Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a billion dollar a year industry. Companies sell their products online by using affiliates to do most of the hard work. Affiliate marketing is a mutually beneficial relationship. The publisher(company) sets up an affiliate network with products, web-pages, banners, for the advertiser to use. The advertiser(affiliate) uses these tools in order to market that companies products. This benefits both parties because the publisher is making money from the affiliates sales and the advertiser is making a commission on the items that they sell.

If you have not been using affiliate marketing, you should give it a try. There is a lot of money to be made from this industry and it will only continue to grow.

The Affiliate Newbie

So you have decided to become an affiliate marketer. Great, now what? Well if your like I was when I started, you pick a product pretty much at random and get your affiliate url. You then check out Google Adwords and create an ad that points to your affiliate link. You then sit back and wait for all that money to come rolling in. Then you say, “Wait a minute, why am I not making any money?”

This is common for an absolute newbie, which is what we all are when we start. Now, you can make money from picking a product and using Adwords. However, you need to research your niche keywords and track your ads.

Top 5 Mistakes Affiliate Newbies Make

1. You try and promote too many products at one time.

   Many newbies will try and promote many products at one time, or they bounce from product to product thinking that it must be the products fault.

   Solution

   Focus instead on only one or two products at the beginning. Trust me on this one. If your promoting five or more products early on in the game, your not going to make any money. More products does not necessarily mean more money. Instead focus your efforts on researching a niche that you care about and has a good product.
   

2. They fail to research their target niche.

   This is a common mistake at first. Many newbies just jump right in and pick products that may look like good ones to promote.

   Solution

   Use keyword tools to find which keywords perform the best. A good tool to use is Wordtracker. You can enter the keyword you are looking for and get statistics on how many searches are done for that keyword. This helps a ton when setting up your adwords campaign. Affiliate networks will also list stats to products. Things to look out for are %sales, payout, gravity, %commission. Point being, research!

3. Does not have a website that promotes their affiliate product.

   Many newbies don’t have a website. A website is essential if you want to make a lot of money from affiliate marketing. It allows you to drive your traffic to a site other than the product site to get people to sign up to your e-mail list and it also allows you to pre-sell the product.

   Solution

   Get your own web-hosting. Its really quick and easy to get a website these days. I use Bluehost as my provider. You can start out with free hosting services, but eventually you will want to upgrade. Most free hosting services give you a really long url that usually has their brand in it. You want your own space with a nice, short and memorable url. Now you can set up your sales page(squeeze page), or you could set up a blog using Wordpress. Your site now has all the information on the product and you can drive traffic to that site.

4. Not setting up an e-mail list.

   This is a real big one most newbies don’t use. The money is in the list. Setting up an e-mail list helps bring in more sales. For example: lets say that you have a site that someone visits but is not sure about the product. If you don’t have an auto responder to gather that persons e-mail, you risk that person leaving your site and never coming back. With a list, you can send e-mail updates about your products or services. So if the person was not sure about your product the first time they visited your site, there is still a chance that they might buy a couple of days or weeks down the road.

   Solution

   Sign up for an auto-responder service. If your not sure what that is or how to use it, tons of information and tutorials are available with the provider. This is especially true with the Aweber auto-responder. Aweber is the industry standard when it comes to auto responders. I found their service simple and easy to use. If your not sure about something, they have video tutorials to hold your hand through the process or you can get in touch with customer service.

5. Not using analytics to track progress or lack there of

   If your not tracking the things that you do, or the traffic that goes to your site, your leaving a lot of money on the table. This is another good reason to set up a site for a product. You can track all the traffic that comes to the site and where its coming from. This will help you make better decisions when it comes to tweeking your site or ppc campaign.

   Solution

   Set up Google Analytics for your site. Its free and easy to start tracking the traffic that goes to your site. You should also be using your affiliate networks analytics to track sales and refunds.

There are many other variables that need to be taken into consideration when discussing affiliate marketing. However, those are subjects for future posts. Just Correcting these five mistakes will help to increase your sales and success with affiliate marketing.