5 Rules Not to Do on Affiliate Marketing
There are so many things that could go wrong in Affiliate Marketing. By its nature, Affiliate Marketing involves so many details that are must be fine-tuned on a daily basis, it only takes that much to ruin it all, or at best not seeing the results you were hoping for. Out of the many things that could go wrong, here are the top 5 mistakes that can really damage your marketing endeavors:
1. Don’t Monetize Too Early
Many new affiliate marketers fail to build an audience though it may seem like an obvious thing to avoid for experienced affiliate marketers. Ideally, you have already built your loyal audience before joining an affiliate program. It means you have already provided valuable content to your audience long before starting to monetize your content.
Do not expect people to convert into customers if you don’t offer them any value. This is an exchange where your audience who values your opinion and content, and thus they might consider any affiliate offers that you share. If you start bombarding your articles with affiliate links before you build and establish any mutual trust it only comes off as spammy website, and your audience will show little-to-no interest.
2. Don’t Go Overboard With Promotion
If your page contains too many CTAs and promotional links, you probably will not be able to maintain your traffic and the trust of your audience. Too many links and banners make your page confusing to readers, and lose their attention of the main idea for which they came in the first place, thus weaken your user experience.
It’s much preferable to choose just a few affiliate programs within your niche and stick with them. Sometimes less is a whole lot more. You might be tempted to join as many affiliate programs as possible and maximize your earnings potential, the better strategy is to remain selective in regards to what links you promote.
Choose a few excellent products to promote, only then you can commit more time to each of them and turn your endorsements into affiliate sales. However, while doing that, stay on the lookout for new matching affiliate programs and grow their number over time.
3. Don’t Choose Only the Most Expensive Products
Do not choose affiliate offers based only on the price. As appealing as it may be (more expensive products usually result in higher commissions). The more important thing than potentially high commissions, is that you can actually convince people to purchase the product. The number of potential buyers is lower for high-end products, high-end products are harder to sell, usually the commissions are also lower for such product categories. This will affect your conversion rate. In addition, the potential to attract much more traffic is higher if you choose to target a larger segment of potential customers.
This doesn’t mean that you should not promote more expensive products. Do it right and keep in relevance to your niche. There is also an important distinction between affiliate programs that offer recurring and one-time commissions.
4. Do Not Forget About SEO
SEO is probably the most effective inbound strategy for those who don’t have large marketing budgets. Content creation is the most effective SEO technique for 72% of marketers. That number alone should be enough to convince you about the necessity of optimizing for search engines.
Good SEO lies in providing a great user experience, creating meaningful, interesting content, including backlinks and carrying out your keyword research. SEO has a direct impact on your traffic and your commissions, so neglecting it is a very bad idea.
5. Don’t Understand the Products You Promote
Make sure that you are familiar with the products you promote before you start to promote them. Nobody would buy a house from a realtor who can't give you any details about the house. The ideal is that you’re already using the product yourself, so that you’re able to talk about the product in an authentic manner and can provide valuable insights to your readers.
Prospects are easier to convert into customers once they read authentic stories and reviews. Usually, it’s not that difficult to detect when a story or review is based on actual user experience or not. Always avoid using made-up stories, or you risk losing your most valuable resource – the credibility of your loyal audience.
If you’re able to avoid all of these mistakes right from the start, you’re en route to becoming a successful affiliate marketer. Keep in mind that it’s a journey. Marketing is dynamic by nature and calls for constant learning, and Affiliate marketing is no exception. The future also seems promising for affiliates; an annual growth of 10% is expected by 2020. It’s not too late to get on board. Once you'll give affiliate programs a try, don’t rush it too much. Affiliate Marketing requires time and commitment, and a lot of engagement with your audience (once you gather loyal audience).