Don’t you just love the idea of affiliate marketing? You promote a merchant’s product to an audience and, should they purchase that product, you get a commission.
Affiliate marketing has completely transformed the way people look at passive income!
And with all the countless sources out there to learn from, one should have no reason not to be successful…right?
Not quite. You see, affiliate marketing as a business model is simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. As a new affiliate marketer, you are bound to run into roadblocks on the way to success.
Ask any successful affiliate and they will tell you mistakes happen…often!
The goal, however, is too mitigate those mistakes as much as possible. That is what posts like this are for.
Top 7 mistakes new affiliate marketers make
Today I’m going to give you my top 7 mistakes new affiliate marketers make, and how you can avoid them. Some of these mistakes might be ones you are making right now.
If that’s the case, no worries because by the end of this article you will know how to identify these mistakes and know how to avoid them altogether.
Mistake # 1
Not Creating Enough Content
Quality over quantity, that is what we are always taught. While this is true, that doesn’t mean quantity should completely be disregarded.
When I say quantity, concerning your content, I’m talking about the frequency in which you post, and how long your post is. This can be the number of words per article or the length of your videos.
The length of an average blog post, review, or any other article, should be a minimum of 500 words. Ideally, you want to do more than that, perhaps, 1,000 to 1,500. Anything shorter than 500 appears half-hazard, which your audience will be able to recognize.
(Here are some sample articles from the Fruitful Income Blog to give you an idea)
In addition to blog length, you’ll want to consider posting frequency as well.
How often do you post right now? Once a week? Although that isn’t bad, An ideal frequency would be around 2 to 3 times a week.
Content Frequency matters for two reasons:
- It allows you to connect with your audience more often
- It puts you in a better position to be indexed by search engine bots
Search engines love content, especially frequently updated content, and if you want to get people to your site, it’s important to provide more content for your audience to view.
mistake #2
Promoting the Wrong Products.
Now, unfortunately, you can create amazing content that resonates with your audience and yet still not see conversions if your products are awful.
With millions of affiliate marketing products to choose from, you’ll want to make sure you, indeed, choose wisely. Products can define the success of your business.
A mistake a lot of new affiliate marketers make is choosing products simply based on the money. Not only is this bad practice, but it’s also highly unethical.
The products you promote should be ones you personally stand behind, ones that you know your audience will love.
When your affiliate product alines with you and your niche, it will inspire you to create more content around it. In addition to that, it will make your content more authentic for your audience. This becomes extremely important in the long term because it builds trust.
Don’t fall for the trap of promoting high commission products just for the money. Believe it or not, you will likely get more sales, overall, if the product is one you care about.
mistake # 3
blindly Following Others
When you jump into the game of affiliate marketing, you should want to model what others have done to gain success. As the saying goes “don’t reinvent the wheel.”
While this is true, new affiliate marketers take this as direction to follow someone exactly to a “T.” This actually does way more harm than good.
If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer, you should duplicate the basic methods of others, yet still, stand out in your niche.
Don’t be afraid to do what no one else is doing. Adding your unique personality to your business is how you differentiate yourself from your competition; use it to your advantage.
Look at how your competition addresses issues within your niche and then add your own unique perspective and extend your answer. After all, no two people have the exact same views on a product or service.
Always be on the lookout for opportunities to present something one of a kind, something no one has ever seen before.
Remember, your goal should be to make a difference in the marketplace, not blindly follow others.
It is okay to follow the methods of great marketers, but make sure to add your own values to your affiliate offers. Ultimately you want to provide your audience with something they can only get from you.
To be successful at affiliate marketing you have to be an innovator.
mistake # 4
depending solely on Search Engine Traffic.
In affiliate marketing, we love hammering down the importance of search engine optimization.
If you do a quick google search and you will find pages upon pages teaching you how to optimize your website.
While SEO and keyword research is an extremely important part of getting people to view your content, it’s not the only form of traffic available to you.
Yet, tons of affiliate marketers only rely on organic traffic, which isn’t a wise thing to do. With Google’s search algorithm constantly changing, it’s impossible to know if what ranks you #1 today will still rank you #1 a week from now.
If you want to be successful, it wouldn’t be wise to completely depend on a single thing.
Of course, You should try to rank on Google, but at some point, you should concentrate on generating traffic from other sources
There are many more ways, other than SEO, that increase the traffic to your affiliate marketing content: such as guest blogging, blogging outreach, email marketing, referrals, and social media.
If there is one particular traffic method you prefer, I recommend implementing it. The overall goal is to have various avenues of traffic directed towards your offers. This creates a comprehensive marketing strategy, where different sources build on each other.
mistake # 5
Selling first, Helping second
As an affiliate marketer, how do you gauge your success?
Is it by the number of sales you make, the leads you capture, the traffic you generate?
Although we all started affiliate marketing to earn money, that shouldn’t be our main focus. In other words, we shouldn’t prioritize sales and conversions over our audience.
Once you fall into the mindset of only driving sales, your content severely suffers and your audience quickly becomes uninterested.
People can tell the difference between authentic affiliate marketers and those who just want to sell to them.
Top affiliate marketer, Pat Flynn, does a great job explaining this in one particular section of his Smart Passive Income Blog, “Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Mistakes.”
Affiliate marketing isn’t a quick, impersonal thing. It’s the exact opposite. You need to start from an authentic place. Affiliate marketing is about fostering genuine long-term relationships with people you trust, products you love, and companies that align with you and your philosophies
As an affiliate marketer, your mission should be creating content relevant to your audience, content that helps them address problems they’re having. Doing this one simple thing will put you miles ahead of your competition because, unfortunately, most marketers have the opposite mindset.
Another good practice is not stuffing your pages and post with ads and pop-up windows. This can as easily be said for your affiliate links, too.
Surprisingly enough, the more ads and pop-ups you add, don’t increase the odds of you getting a conversion. What it will increase, though, is the odds of your audience feeling overwhelmed and leaving your page.
If you put the needs of your audience first, the sales and conversions will come naturally.
mistake # 6
Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
Remember when I said quantity and post frequency matter? Well, it still does. Just don’t let it be at the expense of creating terrible content.
Quality, compelling, content is what converts readers into customers. Believe it or not, your content is your product as an affiliate marketer. Clicks are the result of great content that readers found valuable and helpful.
What we are looking for is a unified balance between both quality and quantity. But, above all else, affiliate marketers should strive to produce high-quality content. One great post will outperform 5 mediocre ones any day of the week.
Besides, you owe it to your readers and fans to create valuable content at all times. It is that value that initially peaked there interest, therefore, that same value has to maintain their interest. Take that away and you’ll lose your fans and customers.
mistake # 7
Being Impatient
To no fault of your own, you probably decided to start affiliate marketing because you believed it would earn you money quickly. No?
Well, I did, and boy was I disappointed! However, over time I have realized that affiliate marketing is far from a get-rich-quick scheme.
Affiliate marketing is a business, and like all businesses, it takes hard work and patience to be successful.
Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of quitting affiliate marketing before they even get started because they believe it will be easy. Perhaps, they saw some guru on Youtube making thousands of dollars in a day and assumed they could too.
Instead of starting your affiliate marketing business with these unrealistic expectations, I recommend you set achievable goals.
Realize that there is a lot of work ahead of you and gladly accept the challenge.
If you go into affiliate marketing with patience and persistence, instead of thinking you’ll get rich tomorrow, you will have more success.
And then before you know it, you too could be making thousands of dollars a day.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it, the top 7 mistakes new affiliate marketers make. Are you guilty of any of them? If so then you now know where you can improve as an affiliate marketer.
The truth is, mistakes will obviously happen, some we can control and others we cant. These seven here in this article are one you can control.
Learn from them and progress further in your affiliate marketing business.