Regimantas Andre |
Click2sell.EU is a leading Affiliate Program Network that helps affiliate marketers earn high incomes. Promote
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Regimantas Andre
has written 19 articles for SB Informer. |
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8 Vital Mistakes To Avoid In Affiliate Marketing BusinessAvoid these mistakes and you will succeed Regimantas Andre
September 02, 2008
Affiliate
marketing can be an extremely profitable business provided you know how
to stay ahead in the competition. The key to success is to learn from
the mistakes other marketers have made before you and never repeat them
again. Here are the top 8 mistakes most affiliate marketers make:
1. Not selecting the right merchant
It
is important that you select the right kind of products for your
affiliate marketing program but what is more important is to select the
right merchant as well. If you have a merchant who is non-responsive or
treats affiliates more as annoyances instead of business partners then
you should not do business with such a merchant. Try looking for
merchants who have an affiliate marketer protection policy, have good
commission rates and have a good customer support system. This way, you
can easily contact your merchant when you have doubts or
clarifications. You can easily find out if a merchant is reliable –
just ask him some questions, ask to provide some more information about
the affiliate program, promotional tools. If merchant looks helpful
then you can do business.
2. Laziness of trying out new promotional campaigns and products
Most
affiliate marketers get so caught up in one particular segment that
they fail to experiment with other niches. It is always in your best
interests as an affiliate marketer to try selling and propagating
products that belong to diverse verticals. This helps you expand your
horizons and also get more exposure in the domains you are working in.
Plus, you will be more likely to be perceived as an affiliate marketer
of choice for future merchant programs.
3. Not having your own home page
Most
affiliate marketers have gone on by directing their customers to the
merchant site directly. However, today that does not work so good
anymore as customers have become smarter. Instead, you need to direct
your customers to your own home page of the affiliate site – landing
page – and pre-sell the product yourself. You do not need to have a
very complex looking site but definitely one that is clean and concise
in its messaging. This gives you much more flexibility in tweaking your
landing page’s text, so you can easily increase sales.
4. Not following up with customers
Customers
have so many options to choose from so why would they purchase from
your affiliate site? This is why you need a good follow-up system in
place. Make sure to send a reminder email or just pick up the phone and
speak to your customers. This helps garner trust and credibility and
customers will be likely to purchase from your site once they know you
are taking the extra effort to persuade them. Make sure you have an
e-mail list of your customers. This way you can keep in contact with
all of them and when you release your new product – you can easily
blast an e-mail to your list and make sales instantly.
5. Not having other income earning avenues
As
an affiliate marketer you always need to have options around as far as
income earning is concerned. Therefore, try and look for sources like
article marketing, ebooks, viral marketing techniques, forum marketing,
blogging, having your own website etc. These sources of referrals will
go a long way in keeping you protected during especially lean periods
as they will continue to garner customer interest and money for you.
Cultivate each of your selected traffic sources. However, make sure to
stay with your strategy for some time and don’t just jump from one to
another.
6. Signing up for too many affiliate programs
Many
affiliate marketers get extremely tempted to sign up for as many
affiliate programs as possible. However, this will most likely do more
harm than good. When you select too many products to promote you lose
focus and direction. Then, it can be difficult to direct your attention
to a winning marketing strategy which in turn will hamper profits.
Select only a few good looking affiliate programs and work on them and
stay focused. This will bring you much more profits.
7. Not having patience
Affiliate
marketing is like any other business and requires patience to succeed.
You need to wait it out before you start breaking even. Don’t believe
these ‘overnight rich’ promises, they are complete nonsense. Affiliate
marketing requires efforts and patience to succeed… It takes learning,
testing and trying until you succeed. But when you achieve the success,
believe me – it’s really worth all those efforts.
8. Not selecting the right affiliate network
There
are many affiliate networks, however only a small number provides
affiliate marketers with all tools required to succeed. You need to
have a good affiliate link protection, commission payment system
working like a clock-work, you need to be protected so your affiliate
commissions could not be stolen. You can definitely try out
Click2Sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu).
It is an affiliate marketing network that was designed with an
affiliate in mind. It protects your affiliate commissions, allows you
to track all your advertising campaigns and keywords, websites that
bring sales. It was designed to help affiliate marketers succeed, so if
you are not doing affiliate marketing yet, you can easily start it
today.
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