UPDATE: I've remade my “How Affiliate Marketing Works” YouTube video.
You are going to find this hard to believe.
My “How Affiliate Marketing Works” video was removed from YouTube because:
The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines:
* How Affiliate Marketing Works – (rosalindgardner)
Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the termination of your account.
Sincerely,The YouTube Team
Huh?
257,000 PLUS views and cited as the BEST explanation of how affiliate marketing works by more than one industry luminary and it is REMOVED?
Anyway, I sent them the following email…
Hi,
Did anyone at YouTube view this video before it was removed from the system?
I have no idea how this video could possibly be removed for spam or any of the other reasons cited.
It's a purely educational video by me… Rosalind Gardner … one of the leaders in the affiliate marketing industry. (i.e. author, regular speaker at industry conferences and consultant).
I would appreciate if someone actually looked at the video and then cited the individual who reported it as abusive, 'cause removing it is detrimental to those who actually want to learn about our industry from someone with integrity and REAL knowledge.
If you'd like – I can report 100 spammer affiliate marketers who have videos posted in exchange for reinstating this video.
Thank you,
Rosalind Gardner
P.S. You can see me speak about affiliate marketing at the Affiliate Summit West conference on THIS video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdZyAfuVeRs&feature=player_embedded (1:50)
OK, yes, I poured it on a little thick, but I was upset. REALLY upset.
Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.
If anyone wants to support the video as worthwhile, educational and informative, please contact YT through their link at http://www.youtube.com/support
Thanks, folks!!!!
Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
hello Rosalind,
I am a new recruit, I joined your team last Sunday and I finally found the training that I needed and looked so hard for since 2001. You are the only generous and unselfish Expert in the field to brake the code of silence and mystery surrounding the online industry.To me the “Super Affiliate handbook” is the * Bible* of the industry and you are being penalized for that….
You need to realize that there is a pack of money hungry THIEVES online called Gurus who have been scheming on You Tube and now feels threaten by your approach in publishing training books and marketing techniques that are creating smart online marketers in the field that they can no longer suck up financially…and in their vendetta these morons went after You Tube to discredit and humiliate you by boycotting your video clips there.
You don’t have to scoop down to their low life level by pointing the fingers at them…You Tube is their recruiting ground and your presence there is creating havoc to their many schemes costing them millions…you should take a class action against YOU Tube…
Your grateful Affiliate
Yes as soon as google takes over you have no come back, Personally I think it is because it must be manned by hundreds of dumb bunnies doing routine jobs and tutored with idiot sheets much like some call centres.Just to save money.One day one arrives in with a headache and it’s good bye Mr Chips no questions asked.Because it is all tech stuff and automated from there it’s a brickwall.No body cares because all they know is to press buttons like automated clones.They have no authority or knowledge to change anything.Bit scary really.
Hey Ros,
How are you? Been a while since we spoke.
Hope all is well with you these days.
This issue does not surprise me at all!
To coincide with a new affiliate training vehicle my partner and I are working on, we started looking into Video Analytics pretty heavily.
We liked Vimeo but their TOS explicitly says – cannot be used for business and certainly NOT GET RICH QUICK (which upon review we figured affiliate marketing would be classified as such).
We checked out TubeMogul (called them and they said – yea we dont like affiliate marketing and wont allow it on our network).
Same with Viddler.
I asked each one of them if they had ever heard of Amazon, eBay, Walmart, BestBuy, Buy.com?
The reply was not positive.
Looks like the video marketing solutions are being slowly taken away as they are taken over by heavy handed people with Fascist ideas.
Strange though when Youtube is owned by the big G who has their own Affiliate network.
I hope you discover some resolution to this and in the meantime, someone with a brain at these companies starts to get rid of garbage videos and not ban intelligent, how-to marketing info from those in the know.
Wish you the best Ros,
Marc Goldman
I cant belive they have taken this video off, probebly because they dont people to learn about affiliate marketing. I will sure look forward to how it goes down. Hopefully they will restore your video and take the warning out.
Good Luck
Hi Ros ~
I was sad to read your story — there are SO many spammers and bad people out there… I can’t believe they’d actually tag you as one of them. As you already mentioned, I seriously doubt that a real person even viewed your video before removing it. I think your letter to them was GREAT. (I doubt I would’ve been so… ummm… controlled! LOL) Good for you! I hope they pay attention and put your video back up. You help so many people!!
I think Google is trying to eliminate Affiliate Marketers! They recently suspended my Adwords Account for violations – and I haven’t run anything for 8 months! They told me that in order to get out of suspension, I had to re-do my web sites – even the ones I didn’t want to advertise anymore – Even the ones that were listed in my DELETED Campaigns. It’s soooo unfair. Affiliates got them to where they are, and now they are killing off their food chain because they have the big sponsors now! I’m about ready to see if there others would like to do something about “Unfair Business Practices.” Certainly there is a greedy lawyer out there who would like a piece of that. . .
This is outrageous. Your video has been a help to so many people; isn’t that what Google says they want? Helpful, high quality content?
I’m having the hardest time trying to find WHERE to contact YouTube/Google to complain about your video being removed. I KNOW that you are one of the most reputable IM people out there and you keep us in the KNOW about the issues to look out for from a reputable viewpoint. I cannot believe that someone as honest, authentic and TRANSPARENT as you would have a video removed from YouTube. Even though the support area says that they don’t remove videos for being flagged — it appears they do!
Like with other Google-run sites, looking through HELP and SUPPORT is like taking a ride on a merry-go-round and if you are LUCKY you will find what you are looking for. Why do these conglomerates make it so hard to contact them? Oh, I get it — they don’t want to be continually flagged. Kind of funny, don’t you think?
I’m persistent and I will state my opinion to them.
Thank you Rosalind. Thank you.
That really sucks. Just like one of my sites was banned/blocked by Akismet, making it impossible for me to place comments on WordPress blogs that have Akismet enabled (and there are lots and lots of them). My comments would immediately be shunted into the spam box where in most cases it would never be seen unless the webmaster checked their spam box and most don’t bother. I can assure you I’m no spammer and actually hate spam. What really sucks is that virtually anyone, including a jealous competitor, can cause this.
Pretty if any out there can explain affiliate marketing better than you. You preach what you practice and practice what you preach. And we know you are no spammer.
Sorry to hear that, Ros 🙂 Hope it is resolved soon.
Rosalind,
I’ve long suspected that YouTube does not actually look at these videos before removing them, especially for them to remove one of YOUR videos. It seems that they could and should come up with a better way.
This industry is full of people waging smear campaigns against others and the fact that YouTube helps them is just wrong.
Some of these online “businesses” and yes, I’m especially including YouTube, are run by clueless kids enamored with making as much money as possible with the least bit of individual customer consideration they can get away with.
Squidoo is one of the more flippant and will dump your ‘lens’ without replying to “why?” other than a generic “guidelines” issues statement. The anonymity of it all is really frustrating at times, isn’t it?
I’m sorry to see you run over by yet another childish, unprofessional and out of control process.
With this happening, and in light of one of your most recent posts re IM niches, how ironic this happened. So many of us have become numbed to the ever-increasing useless scammy and spammy stuff that’s out there for us to view, and we rely on a select group of established, trusted and honest leaders in this industry for guidance.
Hope it get’s straightened out.
I sent a query to YouTube Support as to why they pulled it. Maybe if others will send their query, someone at YouTube will actually look at the video.
Good luck.. I have had an issue with their “Places” “Maps” with wrong info even though I had edited it and corrected their mistakes for almost a year and they have yet responded to my request for help. I guess when you think you are King you can get away with anything.
Best to you and anyone that has to ask help from Google.
Stan
You must be making to much money of YouTube. Ros, That’s why they removed your video
Ros,
Unfortunately, there are a lot of haters and cyber bullies on YouTube. If they don’t like you, or what’s in your video, they will simply flag it. Somethimes people with “nothing better to do with their life” spend hours on YouTube for the sole reason of flagging videos and trying to get accounts terminated. I guess it gives them a feeling of power. I doubt YouTube even looks at why? Once they see the flag, they just issue you the warning(s). After your 3rd warning, they will just terminate your account with no explanation. I have had three (accounts) terminated by them. They give no reason for their actions and I seriously doubt anyone from YouTube will answer your email so it does you no good to even write them. This has been going on for quite some time. It makes no sense but that’s the way YouTube operates and it doesn’t look like they are willing to do anything to change it. Sorry that happened to you. You are a Giant in the Affiliate Marketing industry.
Ken
Hopefully they see your angle and take heed to what you have advised them in your email. So true about there being a tonne of spam affiliate marketers on youtube that will most probably never get there videos taken down.
Hi Rosalind
It all seems very vague – did they give you any more clues as to what guideline you violated?
Libby
Hi Rosalind
I think you wrote the perfect letter to them. I hope the people or team in charge realise who (among their team) did that to you and, although you may be just one among their million users, they have caused hurt nevertheless.
This is disturbing – especially when people like us supported YouTube (or any other once-budding company) in their early days … then when they grow big and famous, they employ robots (yes, real and virtual “robots”) to over-rule by some abstract “terms and conditions” and get impersonal.
Pete
ps: your existing list (includung me) will definitely be on your side if that’s any consolation … but what about the rest of the internet (people) who look for a good proven sincere mentor huh 🙂
Yep….:)
trust google to **** it up.
you should see what they have bee doing over at blogspot…
deleting left right and center – you can put in a reconsideration request – which just becomes available again after a few weeks – so i presume it is never read….:)
(i created a little niche blog with directory content there about two years ago to see how well it helps to build my list – and it did well, until they deleted it a few months ago. when u put in a reconsideration request, they acknowledge receipt – and then the option simply becomes available again after the review period expires…)
and then of course there is the adwords circus – i understand that you need to enforce rules, but just banning someone for life while his company spends millions with you annually?
come on…
and then of course there is the old joke of “we can’t tell you what we want on your website because you might abuse it if you know….:)”
with google in charge, it was bound to happen some or other time…
there is an expression….
“absolute power corrupts”…
it seems to be holding up
just my 0.02c
peter
I would have been upset too. Of course this is the heavy hand of Google at work. Although I have not seen this particular video, I’ve seen a few others done by you and fail to see what they could find offensive.
I wish Bing/Yahoo would hurry up and produce some real competition.
Anne
Hi Ros,
Obviously some one out there doesn’t like you telling the truth.
Regards
Nick
Hi Ros
Soory to hear of your difficulties- the thing is now I REALLY want to see the video – is it hosted anywhere else?
Regards
David