Do You Splog or Blog? - Affiliate Marketers with Wordpress Beware

By Cynthia Mosher

If you are just getting started creating an affiliate marketing business online, one of the easiest ways to do so is to get a blog at Wordpress.com. It's free, it's easy, and you can be up and running in minutes. However, an affiliate marketing blog on Wordpress.com can be shut down before you can say why. Why? because of the Wordpress definitions of a spam blog that are often overlooked. So, do you splog or blog? Are you a splogger or a blogger?

A blog that is operating with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs fall into the Wordpress category of "splog." Wordpress defines an affiliate marketing blog as one it will ban. Wordpress states:

Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs. To be clear, examples like people writing original book or movie reviews and linking them to Amazon, or people linking to their own products on Etsy do NOT fall into this category. We're only talking about blogs that are primarily designed to promote different affiliate programs.

If this is your blogging strategy, get thy self your own domain and hosting company and get Wordpress installed on it. By doing so you avoid the risk of having your website removed. Nick at Wordpress Support told me that the Wordpress.com Terms of Service do not apply to the self-hosted version of Wordpress that you download at Wordpress.org. That software is free for you to use as you please with no restrictions or requirements regarding splogging or blogging in any way. Good news for those of us on our own websites. Good information for you if you are just getting ready to build a blog and use it for affiliate marketing information and sales.

As for affiliate marketers already established on a Wordpress.com host blog site, certainly you have concerns about moving to a new website as that would entail changing all of your URLs and losing the pagerank and traffic avenues you have established with your links. I suggest you write to the folks at Wordpress and ask them what you can do to comply with their terms of service to avoid being banned as a splogger. Do it now. It will give you peace of mind and if you are at threat you can begin restructuring your site to comply with what Wordpress will require of you to be able to keep your blog.

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Cynthia Mosher has been working online since 1998. She shares her advice and experience on working at home and internet and affiliate marketing at her website Wahm Daily.