Perry Marshall seems to think so. Or at least for those who don’t follow the rule that original content and products rule the internet.

In his latest article, “The Death of Affiliate Marketing“, he says that Google is “slashing and burning affiliate accounts” & that “in some categories, the number of advertisers has gone from 50-5.”

He has five pieces of advice for anyone who wants to either stay in or enter the Affiliate Marketing Scene – I’ll summarize them for you.

1- You Must Have A Unique Selling Proposition!

If you don’t have content of you own… you will fail. You’re living on borrowed time.

2 – The only way you can survive as an affiliate on Google now is to have a website with a lot of great, original content, and an email list.

If you’re gonna do that…. you might as well have original products too.

3. There is only one Stable path.

That is to go from a thin affiliate (one with no content or products of your own) to being a full-fledged thick product supplier (one who has both content and products that are their own).

4. Never heavily promote your own Affiliate Program.

What you need to do is have the highest value products in your market. Then your affiliate will naturally grow you sales – because your products is fantastic – not because it offers high pay-outs.

5. If you’ve got well-honed Google AdWords chops, you’ll NEVER go hungry.

Perry said this to a young man who wanted to go full-time with Google AdWords: “Drive across town to some rubber gasket manufacturer. Have lunch with the marketing manager and work out a deal with them where you generate leads for them and they pay you $25 per lead. What you will have created is your own private CPA program with zero competition. And you’ll never get Google Slapped. Put together 3-4 deals like that and you can easily quit your day job.”

This is Perry’s brilliant Summary on the Death of Affiliate Marketing:

“If you’re original, if you have a great USP (unique selling proposition), if you know how to buy and convert traffic, the buyers of world will love you and you can write your own ticket. Students who’ve taken my advice on this have stable, secure businesses and comfortable incomes.”

Be sure to check out Perry’s Blog and Products if your interested in learning more about Google AdWords – his products are king in this market.

Let me know what you think of this? Is affiliate marketing really dead?