Editor's Note: The following is a guest blog post about affiliate marketing written by Lee Zacks, founder and CEO of Zacks Investment Research, an investment ratings, research, and recommendations firm.
__________________________________________________
Affiliate marketing, the practice in which a business rewards one or more parties for each visitor or customer brought in by the affiliate's online marketing efforts, is becoming more and more popular, especially with the current state of the economy. High unemployment rates have many people turning to the Internet as a means of making ends meet.
It sounds great at first. You’re told all you have to do is start a free blog and write a few articles, and you can achieve wild riches. Many people buy into this myth, and are let down after weeks go by and they haven’t made a single dollar. Believe it or not, more than 90% of Internet entrepreneurs fold up shop within the first month. Once reality sets in, it’s easy to get discouraged. Affiliate marketing, like any other business, requires hard work and effort for success to become a reality.
For the reasons, I'm going to discuss seven of the worst mistakes that an affiliate marketer can make. If you can avoid these career killing pitfalls, you’ll have a good chance at becoming a successful affiliate marketer.
1. Using Free Services
The problem with many affiliate marketers is they don’t want to make an investment into their business. This is due in part to all of the tutorials available that instruct marketers to use free services. While there is nothing wrong with free services, the lack of imminent control over one’s content can be a problem. If the company providing the free service decided to delete your account, or went out of business, you could lose content that may have been making you some money.
2. Promoting The Wrong Product
Market research is especially important in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates promote products that are not related to their blog or website or not targeted to their demographic audience, hence making it near impossible to succeed. Researching your chosen niche is crucial.
3. Promoting Too Many Products and Services
It’s easy to lose focus. There are so many great products to promote that many affiliate marketers try to promote five or ten products at once. Some even clutter their web pages with so many links or banners that the web page just looks chaotic. It’s not good to spread yourself so thin. Rather than promoting mulitple products and giving ten percent effort to each, it’s better to put one-hundred percent effort into promoting a single product.
4. Not Starting An E-Mail List
Many affiliate marketers refuse to believe in the importance of email marketing. This is partly due to the wealth of information available about article marketing. Many are led to believe that article marketing is a miracle money maker. While it’s true that money can be made this way, it’s much better to establish a contact and build trust with a potential buyer through email.
5. Spamming
Spam is a gray area when it comes to affiliate marketing. Basically, spamming is blatantly promoting your products or services to those who didn’t ask for information. The worst kind of spam is e-mail spam. Many affiliate marketers engage in this without even knowing. Spamming is a sure-fire way to ruin your reputation as a marketer.
6. Not Writing Unique Content
Affiliate marketing requires a lot of writing. It usually comes in the form of sales copy, classified ads, and articles. Since outsourcing the work is costly, many affiliate marketers turn to what’s known as private label rights, or PLR articles. These are articles that have been written specifically for the use of others, but the problem is that they have been sold to many people. This means that they are no longer unique. Most marketers rewrite the content before publishing, but the general idea of the article remains the same. Content is king on the Internet, and those that write fresh, exciting content will always have a leg up on the competition.
7. Not Using The Services They Promote
A great way to promote affiliate marketing products is by writing reviews. However, many affiliate marketers review products that they haven't tried. If written properly, this can be effective. For the most part, though, readers can tell if the reviewer has actually tried the product. It’s not a good idea to recommend a product to anyone that you don’t like and haven't used. If you don’t use the product, you can’t honestly know if you like it to write a review. If the product isn’t quality, and you continue to recommend it, you’ll quickly lose customers and tarnish your reputation. Many services, offer free trial periods, so you as an affiliate can actually try it out so that you could write a true and honest review that you can promote.
Affiliate marketing is hard work. However, you shouldn’t get discouraged. The best advice I could give you is to avoid making the above mistakes, and NEVER, EVER give up! Persistence and knowledge are the two most important tools you could possess if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer.
__________________________________________________
Affiliate marketing, the practice in which a business rewards one or more parties for each visitor or customer brought in by the affiliate's online marketing efforts, is becoming more and more popular, especially with the current state of the economy. High unemployment rates have many people turning to the Internet as a means of making ends meet.
It sounds great at first. You’re told all you have to do is start a free blog and write a few articles, and you can achieve wild riches. Many people buy into this myth, and are let down after weeks go by and they haven’t made a single dollar. Believe it or not, more than 90% of Internet entrepreneurs fold up shop within the first month. Once reality sets in, it’s easy to get discouraged. Affiliate marketing, like any other business, requires hard work and effort for success to become a reality.
For the reasons, I'm going to discuss seven of the worst mistakes that an affiliate marketer can make. If you can avoid these career killing pitfalls, you’ll have a good chance at becoming a successful affiliate marketer.
1. Using Free Services
The problem with many affiliate marketers is they don’t want to make an investment into their business. This is due in part to all of the tutorials available that instruct marketers to use free services. While there is nothing wrong with free services, the lack of imminent control over one’s content can be a problem. If the company providing the free service decided to delete your account, or went out of business, you could lose content that may have been making you some money.
2. Promoting The Wrong Product
Market research is especially important in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates promote products that are not related to their blog or website or not targeted to their demographic audience, hence making it near impossible to succeed. Researching your chosen niche is crucial.
3. Promoting Too Many Products and Services
It’s easy to lose focus. There are so many great products to promote that many affiliate marketers try to promote five or ten products at once. Some even clutter their web pages with so many links or banners that the web page just looks chaotic. It’s not good to spread yourself so thin. Rather than promoting mulitple products and giving ten percent effort to each, it’s better to put one-hundred percent effort into promoting a single product.
4. Not Starting An E-Mail List
Many affiliate marketers refuse to believe in the importance of email marketing. This is partly due to the wealth of information available about article marketing. Many are led to believe that article marketing is a miracle money maker. While it’s true that money can be made this way, it’s much better to establish a contact and build trust with a potential buyer through email.
5. Spamming
Spam is a gray area when it comes to affiliate marketing. Basically, spamming is blatantly promoting your products or services to those who didn’t ask for information. The worst kind of spam is e-mail spam. Many affiliate marketers engage in this without even knowing. Spamming is a sure-fire way to ruin your reputation as a marketer.
6. Not Writing Unique Content
Affiliate marketing requires a lot of writing. It usually comes in the form of sales copy, classified ads, and articles. Since outsourcing the work is costly, many affiliate marketers turn to what’s known as private label rights, or PLR articles. These are articles that have been written specifically for the use of others, but the problem is that they have been sold to many people. This means that they are no longer unique. Most marketers rewrite the content before publishing, but the general idea of the article remains the same. Content is king on the Internet, and those that write fresh, exciting content will always have a leg up on the competition.
7. Not Using The Services They Promote
A great way to promote affiliate marketing products is by writing reviews. However, many affiliate marketers review products that they haven't tried. If written properly, this can be effective. For the most part, though, readers can tell if the reviewer has actually tried the product. It’s not a good idea to recommend a product to anyone that you don’t like and haven't used. If you don’t use the product, you can’t honestly know if you like it to write a review. If the product isn’t quality, and you continue to recommend it, you’ll quickly lose customers and tarnish your reputation. Many services, offer free trial periods, so you as an affiliate can actually try it out so that you could write a true and honest review that you can promote.
Affiliate marketing is hard work. However, you shouldn’t get discouraged. The best advice I could give you is to avoid making the above mistakes, and NEVER, EVER give up! Persistence and knowledge are the two most important tools you could possess if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment