While the concept behind affiliate marketing is fairly simple and straight forward, the fact is most people mess it up pretty badly. Even those who are considered successful often make some simple mistakes that can cost them thousands of dollars. The following three mistakes are made by almost all marketers at one time or another, and have cost people untold amounts of money, and wasted hours of time. Look closely at each of these items and see which ones you’ve been making, then take action toward fixing them as soon as possible.
Mistake #1 – Failing to Test
One of the cardinal rules of affiliate marketing is to always be testing. There are many different things that you can change in your sales funnel, and each one will have an impact on your sales numbers. Sometimes making a change will cause your numbers to go down, but at least you’ll have learned that fact and you can always swap back to the original format. Other times, however, you can make a small change that will dramatically improve your bottom line.
There is literally no limit to the number of things you can be testing, so whether you’re just starting out as an affiliate, or you’ve been doing it for years, you should always be testing. Some simple things you can test include:
- Color scheme of your site (backgrounds, buttons, links, email list signups)
- The wording of your sales copy
- Whether or not you have a email opt in pop up box
- The location of your email opt in box
- The images used on your site
- The time of day you send out email messages
These are just a few of the things that you should be testing on an ongoing basis to help improve your conversion rates over time.
Mistake #2 – Failing to Understand Your Target Audience
Many marketers find a great product that they really want to promote. It may have a great payout rate, excellent conversion rates and just be a generally wonderful product that will help people solve their problems. While this product may be great, it won’t do any good if you can’t get it in front of the right people. Failing to do the necessary research on what type of audience will be most likely to buy your products costs marketers millions of dollars annually.
Whenever promoting a new product or service, make sure to take the time to really learn about who your target audience is. There are many ways that you can gather this information, including through analytics data, trial and error, or even performing your own surveys. It may seem like a lot of work up front, but the fact is, it will pay off well in the long run.
Mistake #3 – Failing to Monetize
Marketers are often tempted to start up sites, with the intention of monetizing them once they get up and running. This may seem like a good idea, since it is difficult to monetize anything when you have little to no traffic, but the fact is, you are putting all your effort at risk. If you don’t have a detailed plan for monetization in place from the beginning, you may come to find that the business you are building doesn’t have sufficient potential to make it worth it in the long run. Planning out how much money you think your business should make, and how it will make that money, is something that should be done from the very first day.
Of course, you won’t be making a lot of money at first, but the systems necessary to begin earning should be there. Once those are in place, you can make adjustments as time goes by (see mistake #1) to improve the results.
