WordPress Cracks Down On Affiliate Marketing Blogs
A couple of days ago I received an email from my good friend Derrick VanDyke (Affiliate Cash Secrets). Derrick was warning me that WordPress is cracking down on affiliate marketing blogs. I didn’t really pay any attention to it because I don’t have any blogs hosted with WordPress, but then something happened yesterday…
I started getting quite a few frantic emails from members and subscribers – asking me if I knew why their WordPress blog had been suspended/deleted and if I had any idea how they could get it back. Unfortunately I could not help them as I’m not hosted with WordPress and don’t know the process – But I thought it was important to pass this warning on and possibly save a few people from the headaches of having their blogs deleted.
For the record this warning is for people who have a free blog hosted at WordPress e.g. username.wordpress.com. If you are using the WordPress software on your own hosting account you have nothing to worry about.
However if you have a free blog at WordPress you have to follow their terms and that is some scary reading for internet marketers – here are a few examples of what they don’t allow:
…content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost
the search engine rankings of third party sites.
Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs.
Ouch… that just banned two of the powerful uses an internet marketer has for a blog. Even worse, most of the other free blogging platforms like Google’s Blogger have similar terms and they will suspend/delete your blog without blinking. Here you can read Wordpress’ complete Terms Of Service and see the Types of Unacceptable Blogs
Blogging is an extremely potent way to achieve good search engine rankings, build your list of subscribers and generate traffic to your own sites or affiliate sites. In my opinion every serious internet marketer should be using blogs, it’s just that powerful. But if you are using blogs for marketing purposes you should not use the free blog platforms, the risk is just too high. Fortunately there are some good alternatives.
There is no doubt that WordPress is the best blogging platform out there and I wouldn’t recommend using anything else. The absolute best solution is to set up a WP blog on your hosting account and domain. That way you have full control over everything and don’t have to follow other people’s terms. The best how to guide on setting up a WP blog is WordPress Made Easy from Mike Paetzold – without it I wouldn’t be able to post this.
Mike Paetzold also has a free blogging service called MyCCBlog. You get a fully hosted WordPress blog with all the SEO bells and whistles. MyCCBlog is easier to set up than a free WordPress or Blogger blog and a whole lot better – Most importantly MyCCBlog is internet marketing friendly and you won’t have your blog suspended just because you use it for marketing purposes.
Alright now that you have been warned about the fickle nature of WordPress.com, don’t get discouraged. Using blogs for affiliate marketing is very powerful when done the right way. Here are two of my favorite blogging resources for affiliate marketers.
Atomic Blogging from Alvin Phang is an excellent course and it includes some very nifty WordPress plugins and templates you can’t get anywhere else. Alvin is a having a sale right now and until Feb. 10th you can save 60% on Atomic Blogging.
Blogging To The Bank by Rob Benwell. Rob is one of the pioneers in affiliate blogging and I’m truly amazed at the amount of content he gives away in his step-by-step Blogging To The Bank guide.
Hope you found this information useful. Please leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.
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Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
WoirdPress are the terrosrist of the net
Hi Soren,
Great article.. as a new blogger about 7 months ago I got myself a free wordpress blog wanting to use it for marketing as well as other things, took me about a week to realize I was not going to be able to do that, which lead me to hosting my own, in fact Mike helped me set up my first blog called Sue’s Digest – with all the bells and whistles to get it noticed. People if you want to know anything about blogging, go to Mike.
My newest blog which my name here links to is also a MyCCBlog – even though I have my own hosted one, I wanted to test it out so I can market it or not to my lists and I have to say, it’s brilliant, another great product from Mike.
So if you people want to know what one can look like and what you can do with it, go visit.
Thanks Soren, always love your articles.
Sue
Hi Soren,
Great post, and I hope lots of people will read it. I’ll be sending others your way for that purpose. I too saw the big news, and wasn’t concerned at all, because most of my blogs are self hosted and I don’t blog to advertise. I blog for Traffic.
I’ve also created a blogging network where we give people FREE blogs (wordpress blogs no less) and we encourage and teach them HOW to write a blog without it appearing like an advertisement.
I don’t blame Wordpress for not wanting their system to maintain a bunch of commercial spammers. Google will drop them like a hot rock, (and for all we know Google could have communicated something of this sort to them), but more likely the Dev’s at Wordpress saw the trends and decided to crack down before Google did.
Regardless, it’s a common thing that people will get carried away, and just won’t bother to learn how to get the message across without it appearing like an ad. It’s “too much work” they must be thinking.
Tell a story, add a personal touch, refer to the products that made your day, saved your business, enriched your life, but for HEAVENS SAKE don’t use a blatant affiliate link. USE A REDIRECT from your own domain.
What.? Don’t have one?? And you say you’re in business??
Don’t know how? Find someone that will teach you then. You’ve listed Mike Paetzold and other resources… Success Patrol is another site that comes to my mind.
Hope this helps, and thanks for the great blog!
[...] discusses the WordPress crack down on afffiliate marketing blogs. WordPress’s crackdown is on blogs they host and not those WordPress blogs hosted on your own [...]
Hi Soran,
Great Post. I have had blogs at WordPress and Blogger deleted without any reason given – I think I know now…
My hosting package allows me any number of blogs, and since I have installed my own blogs my traffic has increased. It’s also a great way to communicate with my subscribers.
I fully recommend a blog and Wordpress as well.
Cheers,
Charly
http://arvoreentreasures.com/blog
Soren, et al,
A better solution is to tell wordpress.com to got to
the-hot-place and set up your own Wordpress blog, then
you write the TOS!
This is my domain registrar and hosting site.
http://www.d-j–enterprises.info/
Go there, get your own domain for $9.99 or less, get a
$3.99 hosting package, install the Wordpress software (a point-and-click process)
and have a ball! (You can install multiple copies and
put them in sub-domains if you want.)
You can do a lot more things than blogs too. If you are
interested in more, let me know!
Any questions at all hit me back at the email addy.
To our success!
Dennis
BTW, You get a bunch of email boxes with that hosting
plan too. You define what they are!
Sorry! I didn’t realize you wouldn’t see my email!
It is
mktg-info@mgssub.com
Onwards and upwards!
Dennis
[...] plugim_title = “If+You+Use+WordPress.com%2C+Beware%21″; I just read on Soren Jordansen’s blog that if you own a WordPress.com blog, beware! Apparently WordPress.com as well as Blogger are [...]
Thank you Soren for this timely update on Word Press and affiliate marketing. The reality is that to my way of looking at things, now a days to create a long term income, is by using blogs as the medium to brand yourself. How this is done is what is important. While Word Press is indeed one of the best platforms out there, the fact is without good training and support, many people may have blogs..that go nowhere. There is indeed more than one business out there that is striving to help people succeed on the net through the use of blogs,Web 2.0 and other resources. Maybe one day you might list all of them, so that people will know that there are people who do care?
I just wanted you to know also, that I have been studying your techniques for creating free traffic through the use of traffic exchanges. I have to admit that i had my doubts, but am finding that they do work, now all i have is one question…do you have any advise on how to lessen the stress in your wrists by the repetitive motions? LoL
To Your Success,
Diane
Thank you Soren
I have my own server so my web sites my forum are all hostet there
Thank you again
and good luck every one
Adriana
Thank you Soren. I received the same message from Derrick but your explanation is a lot more informative. I really appreciate you going the extra mile for your subscribers which is why I have been with you for the last 3 years.
Regards,
Mike Carr
Excellent post. Thanks for this valuable info
Hi Soren,
Great post. I was a little frightened there for a min until I saw it was the wordpress.com sites that were in trouble.
I have a wordpress blog.com hosted with my own domain so I’m fine. I took Mike Paetzold’s blog course and really enjoyed it. Looking forward to his CC Blog program. Thanks for the article Soren.
Kathie
I thought I was internet savvy [well reasonable so] until I started on this internet earning money caper- so learning a whole new ball game.
Thanks for this information, only have registered a Google Blog, which I have not touched for ages, but have been thinking about using it for my core programs, will think again.
Rather than re-invent the wheel I will go to some of the site mentioned here and start over again.
Peta Kenchington.
Australia
Soren:
This goes for other visitors also. I have 3 WP blogs hosted on my own website. Since a few weeks ago I cannot open them because a receive a 403 error page. I suppose this is a technical problem. I am no expert. The few I know has been learnt by surfing and surfing, tryal an error, etc. Previous to this problem I was working on the .htacces file trying to get the manner to manage rss feeds (php) in html pages. I couldn’t do it.
I have to suppose that I made some inadequate modification to the .htacces file that brought me this bad results. Several folders, including the 3 blogs just don’t open. The remaining folders and all my files work well.
Sorry for touching this subject but when I read your post at first I thought that my problem had to do with what you were saying about WP. And no, after all I guess my problem is only of technical nature.
Unfortunately, I have not a support link from the hosting company.
If any one can help me I would appreciate to read some advices.
Thank you,
Jesus Moreno
Great Post – Thanks for sharing. Just re-inforces the concept of never trust a free host if you are serious about online marketing.
Thanks again for a great post!
Piet Kruger
A few days ago I made a concentrated run at suspending a large number of blogs on WordPress.com that were geared towards making affiliate marketing revenue for the users who created them.
I say “I” because it was not “the devs” who did it, it was just me on my own acting in a system administrator capacity. We have some pretty sophisticated tools to track down and suspend spam blogs en masse, and some others which catch them as soon as they are registered. It may take hundreds of people weeks to create those blogs, but it takes only one of us one or two nights of clicking around the site to get rid of them. We know quite a bit about identifying spam, after all we do run the Akismet service.
This is nothing new, the terms of service have always had that condition. I too suggest that you don’t use WordPress.com for your affiliate marketing blogs. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll get suspended if you do.
I concur that if you want the freedom to advertise on your blog that you pony up a few dollars for some hosting and a domain and install WordPress yourself.
Thanks for all the great feedback guys and gals… a few comments:
Jesus Moreno: yes that definitely is a technical problem and it could be anything from .htacces to corrupted files in your install. I suggest that you use one of the links on this blog to get in contact with Mike Paetzold, he can probably help you.
Sam Bauers: not denying that you guyes at WordPress know what you are doing and Askimet is an invaluable tool (thanks for that)
And not there is nothing new in the WP TOS, a large number of my susbcribers just seems to have fallen from grace thus the warning.
A free WP blog is fine for a personal blog but as you say the best thing is to host your own if you use WP for internet marketing purposes.
I recently startd a blog. It would barely be two weeks old so I’m very new to blogging. I use Wordpress because it was recomended t me. However, it does not seem that Wordpress is leaving many scraps on the table for it’s users in terms of marketing. Since my blog is so new it probably woul be easy to move it. Unless I put it on my own server which possibly is the best option anyway then as you say I will have full control. Thanks for the ino. A great informative article.
WOW! had me worried when I started reading this, but then I saw the part about if you had the hosting somewhere else you where ok. As a new blogger I don’
t need to loose any sites. Thanks for the info Fred
iContent Robot…
iContent Robot…
The theme of your blog is great. Job well done. How to win at guilt-free network marketing: Burn your names list, ditch the Thursday night hotel Ra-Ra meetings and NEVER pay for another worthless opportunity lead again!
Thanks for your info Fred, you’ve been a great help to my success.
hello
Any site must be considered private property
Do not leave other people to control this property
You must control this property
Be smart and buy domain name
have a good time
Crazy info! Thanks for sharing, dont stop writing!
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Great minds run in the same channel!
Thanks for the informative post.. and thanks for adding our comment to the blog.
The site is wonderful.The article is good.You can give more information about the marketing.
See how one affiliate program got me this new home! Affiliate programs rocks. I’m living proof!
Just to let everyone know…this guy from Australia set up a really good Free Internet Marketing Course found at http://www.InternetMarketingsBestFreeGuide.com that made a huge difference to me. Within a month and a half I started earning an income where I have been trying for over two years and just didn’t make anything. Thank you Mark for puting the free guide together.
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wow!
really good info there. i just posted my first blog and i’m quite new to all of this (practically) so i wasn’t sure if non-hosted wordpress blogs allowed affiliate marketing content but now i know! i think i’m just gona have to fork out a few pounds and pay for domain name and hosting! i’m a student looking to get free things everywhere i go but i’m really serious about internet marketing so i guess it’d be an investment!
Thanks Soren, i’ll be looking out for your name now!
This blog rocks! I’m learning so much from the discussion. You guys are great! moneyonline
You can’t play with people’s health by joining a fraud affiliate program. Besides, you would waste your time and energy with such program. You can never become rich through a scam; only get tricked by a bunch of swindlers. Only best affiliate marketing program can give you the rewards in terms of cash and satisfaction. It feels good to know that you’re helping people restore their sexual health, that too, at affordable price. A large number of men have poor sexual life. Get best Online affiliate marketing program and help people treat themselves.
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What a sexy blog, love the theme, what are you using?
[...] blog suspended/deleted by Wordpress.com. Soran Jorandsen recently wrote a post on his blog entitled Wordpress Cracks Down on Affiliate Marketing Blogs. Soran Jorandsen states “A couple of days ago I received an email from my good friend Derrick [...]
Wordpress.com canceled one of my first blogs. While this is their right, they are not giving anyone a warning or chance to correct the errors. I still love Wordpress. I just switched to hosting my blogs myself.
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Your Article is very interesting, It addressses issues in a very clear manner. I have enjoyed very much reading it. Keep up the good writing.
SJ
shubhinetwork8@gmail.com
Thanks for the Pre warning. I have a few WP affiliate sites. I hope they don’t shut them down. Valueable content. 5 stars. Cheers Nigel
Хм…Неплохо
Блоггер – есть ультиматум , заполни форму на моём сайте ,оки ? )
This is something I hadn’t realized before. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll mention it to my readers too, to save them from going to all the work to get an affiliate blog going and then losing it. MyccBlog also sounds like a great alternative.
As for Xocai, the truth should never fear investigation. There are some great research videos over at…
http://healthychocolatevideos.com/category/scientific+research
You have quite a few responses on this entry, so I’ll keep this brief: Anyone who is involved in digital marketing or search engine optimization would be VERY wise to take everything written in this article seriously.
You state, “Blogging is an extremely potent way to achieve good search engine rankings, build your list of subscribers and generate traffic to your own sites or affiliate sites.” I completely concur.
My work (and my company) entails constant blogging by company employees and affiliates. And quite honestly Wordpress is an amazing software platform to use IF it is hosted on your own server. We have been warning people for quite some time, however, to stay away from Wordpress hosted blogs. They WILL get shut down for logical digital marketing use.
This site and all of your information is profoundly relevant. We will refer our affiliates and our employees here. Good job, and good blogging.
By the way, your effective use of this blog as an affiliate marketing platform is beautiful. Keep it up.
– Ad2Action.Com
affiliate marketing discussion…
Your topic Get Paid To Wear T-Shirt and Drive Your Car | Work At Home … was interesting when I found it on Saturday searching for affiliate marketing discussion…
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Номер не пройдет!
I’m new to wordpress, and is using it for internet marketing, i even have included banners there, till I found out paid advertisement is not allowed there although I dont have paid advertisements, made me search if what I am doing is right or wrong. This post have cleared my worries. I’m hosting my own WP.
Thanks for sharing this very valuable information.
Regards
Affiliate marketing is basically a way for you to make money from other people’s products by simply referring people to the designated site. The product owner takes care of the costumer, closes the sale and pays you.
affiliate marketing directory´s last blog ..Affiliate Marketing Tips for Sucess
One of the best ways to learn how to make lots of money online is to interact with like-minded individuals who are equally dedicated to making money on the internet. Nobody knows every single trick in the book and making sure your efforts are profitable in the long run requires some knowledge of proven strategies or methods for optimum results.
affiliate marketing forum´s last blog ..Key Facts About Affiliate Marketing
Your article is very good
What a sexy blog, love the theme, what are you using?
Thanks for sharing this very valuable information.
Your article is very good
Your story sounds very interesting. Thank you for sharing your experience and your ideas. I think it is a good ideas for essay writing to start with a clear and appropriate real life example. You should how it works! Thanks!
I wish I would have read this before! I normally only write very good, helpful, content rich blogs and today I decided to write a review about a new business opportunity with an affiliate link and they shut me down. Crazy!!!
i signed up with the Amazon Omakaze affiliate program. i am not yet earning from this affiliate program because my blog is still very new.’-;
Niche marketing is a good way to promote products and earn money online because there are few competitors yet.’-;
i have just signed up with the amazon affiliate program and i am still not earning a good deal of cash from them.`.’
There are lots of Affiliate programs out there like Amazon, Clickbank, etc. Just sign up with them and see what works for you.,“
A very good marketing strategy is very important in promoting your products both online and offline.”;.
Great article!
Thanks for charing it with us!
it is not always very easy to earn money online, it is a lot of work too.”~;
Great article, thanks for sharing it with us. I am pretty much still a novice when it comes to internet marketing, however, I have seen a lot of things change over the months, the rules are getting much more tougher. I lucked up with getting my WordPress blog hosted on my account, because I had no clue about the new guidelines. Does anybody know about the backlinks mysteriously vanishing in large numbers?
Randy Brickhouse Sr.´s last blog ..Praticing Ethically Sound Social Network Marketing
Great article!
Thanks for charing it with us!
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Wonderfull article love the way it was written id like you to write more stuff if you would please
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Network Marketing is a very good way to promote your products in a short period of time.*-’
Great article. Even Google hates affiliate links. The “Simple Link Cloaker” WP plugin is a must for your own hosted WP blog. Don’t even think about using tinyurl or any URL shortening service. Google is on to these, as well.
Brian Anderson´s last blog ..Google Adwords Tricks and Tips
Amazon Affiliate program pays much better than other affiliate programs out there.”:,
i also want to earn money online that is why i make lots of webpages and monetize them.-”‘
Network marketing is really great for easily earning cash in a short period of time.-;~