7 Mistakes Made in Affiliate Marketing, Think Addition [romance book recommendations txt] 📗

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7 mistakes made in affiliate marketing

The 7 Most Common Mistakes Made

in Affiliate Marketing

 

Affiliate Marketing – The Best Place to Start

Everyone has to start somewhere. And, for neophyte Internet marketers, the best

place to start may be with affiliate products. Rather than going through the

laborious and expensive process of creating your own product (of dubious

quality) and then trying to market it to the masses, why not start by finding a

product that is well put-together and comes from someone who already has a

high degree of credibility? You could save a lot of time, money, frustration, and

will power; and you could make money in the process, too—in fact, really, really

good money. Many top Internet marketers today still sell affiliate products, even

though they make a killing off of their own. Why? Because it’s still fantastic

money and little effort is required.

Now, with that said, it’s important to mention that affiliate marketing is no walk in

the park, either. It’s certainly easier than pulling off a Jeff Walker-style massive

product launch, but, like anything else, there are plenty of pitfalls just waiting to

consume you and your money. Do yourself a favor: heed what I say and avoid

those pitfalls. In this section, I will go over the top 7:

 

Pitfall #1: Choosing a Bad Product to Promote

Not all products are created equal. In fact, that is probably the driving motivation

behind your decision to sell affiliate products: for the most part, you have

accepted that there are plenty of high-quality products already on the market;

and, if you create your own, it might not compare favorably.

If you decide to pick your product off of a list on Clickbank, select very carefully.

Rather than haphazardly selecting the product with the highest commission, look

for ones that have the highest popularity and gravity ratings. If a lot of people are

buying them often, they must be better than other products for sale within that

niche.

In addition to picking good products within niches, you will also want to look for

good niches. Here’s a stupid tip that will illustrate my point nonetheless: don’t sell

garden hoses in the winter. No one will buy. Focus on products that a lot of

people want; and if their popularity just surged, now is the best time to get in the

market.

Pitfall #2: Picking a Low Converter

As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to profit from the hard worker others have

done; and from the money they have spent on copywriters, product developers,

and software. If you select a product that underutilizes these advantages, you are

likely to benefit less.

Take, for instance, conversion rates. Not all product creators hire a top-notch

copywriter. In fact, many of them just write their own copy. Many also don’t hire

someone to do graphs for the sales page. Instead, they try to do their own. The

end result? The page looks hideous, the copy contains major errors, and the

product converts poorly.

Before you start promoting any particular product, read the sales page carefully

and compare it with others. Do you feel compelled to buy? Did the graphics throw

you off? Did the copy fail to reel you in for the catch? These can all amount to

fatal errors for both the seller and you. You cannot help the seller at this point,

but you can avoid his product and find a better one. Do yourself a favor: choose

your products carefully.

Pitfall #3: Selling Snake Oil for a Snake Oil Salesman

This pitfall is especially important to avoid if you have a list. All it takes is one

erroneous product promotion and you could end up with a mass exodus from

your list. Again, don’t make this error.

Even though you may be tempted to promote the next “biggest launch,” make

sure you don’t buy into just anything. Several marketers have lamented their

choices to promote the Rich Jerk’s latest offering after list members complained

that his sales page was loaded profanity and sexist comments. Don’t be one of

these guys. Make sure you carefully inspect anything before you promote it to

your list. Unless you happen to be the Rich Jerk, you probably don’t want people

to think you’re just that—a rich jerk.

Additionally, avoid jumping on the affiliate product bandwagon for major

promotions. Instead, wait until the buzz dies down slightly; and then release a

comprehensive review (something most affiliate marketers do not provide) of the

product. This has a much better chance of getting sales for you; and it will also

help you to maintain credibility.

Last, avoid promoting products that make outrageous and fallacious claims. As

Carl Sagan once said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In

most cases, these snake oil peddlers cannot provide you with any extraordinary

evidence, but they do make the claims. Avoid promoting them and becoming

associated with them.

Pitfall #4: Picking Products that Offer Meager Commissions

If you’re marketing to a list of people, they’re only going to consider so many

product offers in a given period of time, so select the ones you promote wisely. If

you promote something that only generates a 25% commission for you, then

you’re leaving a lot on the time. In reality, you could probably find a similar

product that offers a 50% or 75% commission.

In terms of the actual dollar value of the commission – don’t sweat that as much.

While many top name Internet marketers now say that they concentrate on

promoting high-ticket items (since only a few sales will generate a lot of money),

you can still make a killing selling relatively cheap reports. The rising popularity of

the $7 report is testament to this fact.

So avoid the cheapo sellers, but don’t worry as much about the price.

Pitfall #5: Failing to Collect Leads

Always, always, always capture leads. Rather than generating traffic through pay

per click, search engine optimization, and other methods and then sending that

traffic to your affiliate link, you should make an effort to convert them into list

members first. Why? Two reasons: simple mathematical reasoning and the

collective experience of many marketers.

The simple mathematical reasoning goes something like this: virtually everyone

who would have purchased the product will opt in to your mailing list. And many

who definitely would not have purchased the product will opt in to your mailing

list. Instead of converting at a rate of around 1-3% (in affiliate sales), you will

convert between 15 and 40% of visitors (to your mailing list). From there, you will

get the chance to contact the willing buyers and the more reluctant. Additionally,

once they’re on a list, this is no longer a one-off effort. You get the chance to

market to them again and again for months or even years.

As a marketer, one of the best tools you have available is your list. Always,

always, always use your list over the one-off sale.

Pitfall #6: Ignoring the Importance of Timeliness

In business in general, the quick often outcompete those endowed with greater

resources. Today, Google is no longer a small company with meager revenues,

but in the past, it emerged from nowhere to outcompete massively well-endowed

rivals; and it did so with cunning.

How does this apply to you? Successful affiliate product promotion requires you

to do more than simply slap an affiliate link in an email and send it out to a couple

thousand people. If you expect them to actually buy, your email should be

newsworthy – not promotional.

If you can genuinely write your email as if it were a news announcement, you are

far more likely to draw interest than if you send a link to an Internet marketing

ebook that was written in 1998 and wasn’t particularly popular then.

You need to find product launches that qualify as an “event.” Find something so

big that people follow the event and comment on it. If you can find such a product

(say, the iPhone of Internet marketing products), it is critical that you engineer

your own build-up and release, centered on the build-up and release of the

product. You will want to make sure that your list members purchase from you,

rather than from another list owner.

To make it short and sweet: pay attention to the clock and the calendar. If there’s

a big launch coming up, you need to capitalize on it quickly. There may not be a

second window for opportunity. So take it when you have it.

Pitfall #7: Ignore Important Numbers

Many affiliate marketers fail to make many of the small—yet important—

calculations needed in order to run a business and ensure you are in profit. For

instance, many affiliate marketers will completely ignore the portion Clickbank

extracts from each sale. Instead, they’ll simply look at the price and the

commission.

Additionally, many will ignore conversion rates, pay per click bids, and the

amount of time they put into projects. They’ll also fail to make realistic estimates

of how much promotional efforts will cost; and how much of a risk they’ll be.

They’ll glaze over all of these minor details and devote the majority of their time

to daydreaming about the riches they will rake in.

Unfortunately, affiliate marketing doesn’t work like that. If you’re paying too much

for traffic; if your conversion rates are too low; if you put too much time into

projects that don’t have high yields – the outcome is bad. Your numbers won’t

add up. At the end of the day, month, or year, you may end up in debt, rather

than profit. And since you’re a sole proprietor, not a CEO of a corporation, that

means you don’t get paid at all. Even worse, you might lose some of your own

money that you worked hard to get.

 

Conclusion

So how does all of this come together? As you read, there are seven common

pitfalls in affiliate marketing. If you fall into them, you affiliate marketing will put

you in debt, rather than making you wealthy.

So how can you avoid these traps, make better decisions, and ultimately become

wealthy via affiliate marketing? First, start by selecting products that are actually

good. As I mentioned previously, a low demand product will make few sales, no

matter how hard you try to promote it. If the demand isn’t there, you can’t create

it. Don’t try.

Next, within the niches that are in high demand, look for a product that is actually

a winner. Find something that converts very well. You can do this by looking for

high-popularity, high-gravity products on Clickbank. You can also do this by

scanning salespages to find ones with extraordinarily compelling copy, good

bonuses, and reasonable prices.

In addition to choosing a product that is likely to convert well, you will also want

to make sure that the claims are reasonable and that the seller is credible. One

bad product could seriously knock you down a few pegs with your list members.

Making a single sale and losing an otherwise repeat-buyer is rarely worth it.

Once you start generating traffic for your affiliate marketing campaigns,

remember to drive it to an opt-in form – NOT to your affiliate link.