Top 8 Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

We bet you’ve read tons of articles about how affiliate marketing makes people rich. Probably you’re at the very beginning or maybe not and wondering what’s going wrong, because you don’t see much progress. Don’t panic and don’t quit! You’re probably stepping on the rake every other affiliate already has. Let’s unveil the biggest mistakes almost all affiliates make and learn how to avoid them.

1. You start monetizing too early

It seems obvious that all the efforts affiliate marketers make are for one single purpose – make money. But the whole affiliate marketing business is based on audience: without having an active audience you won’t be able to promote offers. By starting to push affiliate products and services in early stages, you’re risking losing an existing audience and turning away new users. 

Think about it like this: you can’t expect people to convert into customers without providing them with some sort of valuable content. These days people are fed up with overflowing ads everywhere. A lot of users are annoyed once a popup shows up every now and then, when they can hardly read a piece of content they were looking for. That’s why first building an audience by creating high quality content is the surest way to reach your affiliate goals.      

2. You “oversell” it

Affiliate marketing is about making money – no wrong here. But…in order to sell, you should build some trust relationships with your audience, and this is not all. You should keep it. Imagine a good friend of yours who you call for advice and who starts to advertise some stuff, how would you feel? Not that good right? Yes, he is a nice lad, but why the heck is he pushing me all these things when I need sincere advice? 

This is how your audience feels when you start prioritizing selling over being helpful and useful. Instead, you should focus on creating valuable content which will solve the pain points of your audience. Don’t just write or shoot video for yourself – explain the features, focus on the benefits for the users.

Also, avoid intrusive banners and pop-ups: they do annoy. User friction is what turns the audience away, and another eye-catching banner isn’t worth it.

3. You don’t have a deep understanding of what you’re selling

Picking up the product or service with high commissions is important, but not a key to success. So many affiliates try to sell the products or services which they’re not familiar with, which results in at least three consequences: 

• The product/service is not relevant to the audience
• They fail to provide the benefits for a user
• The product/service is of low quality which arouses users’ discontent to the point of no return

Before trying to convince your audience to buy something, you should dig deep into the details and even try it yourself. The biggest affiliate websites started with honest and profound reviews, and this is exactly how they won the hearts of their users. People don’t need a list of features – they can google it. What they need is comprehensive advice based on what issues they want to solve. Knowing the nuances, advantages and possible disadvantages of the product/service “sells” much better than cliche descriptions.

4. You pick the wrong product/service

This mistake is side-by-side to the previous one. Choosing a product or a service which isn’t relevant to your audience will not spark a sudden interest. Picking a product/service based on a high commission amount is the most alluring, but might not be the best approach in the long-term. But at the same time, low cost products/services with minimal payouts like promoting a $5 gaming headset which will bring you less than $1 in commissions, can be a bad  choice too, since you’ll have to get thousands of sales to make a decent amount of money. So as you see, balance is the key.

5. You work within the niche which isn’t interesting for you

No matter how profitable the niche is, you will hardly be able to make money with it if you’re not much into this sphere. You can’t fake it! Your passion always shines through your content if you’re interested in it, and it turns into a compilation of cliches if you’re not. 

How to choose the right niche? There is no guide on how to choose the niche which will be of interest for you, because most guides focus on profitability, so you’ll need to rely on your own taste to choose an interesting niche. Of course, you should consider profitability as well, but in the long run your passion will get you much more profits than any so-called “profitable niche”.  

6. You don’t measure your performance

You can run affiliate marketing programs without using any analytics, but in this case don’t wonder why you can’t scale your business. In order to understand which offers convert better, what products and services attract more users, you need to understand how well each campaign is performing. There are plenty of tools to choose from, but Google Analytics is definitely one of the basic ones. Track and optimize – this should be your affiliate success mantra.  

7. You don’t master SEO

SEO is an effective and proven strategy for all affiliate marketers. Do your homework –  search for relevant keywords and create unique useful content. According to Think With Google data, 53% of consumers research products on a search engine like Google before deciding whether or not to buy it, that’s why your content must be visible on search engines. Neglecting this highly useful tool these days is a fool’s errand, especially if you want to build a proper affiliate marketing income stream.

8. You have a poor quality website  

Just think about your own experience on the Internet: how likely are you to trust someone’s opinion when their website looks poorly made with awful UX design and above all –  with a slow page speed? We bet, none. Luckily for all beginning affiliates, there is no need to be a programmer to build a good-looking website these days, there are plenty of website builders at affordable prices with amazing templates to choose from. Considering all the competition on the Internet these days, a well-designed website is a must for making money online.

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Takeaway

All affiliate marketers make mistakes – there’s nothing to be ashamed of. However, with the knowledge we’ve provided, you can learn from other affiliate’s experience and avoid the most common mistakes. 

Indoleads CPA network has a team of seasoned professionals in online marketing, and we love sharing our knowledge with you. And by the way, there are 2000+ affiliate programs at our platform, so you’re free to choose the best ones for your audience!