subject: 7 Common Pitfalls New Affiliate Marketers Run Into [print this page] 7.As an internet marketer, you have to start somewhere. For new internet marketers, the best place to start may be with affiliate products. Rather than creating your own product, why not start by promoting a product that is ready to promote and comes from a creator who already has experience in this endeavour? You can save a lot of time, money, agony, and be making money in the process too. In fact, really, really good money! Many of the best Internet marketers today also sell affiliate products, even though they create a killing off of their own products. And why is that you may ask? Because it's still fantastic money and little effort is needed. But with that said, it's important to note that affiliate marketing isnt just a walk in the park. If you are interested in making money from affiliate marketing, do yourself a favor: understand what I say and avoid these mistakes. I will go over the top 7 mistakes:
Pitfall #1: Choosing a Not so Good Product to Use
Products are not created equal. Just because there is a product to promote as an affiliate, doesnt necesarily mean it is a good product. And the reason for this is anybody can create a product to sell, but not everyone who creates a product is an expert at what their creating. Rather than basing your decision to promote a product that simply pays out high commissions, there are other things to consider. If a lot of people are buying the product thats a really good indicator. Also popularity of the item, Is there a market ready to buy that product? Is the product you want to sell better than the other products for sale within that niche? And so on. But dont get down on this point though, many resources are available to help you with these questions.
Pitfall #2: Picking a Low Converter
As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to profit from the hard work someone else has done; and from the money they have spent on copywriters, product developers, and software. If you select a product produced by someone that doesnt make the most of these advantages, you are likely to benefit less. So do yourself a favor from the beginning and choose your products carefully.
Pitfall #3: Selling Snake Oil for a Snake Oil Salesman
This mistake is easy enough to avoid. Dont choose products that make rediculous or extraordinary claims. As Carl Sagan once said "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." In most cases, these snake oil peddlers cant show you any extraordinary evidence, but they do make the claims. Avoid promoting them and becoming associated with them.
Pitfall #4: Picking Products that Offer Smaller Commissions
There is only so much time in a day, so select the offers you promote wisely. If you sell something that only generates a 25% commission for you, then your leaving a lot on the table. In reality, you could probably find a similar sellable item that offers a 50% or 75% commission if you look hard enough.
Pitfall #5: Failing to Capture Leads
Always, always, always capture leads. Rather than generating traffic through pay per click, search engine optimization, and other methods and then sending those buyers to your affiliate link, you should make an effort to convert them into list members first. Why? Because if you have a enormous list of potential leads you can keep selling them more products in the future. After all, these are targeted leads that were looking for a certain product, and instead of converting at a normal rate of around 1-3% in affiliate sales, instead you will convert between 15 and 40% of visitors on your mailing list.
Pitfall #6: Ignoring the Critical Importance of Timeliness
In business in general, the quick often out compete those endowed with greater resources. How does this apply to you? Successful affiliate product promotion requires you to do more than simply slap an affiliate link in an email and send it out to your list of past buyers. If your email is relevant to something that is something happening in the news, you are far more likely to draw interest than if you send a link to an Internet marketing ebook that was written in 1998 and wasn't particularly popular then, as an example.
Pitfall #7: Dont pay attention To Important Numbers
Many marketers fail to realize the small details needed in order to run a business and make sure you are in profit. For instance, many affiliate marketers will completely ignore the portion Clickbank keeps from each sale. Instead, they'll simply look at the price and the commission. Additionally, many will ignore conversion rates, the amount of time they put into selling, realistic estimates of how much advertising efforts will cost, etc. They'll glance over all of these essential details and devote most of their time to daydreaming about the income they will take in. Affiliate marketing doesn't work like that.
Conclusion:
Use the information contained in this article to avoid the most common mistakes.
