Affiliate Marketing is definitely the best place to start vs. going through the laborious and sometime expensive process of creating your own product. I am  an advocate of personal products, but for the beginning marketing a product that comes from someone who already is an authority on the subject it is a great choose. This could save a lot of time, money, frustration, and you could make money in the process.

After this short presentation I can read your mind: why so many marketers don’t succeed and only a very short percentage do. Why?

Because affiliate marketing is not walk in the park, either. It’s certainly easier than creating your own product launch, but, like anything else, there are plenty of pitfalls just waiting around the corner.

This is a short list of pitfalls to avoid:

Pitfall #1: Choosing a Bad Product to Promote
Not all products are created equal. If you decide to pick your product from Clickbank, select very carefully one which is a high-quality product, and
highest commission. You need to look for ones that have the highest popularity and gravity ratings.

Pitfall #2: Picking a Product Which is a Low Converter
As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to profit from the hard worker others have already done.
Choose your products carefully:

  • Look at conversion rates
  • Read the sales page carefully and
  • Ask yourself if you feel compelled to buy?
  • Did the graphics throw you off?

Pitfall #3: Selling a product to the Salesman of that product
Especially if you have a list avoid jumping on the affiliate product bandwagon for major promotions.
Instead, wait until the noise dies down slightly; and then release a
comprehensive review of the product. This has a much better chance of getting sales for you; and it will also help you to maintain credibility.

Pitfall #4: Picking Products that Offer Small Commissions
Choose products that offer a 50% or 75% commission.
Because many top name Internet marketers concentrate on
promoting high-ticket items, you can still make a killing selling relatively cheap reports. The rising popularity of the $7 report is my proof.

Nothing wrong to buy a cheap product, but distance yourself from the stingy marketers.

Pitfall #5: Failing to Collect Leads
Always, capture leads. The collective experience of many marketers tell us that you as an affiliate must send potential customers to your squeeze page first and then to sale page of the author. You get the chance to market to your list again and again for months or even years. As a marketer, one of the best tools you have available is your list.

With other words, promote affiliate marketing Products creating a Squeeze page in your domain

Pitfall #6: Ignoring the Importance of Timeliness
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.
To make it short, 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 Figures
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.
If:

  • You’re paying too much for traffic
  • Your conversion rates are too low
  • You put too much time into projects that don’t have high yields –
  • Your numbers won’t add up, and the outcome is bad

you should re-think, and re-tweet your campaign, not give up! You always gave the option of  Free Traffic with Web 2.0 ( Social Media)

Summary:
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.

This is the point where a lot of marketers give up. instead of doing this:

  • Start by selecting products that are actually good, 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
  • Within a niches that are in high demand, look for a product that is actually a winner. Find something that converts very well looking for
    • high-popularity,
    • high-gravity products on Clickbank,
    • scanning sales pages to find ones with:
      • extraordinarily compelling copy,
      • good bonuses, and
      • reasonable prices
  • Choose a product that is likely to convert well, make sure that the claims are reasonable and that the seller is credible
  • Remember to drive traffic to an opt-in form – NOT to your affiliate link which usually is the sale-page of the author.  Collecting leads is critically important
  • Do yourself a favor and keep track of conversion rates, bid prices, commission rates, product broker fees, and all the other little numbers that affiliate marketers prefer to ignore. Knowing, understanding, and tweaking these numbers could be the difference between profit and debt

So now you can avoid these pitfalls, make better decisions, and ultimately become wealthy via affiliate marketing.

Until thr next time

All the best

Michey

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10 Responses to “Common Mistakes Made In Affiliate Marketing”

  1. Holley says:

    Very informative, Michey, thank you! This one is the one that I have failed at every time : “Remember to drive traffic to an opt-in form – NOT to your affiliate link”.
    .-= Holley´s last blog ..Is Leather Sexy? =-.

  2. michey says:

    Holley,
    to be honest with you and my other readers… I spent a lot of time myself until I start to use squeeze pages on my domains for affiliate marketing as well, and stop giving up easily. This is part of the Internet Marketing mind set.
    Thanks for reading, and commenting.

  3. Alex says:

    I have to agree with Holley; The Opt-in Squeeze Page has been a big failure on my part. I know they should be used for free releases as well.

    Even in ‘real world’ marketing, lists are generated and cold calls suck. :)
    .-= Alex´s last blog ..Why Do Some Want To Close The Lid On SEO? =-.

  4. Michey says:

    Holley, I have:
    1) a lens:
    http://www.squidoo.com/affiliate-workshop
    it is not specific for Squeeze pages is for entire process of being an affiliate, you have the link here in the right column
    2) I also have a membership site which let you use their software of creating squeeze pages (I am an affiliate for them), look on my widgets in the following blog:
    http://michaelacernescu.com
    3) If you want I can create a lens specificaly for squeeze pages, let me know
    Regards
    Michey

  5. ohme1 says:

    Thanks for the good advice, Michey

  6. michey says:

    I created a lens about Squeeze Pages:
    http://www.squidoo.com/Squeeze-page
    I hope it is a help.
    Regards
    Michey

  7. michey says:

    I’ll continue later with more Affiliate topics.
    Michey

  8. Rhonda says:

    Thanks Michey, This is really useful. I have a lot of work ahead of me! Off to re-read your lens now.

  9. [...] they are not identical with the Blogging mistakes but there are a lot of similarities as well: http://michey.crabbysbeach.com.....marketing/ Let’s get [...]

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