Content Really is King

It is every affiliate's wish to have unique site content absent
of any re-write or editing restrictions, effectively content with an
"open license." Many sources do exist for content that can't be
changed, but there are very few sources which allow an affiliate to
manipulate the article and make it unique and specific to their
site(s). However, this trend could be changing in the near future.

There is a war between content sites and sites which purely provide
product lists. Google, for the moment, has clearly indicated that sites
providing unique content will prove victorious in the battle. This
means affiliates who want to compete on Google need to have unique
content for their sites or risk vanishing into that ever increasing
special black hole Google seems to reserve for affiliates.

So
where does an affiliate get unique content from? Some affiliates can
write their own, but it's generally a minority that has the time or
desire to do so. A few pay for content to be produced by freelance
writers on networks such as Elance (www.elance.com) or by professional copy writing services such as InfoSearch Media (www.infosearchmedia.com).

Others
are lucky enough to get content from their merchants. That is until the
merchants realize that distributing their own content is only a short
term gain for long term oblivion. The content’s value is diluted and
degraded due to being repeated and copied to a point where the merchant
loses control of it. Affiliates absent of the gratuitous merchant turn
to 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 most
cases, content provided from these sources must also retain links
and/or credits to the author as well as the source site.

The
obvious solution is to have merchants develop content specific to their
affiliates, no credits required, no back links requested (well other
than affiliate tracked and tagged ones that is), the right to edit,
cut, slice, dice and the expressed permission to generally edit the
content 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 a
fair 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 in
the affiliate content arena. At the end of the day though, each individual
affiliate still needs to sit down and work out how to make the content
unique 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.