Natespost

   Ringtones, who are they making money for? Right now, they are making money for the merchants (the actual company completing the transaction and offering the ringtones) and those who display adsense ads for ringtones, many of whom are telling you how much you can make being a ringtone affiliate. If you were thinking about buying adwords ads and converting them as a ringtone affiliate, think again. Let me explain.

   Recently, being a ringtone affiliate was pretty lucrative. You had (and still have) companies offering ringtones for sale with “no credit card needed”. What this means is that it is an extremely easy sell…all the buyer has to do is type in their cell phone number and BAM, you get paid as an affiliate for providing the lead. Early on, this was very lucrative because the concept of a third party (not verizon, sprint, at&t, etc.) being able to sell a product and bill it to the buyer’s phone number was a fresh idea. So many people signed up as affiliates for these companies, bought adword ads and directed the traffic to the companies offering the ringtone downloads and were paid for each signup. It was easy, because as I said, the concept was new and the affiliates could buy the ads for as little as .06 a click. Now, .06 won’t get you in the top 10 of ANY longtail adword keword for ringtones. If you sign up as a ringtone affiliate now and increase your bid on any keywords to the point that you get any traffic, your investment will be eaten up with no profit….the math just doesn’t work.

   Why is this? Well, as with any money making possibilities, a lot of people will jump on board. With the law of supply and demand, more people in the ringtone game, the price of adword keywords rose sharply for ringtones, to the point that it is not profitable for the affiliates to buy clicks and turn them over to the sellers.

  Now, what I don’t like, is that a few big time bloggers have moved to the other side of the ringtone equation, and are absolutely USING their readers to make their wallets fatter. Follow me closely here. Adwords= buying ads. Adsense= selling ads. OK…so buying adword ads and making money with ringtones is no longer feasible, yet these few big time bloggers are trumpeting the cause. They have massive readerships who cling to their every word and do what they say…hoping to make a dollar. They are taking advantage of this trust by telling their readers how much you can make by buying Adword ads for ringtones and directing the traffic to the merchant. BUT, all they are doing is jacking up the payout for ringtone ADSENSE. Meanwhile, they have built “made for adsense” pages where they are SELLING inflated ringtone adsense ads. Unethical? mostly Brilliant? yes