It’s easy to make a lot of mistakes when you first start affiliate marketing. But, if you take the time to educate yourself you can avoid a lot of the problems that might arise. Affiliate marketing is a good way to produce an extra income, add an additional income stream, and even to earn a full-time living, but only if you are prepared and go about it the right way. Here are some mistakes you'll definitely want to avoid.
Choosing the Wrong Products
Any product you choose should offer a solution to a problem that your audience has. First choose who your audience is, then find solutions for them. Doing it the other way around can include the risk that there is not an audience for that product in the first place.
Joining Too Many Networks
You cannot make good income from affiliate products if you spread yourself too thin. Choose just a couple networks and work directly with some good products and their managers to ensure the best mix of products for your audience’s needs.
Not Investing in Helpful Resources
There are a lot of very helpful products, services and solutions today that can help make your life easier as an affiliate marketer. Set a budget and invest in your business. You can’t make money without spending, but you want to spend it wisely.
Not Using Technology to Its Fullest
Email lists, autoresponders, social media, blogs etc… all involve using technology. Seek to learn fully each new piece of tech that you add to your business before adding the next one.
Avoiding A/B Testing
A/B testing means to test two different versions of something like an email subject line, a sales page headline, or something else. But the trick is to change only one small aspect of it during the test. The one that works best can then be used throughout your marketing efforts.
Not Looking at Your Competitors
Many times your competitors are doing a lot of things right that you can learn from. If they are successful, you want to look at them. Buy some of their products and sign up for the lists. Make a note of what they’re doing right and wrong and make a plan to do even better.
Thinking You Don’t Need SEO
Search engine optimization is super important, no matter what you’re doing. You can use it when you are completing a social media profile, a guest blogging bio, and more. It just means that you are considering the search engines (and your audience) in whatever you do, both on and off your website.
Not Finding Multiple Streams of Income
You do not want too many products, but on the other hand you don’t want to deal with only one. You need to diversify your income stream by adding more than one product. The trick is ensuring that all products fit with your ideal audience.
Spending Too Much Time Creating Marketing Collateral
With most products, choose programs that create all the marketing material for you. The reason is that you should not be driving marketing strategy; the company should. If they can’t take the time to create marketing materials for you, it’s probably not the product you want to promote.
Ensuring that you put in the needed time and effort to study your market, knowing what your competition is doing, and promoting the right products to the right people will go far in making sure that you are successful at affiliate marketing.
Did you know…
Here at Baer On Marketing, we have our own affiliate program, perfect for anyone with an audience of entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketers. Want to see how it all works? Check out our offering on our affiliate page and get signed up to start lining your pockets with commissions from us.