subject: 5 Profit Killing Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid [print this page] 5 Profit Killing Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
One of the best ways you can make money from home online these days is affiliate marketing and with the huge numbers of programs available anyone who has internet access can easily start promoting products and potentially making money on the internet. Most affiliate programs are cheap or even free to join, will pay you commission on a regular basis and it's pretty easy to get started so large numbers of people are using them to start their own home based internet business.There are however a few mistakes that many people who are new to affiliate marketing continue to make which can have a huge impact on the success of their business. Avoiding the most common mistakes that are made by people who are starting out in affiliate marketing will increase your chances of making sales and in turn lead to an increase in your commissions, so it's well worth your time to learn what they are to avoid making them in your business.Here are 5 of the top mistakes that people who are new to affiliate marketing are likely to make:1) Promoting an affiliate program without first doing your researchYou'd be quite surprised by how many new affiliates marketers simply start promoting the first program that they come across, most of the time this is because it has a high commission rate and is being promoted many a lot of other affiliate marketers, but this doesn't necessarily mean it will be a good fit for your website. You will find it very difficult to convince your website visitors that they should check out an offer if it has little or no relationship to the content of your website. Why would they take the time to look at this offer if it doesn't have anything to do with the niche you are targeting?2) Incorrect use of your email or forum signature fileIt's very easy to think that creating a signature file for your email or within a forum is a great way to promote a range of products to people who read your emails or see your posts. The reality is that if you overdo it everyone is quickly going to realise that all you are trying to do is sell them something and in many cases this type of signature file will get your email and forum posts flagged as spam. To be most effective your signature file should be relevant to the content of your posts or the forum you are in, make sure to limit it to 2-3 lines of text, include attention grabbing content and don't overdo the links you include either.3) Using the stock ad copy for the affiliate program you are promotingOne of the simplest mistakes that you will ever see most affiliate marketers make is to use the standard copy provided by the affiliate program to promote their links. If you simply copy and paste the ads that everyone else is using to promote an affiliate program then you are probably going to be just one of 100's doing exactly the same and any email you send will have been sent dozens of times before so it's unlikely the reader is going to read it yet again. If you take the time to personalise the ad to suit your audience before sending it out you are making the ad your own so it won't simply look like the same advertisement as everyone else is using.4) Using free hosting accounts and low quality domain namesMost web users these days can spot a site hosted by a free provider and it simply looks unprofessional, even going so far as suggesting to your visitors that you haven't made any money online (and if you haven't made any money online why should they listen to you?). How can you build trust with your visitors and potential customers there is no way that they are going to spend their hard earned money based on your say so. It's not expensive to buy a decent domain name at places like GoDaddy.com and hosting can be had for pennies a day so it's unlikely to break the bank. In most cases these small investments will make a huge difference to your bottom line in the long run.5) Sending your leads to an affiliate site before capturing their detailsHaving spent time, money and effort in marketing to a group of people, having them visit your advertisement or website and then clicking on your affiliate link and they chose not to buy, what exactly have you achieved? The answer, unfortunately, is absolutely nothing! All you have managed to do is spend time and money on no result, and think about all the effort that went into getting that one click in the first place; shouldn't you be rewarded for that? Take the time to set up a squeeze page to capture a visitor's email address so that you can follow up with them in the future should that not choose to buy on the first look. Not only that but you can then send out future offers and updates for different products again and again and again, basically forever or until they choose to unsubscribe. This can be of huge value to your business in the long run, so don't waste your effort.So there you have them, 5 simple mistakes that anyone looking to get into affiliate marketing should absolutely avoid if they have any hope of making more than a few dollars here and there. Take heed of this advice and you will find that your affiliate marketing career will be far more profitable in the future, ignore them at your peril!
