Affiliate marketing is popular for a reason.
It’s a great way to make some extra cash without ever worrying about production or related aspects. You can do it right from your home, or pretty much anywhere.
In fact, it can even become a highly lucrative business for some, if done right.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Here’s affiliate marketing explained in 4 simple steps:
1. Choose a product/service
2. Join its affiliate program
3. Promote the product/service
4. Earn a profit on each sale you make
Needless to say, affiliate marketing is pretty easy to put into action.
All you need to do is sign up for an affiliate program of your choice and promote its products and services on your blog/website/social media page.
If they sell, you earn a commission.
The hard part is actually generating the sales.
It sounds easy, but there’s really no shortcut to making money.
Just like any other business, affiliate marketing also requires tons of your time and attention to be successful.
Pro-tip: Here’s a FREE Webinar + Masterclass from Builapreneur to help you learn more about affiliate marketing and generating passive income online.
Affiliate Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid
While affiliate marketing is pretty much free of cost and super easy to set up, only a few people manage to be really good at it.
Sadly, most affiliate marketers find themselves falling down a pit of rookie mistakes as early as during the first few weeks of their new venture.
Here are some of the biggest (and most common) mistakes affiliate marketers need to avoid:
1. Selling the product instead of promoting it
Too often, affiliate marketers make the mistake of filling their content with sales pitches.
Simply trying to sell a product is just going to make you look pushy. And nobody likes a pushy salesperson.
The only way to drive authentic engagement and traffic (and ultimately, sales) to your affiliate partner’s website is by building trust and confidence in your audience.
You need to help them first and sell later.
Provide genuine advice to your customers, and address their specific concerns.
Creating in-depth reviews, best-of lists, and buying guides is a proven technique to build confidence in buyers and help them get familiar with what your affiliate partner is offering.
Remember, be honest when you’re reviewing a product/service, and include both the pros and cons.
Bombarding readers with only praises about a product and ignoring its drawbacks can make you come across as unauthentic and sales-y.
2. Expecting to make tons of money right away
Affiliate marketing will NOT make you rich overnight.
Instead, it’s a gradual earning process that takes a lot of time, effort, and commitment.
To sum it up, here’s why getting rich overnight for a new affiliate marketer is quite impossible:
Starting out with the get-rich-quick mindset will not only frustrate you, it will lead you to make all the wrong moves, like filling your content with affiliate links or trying to sell more products than you can handle.
To be successful in the long term, you need to have a proper strategy under your belt. Instead of being all over the place, focus on the most important things first.
Creating great content, driving more traffic, and collecting emails should be your top 3 priorities when you start out.
3. Neglecting keyword research and SEO
Search engines bring in tons of traffic for affiliate marketing websites. Being present at the top of search results should be one of your biggest priorities.
Newbie marketers often make the mistake of skipping keyword research and diving right into content creation.
This is a no-no.
Researching keywords lets you find out what exactly your audience is searching for on the internet.
Knowing the trending keywords in your niche will help you create relevant, targeted content that actually fulfills the needs of your readers and solves their problems.
Aside from keyword research, you should also consider investing in SEO tools, creating backlinks, and using social media to promote your website.
All of this will help bring you to the top of search engine results, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.
4. Promoting low-quality or spammy products
Don’t ever make the mistake of promoting a useless, spammy product just for the money.
It will never work in the long run.
First of all, it’s unethical.
Secondly, even if people somehow do buy the product from you and find out they got tricked, they will never trust you or return to your website again.
On the other hand, satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases.
In fact, these people will also recommend you to their friends, family, and coworkers. That way, you get to retain existing customers and acquire new ones too. How cool is that?
Try to always promote products that carry significant value and are of good quality to ensure maximum satisfaction in your customers.
5. Trying to sell what you don’t understand
Too often, affiliate marketers ramble on and on about a product without doing their homework.
This results in a painful gap between what the actual product really is and what you’ve communicated to your readers, leading to unhappy customers.
Moreover, if you don’t know about the product you’re promoting, you won’t be able to offer your readers an authentic, honest point-of-view. This can be pretty unconvincing and can cost you a lot of potential sales.
We recommend you try and purchase the product/service in real life before you start promoting it. This helps you get acquainted to it and write an honest review.
You can even record a video of yourself using the product. This shows your audience you know what you’re talking about, and helps build confidence and trust.
6. Promoting too many products/services
Just because you set up a website and published a few posts doesn’t mean your job is done and you can move on to a new niche/product/service.
It’s very difficult to juggle multiple products at the same time and still manage to make money. Especially if they belong to different niches.
Moreover, your customers are only interested in useful products. They don’t want to scan hundreds of useless products in the process. They’d rather go look somewhere else.
We’ll advise you to focus on just a few products initially, and gradually grow your website big enough to accommodate other kinds of products/services.
If you start promoting every $1000 product you come across just to earn a big chunk of commission, you’ll never be able to give each one the time and attention it deserves.
7. Not investing in the right tools
Digital technology is constantly evolving and presenting marketers with new tools and opportunities to boost their efforts.
If you don’t keep up, you might end up falling behind your competitors.
There are tons of tools out there to help you improve customer experience, create better content, measure your performance, and generate more sales.
For example, you should always invest in a fast-loading website to offer your readers a seamless experience.
You can also use different plugins, analytics tools, SEO tools, automation, and other marketing software to help you do your job more efficiently.
8. Publishing low-quality content
The content you post is EXTREMELY important.
Don’t assume you can get away with low-quality content stuffed with keywords and spammy affiliate links.
Search engines hate that kind of content, and you’ll never be able to make it to the top of search results like that.
Moreover, your readers won’t bother taking you seriously. Low-quality content will just make them suspicious and drive them away from your site.
Make sure your content is well-researched, grammatically sound, and interesting. Use visuals; images and videos get a lot more attention than plain blocks of text.
Also, keep your content easy-to-read, scan, and digest by breaking text up into bullet points and small paragraphs. Avoid using difficult words. Nobody wants to sit in front of their screen with a dictionary.
Pro-tip: When you’re writing product reviews, don’t just focus on the features. Try to focus more on the benefits, instead. Features tell, but benefits SELL.
9. Ignoring the competition
If you’re part of a popular affiliate program, like Amazon or Etsy, there’s a high chance you have some competition.
If you want your customers to listen to you and not them, never ignore your competitors. You should LEARN from them, instead.
Look up who else is promoting your products, and find out what they’re saying.
Once you know what your competitors are doing, you can now offer something new and innovative to your readers that sets you apart. You can also see what they’re doing wrong and learn from their mistakes.
It’s important to not just do what everyone else is doing. You should always differentiate yourself and take a unique angle to stand out from the crowd.
10. Relying only on social media
Social media should always be a part of your affiliate marketing strategy. But it should never be the only kind of platform you’re using.
Why? Because it’s simply not enough to get you the authenticity, trust, and traffic you need to make money.
If you have a blog and website that integrates with your social media marketing, you’ll have a better chance at converting your audience into loyal customers.
People trust a solid website more than just a Facebook page. In the online world, your website is like your store. It’s a central part of your brand identity.
Moreover, a website offers your readers a single platform where they can browse and purchase different products with ease.
Use social media in tandem with a website, paid advertisements, email, SEO, and other channels to make the most out of your marketing efforts.
11. Not keeping track of performance
So, you’re writing product reviews, posting buying guides, tweeting on a daily basis, and running an Instagram page to support your blog.
That’s brilliant. But is it actually working? How much?
To answer these questions, you need to keep track of your performance.
This means investing in some good analytics. Most social media platforms come with their own analytics that show you different metrics of how your posts and page are performing.
For your website, we recommend using Google Analytics to see how well your marketing efforts are performing.
Google Analytics lets you keep track of multiple metrics, like where you’re getting most of your traffic from, how many unique visitors you have, the average time people are spending on the different pages of your site, and more.
ClickMagick is another great tool for keeping track of all your clicks in one place. You can use it to keep an eye on the actual link clicked, where it came from, and all the other links on your website.
Are You Ready to Make Money Online?
Affiliate marketing can be a highly rewarding and lucrative business for people who actually know what they’re doing.
The key is to stay focused, committed, and have a solid strategy behind everything you do. If you’re going to be all over the place, chances are you won’t get too far. You also need to invest in the right tools and technology, and stay up-to-date with the competition.
Avoid the pitfalls listed above that many affiliate marketers have fallen into in the past, and you’re halfway there.
Serious about creating passive income online?
Buildapreneur is offering a FREE Webinar and Masterclass to help you set up your own Affiliate Marketing business in no time.
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