8 Common Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make

By Rahimah Sultan

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Affiliate marketing is more than just joining an affiliate marketing program, promoting a link, and hoping people buy what you’re advertising. Here’s a little background.

Affiliate marketing involves the following steps:

** The merchant has come up with a unique/revolutionary product.


** The merchant has validated and tested the product to see if there’s real demand for it.


** The merchant has created and launched the product simultaneously with an affiliate program.


** The merchant has found relevant affiliates and invited them to join the affiliate program or affiliates have approached merchants for a partnership.


** The merchant has assigned a unique ID and affiliate link to each affiliate.


** The affiliate promotes the brand/product and includes that link in relevant advertising such as blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, etc.


** When a visitor clicks on the affiliate link and visits the merchant’s website, a cookie is generated and stored in their browsing device. This cookie contains the affiliate ID and helps identify the affiliate as the source of the traffic to the merchant’s site. It also helps attribute the sale to the affiliate even if it occurs days or weeks after the visitor clicks on the link.


** When a visitor purchases the product, the merchant checks the sales record and finds the associated cookie, which identifies the affiliate who originally drove the visitor to the merchant’s website.


** When the merchant finds a cookie containing an affiliate ID, the corresponding affiliate is credited with a sale.


** The merchant pays a commission to the affiliate at the end of each payment cycle.



You can be a merchant or an affiliate. When you become an affiliate, the initial hard work is already done by the merchant, as laid out above. 


What are some common mistakes new affiliate marketers make?


New affiliate marketers tend to make the following common mistakes.


1. Over relying on organic traffic

Organic search engine traffic is great because it is some of the most targeted traffic you can get and it’s free although you’re trading time to create content. If you’re ranking high for keywords you can make lots of sales.

On the other hand, it may take 3 to 6 months or more to get ranked for the keywords you want. So, while you’re churning out content on your site, build a brand or authority on social media channels or in forums where people in your niche are like to be.

Don’t rely on any one single traffic source, even Google which changes its algorithm quite often and can cause a loss in ranking.

2. Putting out content without a known purpose

There needs to be a reason for producing content. It should be targeted to people who are looking for what you offer.

3. Not building a list and monetizing it

An email or Facebook messenger list offers a way for getting prospect to get to know, like, and trust you. Once they know you they’re more likely to buy.

4. Constant emphasis on selling

Do not sell, sell, sell. Show how the product you’re offering will solve a problem they have or give them more time freedom, etc.

5. Sending traffic directly to your affiliate link

Send traffic to a landing page introducing the product you’re about to promote. The affiliate product sales page gives the details.

6. Not being consistent

Pace yourself and work on your business every day. Be consistent in your efforts.

7. Blogging for the sake of blogging

Have an end goal and a path for your readers to follow. Use a call to action and get readers’ contact information so you can follow up with them later.

8. Promoting too many affiliate products

Prospects will be able to tell how well you know your product from reading your content. the more products you promote, the less you know about each. If prospects begin to doubt your authority, this could impact potential click-throughs and sales.


In the beginning, choose one product to promote. Spend your time learning about the product and testing it out yourself. Create great content promoting its use. When you begin to see the benefits you can add another program or two to your plate.


How do you get started in affiliate marketing?


Step 1: Find a niche

The first thing you need to do to get started in affiliate marketing is choose a niche. This could be hobbies like travel, sports betting, photography, or anything you’re truly passionate about.

That could be financial products, health and wellness, lifestyle products like fashion, technology, or whatever.

Step 2: Choose a channel

After choosing your niche, you’ll want at least one platform or channel to use for your affiliate marketing. Blogging is probably the easiest and least expensive way to get started and can be used for product reviews and comparisons to promote affiliate products.

YouTube is another good platform and it’s free to start a YouTube channel and upload videos. The downside is there are so many other videos and creators on YouTube that it can be hard to get attention for your products, plus, creating and uploading videos will take a lot more time than blogging.

Instagram is a platform to consider. You can create images and videos to promote your affiliate products and you can pay for ads if you want, as with other platforms.

Whatever platform you choose, you’ll want to add a disclaimer to make it clear you’re sharing a promotion and may receive compensation. On your blog, link the affiliate product and in parentheses add “affiliate link.” On YouTube, include your affiliate link disclaimer in the video description. For Instagram, you can use #ad or #sponsored.

Step 3: Choose the products you want to promote

With your target audience in mind, choose high-quality products that will actually benefit them. Ask yourself if this product will improve their lives or if it’s something you would buy or tell a family member to buy. You’ll need to check out conversions and payouts for the product.

Step 4: Join an affiliate program

You can join an affiliate network or affiliate program. If you have a website and are creating content, you can use your site analytics to home in on your audience’s makeup and find products specifically for them that also give you the commission you want.


When you join an affiliate network or affiliate program, you have access to brands looking for affiliates and you also get tools to use for finding the right options. Some of the top affiliate networks include:

ShareASale
Amazon Associates
CJ Affiliate
Rakuten Marketing


When choosing an affiliate marketing program you must consider:

Commission type and amount
Cookie lifetime
Relevancy
Payment logistics
Creative assets and conversion rates
Competition

You must do your research before deciding on affiliate marketing programs.


Step 5: Create great content

The type of content you create depends on the platform or platforms you’ve chosen to use to promote your affiliate products, but there are some types of content you can depend on that include product reviews, case studies, tutorials, product comparisons, and a resource page that contains all your recommended products and links for them.

Step 6: Generate traffic

Now you need to generate traffic and build your audience. Although social networks work for the promotion of products to followers, building an email list is best in case social networks stop letting people use them.

The fastest way to grow your email list is by using a lead magnet (offering something free to visitors in exchange for their email addresses). This could be a free course, checklist or something else of value. Once you have email addresses you can follow up with subscribers offering valuable content along with promotional emails (affiliate link). You can research email marketing platforms to make the process easy.

You can use search engine optimization (SEO) which uses specific keywords that your target audience is interested in and create content around those topics and make sure your site is indexed by Google, Bing, and other search engines. Once you generate some money you can also use paid traffic.


Affiliate marketing is not just a walk in the park. It requires taking several steps and following through from sign up to generating income. This information will help you to avoid these 8 common mistakes new affiliate marketers make.



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