Does Internet Marketing, AdSense and Clickbank Really Pay Off?

Throughout the previous year, much speculation about the death of Internet marketing has been said. Virtually the Internet was flooded with warnings that Internet marketing was a thing of the past and soon to be extinct.

There were reports that PayPal was closing Internet marketers' accounts for various reasons but mostly because of the reported 90 percent product refund rate. Numerous other payment processors voiced intentions of placing vendor activity under a microscopic eye. ClickBank was reportedly de-listing hundreds of products, again due to the incredibly high refund requests. Amazon first banned Public Domain ebooks from Kindle, and has now followed that up with a ban on PLR ebooks. Now, they must be rewritten. [and the Google Panda had updated and hit numerous marketing sites.]

Over the past year or two, job loss and home foreclosures soared due to the affects of the recession, and Internet marketing products and sales fell to an all time low.

Is making money online a dead issue? Should you be scanning the classified ads in search of a steady income? Are Internet marketeers staring at the end of the world? Historically, every so often something occurs and shakes up the market, but most often something stronger, different, or even better comes out of the events.

For instance, AdSense. AdSense-targeted sites were easily created a few years ago. Many people were reaping thousands of dollars a month from website visitors who clicked on ad displays provided by Google. It took a while but the 'lack of quality content chickens' have finally come home to roost. Google finally recognized that thousands of websites were nothing but garbage pits, created solely for the purpose of generating AdSense commissions, and changed the rules. This change caused Internet marketing incomes to plummet and AdSense was viewed as a plague on the land, something to be avoided. But not for long.

The majority of marketers that created these substandard websites began shouting that AdSense marketing was dead. Other marketers worked through Google's message and decided AdSense was not dead. These marketeers recognized a big portion of Google's income is derived from selling ads, and learned what kinds of sites Google preferred and began producing them. However, this was not easy, involved a lot of effort, and produced smaller incomes, but the realization worked. Once again, AdSense was proven to be a good income-generating source within a viable business plan. It just required a lot more work.

Millions of dollars have been spent on 'how to get rich fast' ebooks. Before the recession, consumers had access to quite a bit of disposable income, and didn't mind purchasing an ebook that turned out to be trash. The ebooks were cheap and satisfied the buyer's curiosity.

Many products being sold had very little useful content and were heavily laden with hype and specious , unverified information. Sales reports were often faked.

Did ClickBank, PayPal and Google mind or condone these underhanded tactics? ClickBank didn't seem to much care because they were getting their cut and as long as refund rates were kept below 15%, the actual content of the products was the vendor's business.

PayPal didn't appear to be concerned either. As long as there were few complaints against the Internet marketer, they did not get involved with the items up for sale. And, if the Internet marketer made prompt refunds when asked, the amount of refunds did not seem of interest to PayPal.

Google largely gave lip service to quality content guidelines. but allowed poor quality or crappy sites to rank, often in the #1 spot. Sending mixed messages to Internet marketers, the consensus interpretation was translated into "Why bother building quality sites while trash still ranks with Google?"

There were and are forums that allow products to be offered for sale that are usually inexpensive. Indeed, that often is the only requirement, that they be cheaper than they can be bought anywhere else. Quality is buyer beware. One such WSO (Warrior Special Offer) is a section in the Warrior Forum where Internet Marketers can create threads to sell products, as long as there is something special about the offer, such as a lower price.

Trash is easier and faster to produce than quality products. However, a good, solid business plan that involves hard work never sold very well. So, easy money, easy site building, easy anything systems have become the norm.

Don't get me wrong, there are many good, honest products being sold on the Internet. Unfortunately, many are drowned out by high-visibility marketers promoting everything and anything without question. These marketers sell 'sizzle' and ignore the meat of the product. When the world economy was healthy and money was plentiful this tactic worked hands down.

When the banks and world economies came tumbling down, everyone began looking at their own finances, and a completely different consumer emerged.

But, the big marketers didn't see, or ignored, the writing on the wall. They did not improve the meat of their products, instead they increased the sound level of the 'sizzle,' producing increased hype, fewer facts, and less quality. The name of the game was volume sales at any cost, and many of the so called guru Internet marketers bragged about the launch of a new product that reaped $250,000 in just one day.

The economy continued to worsen and customers got savvy and became aware of what and where their money was being spent. They began to question product value, and requests for refunds overwhelmed marketers.

Currently, if a product is below expectations, customers will demand their money be returned. It has been suggested that a 90% refund rate is common nowadays.

In this light, you cannot blame PayPal or Clickbank for taking action at this level of customer discontent. With refunds comes charge backs and complaints, so it's not really a big surprise that payment processors are monitoring and closing down accounts.

When Kindle was launched, Amazon was happy to accept most any ebooks offered in order to expand the marketplace. Many Internet marketers began selling 'how-to-make-easy-money' manuals by buying cheap Private Label Rights (PLR) ebooks. Once a pre-written ebook was acquired, converting them to Kindle format and listing them in Amazon's marketplace was a snap.

It was about as easy as falling off a log. The cost was almost nothing with an earning potential of a few dollars per ebook per day. Market a hundred Kindle ebooks, and hundreds of dollars can be earned quickly and easily. Amazon, however, was flooded with duplicate ebooks, and demands for refunds. The end of the free-ride had arrived.

But, there is good news -- Internet marketing is not dead! A return to quality products which offer real value is back in vogue. Internet marketing may be more difficult in the future, may take more work, and rewards may not be as big as once claimed. However, people who care about web site quality and the products they sell will survive and do very well. It just may take six months, instead of one.

Internet marketing is not dead. It's just been revamped and improved, again.