Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Affiliate Marketing

If one has does some research about internet marketing, the concept of becoming an affiliate should be quite familiar as it is touted as the “hands free” way to earn money. While there are many advantages to affiliate marketing such as not having to deal with customer service, refunds, returns or all the hassles of running your own business, the flip side is you can usually only earn a fraction of what you could as being the product owner. One has to weigh the advantages and disadvantages but with the search engine’s hatred for affiliate links, its best that you find smarter ways to adopt. In this article we’ll be discussing 3 mistakes or pitfalls of affiliate marketing. And the ways to avoid these pitfalls and mistakes as an affiliate marketer and what to do.

Affiliate Marketing Pitfall 1: Not talking to Your Affiliate manager

As you improve your skills as an affiliate marketer, one of the avenues you more than likely will participate in is CPA (Cost Per Action) marketing due to the apparent simplicity in the method. Drive some traffic to an offer that usually only requires an email or a few other bits of information which will lead to a small commission.

Talk to the product owner of affiliate manager, since they have the insights to whats working well currently.

Managing your expenses is key to success with this model but most of all finding the best offers will make a huge difference. This is where talking with your affiliate manager will be very helpful as they can direct you to what’s working for others as well as give you a general idea on which creatives seem to be converting for other affiliates. Not complete details but just enough to give you that edge and worth the investment in time.

Affiliate Marketing Pitfall 2: Not Building A List

You’ve heard it time and time again, “The money is in the list” but for most new marketers, this may be a foreign concept. Also, affiliate models such as the aforementioned CPA marketing don’t lend itself well to list building. So what is an affiliate supposed to do? First off, it’s important to bank some commissions as soon as possible so concentrate first on that.

But, once you are stable and you’ve started making some money , learn how to build landing pages or opt-in forms. The faster you start to build a list, the safer your whole business becomes. Yes, it is safer because with a list, you become insulated from the hate of the search engines as no algorithm can effect your list, especially if you learn to build a relationship by providing value to them. You will be in control of your business, as your list grows bigger.

Imagine having a bigger list, and high quality leads, which trust your word, since you have provided value to them in the past. Now if you come across a new offer, or create your own product, all you need to do is send this offer to your list. Since they already trust you, They will covert. How cool is that? 🙂

Contrarily, if you are not grabbing email leads, and simply sending to the product owner’s offer, you will not be able to market to these customers in future, because you have lost the chance to grab their contact details.

Affiliate Marketing Pitfall 3: Not Creating Your Own Product

As i discussed in the start of the article, driving traffic to an offer makes you money, but not as much money as it does for the product owner. This might sound difficult in the begging. And i do not recommend it in the very beginning. I did not have my own product for a long time after i started with affiliae marketing. That’s fine. But your ultimate goal should be creating your own product.

And seriously, it won’t be hard after you’ve been learning about what your target market needs, which any successful affiliate marketer will do. By listening to what are the complaints in forums around your topic plus feedback you can survey your list about, creating an information product focused on solving a problem will surely convert to sales.

Therefore, your ultimate Goal as an affiliate today, should be to create a membership site or your own information product in the longer run.

As it is clear, affiliate marketing can be highly rewarding if approached correctly with no limits on the upside, especially if you implement the steps mentioned above.