How to do--and not do--Affiliate Marketing

How to do--and not do--Affiliate Marketing

There are many ways to do affiliate marketing or to phrase it another work as an affiliate marketer. As an affiliate marketer your job/goal is direct people to a merchant's website through a special link that is unique to you. This link is important because then the merchant knows you referred that visitor and you will get a commission if they buy the merchant products.

If you are looking for a step by step process, I couldn't do it justice in one small article. There are many ways to promote your affiliate link: PPC, article marketing, banner ads, forum posting, email marketing just to name a few. There are literally thousands of courses on the internet telling you how to do affiliate marketing with those methods.

With that being said I would like to address something similar and that is "How not to do Affiliate Marketing". Since there are so many courses out there you are likely to end up on many different email lists. From time to time you might receive a promotional email from that person promoting someone else's product that they are an affiliate of. If you buy that other person's product, now you will be on two email lists(assuming you don't opt in or unsubscribe.) Now you will have two different people sending you emails and an occasional promotional email.

It's very easy to get wrapped up in buying courses when you first start out with affiliate marketing. You don't know anything about it and you want to educate yourself, so you can save yourself time(which by the way is very smart.) However, it's very easy to get caught up in buying course after course without really applying the information in any of them.

Let's say you buy course A. You might start reading it and studying it to try wrap your head around it. Then you get an email from someone about how they are earning $37,398/month with this method. You're excited so you go out buy that course. You start reading that course, let's call it course B and totally forget about course A. Then a couple of weeks later you end up getting another email from a different person about a new course C. They talk about a new method and really resonates with you. You quickly whip out your credit card and excitedly purchase course C. Only to forget about course A and B.

The above cycle can repeat itself until your credit cards are maxed out and/or you give up on affiliate marketing thinking that's a big scam. However, if you take a step back and ask yourself "Did I apply any of the things I learned the answer is a BIG NO.

I went through that exact process up there. The only thing that kept me going is knowing that I couldn't quit because I hadn't truly made an effort in a first place. I'm not saying not to buy courses, I'm saying not to get stuck in the cycle of buying courses and NOT IMPLEMENTING them as happens to so many would be internet marketers.

There are several benefits to buying and sticking with a course. First, you'll save money. Then you can use the money you would have spent buying courses on advertising. Whether this advertising is for PPC, paying someone to write articles or build a website for you, it is beneficial. Because now you are starting to build something and work towards making sales.

The second benefit to staying with one course is that you won't be distracted. I discovered that while I could buy several courses and even go through the material, it is hard to implement so many different methods at once. The reason being is that there is a learning curve involved. It's hard to learn a lot of new concepts and apply them effectively at the same time.

I know this article talked more about how to not do affiliate marketing than how to do affiliate marketing, but I think this is something that isn't talked about enough especially when people are starting out.

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