Common Mistakes of New Affiliate Marketers

by Jared Smith on August 10, 2009 in Make Money Online

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Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. It allows the average person with access to a computer to make a substantial second income. However, 95% of people who try affiliate marketing online end up failing.

The reason most fail is because they read one or two books or articles about the subject and think they can just copy what they read and watch the cash roll in. This leads to many mistakes that end up costing the affiliate money. Here are several mistakes that affiliates make.

#1) Copying – There is a flood of products and programs that claim they can make people thousands of dollars a month just by copying exactly what they show you. While that might sound good the problem with that is every person that buys that product or program is going to try the exact same thing promoting the exact same product, which will drive competition through the roof and decrease your chance of making a profit. The one way to avoid this is to copy their methods, but don’t use the same product they are using. Find a different product that is shown to make money but doesn’t have as many people trying to push the product the same way.

#2) PPC – Making a profit from PPC advertising is possible, however you have to be careful about what keywords you use to promote a specific product. Those ads that are appearing in the first few pages of Google are spending 2 – 5 dollars PER CLICK and bidding on hundreds of keywords. Those people have enough money to fund the advertising and still make a profit. Those who are starting out in the affiliate marketing business cannot afford such costs. Instead of hundreds of keywords with tons of competition chose a few longer, more targeted keywords that will attract more specific people. If you are promoting a weight loss product instead of using weight loss product as one of your keywords, use “effective weight loss system”. You might want to use quotes around your keywords otherwise it will attract random clicks.

#3) Free Traffic – There are more then just paid forms of advertising to attract potential customers. Using social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, or personal or public blogs and forums can attract hundreds of potential customers to any product you wish to promote. Another place you can promote is through classified ads in both local papers and online. You could even put fliers on windshields. It sounds old fashioned but it still is pretty effective and costs relatively nothing.

#4) Commitment – One fatal move that most new affiliates make is giving up after their first mistake. To succeed as an affiliate marketer you need to be able to analyze your mistakes and improve your methods. Most marketers, however, just give up after one or two failures. Those people that end up failing and quitting are abandoning the opportunity of a lifetime. Thousands of people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year through affiliate marketing then through their jobs alone. The market is there, you just have to be driven enough to stay the course.

About the Author:

I wasted tons on make money online scams. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Read these reviews of three make money online systems that really work!