January 18, 2008

Affiliate Marketing - The 7 Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes part 2

Part 2 of: The 7 Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Find Part 1 Here

Mistake #3: Snake Oil Salesmen Selling Snake Oil

As an affiliate marketer, it's especially important to promote good products as one of the means to build trust and create a lasting good reputation for you and your internet business. This becomes even MORE important when promoting affiliate products to your subscriber list. All it takes is just ONE error in product promotion to your subscribers and you can end up with a mass mutiny on your hands. So treat your list with the utmost respect - only promote the highest quality products and solutions to them, and do it sparingly.

Avoid jumping on the affiliate product promotion bandwagon for new product launches. Just because every OTHER affiliate marketer is doing it doesn't mean it's smart, or that you have to do it. Instead, wait until the buzz dies down a little and then release a comprehensive review of the new product. This is something that most marketers still don't do. It will increase your chances of making sales (IF you give the product a good review and recommendation). Additionally this method will build you credibility and connect you with your readers and subscribers. If you buy the product, try it out, and don't feel it lives up to it's hype - Don't recommend it. You can be sure that the next product that you review and DO recommend, your readers will trust your opinion and buy it from YOU.

Avoid promoting products that make outrageous and fals claims. As Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." In most cases these 'snake oil peddlers' cannot provide you with any extraordinary evidence, yet continue to make their claims. Avoid promoting them and becoming associated with them. Their reputation will rub off on you and and your internet business.

Mistake #4: Picking Products that Offer Low and Meager Commissions

If you're marketing to a list of people, they are only going to consider so many product offers in a given period of time. So select the ones you promote wisely. If you promote something that only generates a 25% commission for you, then you COULD be leaving a lot on the table. In reality, you could possibly find a similar product that offers a higher commission.

But don't get stuck here. A high-ticket priced product that offers 25% or LESS in commission, but has stellar support after the sale and no refunds, could end up making you $100s in commission even still. The point here is to choose the affiliate products you promote wisely - taking into consideration the quality of the product, return rate, customer support, commission, and whether it's a good fit for your website or your list.

In terms of the actual dollar value of the commision - don't sweat that too much. Many top name Internet marketers now say that they concentrate on promoting high-ticket idtems (since just a few sales generates a LOT of money). But you can still make a killing selling relatively cheap reports and info products - like the popular $7 report scenario.

Avoid the cheap sellers (commissions), but don't worry about the product price too much.

Mistake #5: Not Collecting Leads and Subscribers

Always capture leads. Rather than generating traffic through Pay per click, search engine optimization, and other methods and then sending that traffic DIRECTLY through your affiliate link, you should make EVERY effort to convert them into your subscriber list FIRST. That traffic cost you money, or painstaking SEO effort, or both. Why waste it by sending it directly to the VENDOR's site and losing your chance to contact them again.

It's based on simple mathematical reasoning - Virtually everyone who would have purchased the product will opt in to your mailing list. And many who definitely would NOT have purchased the product will ALSO opt into your mailing list. Instead of converting at a rate of around 1-3% (affiliate product sales), you'll boost it way up to between 15% - 40% conversion of the traffic you get onto your mailing list. From there you then get the chance to contact these people again, and again. It's no longer a 'one time' chance for you to make a sale. In fact, besides increasing your conversion rate for your initial affiliate product promotion, you'll make additional sales of other products by using this model.

As a marketer, one of the best tools you have available is your subscriber list. Always, always, always utilize a subscriber list over the one-off sale approach.

Mistake #6: Ignoring the Importance of Taking Fast Action - Timliness

In business in general, the quick to act often outcompete those endowed with greater resources. Today, Google is no longer a small company with meager revenues, ut in the past it emerged from nowhere to outcompete massive rivals, and it did so with cunning.

How does this apply to you?

Successful affiliate product promotion requires you to do more than simply slap an affiliate link in an email and send it out to a couple thoursand people (or put a link on your website). If you expect them to actually buy, buy from YOU, your email and promotional links and copy must be newsworthy - not promotional.

If you can genuinely write your email as if it were a news announcement, you are far more likely to draw interest than if you send a link to an affiliate product that's just a rehashed, sliced and diced version of many OTHER products.

You MUST find product launches that qualify as an 'EVENT'. Find something so big, or NEW, that people follow the event and comment on it. If you can find such a product it's critical that you engineer your own build-up and release centered on the build-up and release of the product. You will want to make sure that your list members purchase from you, rather than from another list owner.

To make it short and sweet: Pay attention to the clock and the calendar. If there's a big launch coming up, you need to capitalize on it quickly. There may not be a second window of opportunity, so take it while you have it.

Mistake #7 Ignoring the Numbers

Many affiliate marketers fail to make the many necessary, but small calulations needed in order to run a business and ensure they are in profit. For instance, many affiliate marketers will completely ignore the useful information Clickbank extracts and records from each sale - like 'gravity', 'refund rate', etc. Instead, they'll simply look at the price and the commission.

Many affiliate marketers wil ignore conversion rates, pay per click bics, and the amount of time they put into their projects. They'll also fail to make realistic estimates of how much promotional efforts will cost; and how much of a risk they'll be. They glaze over all these minor details and devote the mojority of their time to daydreaming about the money they'll make.

Unfortunately, affiliate marketing doesn't work like this. Actually, NO business works like this. If you're paying too much for traffic, ifyour conversion rates are too low, if you pu too much time into projects that don't have high yield - the outcome will not be a profitable one. the numbers MUST add up so that at the end of the day, month, or year, you end up in profit rather than in debt. Since you are a sole proprietor, not a CEO or corporation, that makes the difference of whether you get paid, or not paid and possibly left in deep debt. This is what sends most would-be internet marketers and would-be affiliate webmasters back to the 9-5 job after failing miserably at their attempts to grow a real business online.

Conclusion

As you've read here, there are 7 common pitfalls in affiliate marketing. If you fall into one or several of them, you'll likely go into debt rather than becoming wealthy from your affiliate marketing efforts.

So how can you avoid these traps, make better decisiona, and ultimately become wealthy with affiliate marketing?

First, start by selecting good products, proven sellers with market demand.

Next, within the niches that are hot, look for a product that is currently selling and converting well. If it's a Clickbank product, you can do this by looking for high popularity, high gravity products. You can also do this by checking out the sales pages to find ones with compelling copy, good bonuses, and reasonable prices.

In addition to choosing a product that is likely to convert well, you will also want to make sure that the claims are reasonable and that the seller is credible. One bad product promotion on your part could seriously damage your credibility and your business. Losing an otherwise 'repeat buyer' is never worth it just to make a single sale.

Lastly, do yourself a favor and keep track of conversion rate, ppc bid prices, commission rates, product broker fees, and all the other little facts and figures that so many affiliate marketers prefer to ignore. Knowing, understanding, and tweaking these numbers can (and does) make the difference between making profits or taking losses. You can ignore them if you want, but doing so will not improve and maximize your business.

Article by Affiliate Power Tools

Tags: affiliate marketing, Clickbank affiliate, affiliate products, affiliate tips, affiliate marketing mistakes, affiliate marketing report