Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Lesson #4 on Affiliate Marketing

I have made a lot of mistakes over the years as an affiliate marketer. Thankfully, I learn from my mistakes, but I still haven’t learned it all. Every time I think I know it all, something will happen that humbles me once again. As the Internet changes at a rapid pace so do some of the “rules”. One thing, however, that I am absolutely certain of today is that there are no absolute “rules” and I will continually be learning as I hope you are willing to do too.

With all of that being said, there still are some common pits that most of us will fall into when we first start out as an affiliate marketer. I am going to go over some of the most common affiliate marketing errors that can easily be avoided when you know what to look for.

When I first got started, I didn’t even realize I was making these mistakes until a couple of marketing friends of mine pointed them out to me. Rosalind Gardner, James Jones and Randy the Hermit, where most helpful back then. Needless to say, some times I am a bit dense and can’t see the forest for the trees that are blocking my view, so I had no clue that I was screwing up, shooting myself in the foot, so to speak, while I was damaging my new business.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning an income online. It’s one of the ways that I started my business many years ago and it has worked out great for me. It can be the same for you, especially if you learn what the most common mistakes to avoid are. Let’s get to it.

Mistake #1: Choosing the wrong affiliate programs.

We have already gone over the importance of choosing the right affiliate programs in lesson two , but why is it so important?

If you are like most people, you want to earn money online from affiliate marketing as fast as possible and I don’t blame you one bit. If you are in the same position that I was in not so long ago, unemployed and dead broke, you are probably desperate to begin earning as quick as possible. Even if you have a good paying job, you may be anxious to quit being a wage slave to an idiot boss, or you value your freedom more than you do the money. Whatever the reason may be, you just can’t rush into things and begin choosing just any old thing because you thing it may be an in demand product. You don’t want to jump on the bandwagon with a bandwagon product just because “every body else” is.

Instead of jumping without thinking, choose a product that you and your prospects are truly interested in. Take the extra time to plan your actions and do your research to find out if the product really is something in demand.

This is a Fast Method to Use to Find a Lucrative Product

1. Go to CB Engine. This is a website that list all of Clickbank’s products and is much easier to navigate that the Clickbank Marketplace

2. Search through the categories to find a niche that you may be interest in. Within the categories there are a ton of niches listed along with the amount of products for each niche. If the topics you are interested in has less than 30 products available, this is a good indication that it is not a very powerful niche with a lot of interest.

2. When you find several possibilities write them down and go to Google’s free keyword tool. You want to do a search for each of your topics to get the keywords that are related to your topics. Filter through the words and phrases that Google brings you and check off the ones that are relevant to your topic and save them to a text file on your desktop.

For example: If you are searching for the topic of breeding goats, you don’t want keywords that relate to computer RAM. You want keywords about male rams, so you would eliminate every keyword about computers.

3. Go to Google.com and enter a few keywords related to the niche. If there are lots of ads, then advertisers are making money so it’s a good candidate.

Why?

Because no one in their right mind is going to spend good money on ads that are not earning them revenue.

Then I run that list of keywords I am left with through Micro Niche Finder.

Of course this is not scientific but if you just do the above then you are going to eliminate lots of loser niches from the get go.

Here is some other stuff I take into consideration:

1. Are there enough searches? Again using Google’s free keyword tool – are there at least 3-5 keywords with over 100 searches per day?
2. Is this a niche that I can easily find or have others create content for?
3. Is this a niche that I can create a product for?
4. Are there products with high Clickbank gravity? (This shows the popularity of the product.)

Do another Google search, but this time for the product you want to promote, instead of the niche, and see if anyone else is promoting it. If there are way too many people promoting the product it may be too competitive and you may want to reconsider the product.

On the other hand if there are very few or no ads for the product, then you may want to drop that product and move on to something else. A good example of this would be UFO. There are 37,500,000 searches for UFO, but this is a lousy topic.

Why?

Because people want information about UFOs, but they only want to read free stuff…..they don’t want to pay for anything about UFOs. Go ahead and do a Google search. How many ads do you see? The last time I looked there was only one. Now to compare, do a search for Star Trek. There are about 45,200,000 for Star Trek, and look at all of the ads. Do a search on eBay for ended auctions on Star Trek and you will see that people want to buy stuff about Star Trek. See the difference?

Mistake #2: Joining too many affiliate programs.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join multiple affiliate programs thinking it will help you maximize your earnings. On one level this does make sense, as the old numbers game….. the more you get out, the more people you will reach, the more sales you will make.

I am a true believer in having multiple sources of income; however, joining multiple programs and trying to promote all of them at once can hurt your chances of success. Simply because you will be spreading yourself thin between everything instead of giving your full attention to the programs that will make you the most money. It is much better to focus your attention and devote your efforts on a select few.

The best way, IMHO, to get the results you want is by joining one program at a time. Look for one that pays at least a 50% commission per sale. Personally I like memberships that pay you every month, but that is another topic. Then focus your attention on that one program until you are making regular sales. Once the sales are pretty much coming in on auto pilot, then you will be ready to join another affiliate program and repeat the process.

Note: If you start your next one with a product that is related to the first one, you will begin building a network where you can cross promote to your customers. Working this way may take a little more time and effort on your part, but what you will end up with is a solid business base with which to grow your business rather than a hit-and-miss situation.

Mistake #3: Not buying the product or service you are promoting.

The only way you can effectively market any product as an affiliate, is by knowing what you are talking about. The only way you will know and understand the product you are promoting, is by actually testing it out yourself. You must be able to put across to your prospective customers the real emotion that you are feeling, from the benefits of using the product or service. This is very difficult to do when you haven’t tried the product yourself. Look at Billy Mays of Oxy-clean as an example. He would never promote a product that he had not used himself and that actually worked as was demonstrable.

While you may have some success promoting products that you haven’t personally used, because you have the capacity of a brilliant copywriter, you will never reach your maximum income potential unless you can honestly and convincingly recommend it. You also run the risk of never making another sale because you glowingly promoted something that wss as useless as donkey dung. People have a long memory if they believe that you have had once. Instead of building your online credibility, you have destroyed it.

Bottom line….

Try out the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate. Check to see if it is all that the sales pitch is saying it is. Is it really delivering what it promises? When you do it this way, you will know its advantages and disadvantages. Your prospective customers will feel your sincerity and truthfulness in your written words when you review the product. This will help to deliver the enticement for them to try it themselves.

Mistake #4: Not Building a Mailing List

The biggest mistake ever is neglecting to collect email addresses from your potential customers. Having a mailing list is import for both offline and online repeat sales. The only sure way of repeat sales from a buying customer is to get them to join your list when they buy from you the first time. Be sure to have them sign up when they are going to purchase your affiliate product, rather than just giving them to the owner of the product.

You hear it constantly that “the money is in the list”, which it is, but you have to get and keep the list to be able to continue offering promotions. Email marking for affiliate promotion is becoming harder and harder as people become more and more jaded to hype promotional emails. People are sick and tired of signing up to a list only to be bombarded with hundreds of email promotions. With that being said it is still one of the best ways to make sales online. You just have to remember to over deliver to get the sign ups and to keep them on your list.

Sure you want them to buy from you, but they won’t unless you are giving them something that they need and want. They won’t unless you are able to build a relationship of trust with them. You may get them on your list, by giving away something spectacular, but to keep them there you must continue to offer the information that they need and want, both for free and for a price.

One way to do this once they are signed up is to offer them something for free. When they click through to download their free giveaway, offer an affiliate product (for a price) that is even more remarkable, and is a companion to the free product you are giving away. This is called a backend sale. That is just one way that email lists are important to affiliate marketers and there are many more.

To summarize this weeks lesson, just remember to take the time to research and analyze your chosen affiliate programs. Get your own system in place for promoting them. Use what works best for you and then you will be able to maximize your affiliate earnings and build a solid foundation for your business.

That’s my view on the four most common mistakes that many affiliate marketers make. Now you can do your best to avoid making the same mistakes. Can you think of any more that are as relevant too?

I’d love to hear from you! Please let me know if you have any questions and don’t forget to look out for your next lesson. We will be talking about some basic techniques you can use to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

Oh, one more thing, the best affiliate marketing e-book I have ever read is Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook. As long as you remain on Rosalind’s email list all future up dates to the manual are free. I have received 3 updates since I first bought it back in 2003. It is a brilliant read that I still refer back to!

The best program to learn everything there is to learn about affiliate marketing is Affilorama. You can sign up free to get a remarkable amount of free information. If you can afford to upgrade it is well worth it. If you can’t afford to at this time, it is something to ad to your list to do once you start making some affiliate pay days. If you can afford it, I highly recommend that you do. You can test the waters for the premium membership for only $1.00. Click Here Now! or Click on the image below.

Aloha,

June