TopRanked.io Weekly Affiliate Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [PureVPN Affiliate Program]

Once upon a time, the world was a simpler place.

Then people had to go and make things complicated.

Don’t you wish you could go back to a simpler, more pure time?

TopRanked.io Affiliate Partner Program of the Week — PureVPN Affiliate Program

When I went searching for an affiliate program that harkens back to a simpler time, the best I could come up with was the PureVPN affiliate program.

It sounded promising. I mean, you’d think something called PureVPN would be purely and simply about VPNs as it could be.

But, alas, it’s not.

But that’s not such a bad thing.

Actually, it’s a good thing.

Come take a closer look and you’ll see what I mean.

PureVPN Affiliate Program — The Not So Pure VPN

Once upon a time, PureVPN was just that — a pure VPN. But then, online privacy evolved, and so did PureVPN.

Today, in addition to its VPN product, it now sells:

• PurePrivacy, to “Safeguard your digital footprint” by “reclaim[ing] your personal information from the internet and manag[ing] your social media privacy with ease.”
• PureKeep, to “Give your passwords a safe home”
• PureEncrypt, to “Protect your files with total confidence.”
• PureDome, to “Unlock the future of cybersecurity with zero trust.”

That’s a lot of extra stuff for a company calling itself PureVPN.

But hey, that ain’t bad.

The VPN is still the hero product.

And, if you drive your PureVPN affiliate program referrals to the right landing pages, it’s basically the only thing they’re going to see.

But having all that extra stuff on the side — that’s just more opportunities to upsell your referrals and juice up your commissions.

See, told you it wasn’t such a bad thing that the PureVPN affiliate program complicated its offer.

PureVPN Affiliate Program — The Not So Pure Commissions

Like its product offering, the PureVPN affiliate program has opted to bring itself into the modern age by making things complicated.

But, again, that’s not such a bad thing. I mean, the PureVPN affiliate program commissions are great.

Here, take a look:

• 100% Commissions: Get 100% commission on the first month of any monthly plans you sell with the PureVPN affiliate program.
• 40% commissions: Get 40% commission on the first year of any yearly plans you sell with the PureVPN affiliate program.
• 35% commissions: Get 35% recurring commissions every time your PureVPN affiliate program referrals renew their plan.

Sweet, right?

PureVPN Affiliate Program — Next Steps for Pure Affiliates

Alright, that’s enough for now. If you want more details, be sure to check out TopRanked.io for our full PureVPN affiliate program review.

Or, if you’re in a hurry and just want to get started, go sign up here for the PureVPN affiliate program.

Affiliate News Takeaways

Big G’s Had a Rough Week

This week’s big news is, of course, the massive Google leak that dropped.

You’ve all seen it by now, and analyzing the full implications of it is gonna take some time. So I’ll drop a link to the original Google leak report, and leave it at that. There are plenty of other people way more qualified than I am to pour over the details.

One little note I will add since there seems to be some confusion about the source — this wasn’t actually an insider leak. Google stupidly published everything in a GitHub repository back in March. Here’s a link to the “git commit” where everything is.

Now, obviously, with Google’s “Search Generative Experience” (SGE) being all the rage these days, most of us are probably wondering if this is even that big of a deal.

I mean, if SEO is dead gonna be dead anyway, why bother?

Well, maybe SGE isn’t about to kill search just yet.

Here’s Why You Should Still Care About This Week’s Google Leaks

As most of us are probably aware, the other big Google news this week is the massive dumpster fire SGE has turned into.

More so than I think any of us were expecting, including me, and I was already pretty skeptical about how good SGE would be (see our eToro affiliates review edition).

Personally, I was expecting people’s experience with it to degrade slowly over time due to subtle errors killing trust.

Instead, we got all sorts of viral goodness about glue on pizzas and whatnot.

Google, of course, has gone into full-blown damage control mode, with Liz Reid’s blog post last night being the latest installment.

Sadly, instead of admitting its AI search is a bit of a fustercluck right now, she’s doubling down on how great Google is and blaming the problems on “nonsensical new searches” and “faked screenshots”.

To quote someone here, this “blog post is damage control. Like all of Google’s communications about this clusterfuck, it is also very, very bad. It blames users and the media for using Google in the wrong ways. It is also full of huge claims that are not backed up with any information. This is what large companies do when they have messed up”

Ouch.

But whatever.

Let’s give Google the benefit of the doubt here.

Let’s pretend that asking “can I use gasoline to cook spaghetti?” is a bit of a (to quote Reid) “nonsensical new search”.

First, is this really all that nonsensical?

I mean, the question is well formulated. It makes perfect sense and shows none of the usual AI jailbreak patterns.

Now, sure, people don’t ask about cooking spaghetti with gasoline all the time.

But people do ask really, really, dumb stuff all the time.

Sure, they might not be asking “can I clean my fork with an electrical outlet?” all the time.

But they do ask an infinitude of subtly dumb questions all the time. And, making matters worse, they’re often only dumb questions if you already have some familiarity with the subject.

I mean, is it really a “nonsensical new search” if I ask Google if it’s okay if one of the electrical outlets in my home was wired with reverse polarity?

So in reality, it would seem that as much as Google might want to claim the problem is its users making “nonsensical new searches”, it’s not.

“Nonsensical new searches” are part and parcel of the search game.

But fine, whatever. Let’s just pretend the problem still is “nonsensical new searches”.

Doesn’t the I in AI suggest Google’s AI overview should give more intelligent answers?

I mean, ChatGPT passed the gasoline spaghetti test with flying colors… so why can’t Google?

And that makes me think Google’s AI search isn’t really so much AI as it is just a giant plagiarism machine that indiscriminately grinds up a random selection of the web’s content and spits it back out in a nonsensical, demi-factual goop.

Reid has sort of half-admitted this in her blog post, claiming that Google’s AI “can’t hallucinate” because “the model is integrated with our core web ranking systems.”

This basically translates to, “After years of penalizing blackhats for spun content, we’re now putting spun content on our SERPs.”

And I’m not just trying to read between the lines here, either.

This is literally what SGE is up to.

Here, take a look.

Here’s what was the top result for “spaghetti gasoline” before it went viral.

Now scroll up and compare it to Google’s AI overview above.

See what’s going on here?

What makes it worse is that DishGen doesn’t even try to hide the fact it’s using AI. The site title is “AI recipe generator”. And, right there in clear sight on the recipe page for “Fiery Fuel Spaghetti”, there’s a giant note that says “Note: This recipe is AI-generated.”

Looks like our dog-eat-dog world just became an AI-eat-AI world…

…or maybe it’s more of a muslim-US-president-eat-dog world…?

Yeah, that actually happened.

Sure, maybe Obama might not actually be Muslim like Google claimed.

But he did eat dog.

Anyway… I digress.

In any case, the same basic “scrape and spin” logic applies to most of what Google’s been hallucinating (err, I mean… ‘erroneously overviewing’… it “can’t hallucinate…”). Dig a little, and you’ll generally find it’s just a spun version of someone else’s content.

And when that content’s already AI-generated or just a Reddit shitpost, that’s not great. (That was $60 million well spent.)

Now, I know, I know. Right about here is when we’re all supposed to “forget about the glitches” and sing back in perfect harmony, “But this is the worst it’s ever going to be!”

And yeah, okay. Maybe Google will blow our minds in a year from now.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Honestly, I never thought I’d say this… but I actually think Bing might be better for a change.

As a reminder, it’s now been well over a year since Google first embarrassed itself with its Bard promo video.

And here we are today with exactly the same thing happening… but worse.

And I half expect it to keep getting worse if all Google’s doing is “overviewing” the top search results with its braindead LLM.

Especially if the web is going to become increasingly AI-generated.

The effects of AI eating AI have been well documented by researchers. Long story short, it’s not good. At least one hilariously called it degenerative AI when describing the eventual “model collapse” that occurs.

But hey, whatever.

Let’s say Google can iron out the glitches.

Let’s imagine it can start to compete with ChatGPT and only dole out subtly incorrect nonsense.

Well, curiously enough, at about the same time this firestorm has been going down, the Reuters Institute published the results of a recent survey it did asking people about their knowledge of and beliefs about AI.

At the time (between March 28 and April 30 — about 2 weeks before SGE was launched), basically the only AI that the average person had heard of was ChatGPT.

And, let’s face it, ChatGPT is way better than Google’s SGE.

Now here’s what Reuters found when they asked whether people trusted search engines using AI.

That’s not looking great for Google.

And, I suspect after the last couple of weeks, that’s probably looking slightly worse.

Remember, that survey was taken at a time when most people had only experienced ChatGPT.

And, let’s be honest, ChatGPT is miles ahead.

Takeaway

Honestly, if the fact it’s taken Google over a year to get to this place is anything to go by, don’t expect SGE to do anything major to search traffic anytime soon.

Also, even if it does, scroll back up and take a look at how Google’s AI is working — it’s basically just plagiarizing the top search results.

So, in a way, maybe SEO is still in your best interests — Google claims that it’s AI is still driving clicks.

Either way, SEO’s still got plenty of legs, meaning you should probably at least pay attention to some of what’s been dropped in this week’s leaks. So go do your research.

And then, if you’re looking for new, non-competitive niches to break into ahead of the crowd, then scroll down to the next story.

But, before you do, go sign up with the PureVPN affiliate program. You’ll need it.

Affiliate Marketing in a Post-Quantum Future

I don’t always do this, but sometimes I check out the big platforms’ technical blogs. On the rare occasion, there’s something worth looking into.

That was the case this week. I checked out Meta’s blog. I found this post from last week.

It’s about Meta preparing for a “post-quantum” future.

And yeah, that’s post-quantum as in mind-blowing, ultra-geeky quantum computing.

via GIPHY

So what’s this got to do with affiliate marketing?

Glad you asked.

For those who aren’t aware, the moment quantum computers scale up, the encryption standards we currently use will be broken. That’s thanks to Shor’s algorithm.

Now, for a long time, this has been pretty theoretical stuff. But recently, it seems like people who should know have been tipping that quantum’s about to go from theoretical to practical.

For starters, Meta seems to be taking it seriously.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also seems to be taking it pretty seriously. According to the same Meta blog post, NIST is expected to finally publish its first set of “post-quantum cryptography” (PQC) standards this summer.

And, if Google trends can still be trusted, interest in the whole PQZ thing also seems to be ramping up to an exponential curve.

But, perhaps most tellingly, the NSA recently (just last month) said practical quantum computers will be here in about 3-5 years.

And yes, that’s the NSA. As in the “all your data are belong to us now” NSA.

So, let’s say practical, break-all-encryption quantum computers are 3-5 years out as the NSA says. Why do we care about this now?

Well, that’s because of the “SNDL” attack. SNDL stands for “store now, decrypt later”, which basically means hoovering up peoples’ encrypted data today, then decrypting it in 3-5 years’ time.

And, because of that, there’s a bunch of paranoid people out there who are already asking whether they need quantum-resistant crypto.

And they’re growing in number.

Takeaway

This one’s still pretty niche for now. And it probably will be for a while.

But still, there’s big momentum gathering behind quantum computing it’s moving fast, and will soon be breaking things). And there’s also a growing interest from the paranoid types looking to secure themselves against a post-quantum future before it happens.

And the best part is that almost nobody is promoting in this niche yet.

Now, admittedly, that could be because there’s a lack of products to promote. Or, at least, there was a lack of products.

But you know who semi-recently introduced a quantum-resistant product?

Yeah, that’s right. PureVPN. As in the same PureVPN you’ll be promoting with the PureVPN affiliate program.

Closing Thought

While Google’s whole SGE poop show might be the latest “oh my god, disinformation” craze right now, it’s not a new problem.

You see, before there was AI, god created people.

And, apparently, he created them in his own image.

And thus, inspired by god, people wanted to create new things in their own image.

And thus, AI that makes stuff up was born.

So now we know where AI got it’s tendency to bullshit from, how do we go about spotting it?

Well, I stumbled across this some time ago. And while it might not work with LLMs, when it comes to people, it works most of the time:

“Real experts simplify complexity for you. Bullshitters try to confuse you with big words. Asking yourself … “is this person confusing me?” … is the easiest way to spot a bullshitter.”

Good advice, right?

That’s what I though.

So to test it out, I went and took a look at the PureVPN affiliate program landing page. 

Everything’s simplified and easy to understand.

And that’s a good sign they mean business.

Guess that’s just further confirmation they deserved our tick of approval.

Go take a look.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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