Ten Tips To Avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
A great percentage of people who start affiliate marketing give up. The reason is that many of the new marketers are told from the beginning that making money online is as easy as a push of a button. They expect to make money overnight and if it doesn’t happen they give up. The truth is: affiliate marketing is a game, and as every game: can be mastered with practice and time.
First tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Be realistic. Although there are many people in the world who are making outrageous money from affiliate commissions, you have to realize that they did not become successful overnight. They had to overcome difficulties, obstacles, and they are successful because they are ready for changing old methods and testing new things. You are definitely not equal to them yet as a newbie affiliate marketer, so don’t try to compare yourself to them.
Second tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
It all comes down to a business plan. As with every business, also with affiliate marketing planning has a huge impact on success or failure. You have to plan everything carefully, from budgeting to the most important aspect: promotional channels. If you are setting up a website, you have to decide on which niche you are targeting and choose your keywords carefully before even buying the domain.
Third tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Avoid broad targeting of niches, especially in niches that are highly competitive. You have to do your research beforehand and find a question you can provide answers or solutions for, to target a specific segment of the niche. For example if you wanted to enter the weight loss niche you would face a huge competition, so the only way to succeed is to find a specialty product that will solve a common problem of people within the niche. For example you can go for products like: “hypnotherapy for weight loss” or “yoga weight loss exercises” targeting specific keywords. (I haven’t checked these keywords so this is not a recommendation).
Fourth tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Choose your products carefully. You can check for products before you set up your affiliate promotions, make sure that there is a competitive product available. If you are selling information products, it is almost evident that there is an e-book for everything, so your job is easy. Next you have to view the landing page, with the eyes of your customer. Is it appealing enough to make people buy? Is any information left out? Does it comply with the FTC regulations? Does it closely relate to your content? There is nothing more annoying than a website stuffed with irrelevant ads and banners.
Fifth to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Always track your results. You must know where your sales or sign ups are coming from. You must track your conversions as well as your traffic sources. Google will give you a good idea of the high impact keywords, and the searches related to your site or promotion. Affiliate marketing is all about testing different offers, traffic sources and methods. Without this information you will be unable to tweak your promotions in order to optimize your affiliate marketing performance.
Sixth tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Testing is the key. An average affiliate marketer tests about 20-80 different offers and creatives (banner, contextual ad, email, etc) until they find “the one” that perfectly suits their content and converts very well. The key is (at least it works for me absolutely fine) that you test all your offers on free traffic first, in order to avoid losing loads of money on affiliate offers that don’t work.
Forget the Gurus’ advice and don’t go for PPC unless you are an absolute expert, because you are more than likely to lose money. Test your offers with free traffic (solo emails, contextual ads, generic SEO) and if it converts, carefully set up a paid affiliate promotion campaign.
Seventh tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Make sure you read the affiliate agreement before you sign up as an affiliate for either a CPA network, or any other program directly. You have to know exactly which promotion methods are allowed, which disclaimers and unsubscribe information do you have to include in the solo emails you are going to send out for your affiliate offers. It is also your responsibility to study the related FTC regulations in order to avoid being flagged as spammer or fraudulent affiliate marketer, and remember: if you get banned from one affiliate network, you are more than likely to get banned from all, as affiliate programs share information about “bad affiliates”.
Eighth tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Always try to make your offers unique. Have you seen the same offer elsewhere, maybe as a Google Adwords ad over and over again? You have to make sure that your headlines are spot on and not a copy of the standard network recommendation. Also if you have a brand new offer under testing, and it gets loads of conversions, make sure you speed up your campaign for the affiliate offer first of all to dominate the market with your unique offer faster, secondly because your target niche has to be sent your promotion by you and not other affiliates who will soon also discover the offer. But try to make your offers unique, avoid promoting the same old programs that are advertised by super affiliates as well for a long time. If your affiliate offer’s conversion rate drops, you don’t have to stop promoting, it is often enough to change the headline or the email text.
Ninth tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
Avoid black hat methods. You might visit some affiliate forums, where people offer tips to make outrageous commissions by cheating the system. You have to remember that there are tools and methods to automate your affiliate marketing business, they are only fine if they are legal and fair to the customer. Avoid misleading headlines, false promises, fake testimonials in any way. Your customers are not silly and they will see through the lies eventually. Using back hat methods is preventing affiliate marketers from building their customer base and improving their crediblity within the niche.
Tenth tip to avoid Affiliate Marketing Failure
It is OK to generate leads for other people for money. It is also all right to send them traffic. But as you are trying to build your affiliate business here, which should be your first priority, you should consider setting up your system capturing leads for your own list before sending people to a merchant’s landing page. List building is one of the most important long term aspects of a successful affiliate business. Just imagine that you made 40 dollars on a person, and you lost him. The merchant has their details, but you will never have the chance to sell them anything else in the future.
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