Being an affiliate marketer in China has a very unique set of difficulties that must be overcome.
In an effort to boost my income here in China with some American dollars, last year I began to take some online courses about internet marketing.
Now, because I was never really interested in Facebook, You Tube, and all these other social media sites, the so-called Great Firewall of China never really affected me in a big way.
Everyone once in a while I'd run into a site or two that couldn't be accessed, but that's common when surfing in the West.
However, I only began to understand the frustration of my Facebook addicted colleagues as I began to expand my internet horizons.
You see, part of internet marketing is getting you name out.
Writing articles, posting comments, blogging, and creating web sites.
This in itself is a unique skill set, but the difficulty of learning is compounded by the gymnastics routine China's firewall put you through.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason why certain sites have been deemed unworthy, and I've even read that China's government will block whole sets of IP addresses if it suits their needs.
Of course Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, and these huge sites have been denied access to the Chinese market, which makes promotion of my personal site a hassle.
Hosting is another story.
I'm hosting a few sites on an affiliate marketing site called Wealthy Affiliate, and the first four or five sites I created went up without a problem and have been accessible since the first day I created them.
When I switched my hosting service to Fat Cow, all of the new sites I created were not able to be accessed from inside the Chinese Firewall.
The Fat Cow site could be accessed, just not the sites hosted by their company.
After a period of two months, the sites suddenly became accessible for a week or so and immediately went down again.
Can anyone explain it to me? A huge part of internet marketing is SEO (search engine optimisation) and where your site stands in Google rankings.
Again, the China and Google relationship has never really been a stable one and this greatly affects the research side of my affiliate marketing.
Though Google is accessible, it's like an old doorknob which needs to be tweaked in just the right manner in order to open properly.
Many tools are inaccessible like Google Trends and Google Analytics.
But many are accessible as well - in various speeds.
Google pictures work if you don't click on too many in too short a period of time, and two or three consecutive searches will get you blocked for about two minutes.
It's important to space your searches by about five to ten seconds each time.
Most recently I've begun using a VPN which allows users from within China to access sites as they normally would from home, but China is closing in fast on these types of tools and it's difficult to say how long they'll be around.
In an effort to boost my income here in China with some American dollars, last year I began to take some online courses about internet marketing.
Now, because I was never really interested in Facebook, You Tube, and all these other social media sites, the so-called Great Firewall of China never really affected me in a big way.
Everyone once in a while I'd run into a site or two that couldn't be accessed, but that's common when surfing in the West.
However, I only began to understand the frustration of my Facebook addicted colleagues as I began to expand my internet horizons.
You see, part of internet marketing is getting you name out.
Writing articles, posting comments, blogging, and creating web sites.
This in itself is a unique skill set, but the difficulty of learning is compounded by the gymnastics routine China's firewall put you through.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason why certain sites have been deemed unworthy, and I've even read that China's government will block whole sets of IP addresses if it suits their needs.
Of course Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, and these huge sites have been denied access to the Chinese market, which makes promotion of my personal site a hassle.
Hosting is another story.
I'm hosting a few sites on an affiliate marketing site called Wealthy Affiliate, and the first four or five sites I created went up without a problem and have been accessible since the first day I created them.
When I switched my hosting service to Fat Cow, all of the new sites I created were not able to be accessed from inside the Chinese Firewall.
The Fat Cow site could be accessed, just not the sites hosted by their company.
After a period of two months, the sites suddenly became accessible for a week or so and immediately went down again.
Can anyone explain it to me? A huge part of internet marketing is SEO (search engine optimisation) and where your site stands in Google rankings.
Again, the China and Google relationship has never really been a stable one and this greatly affects the research side of my affiliate marketing.
Though Google is accessible, it's like an old doorknob which needs to be tweaked in just the right manner in order to open properly.
Many tools are inaccessible like Google Trends and Google Analytics.
But many are accessible as well - in various speeds.
Google pictures work if you don't click on too many in too short a period of time, and two or three consecutive searches will get you blocked for about two minutes.
It's important to space your searches by about five to ten seconds each time.
Most recently I've begun using a VPN which allows users from within China to access sites as they normally would from home, but China is closing in fast on these types of tools and it's difficult to say how long they'll be around.
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