Setting up an affiliate marketing business is not rocket science these days.But if not done right can be very frustrating and lead to poor results.
Some boring stats for you!
Fifteen percent of the total digital media advertising revenue comes from affiliate marketing. Also, 81 percent of marketers and 84 percent of content publishers use the power of affiliate marketing.
So, if there’s one way that allows you to make money online by sitting in the comfort of your home (sometimes, even from your favorite holiday destinations) is affiliate marketing. It’s now catching up with email marketing and other forms of online marketing big time to generate revenues on the same level. Many have considered it the best way to build wealth in the long run.
But this does not mean that every new affiliate program that hits the digital space will succeed. If you are an affiliate marketer,or thinking of becoming one, here are some of the common mistakes that you might commit and how to avoid them:
Mistake #1: Thinking that you can make money online right away
You can indeed make money online very quickly with affiliate marketing, but you need to hold your horses initially. You can build wealth and become rich, but not so soon as you think. The reasons are pretty clear. During the initial stage, you won’t have many connections, not enough know how,web traffic,valuable content to share, and less trust among people. So, don’t plunge into it without proper planning.
What to do: Avoid wasting your time deluging your website with your affiliate links, or getting into every second affiliate program you come across, or promoting every high ticket affiliate product in the market. You will have to focus on the critical things first, like creating appealing content, collecting emails, and driving online marketing traffic.In other words learning the correct way to market.
Mistake #2: Designing a poor website
The opportunity to make money online through affiliate marketing programs exists because there is a website where people can come and buy what they need. So, creating a poor quality website will be nothing less than a recipe for disaster. Low website design standards will translate into low sales volume in no time. So, you should make this your top most priority and approach the affiliate program more professionally.
What to do: Scour the digital space for all the websites you like and try to answer, “Why?” While doing so, think of the various actions you want your visitors to take on your website. Try to make it easy to navigate, informative, mobile friendly, and simple.
Mistake #3: Forgetting the competition
When introducing a new product in the market or concocting something new, every business should analyze the current competitive landscape. The same goes for an affiliate marketing business too. But sadly, this is one of the most critical components that affiliates tend to miss out on. It often leads to them falling short of people’s expectations, and losing out on potential sales to their rivals.
What to do: You have to make sure that your affiliate program stands out from the rest. To do so, you need to incorporate what your rivals haven’t done yet. You can consider putting together a competitive intelligence spreadsheet and recording every major element of the affiliate programs of your competitors. This will give you a clear picture of what they are doing and what you should be doing.
Mistake #4: Not tracking performance
Making money online through affiliate marketing is not just about creating an appealing website and waiting for people to visit it. User experience indeed holds a very crucial position in the game, but you also have to know how your website is performing once it goes live. Most affiliate marketers don’t do this and expect results—something that’s tough in a world where customers have a very short attention span.
What to do: Make sure you use Google Analytics (or a similar tracking tool) to measure the performance of your website. This will help you decide which campaigns work well and which don’t. You need to carefully observe and analyze the cause and effects of your actions and do more of what’s working the best. So, recognizing patterns of both success and failure is essential for your affiliate marketing success.
Mistake #5: Choosing the wrong niche
This is perhaps one of the gravest mistakes that affiliate marketers make when they start their venture. More often than not, novice affiliate marketers plunge into the domain specializing in a niche that rarely interests them. It’s just the whole prospect of making money online that pushes them to choose a niche randomly and get into it. If you do so, you will be nothing more than a blank page in due course.
What to do: You should choose a niche that interests you the most. You may not know everything about it, but you can gain knowledge over time if you are genuinely in love with it. You should have enough interest to enjoy reading and writing about the niche you choose.
Mistake #6: Leaving out SEO
Most affiliate marketers rely on organic search to get traffic and boost conversions, but rarely does that help them, not at least in the quick time frame that they expect to make money online. Not performing keyword research, and, in turn, not doing SEO, will make the affiliate program get lost in a highly competitive digital space.
What to do: Fold in keyword research and SEO tool at all costs to succeed in your affiliate marketing venture. Make sure you optimize your content with these search terms to gain visibility in SERPs.
Mistake #7: Picking too many affiliate products
When choosing affiliate products for your collection, you may be tempted to select too many of them. Doing so will be a big mistake. You will be less enthusiastic and more distracted because you will have too many things running in your mind. Honestly, juggling so many products will just drain you out at the end of the day.
What to do: It’s perfectly fine to start small. Affiliate marketing programs are mostly about quality and very little about quantity. You should pick select products that exude excellence and make sure you focus all your energy on them.
Mistake #8: Having a closed mind
Lastly, affiliate marketers should be aware that there is no end to learning. They are in a business where they have to try new things and be open to new ideas. If you feel that you have learned enough, then perhaps you are closing yourself to the dynamism that affiliate marketing undergoes day in and day out.
What to do: You should always stay abreast of the latest online trends, SEO ranking factors, and online news that might affect your affiliate marketing business. You should educate yourself continually, keep reading online guides, and know everything that’s going on in your niche. This is the only way you can make money online and build wealth in the future.
These 8 mistakes are not the only mistakes you can make in your business,but these are significant.They can seem overwhelming,but if you identify and correct any or all of them in your business,then you on your way to profit and success.
If you follow ‘what to do’ in the first mistake ie learn to market the right way,that should take care of the other 7.
You have a couple of choices here.
1.Learn all this stuff on your own through trial and error.This takes longer but it’s totally doable.Again,this isn’t rocket science.
2.You can join an existing platform that will teach you exactly how to build your business step by step.This could have you (a)learning the right way right away.Eliminating much of the trial and error involved going it on your own,and (b) earning in a much shorter time frame than your first choice.
Obviously,you don’t have to join this platform,but I would suggest you find one that is good.Has good reviews and good results.Learn from someone who has achieved the success you want to achieve.Do what they teach you and you will succeed.
To your success.
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