Content Really is King
It is every affiliate's wish to have unique site content absentof any re-write or editing restrictions, effectively content with an"open license." Many sources do exist for content that can't bechanged, but there are very few sources which allow an affiliate tomanipulate the article and make it unique and specific to theirsite(s). However, this trend could be changing in the near future.
There is a war between content sites and sites which purely provideproduct lists. Google, for the moment, has clearly indicated that sitesproviding unique content will prove victorious in the battle. Thismeans affiliates who want to compete on Google need to have uniquecontent for their sites or risk vanishing into that ever increasingspecial black hole Google seems to reserve for affiliates.
Sowhere does an affiliate get unique content from? Some affiliates canwrite their own, but it's generally a minority that has the time ordesire to do so. A few pay for content to be produced by freelancewriters on networks such as Elance (
www.elance.com) or by professional copy writing services such as InfoSearch Media (
www.infosearchmedia.com).
Othersare lucky enough to get content from their merchants. That is until themerchants realize that distributing their own content is only a shortterm gain for long term oblivion. The content's value is diluted anddegraded due to being repeated and copied to a point where the merchantloses control of it. Affiliates absent of the gratuitous merchant turnto sites such as Ezine Articles (
www.ezinearticles.com) and ARA Content (
www.aracontent.com)where the content is free, but can't be edited or changed. In mostcases, content provided from these sources must also retain linksand/or credits to the author as well as the source site.
Theobvious solution is to have merchants develop content specific to theiraffiliates, no credits required, no back links requested (well otherthan affiliate tracked and tagged ones that is), the right to edit,cut, slice, dice and the expressed permission to generally edit thecontent to make it unique.
The niche of "open license" content has but a few players in the arena. For example, Wikiepedia (
www.wikipedia.org)while not a merchant, does allow articles to be re-written; however,this permission does come with a few strings attached as they apply afair number of requirements in order to use the content. Various Affiliate Management firms now provide in "open license" house content development for their affiliates. These services should place them as leading contenders inthe affiliate content arena. At the end of the day though, each individualaffiliate still needs to sit down and work out how to make the contentunique to them if they want to win their battle with Google.
Article can be used with permission of Chris Sanderson as long as the signature and in place links are left unchanged. Chris Sanderson is an Affiliate Marketing Manager based in Bangkok Thailand with AMWSO.com and the owner of Xaap.com.
