Are you making these affiliate marketing mistakes? If so then it could be the reason your affiliate marketing campaigns aren’t bringing any results.
Sure, affiliate marketing is a multibillion-dollar global industry currently. However, to become a successful affiliate marketer, you need to play your cards well by avoiding these costly affiliate marketing blunders.
As an affiliate marketer with many years of experience in the industry, I have made almost all of these mistakes and they cost me time, money, and resources.
That’s why I decided to outline them in this article to caution you before you make them.
Let’s get started.
1. Not Being Authentic
To make the most out of affiliate marketing you must be authentic. In other words, you must be yourself.
One of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes newbies make when getting started is to want to be like Pat Flynn, John Chow, Matt Giggity, and other top affiliate marketers out there. In the process, they end up copying almost everything these guys do, including their marketing strategies and website design.
See, copying what other affiliate marketing websites are doing can make you lose trust with your target audience.
Aside from that, copying can hurt your website’s SEO health.
Search engines have gotten smart over the years and are using smart algorithms that can spot copied content or elements.
Not being authentic can hurt your website’s rankings because search engines like Google, Bing, and others hate duplicate content.
As a rule, you should build a solid relationship with your target audience. Once your audience trusts you, they will feel comfortable when acting on your referrals.
This can be achieved by being open, honest, and truthful.
When I was starting my journey in affiliate marketing, I thought that telling my readers a product suck was bad. So, I couldn’t mention any weaknesses of the products I reviewed. One year later, I couldn’t make any great sales.
That’s when I learned the importance of being honest and truthful.
If a product’s quality isn’t up to the mark, let your readers know that.
2. Lack of Knowledge About What You’re Promoting
If you’re lazy to research, read, and read again, affiliate marketing isn’t for you. Another mistake that I see most marketers making is not taking their time to research and find out more about the products they are recommending to their target readers.
Sure, your target audience might not be savvy. But in today’s digital world where information is readily accessible, your audience will easily find out if you lack good knowledge of the products you’re recommending to them.
To avoid this, you need to stay updated on your niche by following industry-leading blogs and niche-specific forums.
Reddit and Quora are two of the most popular forums where you can interact with other marketers in your niche and exchange ideas while learning more about the products you promote.
3. Not Testing or Comparing What You’re Promoting
Not testing or comparing products or tools you promote is also another mistake affiliate marketers make. Well, of course, it’s not a must to test the product if you already have ample knowledge about it but recommending products or tools you have first-hand experience with could help you create content that has a personal feeling and is authoritative.
In fact, when you compare products, you demonstrate the time and effort you have taken into finding out more about the product thus your target customers see you as an authority in your niche.
Testing the product will also enable you to answer questions customers are asking without a problem. This is also another effective way to build trust with them. It’s also a great way to outshine your competitors.
4. Thinking That Affiliate Marketing is Easy
Even the experienced affiliate marketers who have been in the game for many years will tell you that affiliate marketing keeps evolving.
The affiliate marketing strategies and techniques that used to work a few years ago aren’t effective today.
Niches that were seen to be profitable aren’t anymore. That means that it’s not as easy as many people think. You have to be an avid reader and researcher.
You also need to gain knowledge about SEO, how to build backlinks, etc. In other words, you must be thirsty for knowledge.
5. Not Tracking Performance
With affiliate marketing, you’re going to deal with links that you place on products you recommend to lead people to the official websites of the products- you know how it’s done.
Not tracking and managing these links can make it hard to determine the performance of your marketing strategies.
In this case, you should use a powerful link management platform like Bitly, Easy Affiliate, or your preferred plugin.
These link management platforms can help you track everything from where the website visitor is coming from to clicks, and many other components.
This way, you can tell whether it’s time to change strategies, tweak things or adjust as per the data you obtain from the link management platform you’re using.
6. Joining Too Many Affiliate Marketing Networks
To survive in today’s uncertain economic times, you need to create multiple streams of passive income. However, joining too many affiliate networks or promoting too many products from different brands can hurt your affiliate marketing success.
You’d end up pumping out poor quality content and your customers will know that. The last mistake you want to make is to make customers doubt your authority or knowledge about the products you promote.
To avoid making this mistake, find out a few products you have ample knowledge of or you have used then write epic content about them.
You can keep adding more as you get better results with your first product. For experienced affiliate marketers, this isn’t a problem, but when you’re just getting started, you need to be cautious.
7. Not Taking Advantage of Affiliate Resources
Unless you’re doing affiliate marketing on Amazon or other marketplaces that restrict users, many affiliate marketing networks out there offer incredible resources you can leverage to promote your products and generate more revenue.
The most popular affiliate networks and programs offer affiliate marketers resources like swipe copy, discounts for customers, free products to test and review, specialized coupon codes, detailed analytics, and banners but unfortunately, many still don’t leverage all these resources.
8. Not Choosing a Niche That Has Your Interest
Passion and interest are two driving forces behind a successful affiliate marketing business. Unfortunately, many affiliates will focus on finding a profitable niche and ignore their interests and passion.
See, choosing a niche that doesn’t have your interest will affect your business in the long run.
Remember that in affiliate marketing, you’re going to need to churn out high-quality and informative content regularly. The last thing you want to see is getting bored and lacking ideas in your third month of affiliate marketing.
Choosing a profitable niche that has your interest will not only benefit you but will be helpful to your customers as well. Customers will be able to see your passion in the content you write and the way you get your message through.
9. Not Choosing Suitable Products to Promote
The products you choose to promote can make or break your affiliate marketing success. If you choose products your target customers aren’t interested in buying you will struggle to make sales. Equally, if you choose products you aren’t knowledgeable about, you will struggle to create informative content.
As a rule, you should focus on choosing products that customers are looking to buy that you can write about very well and for a long time without getting bored.
And this is where product research comes in.
Before you choose products to promote, you need to conduct a thorough background analysis of them and the people who are interested in buying them.
This way, you will know how to promote the product in a way that people will not hesitate to click your links and take the desired action.
10. Focusing on the Conversions and Sales
Everyone wants their marketing efforts to bring results. After all, that’s the number one reason for working hard. However, with affiliate marketing, getting into the game with the money in mind may end up leaving you frustrated.
Sure some people started making big money fast while others take long before they get their first affiliate sale.
The goal is to focus on creating high-quality content that educates your audience about the products you promote. In some cases, people who read your content aren’t going to buy using your links.
When you focus on selling instead of helping your target customers, you end up creating mediocre content and inserting affiliate links in a way that makes your website spammy.
To help your customers, give them content that answers their search intent. For instance, when describing a product, try to demonstrate the benefits it can offer to the users instead of listing its features.
Remember to use non-intrusive banners and pop-ups to avoid hurting the user experience on your website.
11. Not Diversifying Your Content Distribution Channels
For new affiliate marketers, the only content distribution channels they know are their blogs, websites, and search engines. Of course, these are great channels to start with but they aren’t the only places to promote your products.
Think about it. 45% of internet users start their search on social media before making a purchase decision.
With more than 4.6 billion people using social media, you’re missing out on a lot of great marketing opportunities if you aren’t taking advantage of social media.
Social media is a powerful tool for building brand awareness and attracting customers to your affiliate website.
You can tap into the potential of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms to drive more customers to your website.
12. Not Creating an Email List From the Onset
Ever heard of the mantra that says “the money is on the list?”
Research suggests that only five out of every 100 people who will come to your website will make a purchase.
Remember that no one will buy the products you recommend unless they build trust with you and enjoy your content.
That’s where collecting email addresses become helpful.
When you create an email list, you get the opportunity to build a lasting relationship with your readers as you will be keeping them updated every time you introduce a new product into your recommendations or you publish new content.
The more website visitors subscribe to your email list the more traffic your website will get. And this can translate into more revenue in the long run.
Email marketing isn’t a walk in the park though. You have to integrate email opt-in forms into your website and promise your subscribers something of value once they sign up.
13. Publishing Low-Quality Content
In affiliate marketing investing in a beautiful website design and getting affiliate links is half the battle. You also need to give people reasons to stick around your website longer and even come back once they are gone.
Remember that the internet is full of noise thus it’s hard to attract attention and keep it longer.
That’s why you need to create epic content. Without quality content, you’re not going to attract visitors to the products you recommend as no one will click on those links.
To create useful content, you need to research your audience and determine what type of content they want to consume. You also need to conduct keyword research to find out the exact search phrases users are entering into their browsers when looking for information online.
Once you have gathered all this information, create content while incorporating humor to make it entertaining.
14. Not Optimizing Your Content
Free traffic is invaluable. Even though it takes long before you start getting great results with organic traffic, optimizing your content for SEO is a great step to start with when you’re getting your feet wet in the affiliate marketing landscape.
Sure, paid traffic can generate great results but if your budget can’t allow you to use it, SEO is the best option.
Search engine optimization is the process of making your content discoverable by people searching for information related to yours.
It’s still the most powerful digital marketing strategy for getting higher Google rankings and the best for newbie affiliate marketers.
Google focuses on serving its users content that solves their problems or meets their needs. The search engine uses a smart algorithm to determine what content to push higher in search and what to sink down.
To make your content appear at the top of search results, you need to research keywords people are entering into the search engine when looking for information, and include them naturally into your content. You also need to add visuals to your content to get people attracted to it.
Last but not least, you need to break your content into sections to enhance readability and scalability.
15. Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
The truth is that you’re going to churn out mountains of content to make your website more authoritative. However, at no point should you sacrifice quality for quantity.
This is a mistake many new affiliate marketers are prone to make.
It’s better to post at least two high-quality and in-depth posts per month than to churn out one mediocre blog post every day.
To ensure you produce high-quality content regularly, start by brainstorming topic ideas, researching relevant keywords, and creating content outlines before you start writing.
Another thing is to check what your competitors are doing and do it better. For instance, if your competitors are using text-only content, add images, videos, and infographics to yours to make it more attractive and entertaining.
Avoid These Mistakes
To run a successful affiliate marketing business, you’re going to do a lot of work, be patient, experiment with different strategies, tweak, adjust, and adapt.
In the process, you will make a ton of mistakes. However, after reading this list of costly affiliate marketing mistakes I made myself I hope you will try as much as you can to avoid them.
Are you an experienced affiliate marketer?
If so then we would love to hear the mistakes you made and how to avoid them.
Good luck!
