5 critical affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid.
Even if I'm fairly new to affiliate marketing, I have made some researches to understand what I was doing wrong. After reading many blog posts and watching long videos, I discovered that I had fallen into some affiliate marketing traps.
Here are the 5 biggest affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid.
1- Not building an email list
Whether it's selling membership products or one of my own courses, email is the most effective way to build relationships with your audience and turn them into customers.
Therefore, if you don’t plan to design your site to help you optimize your email list, you will have a lot of work to do.
But how do you build an email list?
Register with Aweber. It's FREE up tp 500 subscribers. Perfect to start with.
Create an Opt-in Page with a signup form. A type of form that will make your visitors to sign up.
Send out regular emails with good content that will reach what your audience cares about.
Rinse and repeat.
2- You ignore SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
For most of us, the success of your affiliate campaign will be achieved through SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Unless you already have a huge website and email list, learning how to rank your posts is critical to your success.
To be honest, it doesn't take a lot of time. However, the extra half an hour spent on research and optimization for each post may affect your marketing activities.
Consider this with your affiliate marketing SEO:
- Did you perform keyword research to choose the most important ones?
- Did you use that keyword enough inside your post?
- Did you add a photo or video to your post?
- Did you create links from other posts inside your website/blog?
- Did you promote your post elsewhere, on other social media?
3- You are not authentic
There are many gurus out there that you have probably met online. You will see them with their Lamborghini, Ferrari, wearing luxury watches, etc. Ignore them!
Be authentic to yourself! Tell your story just the way you would be telling it to your own family.
If you want to build a long-term brand relationship with readers who truly trust you, then trust is absolutely essential.
Don't try to promote something that you didn't try yourself. People are not stupid. If you don't like something about the product, mention it. But the opposite is also true. Let people decide if they want to buy or not. At least you will be true to yourself and people will trust your judgment.
4- You are spamming your audience with mixed niches
If you are in the health niche, why would send emails to your audience about a dog training affiliate program? Focus on your niche and your niche only. You will gain some authority in that niche, and you will gain more trust from your readers.
5- You don't use the resources from the affiliate programs
Many affiliate programs provide resources to help their affiliates make sales. If you make sales, they do too...right?
Don't neglect the resources they offer. Resources can include:
- Discounts, coupons
- Banners (image only, image & text) that adds more visuals to your post
- Swipe copy (email samples)
- Details analytics of your affiliate link(s)
- Link builder (your affiliate link in which you can add some tracking words)
Don't make these affiliate marketing mistakes
If you only avoid these five mistakes, you will be at your best and can start to make the most of the affiliate marketing potential of your website.
Do not hesitate to share your own experience & mistakes with us.