affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is not easy. I am not saying this to scare you away from affiliate marketing, but simply to point out the facts. There are many people who read about affiliate marketing and someone making insane amounts of money.

They think affiliate marketing is as simple as starting a blog, creating a couple of dozen blog posts. Inserting affiliate links and seeing the sales and commissions rolling in. 

Setting such unrealistic expectations is the first mistake. And there are many more. Let’s read about some of those mistakes to make sure you can steer clear of them.

1. Signing up for bogus courses:

You can find dozens of affiliate marketing training programs. People are selling $50 dollars courses that can make you $5000 in a month. It sounds too good to be true and it usually is not true. There are some courses that are legit though. You need to do some due diligence when signing up for one of these courses.

Let’s take the example of Profit Point Autonomy academy. The course promises to teach you the secret to affiliate marketing success. Problem is, there’s no secret. Affiliate marketing will usually take a few months of hard work before you can earn that kind of income. I am not saying that courses like profit point autonomy are scams but you should always take these claims with a pinch of salt.

2. Creating poor content: 

You need to create content that actually has some value.  Not just for the reader but also for search engines. 

You should make sure your content is interesting and motivating, otherwise, there won’t be anyone reading it. This means no traffic, which translates into no sales either.

It is important to use good-quality images on your blogs, forums, videos, or wherever else you are placing them so people can see what they’re interested in. Poor quality pictures will not help with conversions. Again this takes time and effort but does pay off in the long run.

3. Not learning SEO: 

The content of your blog posts needs to be optimized for the major search engines or it will be hard to get traffic and therefore sales.

If you are not doing anything to optimize for target keywords, traffic will be low and with the slow flow of traffic, the sales will be too. Not learning SEO (search engine optimization) could mean losing out on half of your potential earnings. When people visit your website, they should see something worthwhile so that they stay on your site, click on the advertisements and finally buy whatever it is you have been promoting them to buy. This will not happen if there’s no traffic going through your site.

4. Not choosing the right niches: 

There are so many different types of niches in affiliate marketing that you can tailor to any niche yourself. Choose something where there’s already a demand for products – like weight loss products or books about agriculture. Selling other types of things may work but takes more effort from you to convert into sales.

5. Slow-loading website:  

If your website is slow, people will simply leave and go to a different site. Studies have shown that if there’s any sort of problem with the loading time of your page, you can lose up to 30 percent of your traffic. Amazon was one such website that didn’t get it right at first. Their pages used to take a very long time to load because they had so many products listed on their page – this led to a drop in conversion rates and sales. However, they fixed it by reducing the number of products per page and saw an increase in revenue almost instantly. Also, remember that slow loading speed can also hurt your chances of ranking high in Google search results. 

6.Overspending money: 

You don’t need expensive software before you start out as an affiliate marketer or when you are starting out for that matter. Spending too much on fancy tools or courses will put a lot of pressure. And when you are under too much pressure, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to perform up to expectations. 

Don’t get me wrong though: tools and courses can help smooth out the learning process but should not be bought until you actually need them. Until it becomes absolutely necessary. This will eliminate all extra expenses which may hurt your business in the long run if it is starting out or still small. 

7. Not choosing the right affiliate program:  

It is important to choose the right affiliate program that can be easily monetized. If you fail to find a niche that has products that you or your audience would be interested in, it will be difficult for you to make as much money as possible. Don’t just go with any kind of product – do your research and look for products that are likely to get more sales over time. 

You can also monetize your own blog by placing ads from Adsense, Media Defender, etc. I recommend integrating these into your website so that they are displayed automatically when someone enters your website via a search engine like Google.

Now go ahead and make some of your own mistakes. When you do, just remember to learn from them and don’t make the same mistake again in the future.