WebMaster Solutions
Affiliate
Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Common
Mistakes
by Kenneth Catto
Having an
Internet business, which earns you money on
auto-pilot is very exciting. Although it's easy
to make money with affiliate marketing, only a
very small percentage of affiliates make a lot
of money.
By following
the advice in this article, not only will you
avoid the common mistakes most affiliate
marketers make, but you will also learn how to
select programs that make you residual income
for many months.
With affiliate
marketing a vendor pays people (affiliates) a
certain percentage of the sale price for
merchandise sold. It's a win-win situation
because the affiliate simply refers people to a
website and does not have to worry about
fulfillment, and the vendor gets people to
advertise for them and only has to pay them
after they make a sale.
Here are some
common mistakes most affiliate marketers make,
and why you should avoid them:
1. Sending
people directly to an affiliate's website.
You spend so
much energy, time and money to advertise. When
you send people directly to a vendor's website
you only have one chance to get the sale. If
they don't buy they are gone. The best way to do
this is to send people to an opting page, where
you give them something of value for free, in
exchange for their email address. That way you
can follow up with them at a later date and have
the opportunity to sell them other products.
2. Creating a
website with a gazillion affiliate links, tons
of flashy banners and all the colors of the
rainbow.
You don't want
to overwhelm people because when that happens
they are gone. Instead, offer an honest review
of a product, pre-selling readers on its
benefits, and on how it will help them.
3. Falling
victim of affiliate commission theft.
Yes, commission
theft is a very big problem. While, you cannot
eliminate it completely, there are some steps
you can take, to minimize it dramatically. Two
methods you can use are cloaking and
redirecting, instead of having the affiliate url
in the form:
http://www.vendorswebsite.com/?id=imakemoneyoffofyou
It takes the
same effort to refer a sale for a one-time
purchase product than it takes to refer one for
a residual payment product. Therefore, it makes
good business sense to try and market affiliate
programs with recurring commissions.
In choosing
residual payment affiliate programs, you should
consider the stickiness of the services you are
promoting.
For example,
you refer a sale for a membership website which
only offers resale rights to products, and
nothing else to keep the customer from
canceling. People can join, download all the
products and then cancel within the same month.
On the other
hand, consider referring a sale for web hosting
or for an autoresponder service. These services
will be essential for the customer's business,
and he/she is therefore not likely to cancel for
a very long time or until they give up their
online ventures completely.
In conclusion,
you should try and avoid the common mistakes
that affiliate marketers make by sending your
customers to an opt-in list first, pre-selling
them to the product's benefits, and by avoiding
affiliate commission theft. In addition, you
should be going after programs with residual
commissions but be sure to always evaluate the
stickiness of the product you are recommending.
To be able to do that, the best way is to try
the product yourself first.
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