How to Avoid the Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Are you tired of making the same affiliate marketing mistakes over and over again? In today’s episode, we’re diving headfirst into the world of affiliate marketing blunders and how to avoid them like a pro. This episode is not all doom and gloom though. Because I’m not just here to point out the problems – I’m also going to share my best tips and strategies to steer clear of these pitfalls and set yourself up for affiliate marketing success. Let’s jump in and discover how to sidestep the most common affiliate marketing mistakes!
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Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How to Attract Affiliates with the Right Commission
How to Build Your Personal Brand and Become a Celebrity in Your Niche with Rory Vaden
Why Your Affiliate Program is Failing (And What to Do About It)
How to Build Strong Relationships with Your Affiliates
How to Avoid the Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Are you tired of making the same affiliate marketing mistakes over and over again? Well, in today’s episode, we’re diving headfirst into the world of affiliate marketing blunders and how to avoid them like a pro. This episode is not all doom and gloom though, because I’m not just here to point out the problems.
I’m also going to share my best tips and strategies to steer clear of these pitfalls and set yourself up for affiliate marketing success. So let’s jump in and discover how to sidestep the most common affiliate marketing mistakes. Welcome to the affiliate, guy.
Podcast. If you want to grow your income, serve your tribe, and enjoy all the benefits of affiliate marketing and having your own affiliates, you’re in the right place. Thanks for joining me today.
Let’s get started. So I’m not here to be a parent, but I am going to tell you up front like we all make mistakes. Every one of these mistakes that I’m going to share with you today, I have made, and I know at least ten others who’ve made these same mistakes as well.
Okay, mistakes are fine as long as we learn from them. So that’s why today we’re going to dive into some of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes that I see so many of us fall victim to it and then more importantly, want to talk about how to avoid them. Now, the mistakes, I’m going to break these up into six parts here.
The first part is these are mistakes in kind of the basics, right? Choosing the right products, choosing the right niches. The second part is mistakes in content creation and promotion.
Part three is mistakes in link management. Kind of a boring topic, but an important one to cover. Part four is mistakes that are really around affiliate program selection, selecting the wrong programs.
Then part five is mistakes in building and nurturing those relationships. And then lastly, mistakes in mindset. So again, six parts with anywhere from 2345 mistakes in each of these parts.
So let’s jump in with part one. So this is Mistakes in choosing the right Products and Niches. The first mistake I just see this so often, is falling for the hype.
Falling for the hype. It’s so easy to get caught up in the hype. When you see a new product launch, you see a new so and so’s they’re doing an affiliate program and so you want to be a part of it.
The problem with this is if you don’t do the research, you end up letting the excitement cloud your judgment. And so if you just rush into promoting a product without doing the proper research, number one, you could end up in a situation where just because somebody famous or a big company makes a product doesn’t mean it’s a good product and you end up disappointing your audience. They buy it goes well, but now they don’t trust you for the long term.
And so I asked a friend of mine one time he asked about a specific offer and he knew he could make about $30,000 promoting this thing versus about $20,000 promoting something else. And I said, okay, here’s my question though. Is this going to best serve your audience?
And he went on to explain why it wasn’t. And I said, okay, you’re going to make $10,000 more. And that’s awesome.
In that month, he promotes about one affiliate offer a month. In that month, he’s going to make $10,000 more. And I don’t want to dismiss that.
He’s not a multimillionaire, but he makes about a half million dollars a year. $10,000 is still a lot of money. That is a really nice vacation.
That is a really sweet, like, week long vacation at a pretty nice place. So I don’t want to dismiss $10,000. There’s a lot you can do with that.
That’ll pay for like a week of college. In all seriousness, it’ll pay for a lot. It’s a third of a pretty decent car, if I’m not mistaken.
There’s a lot that $10,000. And I was like, that’s awesome. But long term, if you sell this and it doesn’t go well, how much are you going to lose over the course of the next?
Just look at one year could cost you $50,000 to $100,000. So you may not notice it because it means only a few people less are going to buy each time, but it means that next promo that would have made you 25,000 is only going to make you 20,000. And the next one instead of 20 is only going to make you 17.
And over time, you’re going to lose a lot more money than you made. So rushing into this, promoting your product without doing the proper research can not only fail when it doesn’t resonate with your audience, but it can fail if it’s not a great product, if it’s not going to serve your audience. So you need to look at things and do the research, maybe go through the course or use the product and study the competition and see those things.
So don’t fall for the hype. The second thing is kind of ties in. If you ignore your audience’s needs, if you ignore your audience’s preferences, you’re going to fail.
I mean, your audience is the heart and soul. The heart and soul, ultimately of anything with building a platform. The heart and soul of my podcast is you, the listener.
The heart and soul of my emails, of the content I put in my emails, is the people on my list, individuals on my list. That’s why I never say my list. It’s like I don’t refer to them as my list.
It’s individuals on the list. They are people. The heart and soul of social media is the people who follow you, and your audience is the heart and soul of everything affiliate marketing related.
If you don’t understand their needs and preferences, you can end up promoting some products that just do not align with them. So survey them, engage with them. I like to periodically.
I don’t do nearly as many as I used to, but I like to periodically just engage with them. Maybe get on Zoom and talk to them for ten minutes, and I’ll coach them through a specific situation. What I’m giving is the coaching.
What I’m getting is learning more about them. And we can do these things even just asking a simple question. Maybe it’s just one question.
Ask one question and get 500 responses. You will learn a lot so that you understand what they’re looking for. This is the importance, again, of connecting with your audience.
That’s one of the reasons why at the end of every episode, I invite people to text me 260-217-4619, by the way. One of the reasons why I do that yes, it is to serve. Please don’t misunderstand me.
I want you to text me if you’ve got questions. Big takeaways from the episode. All the stuff that I always say at the end of each episode.
But I get as much out of it because I’m learning what you really need. What problems are you having? What struggles are you facing?
What obstacles are you encountering? And I learn this stuff, and that helps me to refine my avatar. Speaking of avatar, by the way, go grab our Avatar creation guide.
It’s free. Go to mammicwames. com
avatar. And you will avoid a lot of these problems on the front end. If you actually decide who your audience is, you’ll avoid this.
The third mistake I see here in this kind of part one here, choosing the right products and niches, choosing too many products at once, I get it. There are so many opportunities out there. But promoting too many products at once, not only can it confuse your audience, but it can confuse you.
And you’re going to go we’ll talk about this later. But you’re going to go half in on three things. Half in on three things doesn’t equal all in on one, believe it or not.
You think, well, half plus half plus half. Last time I checked in, math class was 1. 5
not in affiliate marketing. So the key here is start with one product, start with one promotion, and really hone in on that one. Work through all the kinks like we’ll talk about in this episode.
The things like creating a promo plan and things like that. Work through the kinks with that one. Now, if you’re more advanced, yeah, promoting two things in a very short period of time is totally doable.
But this is a mistake I just see so many people make. They’re like, okay, I’m going to do affiliate marketing. And what they think is promoting 20 things in 60 days is better than promoting three things in 60 days, and it’s usually not.
Now, I’m not saying you only need to promote one thing for 60 days. I’m saying promote one thing for a week or two and then move on to the next thing, and then the next thing. The fourth mistake here is not paying attention to seasonal trends.
Seasonal, what is the word I’m looking for? Ebbs and flows within product sales. Not paying attention to demands, not paying attention to just the trends that are going on that aren’t necessarily seasonal.
Every year we release an update. The Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions. And I’ll link to that in the show notes.
And this is specific to promoting things in the last five, six weeks of the year, when for some industries, that’s 50, 60, 70% of their sales. For people who are in niches where seasonal things matter more, that can make or break your entire year. And if you ignore those trends and if you ignore what’s going on, you end up ignoring those spikes in demands and commissions.
So pay attention. Are there any seasonal shifts? And then you want to tailor your content and promotions accordingly.
I always ask with clients whether we’re running their affiliate program or if I’m going to be promoting something as an affiliate, hey, are there any just bill built in spikes? And a lot of people will say, well, we’re pretty much even for eleven months out of the year, but we spike in January with New Year’s resolutions. Okay, that’s good to know.
Or they’ll say, yeah, we spike when the kids get out of school a little bit, or we spike when the kids are going back to school, or yeah, we have a little bit of a bump around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
Some industries, it’s not as pronounced. Obviously, if you’re in the health and fitness industry, 50% of your entire year can come in January. We know that if you’re in a gift industry, 50, 60% of your entire year can come from right before Thanksgiving through about December 23.
We know that stuff. Some of them, it’s a little bit less pronounced, but we have one particular client where about 20% of their sales comes in one month of the year. And you go, okay, well, that’s not a huge thing.
Well, I mean, 80% of their sales come in eleven months of the year and 20% in one. That is noteful we have to take advantage of that if we’re going to run a promotion. It makes sense to run it then, because if we can increase sales so if we were going to make, say, let’s just say they were going to do $100,000 in that month or in that one month, right.
If we can increase sales in that month by 20%, we’re at 120,000. It’s a pretty big increase to go up $20,000 versus 20% in the other month might only produce $12,000 increase or so. So we focus our efforts around that month.
And you need to know that as an affiliate. All right, the second part is common mistakes that are really around content creation and marketing promotion. The first one not having a plan.
Whatever you do, create a plan and stick to it long enough to find out what works. So go grab our affiliate Promo plan guide. Go grab that Mammogwaims.
com Promoplan, go grab that guide. That’ll walk you through how to create a promo plan.
And the big mistake here is not that you don’t follow the plan perfectly, but that you don’t even have one, and you’re literally trying to make it up as you go. What I find is typically we’ll tweak the plan anywhere from ten to 40%, but that means at least 60% is planned in advance. I know what I’m going to be sending via email each day.
I know what we’re doing social media wise. I know what we’re doing at such and such a point. And even if I decide to tweak it, I at least have a starting point for that.
So not having a plan is a huge mistake. The solution there is have a plan, go grab the template, Mammoglames. com
promo plan. We’ll put that in the show notes, go grab that and then use it. The second mistake is low quality content.
You’ve all heard the expression, content is king and quality matters, right? We see this so often, is we put in all this effort into our own stuff, whether it be the podcast or our own writing, our own emails, our own blog posts, our own sales copy, our own sales pages and videos, and then we pack it in on an affiliate promotion. We just take the swipe, copy and copy it, and send it.
Do not do that. That’s not what Swipe copy is for. Or we see so many people, they’re like, I’m going to create a review post, and then it’s just stuffed with keywords, there’s no value, and things like that.
Or I’m going to kind of take what they give me and post generic images on social media. Is that what you normally post? Do you normally post kind of mediocre images on social media?
Or do you post really good ones? Are you always posting selfies and then all of a sudden when you do a promotion, you’re giving them some sort of you’re posting a banner ad. Basically, that doesn’t work.
So think about this. How do you put the same effort into your affiliate promotions as you do the content you’re creating for your own stuff? How do you make it feel the same?
How do you make it stay on brand and not just be kind of mediocre keyword stuff, reviews, ugly images that don’t fit your brand, things like that. Take the time. Take the time to make it seem as close to your own stuff as you normally would do.
Another mistake here is just not taking advantage of multiple content formats. Oh, well, I’m going to send three emails, okay? I’m only going to do social media.
Well, that doesn’t work. We’ll talk about this later when I talk about going all in. But you got to do everything.
Use your podcast, use social media, use video, use your blog, use your email, and reach different people. I have people that follow me on social media that are not on my email list. I have people on my email list that don’t follow me on social media.
I have people that I text with, mentioned that earlier, that I text with that are not on my email. They’re not on my email list. The reality is, only half the people in my audience listen to this podcast.
Why can’t just abandon the other half? That’d be ridiculous. So I want to talk about affiliate offers on all content formats that I can.
I probably admittedly I don’t use the podcast enough. So here’s a news flash. Maybe over the next year I’m going to do one or two more episodes where I talk about an affiliate product.
I’ve got to do that. It’s the smart thing to do for me. And it’ll be good content.
Of course, we’ll make it really positive content, something you get value out of. Another big mistake here is just not following basic SEO best practices. All right?
SEO is search engine optimization. If you don’t know that, it is so important. And so if you’re going to write a review post, you need to be updated on SEO trends.
You need to optimize your content. We’ve got the guide. We’ve got a review post guide that we’ve updated, I don’t know, every six months for the past five, six years.
We keep it updated with the latest SEO trends and all that stuff. So if you want to go grab that and you should go grab the reviewpost guide, madmicwams. com
reviewpost. We will link to that in the show notes as well. So go grab that and you will know how to optimize for the search engines.
It basically shows you how do you rank high on Google for certain product reviews and convert. That’s the important thing. If all you do is rank high we talked about this keyword stuffing.
And whatnot if all you do is rank high but the content reads terribly, you’re not going to convert into sales. And if all you do is have a great converting post but it’s on the second page of Google. Nobody’s going to see it.
The tree falls in the forest. Nobody’s there to hear it. Does it make a sound?
So we want to go grab that guide. Make sure you do. I’ll put the link in the show Notes for that.
All right, last mistake here, not thinking about mobile. Guys, how much of the Internet do you access on your phone versus computer? I know for me, it’s actually pretty low.
I’m on the low end because I’m an Internet marketer, so I prefer to use my double monitor. Well, triple monitor now, triple monitor setup. And the keyboard.
I don’t like typing with my thumbs and yada yada. But the reality is most people are accessing the Internet on their phone. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this mistake.
We created a great page, we’ve done blah, blah, blah. Looks great on desktop. Boom.
Let’s roll with it. Oh, crap. Two days later oh, guys, this looks horrible on Safari on my phone.
Oh, yeah, we forgot to do the mobile part. Oops. Don’t make that mistake.
Make sure you always check in mobile. I like to use a tool called browsershots. It’s free.
I think it’s browsershots. org. I’m not looking at it right now, but I’m pretty sure just Google browsershots and you can see what your page looks like in hundreds of different browsers.
Now, what I do is I check the top five and I make sure because I’ve got whatever I don’t even know what kind of phone I have. I know it’s an apple. It’s an iPhone.
That much I know. Where is it? Let’s see.
So my phone is an Apple. It’s iPhone 14, and it’s got whatever the latest iOS is because I just updated it the other day. Okay, so because of that, I know what it looks like on mine, but what does it look like on an Android using Chrome?
What does it look like on an iPhone nine? I don’t necessarily care what it looks like on an iPhone six, because that is like 0. 1%
of the population. But what does it look like five generations ago on Safari? What does it look like on the bigger ones?
What are they? This is the pro. I think they’re called the whatever.
Plus, I’m not like one of those smartphone nerds. I don’t even know what the new one is. It’s probably like something, but the bigger ones, the Max, that’s what they’re called, I think.
What does it look like on there? Does it look a little bit different? What does it look like in the sideways mode, landscape mode?
What does it look like that? You need to know those things because sometimes it can really look awful, and if it does, well, you need to fix that. So that’s part two.