Five Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make!

Earning a reward in the form of a commission, by selling someone else’s products can be appealing to budding marketers looking to make money online. 

However, a lot of mistakes can be made when trying to establish your own successful monetized site. Below highlights some of the biggest mistakes prospective affiliates make when entering the affiliate marketing space.

Lack of Research
A fundamental error is not understanding what affiliate marketing actually is, and consequentially, the ways in which it could best work for you. 

Too often people enquire on how to join affiliate networks as a publisher before having a website in place, which is essential to getting started in the channel.

Another common instance would be building a basic website which lacks strong relevant content, adding a few links and then wonder ‘why isn’t my site making any money?’

Once the value of the affiliate marketing business model is understood and the focus and purpose of your website is defined, then you can switch you attention to researching the actual products and services you wish to promote.

Pushing the Sale
Placing too much emphasis on directing readers to a ‘Click to Action’ button to try to push a sale will inevitably have the diverse effect of pushing your site traffic away. 

You can see how this is an easy mistake to make, as ultimately you make money by driving people to an advertiser’s site to then purchase a product which you receive commission on. So placing ‘Buy Now’ buttons on your site seems like an appropriate call, right?

However, the key is driving relevant traffic, as the more relevant the traffic, the more likely people are to convert and generate you a commission. 

Therefore ideally you should aim to focus on credibility by becoming an authority in your industry and provide knowledge on the products or services you are promoting. 

Avoid just placing an affiliate link on your site, instead write some content around the product. Maybe you have tried and tested the product and this will help establish a connection with the reader. 

People are far less likely to purchase a product if they feel they are being pushed to purchase. Instead, focus on educating your audience on the product you’re promoting.

Once this has been accomplished, you will have become a valued source of information to those who use your site and a key component in their buying decision process. Only then are you likely to see sustained conversions being driven through your site.

Promoting Irrelevant Programs
Promoting as many affiliate programs as possible in an effort to maximize your revenue streams may sound appealing to new affiliate marketers just starting out. 

However there will come a point where your site will lose its focus, particularly if you are trying to adhere to all of these programs. As a result, content quality will suffer, alienating your hard-earned traffic which will eventually drive them away.

Instead, focus on a small group of relevant programs your site will complement, as this will be far more manageable for you and far more rewarding for those who visit your site. Maintaining the purpose of your website and the confidence of your users you have established is key to running a successful affiliate site.

Radio Silence
Another fallout from joining either irrelevant or multiple programs is that you give yourself too much to do and can become too thinly spread to make the most of these relationships. 

This leads to many new affiliate marketers failing to speak to the advertisers who are likely to make the biggest difference to how effective your site can be. 

Building a relationship with all your key players, whether this is the advertiser directly, or with either an agency or network, will play a vital role in your success as an affiliate.

By establishing these relationships, you are able to let them know about the opportunities available on your site and the demographics of your audience. 

This helps the advertiser position you in their wider affiliate strategy, particularly if you are able to prove the success of promotions they have run with you with case studies. These could lead to either more promotions from the advertiser or a direct competitor. 

The more you know about the products you are promoting and the more the advertiser knows about your opportunities, the more effective you will be as an affiliate.

Inactivity
Arguably one of the biggest mistakes new affiliate marketers make is inactivity. Too often new sites are set up with content and links to advertisers and then the site owner gets comfortable, sits back and expects the money to just roll in. This is not how affiliate marketing works, you need to work at it.

You need to remain active with the work you put into your site, it’s easy to fall into the trap of regularly updating your content every week and sending out a blog post every day, to sporadically updating your site every few months.  

To keep your users engaged you need to keep providing them with fresh content that encourages them to keep coming back to the site, to see what the latest news and offers are on the products they are interested in.

Conclusion
Making sure you’ve done your research on both affiliate marketing and the products you will be promoting, whilst maintaining the focus of your site and the trust of your audience is pivotal to running a successful affiliate site. 

In most cases, affiliate sites fail when these objectives are either unaccomplished or become neglected.

These are just some of the mistakes I’ve seen new affiliates make but by avoiding these you can then establish a strong foundation to become a successful affiliate. 

This will take time, as you will have to work hard to keep your sites content relevant to constantly moving trends and work smart to maintain your relationships.

http://performancein.com/news/2015/06/04/five-big-mistakes-new-affiliate-marketers-make/

Pinterest Bans Affiliate Marketing Links!

On February 12, 2015, Pinterest announced that it would “automatically remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on Pins.” This is important news because merchants with affiliate marketing programs could see a drop in revenue from that channel, depending on how many affiliates use Pinterest to drive traffic.

…merchants with affiliate marketing programs could see a drop in revenue from that channel, depending on how many affiliates use Pinterest to drive traffic.

Pinterest is a social media platform that enables users to curate collections of most any online content. For example, a fashion blogger can create a collection of links to her favorite denim jeans. These collections are known as “boards,” and each link is called a “pin.”

The fashion blogger has fans that she built up via her blog. Those fans could follow her to various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

And whenever those fans see a product recommendation from her, no matter what platform it’s on, they may be inclined to click through and complete a purchase. Pinterest is simply another way for bloggers to interact with their followers.

So how is this related to affiliate marketing? Say that the fashion blogger monetizes her content through affiliate marketing. She has a blog post on her site that features a review of various denim jeans, and that post contains affiliate links that her followers can click through to purchase the jeans. This is traditional affiliate marketing.

Pinterest vs. Affiliate Marketing

However, with the advent of social media, the blogger can now post those same affiliate links on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites. She is simply communicating her product recommendations across multiple channels in the hopes that her followers will click her affiliate link and complete a purchase, thus generating a commission to her.

But now, Pinterest is blocking all those affiliate links. The pins remain, but the links are blocked — the pin still appears on boards, and can be shared, but click-through functionality is removed. 

This is not a surprise to affiliate marketers, as Pinterest has blocked isolated affiliate links in the past. But this is the first time that the website has issued a comprehensive ban on all types of affiliate marketing.

Revenue for Pinterest

The ban comes at a time when four-year-old Pinterest is considering how to generate revenue from its 70 million users. In April 2014, Pinterest launched a test for “Promoted Pins” that enabled brand advertisers to pay for promotion on a cost-per-click basis. 

There is also industry speculation about Pinterest partnering with payments company Stripe to add its own “buy” button to user-generated content within the next three to four months. This move could place Pinterest in the role of the affiliate.

In fact, Pinterest experimented with the affiliate role in 2012, when it partnered up with Skimlinks (an affiliate marketing tool) to auto-convert pins into affiliate links. But the Pinterest abandoned that practice after it came under fire for not disclosing the practice to its users.

By banning affiliate links, Pinterest could be paving the way for another attempt at affiliate marketing, perhaps a transparent attempt at monetization.

Reliance on Pinterest? 

There are still methods for affiliates to benefit from Pinterest. For example, the fashion blogger who curated a board featuring her top denim picks could link each pin to her own blog post, which could link to the retailer’s e-commerce site for affiliate commissions. 

While this approach could work in the interim, affiliates should not depend on Pinterest for that traffic. If Pinterest implements a “buy” button, the blogger’s traffic from Pinterest would likely reduce.

If a retailer wants to benefit from a blogger’s Pinterest following, the retailer would likely need to work directly with the blogger, outside of an affiliate relationship. The retailer could compensate the blogger for curating a board, paying her a fixed amount instead of a commission.

In short, if a retailer’s affiliates use Pinterest as part of their marketing mix, that retailer will likely see a decline in affiliate revenue based on these changes. However, affiliates that depend mainly on Pinterest for their revenue may not be adding any value to your affiliate program anyway. 

These affiliate are building their success off a single site, instead of creating unique value — the heart of true affiliate marketing.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/81802-Pinterest-Bans-Affiliate-Marketing-Links 

Affiliate Marketing: Be Careful What You’re Recommending!

I’ll never forget my early days of setting up my first website and branching out into affiliate marketing…. this was in 2007, when most programmes where you could work from home and earn money online on writing sites were US-based – and not open to residents of other countries.

The main reason for this was cross-border payments and Paypal not widely used. Most companies would send a USD check – to residents of the US only. 

As I was in the UK, I was letting people know about various websites they could find ways to earn money online – and in one short post I suggested Associated Content. 

These posts would contain an affiliate link and I hoped that US readers might sign up and I might end up getting an affiliate payment at some point. 

Well, the post hadn’t been on my website more than a couple of weeks before I received the most horrendous, ranting, wild email from some furiously mad UK resident who was incandescent with rage that he’d looked and it was for US residents only. Now, 

I’d not said about restrictions, I was simply pointing interested people towards sites they might try/investigate.

It really put the wind up me! I can still remember it to this day …. he was FURIOUS!!! I mean, you have to laugh really, it wasn’t a big deal. No money had changed hands. He’d probably wasted 10 minutes of his life…. and a further 20 minutes to email me… but it did make me scared of reader backlash!

I was reminded of this incident when another writer here on DailyTwoCents said they were considering writing reviews for cash …. and there’s no way I’d do that as the memory of that horrible email haunts me to this day! 

Imagine if I’d written a (false) review about some gadget and he’d spent a fortune on it for a special gift! Reviews ….? Not for me!

http://dailytwocents.com/affiliate-marketing-be-careful-youre-recommending/

​Are You Thoroughly Disgusted with Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a tough business. Once that you realize that it is:
 

1. Tough, and
2. A business, it helps.

If you are going to promote a product as an affiliate, just putting your affiliate link on your website is NOT going to do it. Here are some criteria:

1. Know your product inside and out.
2. Use your product.
3. Be excited about your product.
4. Trust your product.
5. Testify of the usefulness (to you) of your product.
6. Keep posting about your product until you have written about it about 10 times, pointing out various benefits and twist.
7. Reporting on the use of your product by you and others (testimonies).
8. Be able to suggest backup products to your buyers. (So you may want to keep track of your buyers.)
9. Promote related products.
10. Use keyword and SEO techniques to promote your products including social marketing.

I also suggest that you contact your affiliate manager. He or she will know what is going on, what works, who is making the big bucks, etc.

He or she will guide you to markets in and out of the country. Ask your affiliate manager about PPC marketing. PPC is a good way to check out your keywords too.

One other thing...

Make sure your domain reflects your market. You may want to create a new domain for your product from the start. It can pay off.

Think about it! You are in business to make money, not for your health.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/tj-books/blog/are-you-thoroughly-disgusted-with-affiliate-marketing

How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business In One Day!

How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business In One Day...

and I should add, even if it’s your first day online, and only have $50 or less to spend.

And I’m not talking about getting in a “home business” program. They’re fine if you want to get started in the “home business” niche…but…

I want to give you a formula you can use for ANY niche you decide to enter into. Follow the steps below and you’ll feel like this guy at the end of the day…

I was recently asked by a customers who is trying to promote a weight loss product – acai berries to be exact.

She asked me the best ways to promote her affiliate link without buying ads, or without using article marketing because article directories won’t allow any articles that promote or talk about acai berries!

I gave my advice in a couple of steps….

1.  If article marketing is out, get traffic with Youtube videos.  Create videos with helpful content about acai berries and weight loss and upload them, with your titles containing keywords.

2. Put a link in the description to a lead generation page (squeeze page). When they land on your squeeze page, offer them a free “giveaway” product if they optin to your email list (autoresponder). For example, a free teaser report about the benefits or dangers of acai berries.

The other option, and this is much more effective for cold traffic (i.e. traffic from Youtube) is to make the offer on your squeeze page “blind copy”.

Blind copy means you don’t actually let the reader know that you’re talking about acai berries – You hide the fact that it’s anything to do with acai berries and just refer to it as a “weight loss super food”, or something along those lines. 

The main reason for using blind copy is to muster up some curiosity in their mind so the reader can’t help but to opt-in in to learn more.

3. Another way to drive traffic for free would be by posting in weight loss or mummy, chat forums and social media sites (groups).. and putting your link in your forum signature file! 

Again you want to send people to your squeeze page so you build your email list. Your email list is your most important asset as an internet marketer. With a list, you can follow-up with them at any time and use the emails to build that all-important relationship.

So that’s the ‘what to do’….

The ‘how to do it’ is explained in this next part.

This involves actually going out and doing work. However, none of these tasks are overly technical or require a phd in computer science. Admittedly, these are the bare essentials, but they’re enough to get you started running a proper, reliable affiliate marketing business.

* Write a 5~10 page report in Word about acai berries and how they help you burn fat.
* Turn your report into a PDF using Doc2pdf.net
* Get an ecover for it on fiverr.com
* Use a site like 1MinuteSites.com to create your landing pages (squeeze pages etc),
* Get an autoresponder (email management software) like Aweber or Pure Leverage so you can start your list building
*Focus on the traffic methods I explained above to promote and give away the free report.

That there is a quick outline of a basic, but complete affiliate marketing business model. You could literally get this kind of business up and running in one day and for less than $50.

Internet marketing doesn’t need to be complex. You just need the right pieces in place. I’ve listed the bare essentials of how to set up a list building system and two examples of how to promote  for free, apart from article marketing.

http://stuartstirling.com/how-to-start-an-affiliate-marketing-business-in-one-day/