Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways that you can introduce cash into your life. It’s a business model that many people have discovered and make a decent living with.
However, the first steps into this arena can be tough. So much so that many people find themselves making simple mistakes starting out. If you find yourself not earning what you thought you could, or you don’t see any sales with your push forward, it’s time to rethink what you’re doing.
You may be very well be doing something completely wrong, and beginners should know what the most common affiliate marketing mistakes could be. The following are some of the most common mistakes that are being made right now.
1. Expecting To Make Money On Day One
Even if you sign up for the greatest marketing course in the world, your first day attempting to make money online is going to be tough. Affiliate marketing is not something that you can wake up and make six figures with. Some people do it, but what they don’t tell you is that they worked at it, struggled, and eventually broke through.
There is no “short” term victory here. If you’re going to make money with affiliate marketing, you have to put in some work, and you have to come to terms that you are not going to pull a lot of money on day one, or even on day 30. It may take you longer than if you were to just get a 9 to 5 job. Don’t make the mistake of believing your meal ticket is coming in less than 30 days, when starting.
2. Not Building An Email List
Email marketing is one of the most powerful things that you can do with affiliate work. If you build a list of at least 1,000 people, you’re going to have a great push forward in the future.
Building a list can take upwards of a year, or more. If you aren’t collecting emails from your audience, if you don’t think that you’re going to ever work with email, or just forget to start this, you’ll be working backwards when your links and content start to fail in producing sales overall.
3. Picking A Low Yield / Unpopular Niche
Here’s the thing about affiliate marketing mistakes, many are because you can’t separate business from pleasure. For instance, a lot of people will jump into the fray of this type of work promoting the wrong things.
Some people will want to make money with selling books, for instance. Commission on book sales in this arena is only around 4%, and even then, books can run down to around a penny plus shipping.
Pick another niche, like video games, and you’ll see the same thing. There are some niches that are extremely limited, and low yield. They may be popular in regards to conversation, but when it comes to sales, especially replacing a full-time income, it’s not so simple, and you’ll find out fast that you’re wasting your time.
Picking the right niche is everything, so make sure that you know what you’re getting into.
4. Forgetting To Write Reviews About All Products
When you’re trying to create sales through affiliate links, you’re going to have to write or hire writers to publish a lot of reviews about the products you’re trying to work with. Whether you’re selling physical or digital items, you need to make sure that you harness the power of reviews for your page. You need to be exhaustive here.
The most prominent marketers are not only exhaustive, they rank their products at the top of their list. Look up “shake reviews” or “vitamin reviews” or anything along those lines, and you’ll see affiliate site rank high. Within those pages you’ll see that the marketers have reviewed EVERY product under the sun, and linked to affiliate links where you can buy them. Whether they have buried the product for being bad or not, they’ll link it to a place where you can buy it.
They make money on every click, and you can too.
5. Investing Too Much Into SEO
There’s nothing wrong with SEO, but it’s not the only thing that you should be working with. If you are only working with this, you’ll find that Google will eventually stop sending you traffic.
They update their algorithm a lot, and what may get you 1,000 hits today, will not get you 1,000 hits tomorrow or even next week. If all you’re doing is working with optimization, and crossing your fingers, you’ll end up with diminished results at one point or another. You need to invest in marketing that covers SEO, advertising with PPC, link exchanges, and much more.
You have to find out other sources of traffic, simple as that.
6. Too Many Links and Advertisements
When you set up your website for affiliate marketing, DO NOT post a ton of links throughout. You shouldn’t advertise the affiliate product that you’re selling throughout your page. Once or twice, is ok, but if the crux of your page has links to affiliate options, you’re going to see your bounce rate jump to all new highs.
Bounce rate is not good if it is above 90 percent. That means that people will hit your page and leave within the first minute of landing. Too many links to the wrong areas will penalize you in Google and will not pay off dividends.
7. Trying To Promote Too Many Affiliate Products
There’s nothing wrong with diversifying your digital portfolio. However, one of the easiest mistakes for beginners to make with affiliate marketing is promoting too many products.
Signing up for every affiliate program is not a good thing. Pick one to focus on, and perhaps two if you are running out of ideas for the first one. Promoting too many things will mean that you’ll get less sales overall.
8. Promoting Bad Products
The last big affiliate marketing mistake beginners make is simple, they promote the wrong products. Not just wrong products, but blatantly bad options. If you promote bad products, your reputation is going to go down with the scam, spam, and terrible products you’re trying to promote.
Don’t pick bad products or links, you’ll find that selling through just one of these will be painstaking, and in many ways nearly impossible.
To your success…
Back to the Affiliate Model page.
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