Jun 09
11
Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague!
Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague!
By Pearlin Siow
Affiliate marketing is a business model whereby you promote and sell other people’s (referred to as a merchant) products for a fixed commission fee. Benefits of affiliate marketing are plenty. One of it is you don’t have to create your own product, you can get started immediately just by joining an affiliate program. You also don’t have to worry about customer service or carry any inventory as everything is provided for by the merchant.
The affiliate marketer is simply a middle person who recommends and suggests solutions to people. For example, if you want to lose weight and you go online to look for solutions and you come across my blog or an article I’ve written about weight loss. You read the weight loss solutions that I offer. I then suggest that you go to a website where you can purchase a product that will help your weight loss problem. Essentially, I make a commission when you buy the product because I have connected the buyer to the seller.
You don’t create the product, you are just the middle person and you send people who are interested in the product to the merchants offering the solutions. This is a simplified approach to how you do affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer, you are mostly doing pre-selling. Pre-selling means suggesting solutions or endorsement via an informative write-up on a certain product to help a customer make a better decision.
One of the most common mistakes is the lack of focus. There are so many products to promote in affiliate marketing and naturally, you are excited, so you may take on too many things at one time, which will hurt your business. Start with one product and scale up from there. Write a simple plan for yourself and decide which market you want to target. You can’t serve everyone. List down one to five markets, choose one product for each market and have one blog to do your promotions.
Don’t try to hard-sell your customers. You want to present yourself as a neutral party, as their friend, and your job is to simply suggest solutions. This method will make your job a lot easier and you will also convert more sales.
Another mistake that affiliate marketers make is their failure to build a database or mailing list online. If a visitor goes to your blog and you don’t capture their information, there is no way you can contact them again. It is crucial to focus on building your database, or as Internet marketers call it, list- building, if you want to have a successful Internet business. Start from day one using an opt-in form which is a way to capture people’s names and emails on your blog or website.
The last mistake is not treating their affiliate marketing business as a proper business. Some people go in with the idea that they are going to “give it a try” and if they don’t get results in three days, they jump to another opportunity. Every business model works. You just have to follow a proven, systematic process. When you treat it like a long-term business, you will have the ability to focus your efforts on scaling up the business. Remember, the more you put in, the more results you will get. Just like with every action, there is a reaction!
Pearlin Siow is the best-selling author of Asia’s Dragons which features 8 top Internet gurus at http://www.yourfinancialfreedomseminar.com
Beat the recession and create your own cash-pulling Internet business at http://www.makemoneyinpyjamas.com You will also receive my exclusive interview with World #1 Super Affiliate, Ewen Chia, where he reveals his PROVEN system that will give you cash even if you have no product to sell and no Internet marketing experience.
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