I signed up for Google Affiliate Network a while ago. My biggest complaint: nearly all of the affiliate links (as far as I can tell) have an expiration date! Why on Earth would anyone post an affiliate link that expires? Everyone knows that affiliate marketers live and die by: build it, submit it, forget it. Residual income is the entire reason we build websites, it’s how we survive.
If I wanted flash-in-the-pan payments I would be better off working by the hour. Affiliate marketers don’t get a pension or a salary, all we have is our sites. You expire our affiliate links and you expire our business! I’m insulted Google is this inconsiderate to affiliates to allow affiliate links to expire like this.
For example, I wrote up a few posts about Cricket and I even signed up for a phone plan to see if the tracking really worked. A week or two later I get notice from Google that the links are expired! What?! You mean I worked all those hours for nothing? I’m thinking, maybe this is some kind of mistake? But the more I look at Google Affiliate Network, the more it seems this is Google’s strategy. You go into their “links” area and *most* of their affiliate links do *not* fall under the “ongoing” category. Even the word “ongoing” makes me nervous, how long is ongoing?
So who would waste time, money and energy to build websites and content for links that expire? Maybe email marketers are OK with Google Affiliate Network expiring links because emails have a shorter lifespan? I doubt it. Why spend time building email content that you’ll never use again? Content that you could also host on the web for years and years?
Am I missing something or is Google Affiliate Network really worthless?