Mark Ling – AffiloJetPack

How A Penguin Ruined The Livelihoods Of Thousands Of Affiliate Marketers You’ve heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But what about the Google Penguin of the Affiliate Apocalypse? In April 2012, Google unleashed an update to their search engine algorithm that resulted in literally thousands of people losing their incomes overnight.

We like to think of penguins as cute and cuddly animals; but this Penguin came like a thief in the night to rob people blind. Google was targeting websites that were trying to use unnatural techniques to move their way up the search engine rankings.

What’s more, this isn’t the first time that Google has completely sucker punched affiliates out of nowhere.

In 2011, the Google Panda algorithm change crushed massive numbers of affiliates and webmasters. Incomes were slashed overnight, entire pages dropped from the front page of Google, and a storm of epic proportions blew across the affiliate marketing landscape.

The so-called “gurus” (and their students), who relied on push button software, masses of poor quality content, and 5-page micro niche sites that added nothing of value to readers were all severely punished.

Affiliate marketing forums and blogs were packed with Chicken Littles, all claiming that the sky had fallen.

Those who had jumped from one “hot” system to the next found themselves floundering after Panda; and Penguin was just the final nail in the coffin. Affiliate marketing, it seemed, was dead.

But here’s where the story really becomes interesting. I’m an affiliate marketer myself, and I didn’t lose any money after Google’s Penguin update. In fact, I’m doing BETTER now than I was before it. At this rate I can’t wait for Google to roll out their next algorithm change!

My affiliate earnings haven’t dropped like a stone
My sites haven’t vanished from the front page of Google
I’m actually getting more visitors than ever before
I don’t have to lie awake at night worrying whether my income is going to dry up completely
So what’s different about the way I do my business online? What allows me to thrive, while thousands of others struggle in the affiliate marketing post-Penguin wasteland?