What is an Affiliate Marketer and Why Are Affiliates the Bad Guys?

There's a certain embarrassment about being an affiliate.  When I talk openly about being an affiliate marketer, it's usually to someone who's never heard of the role, or someone who is herself an affiliate marketer.  The rest of the world looks on and disapproves.

In particular, affiliate sites have an increasingly bad reputation with search engines.  They also have a bad reputation in other online communities, for a lot of reasons.  The major ones are that they're seen as spammers and they're a new kind of professional animal that nobody fully understands.

Pros and Cons of Backlinks: Not Worth the Effort Anymore?

Writers or web content publishers who are also search engine marketers often tout the value of backlinking their own work.  I'm a maverick.  I think backlinks created for "link juice" are pretty valueless and getting cheaper daily.  I write web content for revenue share, and I don't systematically backlink, and my articles, many of them hosted at HubPages, don't do badly at all.  And I think I'm not alone.  I know, I know.  A lot of people swear by creating strategic backlinks.  But there's another group of people that don't touch the things and let the backlinks develop organically.  And it's looking like that may be okay.

Suite101 Scam? No, It's Not. You Just Can't Ignore SEO.

Many writers wonder whether Suite101 is a scam.  I've been writing for Suite101 for over 6 months, and I like it.  It's not HubPages; it's suited to different types of articles.  So is Suite101 a scam?  My answer is that it depends how you define scam.  Suite101 is a legitimate company and they have freelance writers with professional portfolios writing for them.  They ask for no investment but time.  They pay in a timely manner.  They have a solid reputation in the online publishing industry. But Suite uses one of the new earnings models known as revenue sharing.