Affiliate Marketing

Can You Succeed in Making Money Online?

 You can make a little money working online, but you can also make a lot. What you earn depends on which direction you go (choosing your niche or passion zone) and what kind of work you get into (methods and strategies you use).

 Some people choose to focus only on one area. This is not what most people who work successfully online recommend. It’s always better to have some variety when it comes to making money. So, if one avenue suddenly changes or stagnates, you’ll still be making money in your other endeavors.

Many of these methods of making money online require little or no money to get started – and you can build them quickly. Even if you don’t have all of the knowledge you’d like to have about what niche you’d like to get started in, that’s not important. You can learn as you go along.

Affiliate Marketing Is a Good Way to Earn Online

 Affiliate marketing can be an easy way to make money because you don’t have the time and expense of creating your own product. Out of the various business branches you can get into, affiliate marketing might bring sales, but it also might take longer to start receiving the money you’ve earned. For example, Amazon has a two-month payment window.

As a general rule, affiliate marketing is not the answer if you’re in a bind and need quick cash. This is more of a long term, steady type of way to bring in an income.

There are a few ways that affiliate market can pay off. If you’re someone who has a platform (SFI and TripleClicks is a great platform!), then you’re already ahead of those who don’t. Affiliate marketing works best if you already have an audience who, knows, likes, and trusts you.

If people don’t trust you, then they’ll be more hesitant to buy from you. To build this needed trust with your audience, make sure you’re open about any connection you have to the product.

First of all, if you received a free copy of the product in exchange for a review, or for promoting it, then you have to disclose that information. Second, never promote a product that’s junk or is questionable just to make a sale.

By doing so, your audience will feel duped and will refuse to trust your recommendations in the future. On any products you do promote, make sure they’re items from marketers who are known to provide excellent customer service.

Sharing a product from a marketer who has poor customer service, will reflect badly on you. When you look for products to promote, make sure you don’t put all of your eggs (potential commissions) in one basket.

In the past, many affiliates relied solely on Amazon for their earnings. Then when some states wanted to charge a tax on purchases from Amazon, the affiliate programs in those states ended up being shut down.

Because of this issue, affiliates in those states were left scrambling to find other affiliate programs to replace this lost income.

One of the biggest issues that stumps people who want to get started in affiliate marketing is not knowing which products to promote.

Finding ideas in this area is fairly easy. All you have to do is look at your own life.  If you create content about fitness and use at-home exercise equipment, then you could write reviews about the products you use and include affiliate links to some of them.

You want to be careful you don’t overdo it with links or your audience and search engines might think your site is a spam site. Some experts recommend you don’t just rely on banners on your site.

When you’re first starting out, it can be tempting to assume that banners will be your biggest money makers, since they’re front and center – but the truth is that most banners don’t convert very well.

In general, readers see banners and think of them as advertisements – so they’re ignored. It’s called ad blindness, or banner blindness.

Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Being an affiliate marketer can be a very lucrative career. One that you can earn more money than in a traditional job. Many affiliate marketers make millions of dollars, many more many six figures, and even more make a solid full time living as affiliate marketers. If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer learn about the top 10 affiliate marketing mistakes, how to avoid them and what to do instead. 

Mistake # 1: Thinking the Money Will Roll in Immediately

Just because you decide to become an affiliate doesn’t mean you’re immediately going to earn money. Being an affiliate for any type of products or services is just like being a salesperson who works on commission. If you want to make good money, you must believe in the product. In addition, you’ll need to explain to your audience how and why they should try the product. Think about how much you’ll earn on each sale so that you can determine how much time and effort you can devote to making that sale.

Mistake # 2: Not Building Your Email List Now

You need an email list full of your target audience in order to earn a fulltime living being an affiliate marketer. If you know who your audience is, you can start building your email list even before you have affiliate products to share. Just share a topic/problem related freebie to get them on the list and then share your knowledge and experience. The products and “finds” can come later.

Choose the right software so that you can automate a lot of the process of building your email list so that you can promote solutions to your audience. There are many programs you can use to build a list such as TrafficWave.net, Active Campaign, and Aweber.com.

Mistake # 3: Not Choosing a Niche You Enjoy

Choosing a niche just because it’s popular is a big mistake. Affiliate marketing is not all about the money. In order to succeed as an affiliate marketer, you should choose a niche and audience that you know and enjoy. If you don’t enjoy the topics or can’t relate to the audience and their problems, it will show in your content, solutions, and sales.

You must be able to write content that shows your enthusiasm about the topics and solutions you offer your audience. Research your potential niche options to ensure that you can make enough money with the audience, provide the solutions the audience needs, and enjoy talking about the niche topics. Your enthusiasm is contagious and profitable.

Mistake # 4: Offering Too Many Product Options

When you decide to be an affiliate, it’s easy to go overboard choosing products to promote. You don’t want to promote everything that is available, only the items that your audience needs. Research and pick a very specific product that solves one of their problems or difficulties. Don’t try to promote multiple items that solve the same problem. With too many options, readers have difficulty choosing and ultimately don’t take any action.

Mistake # 5: Avoiding Research

The most important thing that you can do for your affiliate marketing business is to research everything. Continuously research your audience. Always research the products you want to promote including the creators of the products you want to promote. Your reputation is on the line. If you promote a product that turns out to be a scam or the seller doesn’t live up to their promises, you may lose your credibility. Always do your due diligence.

Mistake # 6: Using Inferior Content

As an affiliate marketer, you probably have a blog and social media accounts that need content. You may be tempted to toss something up that isn’t up to your standard. There is no point in putting up inferior content. It only makes you look unprofessional and damages your reputation.

If you need quality content, hire a writer or buy PLR and rewrite it yourself. Content strategists can help you plan and manage your content from blog posts, to freebies, and more. A good place to find a writer is at WriterHelpWanted.com, where you can post a free job listing that hundreds of writers will view.

Mistake # 7: Avoiding Product Reviews

Another mistake is not doing product reviews. On most corporate websites, where people shop, there are reviews. Customers really do pay attention to reviews. Your audience will appreciate your honest product reviews, even if you do make a percentage of sales. Just be upfront about whether you get money if they buy or not.

Mistake # 8: Using Too Many Affiliate Links

Adding too many affiliate links can make content look like spam. They can also give readers the impression that making a sale is your top priority rather than helping them. Limit the number of affiliate links to the focused solution in emails and articles. When you reference supporting content or examples use straight links. In short, use links sparingly and only when they are important to the message or content.

Mistake # 9:  Using Ugly Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are typically ugly, with odd letters and numbers, question marks, or other characters in them. Most people realize they’re affiliate links but they’re more likely to click them if they’re not ugly.

You can make them look good by using a link shortener. You can also set up redirects to cloak your link. Yoast blog has a good post about this.

There are also several WordPress plugins that you can choose from like Easy Affiliate Links.

Mistake # 10: Not Building Relationships & a Community

One of the best things about becoming a profitable affiliate marketer is the friendships you make along the way. Building relationships with your community will make you the ‘go-to’ person for your subject matter. Many affiliate marketers skip this because they don’t want to be ‘public.’ However, if you are open with your audience, you’ll make more money.

You don’t have to learn about these top-10 affiliate-marketing mistakes the hard way. Use these ideas and tips to avoid the mistakes. When you avoid these mistakes, your efforts will be more efficient and profitable.