Many affiliate marketers who try and build lists often find out that no matter what they do, their list is not buying what they’re recommending. They’ve tried building a relationship with the subscribers, they’ve tried bribing them, cajoling them and almost begging them and yet, sales are minimal or there are none.
In this article, we’ll look at a few quick tips as to why you may not make sales despite your best efforts. The whole affiliate marketing concept has many ‘gears’ and if even one is out of alignment, there will be friction in your marketing and the entire machinery will grind to a screeching halt.
Let’s look at one of the most common mistakes – you’re NOT promoting the right products. Period.
Are you promoting low-quality products?
This is the biggest mistake of the lot. Most beginner affiliate marketers are so eager to make sales that they’ll promote anything and everything under the sun, hoping to make a few easy commissions.
Here’s the truth – if you say that everything is good, then nothing is good. Your subscribers and visitors are smarter than that. They can smell hype a mile away.
Never put the dollar ahead of the customer. That will inevitably lead to you losing credibility and your subscribers will not trust you. Once they lose trust, you can forget about them buying what you recommend.
The same applies to the products that you mention on your websites. If you promote products that are substandard just because the affiliate payouts are high, you’ll probably end up with disgruntled customers emailing you or leaving negative comments on your blog.
Once again, you’ve burnt bridges and this buyer will never trust you again.
Are you promoting unrelated offers?
If you have a website on weight loss, mentioning products such as power tools or having banner advertisements for survey programs will not cut it. Of course, you’ll get the occasional sale or two from the curious visitor, but that will never compare to mentioning a closely related product in your content.
Having a banner ad for an eBook that promises six-pack abs, or a popular juicer that’s sold on Amazon, will translate into many more sales from the health-conscious crowd that’s on your site.
If you’re building a list from your site (and you should be), the same thing applies. Only promote related offers to your niche… or find a way to angle or slant the offer to make it relevant to them.
If we used the earlier example, a series of audios on positive thinking may not really seem related to weight loss. However, if you mention how affirmations and positive thinking tips in these audios will help people stay focused and succeed in their weight loss journey, you’ll probably get sales from readers who need that motivation to keep going.
Are you wasting time on offers that don't convert?
Some offers just don’t sell. Either the sales copy is weak, or the product just doesn’t resonate with your audience. Track your offers and if they don’t convert after a month or two, ditch them.
Never be overly attached to the products you’re promoting. This is business and not a marriage. Only promote products that sell well for you.
To wrap things up, adhere to the 3 tips above, and you’ll increase your sales and commissions. It isn’t rocket science. Just put the customer before the money and put the right offer in front of the right customer – and you’ll be golden.
That said, I do have one very important (and valuable) piece of advice for you. This seemingly simple chunk of knowledge takes most successful affiliates a year or two to learn on their own. You get it for free, right now, so use it! Act on it!
The Single Most Valuable Insight For Successful Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the MOST common mistakes that affiliates make, and it costs them thousands of dollars. This is especially true in the make money online (MMO) niche, where several products are released daily, and everyone is only concerned about the current and upcoming products.
But what about products that did well for you before?
Very often, when one promotes several products, they’ll notice that some do much better than others. One of the best things that you can do is to take note of the products that have performed well for you.
It means a few things.
Firstly, the product converts well.
Secondly, it’s in tune with your list. Your list will always prefer some products over others. Thirdly, if it made money for you once, it will probably make you money again.
All too often, marketers promote one product and even if it does well for them, these wonderful products end up being forgotten like spurned lovers. It’s really a pity because by re-promoting these products at intervals, you will make money many times over.
If you’ve created reviews, videos, etc. in your promotion efforts, these can be used over and over to promote the same product. You’ll be leveraging on past efforts, and this is what passive income is all about.
Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the product is ‘evergreen’ in nature. For example, if you’re promoting a copywriting or an article writing course, you know that the concepts will be the same for a long time.
Copywriting techniques do not change much, and as for article writing, the course will still be relevant after years. This is what is known as ‘evergreen’ products.
While you’ll not be able to re-promote search engine optimization courses or WordPress plugins due to things online changing so rapidly, the evergreen courses will always stand the test of time.
So, you may wish to add a few emails in your autoresponder sequence to go out maybe once every two months to promote these evergreen products. As long as you keep building your list, there’ll always be people who are new to it and will not have seen the earlier products that you promoted. In many cases, you’ll get sales from them.
Sometimes, after a launch is over, the price of a product may rise. For example, the copywriting course may rise in price from $27 to $97. At times like these, you may contact the vendor and ask for a special coupon code that you could use for your list to drop the current price back down to launch price.
By being able to offer your list a lower price that they could never get elsewhere, they’d be much happier to purchase through you. It will seem like an absolute deal… and it is.
So, the crux of this entire article is that you should promote what worked well for you. While you should promote new products that hit the market, you shouldn’t forget products that are of high-quality and converted well before.
Every product is new to the customer who is seeing it for the first time. So, bear that in mind and breathe new life into existing products.
