To provide a better guide on mistakes, I started to reflect back to when I started affiliate marketing.
It is a fact that affiliate marketing is a valuable and convenient source of income to earn from home, without making any investments. While it seems easy to implement, there are some mistakes prospective marketers fall prey. If you too plan to enter the affiliate marketing field, you can attain more success by avoiding these mistakes.
1. Advertising products not related to your site
No matter how good an affiliate marketing program may be, and no matter how high a commission you stand to earn, there is no point advertising about it if your website does not have anything to do with the product.
Remember, it is the people who visit your site who may buy whichever product you market. If your site is about self-improvement, you will have visitors looking for help and perhaps some self-improvement tips. It is very unlikely your visitors will be interested in buying the gaming accessories you are promoting on your site!!
2. Using banner pages
Many affiliate marketers create web pages full of affiliate banners thinking that the more banner ads they place on the page, the more clicks they get. However, this is a huge mistake to make as most surfers who reach your banner page are least bothered with and thus ignore banner ads. Just put yourself in the shoes of a surfer; how would YOU react to a page full of banner ads? It’s obvious you would think you have other work to do than look at a page of banners!
3. Not trying or using the product
Just imagine your client asking you something about your product, and you were replying that you do not know the answer? Do you think your client will buy your product, which you don’t know anything?
Forget your customer; would you buy something from a person who does not know anything about the product they are selling? So do not make the mistake of not trying out or learning all you can about whatever product you sell. No one will be interested in a product you are not interested in learning more!
4. No website promotion
A common affiliate marketers complaint are not receiving many hits. Well, this is not an affiliate marketing problem; they do not receive hits because their website is not search engine optimized. It is through search engine optimization that people reach a site. If there are no site visitors, how can you expect to receive hits?
In addition to SEO, websites need to be registered with a niche directory to receive more traffic. Failing to do so will not bring in visitors or hits. Affiliate marketing and search engine optimization go hand in hand; it is not enough to make a website and post links hoping it generates money. You cannot afford to ignore SEO in affiliate marketing.
5. The wrong niche
The secret to successful affiliate marketing lies in choosing the right niche. Remember, you are not the first person promoting any product. You have many competition out there, which is why you need to use Keyword Tools to learn more about your competition.
It’s human instinct to target large niches as they are more in demand than other niches, and thus should generate more hits. However, as these fields are known, they also have other sites competing for them. It is thus better choosing a more specific niche while starting out at affiliate marketing as it’s a more profitable niche.
For example, instead of promoting kitchen utensils, you can promote a particular brand or only baking accessories or copper-bottomed utensils. You thus receive traffic from people who are specifically looking out for these products. In fact, there is a higher chance of their buying something from you as you are promoting just what they require!
6. Promoting the wrong product
Many beginner affiliate marketers who are in a rush to start making money just build websites and start developing the more popular products they come across, without doing any prior research. This is a huge mistake as you need to choose a product based on your selected online audience.
You need to do your online research in your targeted online audience to find out which products are high in demand. You also have to see if there are any problems they are facing and if there is any specific information they need.
You can then accordingly choose the right product they need or are interested about, and start promoting it on your website. Besides selecting a product they require, you also have to make sure you know something about the product you plan to market. This way you will be able to write an honest review of the product for your online audience.
7. Joining too many affiliate marketing programs at once
It is both free, and so easy joining affiliate marketing programs today, which most marketers are tempted to join as many of them as possible at once. They do so with the intention of generating maximum profit by simultaneously promoting various products from different affiliate programs.
This is a bad idea as it only leads to a big headache as you cannot concentrate, learn more about and promote all of them at the same time. Moreover, if you market various products, you only confuse your online audience, and they start losing trust in you.
Start out by advertising about one product at a time, by conducting the necessary research so that you wisely choose one affiliate program and start promoting it on your site. It’s only after that product starts giving you result that you can start looking out for and promoting the second product.
These are the seven most common mistakes people starting out in affiliate marketing commit. As you know them now, it is up to you to make sure you do not repeat the same mistakes. While it is true that you learn from your mistakes, it is also true that prevention is better than cure.
So instead of committing these mistakes and wasting your time and efforts, it is better avoiding these errors and concentrating more on how to perfect your art of affiliate marketing!
Jay
I've worked for WooRank, SEOptimer, and working on a cool SEO audit tool called SiteGuru.co. Now I have build Linkilo and SEO RANK SERP WordPress theme. I've been in the SEO industry for more than 5 years, learning from the ground up. I've worked on many startups, but also have my own affiliate sites.
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