January 12, 2008

Affiliate Marketing - The 7 Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Affiliate Marketing - The Best Place To Get Started in Affiliate Marketing

We've all got to get started somewhere. And for newbies to Internet marketing, the best place to get started will likely be to promote affiliate products. Although it's really best to have your OWN products, when you're just starting out it's not the most practical idea. Creating a product is a lot of work, and an expensive process - something that an internet marketing newbie can easily get lost with.

Better to save months of your time, money, and frustration by finding a high-quality product or productsthat come from a vendor who already has a high degree of credibility. These types of products will already be proven sellers.

By selecting good affiliate products to promote, beginner Internet marketers can start generating income quickly. In fact, there's very GOOD money being made selling other people's products (affiliate products). Even the top Internet marketers who have their OWN products sell affiliate products. That's because it's VERY Lucrative and very little effort is required.

Even so, affiliate marketing is not necessarily as easy as falling off a log. There are pitfalls just waiting to consume you and your money. So do yourself a favor and read this complete affiliate marketing blog series. It will help you avoid the pitfalls and bumps in the road along your journey to Internet marketing success.

So let's get started.

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

#1 - Choosing the Wrong Affiliate Product To Promote

Not all affiliate products are created equal. In fact, probably the driving force behind your decision to sell affiliate products in the first place is that you're thinking that there are logs of high-quality products already on the market and if you create your own it might not stack up to them.

Should you choose an affiliate product to promote from the clickbank Marketplace, select very carefully. Rather than just quickly selecting a product with the highest commission, look instead for products that have the highest popularity and GRAVITY ratings. If lots of people are buying them and the popularity and gravity ratings are HIGH, then those affiliate produts will be better sellers for YOU than other Clickbank products listed in the same category.

To further your selection of the best affiliate product, check out the 'refund' rate or 'return' rate for the product. The last think you want is to be running an expensive ad campaign for an affiliate product, only to discover that 10% or more of your hard-won sales resulted in refunds. That can make even the least expensive ad campaign expensive.

Also, by choosing good niche affiliate products, you will also want to look for good niches. Investing in some niche/keyword research tools can help you find profitable, in demand niches. The hotter and hungrier a niche is, the better your sales will be IF you promote the right products to those people. Use common sense about the products you choose. For example - Air conditioners, garden hoses, and beach toys will NOT sell too well in the middle of Winter.

#2. Picking a Poorly Converting Affiliate Product To Promote

Profiting from the hard work of others - the money they have spent on copywriters for the sales page, graphics, product development, and software - THIS is the goal of successful affiliate marketers.

If you decide to promote a product that UNDERutilizes these advantages, you will either benefit less or have to work harder, or both.

Let's take conversion rates, for instance. Not all product creators hire a good copywriter for their sales page. In fact, many product venders write their own copy. Many also don't hire someone to do graphics for the sales page. Instead, they try to do their own. The end result is usually that the sales page looks unprofessional - the sales copy contains typos, grammatical errors, and is poorly worded, plus the graphics are just plain scarey - And this results in a poorly converting product.

Before you begin promoting any product, read the sales page and compare it with other products in that niche. Do YOU feel compelled to buy the product? Did the graphics add or detract from the product sales page? Did the sales message fail to get your attention and reel you in? These will all amount to Fatal Errors - for the product vendor and for you. You can't help the seller. But you CAN avoid his product and find a better one to offer. Do yourself a favor and choose your affiliate products carefully.

That's it for this post, readers. Stay tuned for for the next installment of: Affiliate Marketing - The 7 Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes.

Article by Affiliate Power Tools

Tags: affiliates, affiliate marketing, affiliate, affiliate products, Clickbank marketplace, internet marketing