Hey guys!
Making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process.
Even though mistakes and hiccups usually cost money and might be the cause of frustrations, everyone has to deal with them sometimes. Still, learning how to steer clear of most common mistakes could give you a headstart against your competitors.
Read the article below to find out what are the 7 biggest affiliate marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Poor choice of offers
An affiliate marketing offer is something that stands at the heart of your business. As a beginner, choosing the right offer might seem to be the most difficult task. There are a lot of different reviews and recommendations that help advertisers make educated decisions when it comes to choosing ad trackers or traffic sources. But when it comes to offers, there aren’t any cut and dry guidelines or reviews.
☞ How to choose an offer that will have the highest chance of success?
The answer is don’t choose just one offer. The correct way to go about things is to choose your niche and open a bunch of campaigns with similar offers and see which one gives the best results before optimization.
As a beginner you should choose low payout offers and pair them with a Tier 2 or Tier 3 GEO. By following these recommendations you are choosing offers that are easy to convert and don’t require a lot of learning and preparations.
Go with sweepstakes. Surveys and Sweeps, leadgen and any variation of simple flow, single opt-in or double opt-in offers are evergreen options, perfect for learning affiliate marketing. They look like spin wheels or quizzes and only ask the user to fill in some data in return for a chance to win something.
Here are the general DOs and DONTs of choosing offers.
2. Lazy landers
Being lazy is obviously not an ideal approach if you want to grow a business of any kind. Just like making lazy choices will have a negative impact on your campaigns, being lazy with your landing pages can significantly hinder your progress.
☞ Why waste all that time to make an additional pre-lander while the offer page seems good enough?
Well, there’s a couple of main reasons:
If you want to do absolutely everything to ensure the best performance of your ads you can subscribe to one of the lander builders and create the landing pages from scratch. Obviously in that case it would be very useful to have a spy tool subscription as well. You need to research what works before you can create a winning lander.
3. Optimizing too quickly
Having your campaigns up and running is a very exciting step in growing your business. That’s also one of the first steps you take and one of the easiest steps to mess up.
It takes a lot of willpower to gather data because, at first, gathering data is just watching your money burn. It’s highly unlikely that your campaigns will have a positive ROI right from the start. But instead of protecting yourself from losing money, you need to sit back and watch that data flow.
Gathering data is necessary for making the correct optimization decisions. It’s normally recommended to set a daily budget and then wait 3-5 days before optimizing the traffic. The optimal daily budget is $100 but you can definitely gather data with less.
Optimization is mostly about cutting out chunks of traffic that don’t match your particular offer. It’s obvious that when something doesn’t work for you, you wouldn’t want to waste money on it. But like we’ve mentioned before… traffic fluctuates and it’s quite impossible to tell if what is working for you today will keep up the performance tomorrow.
☞ What if you rush with optimizations and just cut out the underperformers right away?
Most likely, you will remove sources that might have brought you profits if you had tested them for longer. Also, without giving sources a proper chance to perform with higher bid prices, you might not give them a chance to show their best side. And if you cut all kinds of targeting options too soon, you might find yourself left with too little traffic to make reasonable profits, let alone to scale your campaigns.
4. Not enough testing
Testing is the key to success. Affiliates who made a living out of media-buying didn’t just immediately start earning money. They all found their perfect money-making niches by testing different options.
☞ So, how much should you test?
The answer is... a lot. Almost every aspect of your affiliate marketing business should be tested to some extent. Of course, in some cases, it might be enough to choose based on reviews and recommendations but that only regards:
Some tests you need to do on your own. To make a lot of money in affiliate marketing you need to find the perfect funnel. And in order to find the perfect funnel you need to test all kinds of combinations. Here is the list of variables to test on your own:
5. Careless campaign set-up
Campaign set up is easy but when you’re a complete beginner it’s not that difficult to overlook something. This is not the kind of mistake that will ruin all your efforts but it’s the kind of mistake that costs money and can be really discouraging.
Traffic sources usually have extensive documentation that will guide you through the process of campaign creation. Additionally, you can often find video tutorials on YouTube or step-by-step written tutorials on community forums.
Some of the common campaign set-up mistakes include incorrect targeting (not in agreement with offer requirements), not setting a conversion cap to match your offer’s conversion cap, mismatched style of lander and offer page or incorrect destination or postback URLs.
6. Lack of affiliate marketing tools
You only need an offer and a traffic source to start affiliate marketing, that’s true. But nobody ever said you will make good profits with such a minimalistic set up.
Sooner or later you will need more tools and resources to beat the competition.
In point number 4, we listed resources that you can choose based on freely and widely available recommendations. This list is composed of exactly the set of tools that you might eventually need in order to raise your campaigns to the next level.
☞ Why are additional tools so essential?
Without a tracker you won’t be able to gather data necessary for accurate optimization. And when you don’t have that data, you won’t be able to optimize your traffic efficiently enough to keep your campaigns profitable. Tracking does cost money in most cases but not tracking is actually more expensive.
Without a spy tool you won’t know what are the trends in creatives and what works best and where.
Without a lander builder you are forced to re-use the landers that have already been seen thousands of times.
Without translation services you are either limiting yourself to running ads only in the languages you know or you’re taking the risk of using Google Translate which might not be that accurate and lower the credibility of your ads.
Lastly, community forums are entirely optional but extremely useful. They offer advice, case studies, directories, bonuses and tons of free resources for you to take advantage of. Overall, joining an affiliate marketing forum can provide you with enough support to overcome any obstacle you might face.
7. Getting discouraged too quickly
The last biggest mistake is a direct result of the six mistakes we’ve just mentioned. Obviously, making a series of mistakes and having a couple of failures along the way might discourage you from pursuing affiliate marketing. But it shouldn’t!
If you are expecting a get rich quick scheme then we have some bad news for you… most of those are a scam. And affiliate marketing is not one of them.
Affiliate marketing requires investment, just like any other legitimate business that grows and expands slowly and in a natural manner. The only difference is that the initial investment is very minimal and you are not bound by any time contracts.
Huge profits are definitely possible in affiliate marketing, but you won’t get to them in a month and probably not even a year. In order to become successful you need to test a lot and learn something about every aspect of affiliate marketing. Successful media buyers quite often have a niche that they specialize in, so you should also strive to master one vertical, GEO or ad format.
Thousands of people who try affiliate marketing will quit too soon. Don’t be one of those people. If you persevere long enough, you will become one of the few that make a very comfortable monthly income. Be like these guys, be wise.
Do you want to learn more about:
Making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process.
Even though mistakes and hiccups usually cost money and might be the cause of frustrations, everyone has to deal with them sometimes. Still, learning how to steer clear of most common mistakes could give you a headstart against your competitors.
Read the article below to find out what are the 7 biggest affiliate marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Poor choice of offers
An affiliate marketing offer is something that stands at the heart of your business. As a beginner, choosing the right offer might seem to be the most difficult task. There are a lot of different reviews and recommendations that help advertisers make educated decisions when it comes to choosing ad trackers or traffic sources. But when it comes to offers, there aren’t any cut and dry guidelines or reviews.
☞ How to choose an offer that will have the highest chance of success?
The answer is don’t choose just one offer. The correct way to go about things is to choose your niche and open a bunch of campaigns with similar offers and see which one gives the best results before optimization.
As a beginner you should choose low payout offers and pair them with a Tier 2 or Tier 3 GEO. By following these recommendations you are choosing offers that are easy to convert and don’t require a lot of learning and preparations.
Go with sweepstakes. Surveys and Sweeps, leadgen and any variation of simple flow, single opt-in or double opt-in offers are evergreen options, perfect for learning affiliate marketing. They look like spin wheels or quizzes and only ask the user to fill in some data in return for a chance to win something.
Here are the general DOs and DONTs of choosing offers.
2. Lazy landers
Being lazy is obviously not an ideal approach if you want to grow a business of any kind. Just like making lazy choices will have a negative impact on your campaigns, being lazy with your landing pages can significantly hinder your progress.
☞ Why waste all that time to make an additional pre-lander while the offer page seems good enough?
Well, there’s a couple of main reasons:
- In 90% of cases using a landing page is proved to bring more conversions.
- That 10% should be discovered via split testing (two campaigns launched at the same time one with a pre-lander and one without).
- There are many people running the same offer as you so you need to make it stand out!
- The offer page itself might not be enough to convince users to convert.
- Sometimes you need to ‘sell’ the product, its benefits, long term value, and why it’s an offer the potential client just can’t refuse.
If you want to do absolutely everything to ensure the best performance of your ads you can subscribe to one of the lander builders and create the landing pages from scratch. Obviously in that case it would be very useful to have a spy tool subscription as well. You need to research what works before you can create a winning lander.
3. Optimizing too quickly
Having your campaigns up and running is a very exciting step in growing your business. That’s also one of the first steps you take and one of the easiest steps to mess up.
It takes a lot of willpower to gather data because, at first, gathering data is just watching your money burn. It’s highly unlikely that your campaigns will have a positive ROI right from the start. But instead of protecting yourself from losing money, you need to sit back and watch that data flow.
Gathering data is necessary for making the correct optimization decisions. It’s normally recommended to set a daily budget and then wait 3-5 days before optimizing the traffic. The optimal daily budget is $100 but you can definitely gather data with less.
Optimization is mostly about cutting out chunks of traffic that don’t match your particular offer. It’s obvious that when something doesn’t work for you, you wouldn’t want to waste money on it. But like we’ve mentioned before… traffic fluctuates and it’s quite impossible to tell if what is working for you today will keep up the performance tomorrow.
☞ What if you rush with optimizations and just cut out the underperformers right away?
Most likely, you will remove sources that might have brought you profits if you had tested them for longer. Also, without giving sources a proper chance to perform with higher bid prices, you might not give them a chance to show their best side. And if you cut all kinds of targeting options too soon, you might find yourself left with too little traffic to make reasonable profits, let alone to scale your campaigns.
4. Not enough testing
Testing is the key to success. Affiliates who made a living out of media-buying didn’t just immediately start earning money. They all found their perfect money-making niches by testing different options.
☞ So, how much should you test?
The answer is... a lot. Almost every aspect of your affiliate marketing business should be tested to some extent. Of course, in some cases, it might be enough to choose based on reviews and recommendations but that only regards:
- Affiliate Networks
- Traffic Sources
- Affiliate Ad Trackers
- Spy Tools
- Translation Services
- Forums and Community Groups
- Landing Page Builders
- Hosting Providers
- Other additional tools
Some tests you need to do on your own. To make a lot of money in affiliate marketing you need to find the perfect funnel. And in order to find the perfect funnel you need to test all kinds of combinations. Here is the list of variables to test on your own:
- Offers
- Landers
- Creatives
- GEOs
- Targeting (Device, OS, OS Versions)
- Ad Formats
- Sources
- Targets
5. Careless campaign set-up
Campaign set up is easy but when you’re a complete beginner it’s not that difficult to overlook something. This is not the kind of mistake that will ruin all your efforts but it’s the kind of mistake that costs money and can be really discouraging.
Traffic sources usually have extensive documentation that will guide you through the process of campaign creation. Additionally, you can often find video tutorials on YouTube or step-by-step written tutorials on community forums.
Some of the common campaign set-up mistakes include incorrect targeting (not in agreement with offer requirements), not setting a conversion cap to match your offer’s conversion cap, mismatched style of lander and offer page or incorrect destination or postback URLs.
6. Lack of affiliate marketing tools
You only need an offer and a traffic source to start affiliate marketing, that’s true. But nobody ever said you will make good profits with such a minimalistic set up.
Sooner or later you will need more tools and resources to beat the competition.
In point number 4, we listed resources that you can choose based on freely and widely available recommendations. This list is composed of exactly the set of tools that you might eventually need in order to raise your campaigns to the next level.
☞ Why are additional tools so essential?
Without a tracker you won’t be able to gather data necessary for accurate optimization. And when you don’t have that data, you won’t be able to optimize your traffic efficiently enough to keep your campaigns profitable. Tracking does cost money in most cases but not tracking is actually more expensive.
Without a spy tool you won’t know what are the trends in creatives and what works best and where.
Without a lander builder you are forced to re-use the landers that have already been seen thousands of times.
Without translation services you are either limiting yourself to running ads only in the languages you know or you’re taking the risk of using Google Translate which might not be that accurate and lower the credibility of your ads.
Lastly, community forums are entirely optional but extremely useful. They offer advice, case studies, directories, bonuses and tons of free resources for you to take advantage of. Overall, joining an affiliate marketing forum can provide you with enough support to overcome any obstacle you might face.
7. Getting discouraged too quickly
The last biggest mistake is a direct result of the six mistakes we’ve just mentioned. Obviously, making a series of mistakes and having a couple of failures along the way might discourage you from pursuing affiliate marketing. But it shouldn’t!
If you are expecting a get rich quick scheme then we have some bad news for you… most of those are a scam. And affiliate marketing is not one of them.
Affiliate marketing requires investment, just like any other legitimate business that grows and expands slowly and in a natural manner. The only difference is that the initial investment is very minimal and you are not bound by any time contracts.
Huge profits are definitely possible in affiliate marketing, but you won’t get to them in a month and probably not even a year. In order to become successful you need to test a lot and learn something about every aspect of affiliate marketing. Successful media buyers quite often have a niche that they specialize in, so you should also strive to master one vertical, GEO or ad format.
Thousands of people who try affiliate marketing will quit too soon. Don’t be one of those people. If you persevere long enough, you will become one of the few that make a very comfortable monthly income. Be like these guys, be wise.
Do you want to learn more about:
- Choosing offers with the highest chance of success?
- Tool recommendations.
- Why should you create your own landing pages?
- How to check campaigns before launch to avoid careless mistakes?
