Affiliate Marketing is Easy right?
When I first started in affiliate marketing I thought that making money online was going to be easy…Surely all you had to do was put up a website and review a product and bing bang..people will buy stuff using your links..well I found out the hard way and made many mistakes, so here are some ways to avoid affiliate marketing mistakes that I made.
1: Affiliate marketing scams
You’ve seen them everywhere…”make $10,000 a month with our easy system” or “How I made $500 in a day with this secret only the pros use”. Honestly these systems are nothing new..they are just packaged slightly differently and you will find yourself paying out money on either systems that do not work, or systems that you can find out anywhere for free. Don’t get swept into the hype. It took me 3 months to realise I had been duped by one scam I stupidly entered into.
2: Affiliate marketing takes time
Like everything in life Affiliate marketing takes time to build. You will not make money instantly. You have to write content over time and build up traffic while gaining trust from your readers. Just promoting a product to people who know nothing about you will not work. Gain a following, gain trust and then promote.
3:Create your own content
Make sure that everything you create on your blog or website is written by you and do not get involved with any content curator software. You want your content to be quality content and not copied content which is illegible to the reader.
4: Join a community of affiliate marketers
When i first started i didn’t know that there were actually places to learn affiliate marketing properly and speak to people who are actually making a real living through affiliate marketing. The first one I looked at was Affiliorama and then after a bit of research I discovered Wealthy Affiliate. for more info on Wealthy affiliate take a look at my review here.
5: Choose a niche you have an interest in
When starting in affiliate marketing you are going to need to pick a subject you have a passion for as you are going to have to be writing about it every day or week. So it makes sense to pick a subject you either know about or have an interest in. If you do not then you are likely to stop writing and give up.
6:There’s an affiliate product for everything (well nearly..)
The first affiliate marketing mistake I made was to think that you should choose a product first. What you actually want to do is choose a niche or subject and then search for a product afterwards. A quick tip is to just type in your niche and then add + affiliate program to the end of it and type into google Eg: “bikes + affiliate marketing”
7: Choose your products wisely
The last thing you want to do is promote a product that you know nothing about. Remember you are trying to build trust and gain a following. Always try to have actually purchased the product yourself or make sure you research it well before promoting.
8: Use video marketing
People love watching videos and their popularity within affiliate marketing is growing all the time. You can easily get videos made using Fiverr, or if you are interested in a really easy way to create professional looking videos yourself take a look at my “create a videos marketing business” here
9: Affiliate marketing gurus
You see them everywhere on Youtube..it normally starts with a guy standing by a sports car and a briefcase full of money. These people are just trying to entice you into using their system or product they are trying to promote. They are what is known as faking it before making it…they also probably live in a wooden shack on the edge of town and have no money but own a computer! Yes there are some real marketing gurus out there but beware..if someone wants to show you a system that sounds too good to be true..it probably is!
10: Don’t give up
Here is a reality check…You are not going to make $10,000 in your first month of affiliate marketing. You may not make that in your first or second year, but if you work and work on it and write content and create material people want to read you may just make some money from it..but be realistic and whatever you do Don’t give up..think of it like planting seeds..every piece of content you create will grow over time…and in months or years you may make you first $100..or lets be optimistic and say $10,000!
I hope you have found this article on Avoiding affiliate marketing mistakes useful in some way or another, and if you would like to share this post or have any comments you would like to make the please just drop me a comment.
Pete.
Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines. What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely. This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.
Love this article, Pete. I just recently made my first referral commission and can vouch that yes, it takes time. Help people, create content that is genuinely worthwhile, treat others as you would your own family and friends, and success will follow.
Hi Pete
Indeed a great post about internet marketing mistakes.
I am glad that you have covered the major internet marketing mistakes which almost every internet marketers do.
Internet marketing is the best way of making money online and the best part about it is, It allow internet marketers to earn with few but potential visitors. We don’t need huge amount of traffic to earn. We only need 10 targeted visitors who can purchase the product.
The most common mistake which internet marketers make is, they promote so many products at once without having any experience with them.
To earn more, internet marketers pick every high paying product and start promoting them but don’t get any sales from them because they don’t focus on each product correctly that’s why they are unable to makes sales.
Every successful internet marketer suggest to promote only those products which you have personally used.
I would like to thank you for sharing such a great piece of content. 😀
Hello,
Well, I am trying to learn affiliate marketing from last few months, but I am finding it very difficult, specially the conversion part, as I am not able to attract any sales expect one or two.
Although, I am learning it quickly, and Now, I can say, I made a mistake by picking products without enough research and also, I reviewed the product without even using it, so all this resulted in failure.
But I hope, I will improve on my skills and will succeed in Affiliate marketing soon.