Avoid These 10 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Being an affiliate marketer can be a very lucrative career. One that you can earn more money than in a traditional job. Many affiliate marketers make millions of dollars, many more many six figures, and even more make a solid full time living as affiliate marketers. If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer learn about the top 10 affiliate marketing mistakes, how to avoid them and what to do instead.
Mistake # 1: Thinking the Money Will Roll in Immediately
Just because you decide to become an affiliate doesn’t mean you’re immediately going to earn money. Being an affiliate for any type of products or services is just like being a salesperson who works on commission. If you want to make good money, you must believe in the product. In addition, you’ll need to explain to your audience how and why they should try the product. Think about how much you’ll earn on each sale so that you can determine how much time and effort you can devote to making that sale.
Mistake # 2: Not Building Your Email List Now
You need an email list full of your target audience in order to earn a fulltime living being an affiliate marketer. If you know who your audience is, you can start building your email list even before you have affiliate products to share. Just share a topic/problem related freebie to get them on the list and then share your knowledge and experience. The products and “finds” can come later.
Choose the right software so that you can automate a lot of the process of building your email list so that you can promote solutions to your audience. There are many programs you can use to build a list such as Aweber.com, GetResponse.com, Sendlane.com along with landing page software like LeadPages.com, Instapage.com, and Clickfunnels.com.
Mistake # 3: Not Choosing a Niche You Enjoy
Choosing a niche just because it’s popular is a big mistake. Affiliate marketing is not all about the money. In order to succeed as an affiliate marketer, you should choose a niche and audience that you know and enjoy. If you don’t enjoy the topics or can’t relate to the audience and their problems, it will show in your content, solutions, and sales.
You must be able to write content that shows your enthusiasm about the topics and solutions you offer your audience. Research your potential niche options to ensure that you can make enough money with the audience, provide the solutions the audience needs, and enjoy talking about the niche topics. Your enthusiasm is contagious and profitable.
Mistake # 4: Offering Too Many Product Options
When you decide to be an affiliate, it’s easy to go overboard choosing products to promote. You don’t want to promote everything that is available, only the items that your audience needs. Research and pick a very specific product that solves one of their problems or difficulties. Don’t try to promote multiple items that solve the same problem. With too many options, readers have difficulty choosing and ultimately don’t take any action.
Mistake # 5: Avoiding Research
The most important thing that you can do for your affiliate marketing business is to research everything. Continuously research your audience. Always research the products you want to promote including the creators of the products you want to promote. Your reputation is on the line. If you promote a product that turns out to be a scam or the seller doesn’t live up to their promises, you may lose your credibility. Always do your due diligence.
Mistake # 6: Using Inferior Content
As an affiliate marketer, you probably have a blog and social media accounts that need content. You may be tempted to toss something up that isn’t up to your standard. There is no point in putting up inferior content. It only makes you look unprofessional and damages your reputation.
If you need quality content, hire a writer or buy PLR and rewrite it yourself. Content strategists can help you plan and manage your content from blog posts, to freebies, and more. A good place to find a writer is at WriterHelpWanted.com, where you can post a free job listing that hundreds of writers will view.
Mistake # 7: Avoiding Product Reviews
Another mistake is not doing product reviews. On most corporate websites, where people shop, there are reviews. Customers really do pay attention to reviews. Your audience will appreciate your honest product reviews, even if you do make a percentage of sales. Just be upfront about whether you get money if they buy or not.
Mistake # 8: Using Too Many Affiliate Links
Adding too many affiliate links can make content look like spam. They can also give readers the impression that making a sale is your top priority rather than helping them. Limit the number of affiliate links to the focused solution in emails and articles. When you reference supporting content or examples use straight links. In short, use links sparingly and only when they are important to the message or content.
Mistake # 9: Using Ugly Affiliate Links
Affiliate links are typically ugly, with odd letters and numbers, question marks, or other characters in them. Most people realize they’re affiliate links but they’re more likely to click them if they’re not ugly. You can make them look good by using a link shortener. You can also set up redirects to cloak your link. Yoast blog has a good post about this. There are also several WordPress plugins that you can choose from like Easy Affiliate Links.
Mistake # 10: Not Building Relationships & a Community
One of the best things about becoming a profitable affiliate marketer is the friendships you make along the way. Building relationships with your community will make you the ‘go-to’ person for your subject matter. Many affiliate marketers skip this because they don’t want to be ‘public.’ However, if you are open with your audience, you’ll make more money.
You don’t have to learn about these top-10 affiliate-marketing mistakes the hard way. Use these ideas and tips to avoid the mistakes. When you avoid these mistakes, your efforts will be more efficient and profitable.