I was asked this question recently:
“Writing for healthcare websites is one of my specialties. An owner of a start-up company in the field wants me to work for him part-time. The company is an affiliate site and makes money from a third party whenever somebody fills out a form at his website. Is it worth my time and effort? Will this site make money?”
That’s an interesting question. Google has long had a “hate” relationship with affiliate sites both organically and on Google AdWords. In fact Google will only show one site, either the parent site or one of the many affiliate sites on a search query for Google AdWords. The key penatly appears to be a duplicate content both in the organic and paid search arena.
The truth is that it is very hard for a website to place when it is an affiliate site both organically and in AdWords. The only way an affiliate site will rank is if the look and feel of the site is very different from the parent site AND the content is different from the parent site. Unfortunately, this is typically not the case. So, do I recommend investing time and money in affiliate websites and investing in promoting them with Google AdWords? No I don’t.
If you are thinking of investing in an affiliate online business. Be very cautious, you may spend a lot of money and find out that Google is simply filtering out your site from the results both organically and in paid searches.