No domain pointing on Adword?

[cssoh]

Hi all...I have just read an article about Google now forbids domain name pointing to another site on Adword (something that affiliate marketers do a lot), ie. to advertise on Adword you need to have your own site and from there point to the intended site. Is this true? I am exploring affiliate marketing as an online business on top of my brick and mortar, so this issue whether it's true or not needs to be taken into consideration. I'd appreciate experts' advice.

Cheers...

[I, Brian]

A domain and basic website aren't expensive - you're looking at around £6 for a .co.uk for 2 years, plus webhosting costs of less than £5 per month.

Really, it has to be said, *any* business that thinks it can't afford such basic costs really needs to ask itself what sort of online business model it has in the first place.

[cssoh]

I may be wrong, but I think a lot of people who are involved in affiliate marketing register domain names to redirect to the merchants' sites and are quite succesfful without even having their own website.

[www.t6c.co.uk]

I though you still could you just had to say so. And it would tell people next to the add !

Or has it changed.

[dotwhack]

I've had a lot of porblems with affiliates in the past - I worked for a resonably large mail order clothes company and instead of generating new customers, our affiliates simply pushed up the price of our keywords (especially brand ones) and we ended up paying for our own customers to come back.

Ended up in solictors letters & trademark documents etc - it was a nightmare.

Just thought I'd offer a word of warning - you must be strict with your affiliates & understand exactly who they generate traffic/sales to your site

[dotwhack]

oh and i believe affilates are supposed to display 'AFF' next to their adword adverts to identify they aren't the official link to a site....

[Elquicos]

Now affiliates don´t need to add "aff" to the creatives, but are forced to match the displayed URL with the actual domain people land on. Basically, Google don´t like affiliates too much (they new guidelines penalise them) so Google are forcing them to add any value and not just do arbitrage. I personally think is a good practice.