Affiliate marketing dead?

[sandyallain]

I have created a network of travel websites that I have decided to promote little by little.. Also so they getdomain age and google trust.... but now when you search for all my main keyphrases... you either have wikitravel,lonelyplanet,frommers and other big brand. I guess that Google gave them better value as to get trusted travel information... However, it seems it will be very difficult to rank my sites. I could do long tail keyphrases but again might not be worth it...

I used to work as a SEO consultant for other travel sites selling products... they still rank pretty well as they are sites of value selling something.. of course threy compete with other sites but we are in the same level. How can you compete with loneyplanet with your affiliate site because I am not selling anything on my sites.

I am pretty much desperate.

I designed a network of 30 sites... all good content with good SEO on the page... of course, I will be honest. I might have to change the content to make it better... you can check one of my site here; www.simplyparis.org

it is worth it or better stop this project and focus on 1 product oriented website ?

Is anyone working as an affiliate marketer with experience after google panda and pinguin ?

is affiliate marketing dead in 2013 now?

[OrionGroup]

When I do a Google search for certain phrases that I find on your website, I see a lot of duplicate content. How much of your website's content is completely unique?

It will help if you get a copywriter to write from scratch instead of piecing sentences together from other sites.

[sandyallain]

this is not what I am doing... where do you see duplicate content?

[OrionGroup]

Here:

http://scott.offord.me/NiAE

http://scott.offord.me/NicJ

http://scott.offord.me/Ni0y

[sandyallain]

ahhhhh!!!!!

is it someone who copied from me or my writers so copied there I guess...

but if it is from different sites and I come number 1... it is that there are copying from me..

anyhow... i will try to fix this...

concerning my other questions ? any clues?

[EGOL]

I find lots of dupe content too.

Instead of building 30 sites I would focus on one, filling it full of high quality, original, substantive content.

Actually, I don't think that I would make a travel site like these because I don't have the resources to compete and the ability to produce fantastic content for cities around the world.

Lots of people see the sites of an industry ranking well in the search results.  Then when they try to make their own site or a clients they discover that they can't rank.  That's because they have zero authority and no power.

it is worth it or better stop this project and focus on 1 product oriented website ?

That is what I would be doing.

is affiliate marketing dead in 2013 now?

AM has been really hard for several years unless you have a heavyweight site.  You can no longer toss up a site with grabbed content - or even original content and get traction in an industry as competitive as travel.

or my writers

heh... you gotta keep an eye on these guys.