Affiliate marketing is a wonderful way to generate an income online. If you know what you’re doing, the sky truly is the limit. Yet, so many marketers struggle to make a cent online. In fact, over 95% of them never see any positive results.
While their lack of action is usually to blame, there are also many affiliates who try their best and still fail miserably. They do everything they can, but the results are paltry. It reaches a point where the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze, and they quit affiliate marketing.
Here’s a truth that you must sear into your mind – people will only buy from you if they trust you. This cardinal truth is the cornerstone of all sales and marketing. People only buy from companies and people that they trust. That’s why reputable brand name companies see billions in sales. People trust them.
The same applies to you as an affiliate marketer. The visitor to your site needs to trust you. If you have an email list, the subscriber needs to trust you and your judgment before they spend their hard-earned money.
Very often, affiliates are so desperate to make money that they hype up a product to a point where it’s just not believable. Their desperation is subconsciously picked up by the reader, and they’re put off by it.
In the make money online (MMO) niche, marketers mail for products daily. Some even go so far as to mail several times a day. Nary a thought is given about the quality of the product. Their goal is to sell, sell and sell.
This problem is exacerbated when most of the products in this niche are poor quality and never deliver on their promises. All foam and no beer. Once the subscribers have been bitten once, very often a huge chunk of them become twice shy.
They’ll be much less likely to buy what you promote.
You’ve lost all credibility… and the root cause of this is greed. This is the biggest pitfall for so many marketers.
It may sound tough to hear, but this is the harsh truth. The goal to make as much ‘easy money’ as possible by bombarding your audience with offers is a very short-term strategy. There’s even a term for it in this industry – churn and burn.
It is called that because the subscribers on the list get jaded fast and just stop buying. So, the list becomes useless because it stops generating money. The only way to keep getting sales is to keep adding new leads to your list.
A much better strategy will be to selectively promote the good offers. You’ll need to provide a balance of value and offers. If your approach is only to sell, you’ll turn off the subscriber. If you take the slow and steady approach, the lifetime value of your customer will increase considerably.
Your list will have a high retention rate, and when you promote something, people will believe you and buy it. Industry statistics show that it’s 7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
So, be sensible and treat your list like people instead of numbers or cash cows. People join lists or visit sites to get information and value. If you can provide that while promoting products, you will get the sales and win the hearts of your audience.
Now that we’ve covered the biggest (and most important) pitfall you absolutely must avoid, let’s discuss the other most common mistakes many affiliate marketers make first starting out.
3 Common Mistakes Most New Affiliates Make
This is a ‘bad news – good news’ type of situation. The bad news is that there are way more than 3 mistakes that affiliates make. The good news is that you’ll learn 3 of them here and can avoid making them.
As a marketer who does affiliate marketing, it would be in your best interest to learn all that you can about this method of making money online. The more knowledge you have on the topic, the better. Next, you’ll need to test out whatever you learn. Keep the winning strategies and discard those that don’t work.
You’ll need to find out what works for you. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ formula here.
Now let’s look at 3 common mistakes that you should avoid when doing affiliate marketing.
1. Not watching your competition.
Knowing what your competition is doing and offering is crucial to success. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the ‘make money online’ niche or the health niche. You will need to check out your competitors’ sites, etc. If they have an email list, get on it and see what they do.
If they have a niche site, take a look at their blog posts, products they are recommending, their newsletter, their EVERYTHING.
As an affiliate, you will face competition almost all the time. If the niche has no competition, there’s probably little or no money to be made in it. So, it’s best to steer clear.
Keep a close eye on what the other affiliates are doing and always try to out do them. Be better, be original, and be passionate about your niche.
2. Thinking this is a get-rich-quick method or magic button to success situation.
Every day, thousands of beginners come online hoping to make easy profits. They want the internet marketing lifestyle where they don’t have a boss and work their own hours. The freedom they imagine is so sweet that they can almost taste it.
The potential of making good money seems so real that they can almost see themselves in the cars and mansions that are displayed on so many sales pages hawking the latest and greatest ways to make quick and easy cash.
Reality, however, is far more brutal. Making money online requires a lot of effort, know-how and time. Things online change rapidly. You must always be on top of things.
Sipping cocktails by the sun kissed beaches of the Caribbean is a reality only when you’ve poured in immense effort into your business. It takes time to build a passive online business… and even then, you still have to keep an eye on things.
If you’re expecting easy profits with affiliate marketing, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Expect to work at it for 3 to 6 months before you see money coming in regularly. It may take a year or two before you earn enough to ditch your day job and tell your boss to shove it.
The question is – do you have what it takes to last that long?
3. No real strategy at all.
Planning your affiliate marketing is crucial. You need to know what products you’ll promote, what traffic generation method you’ll focus on, who your target audience is and so much more.
Like Steven Keague said, “Proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance.”
Create a plan. Stick to it. Adapt where necessary and promote well. Don’t go in blind.
Avoid these 3 common mistakes and your affiliate marketing journey will be smoother and much more rewarding.
