The Underground Story of Google’s Success and Why Facebook Could Crush Google

Facebook Vs. Google

Here’s a story you may not have heard about Google.

It includes a little underground history of Google including:

• A big reason for Google’s early success.

• Some huge mistakes Google has made.

• Why Google is losing its appeal.

• How Facebook could crush Google

Facebook wasn’t even born …

And in 2003, even Google Adwords wasn’t very popular yet. A relatively small amount of people were advertising with them.

At that time I figured out a way to make money by advertising people’s products as an affiliate via Google Adwords. I placed my affiliate links for a product in the destination URL of an Adwords Ad. I bid on keywords related to that product or service. When someone clicked through my ad and purchased or signed up, I would earn a commission.

I was earning far more money through affiliate commissions then I was spending to advertise with Google Adwords.

It was great money. In early 2003 I was earning $30,000 a month in profits doing this. But I wasn’t really happy. I wanted more time to myself and for my income to become more passive.

The thing I hated the most about the way I was earning money with Google was that it involved massive amounts of time at the computer looking at figures, and analyzing results so that I could fine tune my system of advertising and find new products to advertise.

It was around that time that I decided I was going to write a book about how I was making money as an affiliate using Google Adwords.

You may have heard of it “Google Cash”.

This knowledge was set to spread like wildfire!

I wanted to show people how they could make more money and do less work.

I wrote the 87 page book on how I was making the money I was. It includes instructions with screen shots and a complete explanation on how one could duplicate my success. Since then that is one of the primary principles I try to get people to adopt.

SUCCESS CAN BE DUPLICATED.

Within 2 weeks, without any advertising the book soared to the #1 selling eBook on Clickbank. It remained at the #1 spot for over three years.

This was the kind of money I wanted to be making. After all I only worked one weekend and I got paid for it for years to come.

As I said the method of making money in my eBook was more lucrative at the time that I started selling Google Cash. Regardless the methods are simple, effective and still work today.

Perry Marshall credits my book as the reason for Google Adwords’ early success.

Here is an excerpt from Perry Marshall’s article:

A 20-something surfer dude named Chris Carpenter put Google Adwords on the map.

You’ll never read about this in the Wall Street Journal…. but it is my professional opinion that “Google Cash” in 2003 and the firestorm of affiliate activity in the lowly “bizop world” was THE tipping point for Google Adwords.

Suddenly every imaginable keyword was being bought up by affiliates and Google ads started multiplying like rabbits in Australia.

How cool is that?

My eBook might have been the initial spark for Google’s success.

A Google insider once told me similar.

In 2006, on a surf trip I met a guy in the water while we were sitting in the lineup waiting for the waves to roll in. When I introduced myself, his eyes lit up and he said, “Are you the same Chris Carpenter who wrote Google Cash?”

That kind of freaked me out, as that had never happened before. But things got even weirder.

He told me that he was an employee at Google. And that he and his team knew about my Google Cash eBook. We talked and talked.

He said that they estimated that between 2003 and 2006 Google Cash had brought them around 100,000 new advertisers. He said that at that time, on average an advertiser spent $1,000 on Adwords.

He said that a joke around the office was that I was their #1 sales associate, having made Google easily over $100 million in sales.

I joked with him that you’d think that Google would give me some stock options or something.

But no that never happened.

Instead just a few years later I got my Google Adwords account banned for life, just like thousands of others did. But more on that in a minute. Back to my story.

Things were cruising along fine for years. I was making good money promoting lots of different products as an affiliate on Adwords. And I was selling lots of Google Cash eBooks.

My coining of the name “Google Cash” was based on the concept that pay-per-click traffic from Google could earn affiliate marketers cash.

Simple enough: but I made a mistake in that “Google” was a trademarked name. I should have never used their name in the title of my ebook.

Then the scams started …

In 2008 scammers started using the name “Google Cash” to lure people into their “Work For Google” scams.

There was nothing I could do, since Google was not my trademark.

These scammers were offering “Google Cash Kits” where people paid $1 for a kit that supposedly told them how to work directly for Google.

Many of these sites had photos of people holding sizable checks they received from Google. These of course, were bogus checks.

When people ordered one of these “Google Cash Kits” for $1, nothing ever arrived in the mail. They never received anything. However, their credit cards got charged around $60 every month.

The FTC received over 275,000 complaints about these “Work for Google” scams. Google filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against Pacific Webworks, alleging trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition and cyber piracy.

They commented about the matter on their blog.

“Although there’s no secret kit that can guarantee riches, many people really do make money online. In our experience, the best way to build a business on the web is to really serve users – offer useful products and services or write about something you have a passionate interest in.”

I started to worry about my eBook business.

I wasn’t sure if Google was going to be confused that I was one of these scammers since my “Google Cash” ebook held the same name as the “Google Cash Kit” scam.

I called Google and spoke with their lead council and was relieved when she told me that she knew of my eBook, and that I was not associated with Pacific Web Works and their “Google Cash Kits – Work For Google” Scam.

My eBook has been one of the great guides to creating an online business. So to distance myself from the scammers, their illegal activity and the profoundly hurtful nature of these types of scams, I started to give away my eBook for free.

I’ve been giving it away for free ever since.

You can download my Google Cash eBook for free here. It’s still an awesome eBook. The system still works. It is just a little harder because of more competition.

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I’ve heard from lots of people who read my eBook and later ended up making money a different way online. They said that reading the Google Cash eBook made a light bulb go off in their head, and changed everything.

So if you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you give it a quick read when you have a chance.

In 2009 and 2010 the FTC cracked down on the scammers.

They also gave Google a lot of flack about this, because many of these scams got most of their traffic from Google Adwords.

Google started banning Advertisers who promoted any of these questionable products at any time. Even those who had them in their deleted campaigns years ago.

Google used an automated system to ban advertisers accounts. A banned advertiser would go to login to their account and it would tell them that their account had been banned for life and that they could not sign up again.

It’s been widely said online that over 100,000 Google Advertisers were banned.

The dirty little secret …

The dirty little secret is that many of those who were banned had invested millions in Google advertising and were the reason why Google was able to expand the way it did.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly Google forgot the 100,000 Advertisers that started the spark and momentum for Google to grow to what it is today?

In 2003 to 2006, 100,000 affiliates started using Google Adwords like crazy and gave Google the momentum to grow big time. Over time large corporations flocked to Google because it gave the best results on searches.

Today SEM Rush estimates that Google’s profit can be visualized in the following chart.



Today 80% of Google’s profits come from the top 1.35% of advertisers (people who spend more than $10,000/month).

In short Google doesn’t really care for the little guy as much as they should since most people who advertise on Google do not make up a significant share of their profits.

Regardless due to the popularity of Google people will advertise with them despite the primarily one way relationship.

Ignored by Google

I found myself ignored by Google on the issue of my banned account, with Google sending out only automated standard response to all affiliates that were banned. Google really didn’t care about the advertisers they lost and they got the FTC off their backs and only lost a small portion of their profits.

As I previously stated, Google got rid of over 100,000 advertisers.

Guess where those 100,000 advertisers went?

Yup, you guessed right – FACEBOOK!

Facebook is serious about PPC …

We all started advertising on Facebook. We might have never bothered with Facebook advertising, but by Google banning our Adwords accounts, we were forced to give Facebook a try.

And it turns out that, when done the right way, Facebook advertising is like Google Adwords was in 2003. Tons of targeted traffic for low cost per click.

Since Facebook Advertising is relatively new and people are still learning to use it effectively the cost for advertising is relatively cheap. As competition increases prices on Facebook will increase like they did on Google.

Google is now in a very precarious place. They make the vast majority of their money from their search engine advertising income.

They banned and got rid of many of the smaller mom and pop style online businesses advertisers.

They alienated hundreds of thousands of people.

Here’s the problem for Google.

If people stop using the Google Search Engine, then Google is doomed.

Right now we all use Google because it is the best search engine, plain and simple. It gives you the best results for what you are searching for.

Even those of us who got banned from Google Adwords still use the Google Search Engine, because it is the best.

However, as soon as there is a good alternative search engine, then many people will jump ship.

This is how Facebook could crush Google.

As soon as Facebook learns to better harness their data and the power of it’s people (800 million+) to help each other find what you are looking for, Google will be doomed.

Imagine doing a keyword search at your computer and having millions of human minds point you in the right direction.

So what can Google do about this reality?

Google can still survive. They can even come out on top.

I think I have the answer. Perhaps I’ll write about it in a future blog post. Google if you want the answer now, you need to send me some love! :-)

Guys, what do you think? Is Google Doomed? Is Facebook going to crush Google? Or will Google trump Facebook? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.