Avoid Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes in 2020

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

I fell flat on my face the first time I tried affiliate marketing-and learned so much! I'll share the four major mistakes and traps you need to look out for in this chapter.

Affiliate Marketing: it’s easy to do—but mostly done the wrong way. Anyone can take hold of a hyperlink and sell it from behind the scenes. But a success affiliate advertising that delivers fee for you and your target market in the long time period? That takes paintings.

It additionally way knowing what not to do.

We’ve included how affiliate advertising and marketing works in Chapter 1, how to get began in Chapter 2, and my top suggestions for succeeding with associate marketing in Chapter 3.

Now, I’d like to provide you a few perception into what to keep away from with regards to associate advertising.

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

I’ll start by means of sharing with you what took place to me the first time I ever tried affiliate marketing—and what I learned when I fell flat on my face. Then, I’ll come up with the 4 essential associate advertising mistakes and traps you want to look out for as you’re getting commenced in your journey.

Here’s what to expect in this chapter:

1. My $300 Affiliate Marketing Mistake
2. A Wake-Up Call for Doing Affiliate Marketing the Right Way
3. The Four Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
4. Serve First to Succeed with Affiliate Marketing

My $469 Affiliate Marketing Mistake

First, permit me inform you the story of my $300 associate advertising mistake.

It turned into 2008. I had just been laid off from my job within the structure industry. In the months main as much as my layoff, I have been experimenting in online enterprise with my first actual attempt, GreenExamAcademy.Com.

As I become building Green Exam Academy to help others within the architecture industry pass the LEED Exam, I observed affiliate advertising and found out how others had been making money with it.

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

So I signed up for an affiliate community and I picked a product I felt could be k for my target audience and were given an affiliate link. (I didn’t absolutely realize if it'd be k—unfortunately, that wouldn’t end up clear till later.) I installation a Google AdWords account to begin advertising it, and created my first ad. In the advert, I drove humans to click on the affiliate hyperlink for the product I was advertising and marketing.

A couple hours after publishing the advert, I saw that it already had a few hundred impressions—i.E., views via a visitor. Not bad! After a few more hours, it changed into over a thousand impressions. But how many clicks had the ad gotten? Zilch, nada, none. I waited and waited till I ultimately got my first click on, but that character didn’t end up buying the product.

I had spent $300 on a pair dozen clicks, and those clicks had amounted to 0 sales.

I commenced thinking about the ones clicks, and the humans on the alternative give up of them. Who have been they? What forced them to click on?

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

At that time, I turned into a terrible marketer and copywriter—but that wasn’t the most important issue. What I realized after a brief whilst became that there changed into absolutely no manner for me to recognize the solution to those questions on who turned into clicking on my advert or why. I had created an advert based totally on a product I didn’t understand inner and out. I hadn’t spent the time learning the product and knowledge how it is able to serve my audience. And via failing to do this, I was failing myself and my target market (small, on the time) who counted on me. I had left them at the back of while I panned for gold in the incorrect place.

A Wake-Up Call for Doing Affiliate Marketing the Right Way

My $three hundred mistake become a wake-up call. I determined right then and there I wasn’t going to do that ever again. I discovered how critical courting constructing is to powerful affiliate advertising. My gaining knowledge of process could keep from there, of course, however the constructing blocks were set.

Affiliate marketing isn’t a short, impersonal aspect. It’s the exact contrary. You need to begin from an proper place. Affiliate advertising is set fostering genuine long-time period relationships with humans you consider, products you love, and agencies that align with you and your philosophies. And except you simply understand the product, have used it effectively for yourself, and may prove that to your target audience, you may’t assume others to just take your phrase for it.

Any healthy dating takes time to construct and a high-quality deal of agree with. And that’s what we need to awareness on in our affiliate advertising relationships. Too frequently, I see human beings losing time and energy selling products beneath the guise of associate advertising and marketing while ignoring the courting component of things. But affiliate advertising should be a natural extension of your true efforts to build and serve an target audience—now not a tack-on just to make a little extra cash.

The Four Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

On the spectrum of affiliate advertising mistakes, my $three hundred mistake wasn’t too serious. You can chalk that one as much as a beginner’s lack of excellent judgment or revel in.

But there’s a bigger photo right here we want to talk approximately too. Like the whole lot, associate advertising has its wonderful and negative sides. And in fact, for a protracted time—and specifically after I first commenced out in online commercial enterprise lower back in 2008—affiliate advertising has had a terrible connotation. I’ve made it part of my mission to reveal that associate marketing may be carried out in a legit way, one where all people may be a winner. But at the identical time, because associate marketing is technically smooth to do, it’s smooth to fall into an aggressive, profits-first method as opposed to one centered round serving your audience.

Affiliate Marketing

I need you to be aware of how associate advertising can be abused, or how your efforts can be derailed. My intent isn’t to fear or scare you from happening the affiliate marketing route, because it could be a wonderful possibility if executed the proper manner—however I do want to arm you with know-how approximately the traps to look out for as you build your associate advertising commercial enterprise.

I feel it’s my obligation to show you the way to do associate advertising and marketing proper—and that consists of understanding how no longer to do it.

Whether you’ve simply began mastering approximately associate advertising, or you’re already promoting other people’s merchandise thru associate links and need to make certain you’re going about it the right way, I’m going to percentage with you 4 guidelines to keep in thoughts in heading off the dark facet of associate advertising and marketing.

These are the 4 largest traps to look out for, so that you have a fair greater hazard to be triumphant with this powerful tool that permit you to better serve your target market, generate an earnings, and construct relationships with the owners of the products you’re promoting.

The four biggest affiliate marketing mistakes:

1. Promoting a product that doesn’t make sense for your target audience.
2. Not retaining an eye on the first-class of your audience’s enjoy.
3. Not being honest about a product or promotion.
4. Earning all of your profits from Affiliate marketing.

Okay. Let’s talk approximately these 4 risks you need to appearance out for to your affiliate advertising and marketing journey.

1. PROMOTING A PRODUCT THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE.

Perhaps the most important associate marketing mistake people make isn't always promoting a product that simply makes experience for his or her target audience. This often occurs when a person takes an profits-first approach as opposed to a serving-first one. You must search for answers that can assist your target market—whether or not there’s an affiliate opportunity there or no longer. If there occurs to be one, exquisite. That’s a bonus. If there isn’t, however you know the product ought to nevertheless be useful to your target market, it’s your responsibility to percentage it with them.

Since my logo is targeted on helping human beings build a hit online agencies ethically, the goods and offerings I sell are all things that aid this consciousness: I suggest services that assist humans host their website (Bluehost), begin an e-mail listing (ConvertKit), plan their editorial calendar (CoSchedule); audio and video gear to create excellent content; and books and courses, each mine and others, to help human beings analyze and enhance their skills. Most of these are things I advocate as an associate—however a very good wide variety of them are not. Even if I can’t shape an associate courting with a enterprise, if their product is the excellent one for my target market, I’m going to recommend it.

As your brand grows and you start to build an target market, you’re going to get noticed. The affiliate advertising possibilities will start to trickle in, as corporations see the visitors you’re getting and the agree with human beings are putting in your logo.

These organizations will additionally understand you’re a person who can doubtlessly be swayed with the aid of a fee.

Sometimes, they’ll provide you payments for surely sending them leads, because it’s essentially smooth marketing for them. They realize how tons money they want to spend, and how many leads they need to collect, to transform a sure percentage of them to customers. Either way, as you grow, you’re going to observe an increased range of the ones forms of inquiries—many from corporations you’ve never even heard of earlier than.

At the begin of my online business journey, each couple months I’d get an offer from a different organization saying, “Hey, we have this new product. We suppose your target market would like it. Promote it to your target market and we’ll give you $seventy five for each person you ship our manner.”

I implore you, please: do not be persuaded by using the greenback cost of the commissions you’ll be offered.

Sometimes when a new company reaches out to me with an affiliate provide, I’ll take a look at the product and comprehend it’s obviously not a suit for my target market. In the ones cases, it’s easy to say, “No, thanks.” But while you’re simply starting out, the promise of a commission can make it hard to see matters clearly. You would possibly think, “Wow, this opportunity is in the front of me right now. Maybe I must say sure. What harm ought to it do?”

The damage it may do is doubtlessly large: the destruction of the consider you’ve worked tough to construct together with your target market.

Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

That’s why my advice is to live on the safe facet via always supplying and recommending products you’ve used before and apprehend, so that you understand exactly the form of enjoy humans can have with them. You must additionally get to recognise the business enterprise itself, and preferably have a personal courting with a person in a leadership position there. That way, you can be certain that the enterprise in the back of the product you’re selling is one that will deal with your people.

Again, be careful. Often agencies will attain out to you based on a easy algorithm—in case you’ve reached a sure threshold of social media followers, for instance, they’ll send you a message asking if they are able to pay to get in the front of your target audience. You may additionally have even heard of these products, and recognize they have got a terrific reputation. Sometimes those merchandise may virtually be a wonderful fit. Still, don’t right away say yes to the opportunity. You want to be privy to this, due to the fact the vultures begin to come out at a certain factor as soon as you start to gain a few notoriety in a space.

In the early days, I’d get associate inquiries from corporations each couple months. Now, almost each day, I get emails from businesses I’ve in no way heard of that need to get in front of my target market. The nature of those offers also ranges greater widely now, probably because my target audience is an awful lot larger.

For instance, I every now and then get offers from monetary planning companies to get in front of my target audience for tens of hundreds of greenbacks. But it’s no longer in my exceptional interest to mention yes, due to the fact even though the ones offerings might assist my target audience, economic planning isn’t what my logo is about. Bombarding my target audience and saturating my brand with stuff that doesn’t healthy could dilute the brand and confuse human beings’s perception of what I stand for. I don’t need to provide my audience economic planning help to help them the great manner I likely can. There are plenty of terrific brands out there that target monetary making plans, however it’s not my realm.

Recognise you've got a choice, and that it’s k to say no. Opportunities will come your manner, but your priority ought to be to shield your brand and your reputation. Choose wisely.

2. NOT KEEPING YOUR EYE ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR AUDIENCE’S EXPERIENCE.

This next one is similar to #1, but it has extra to do with how matters can change after you start selling what appears to be a tremendous product that you recognise is a good suit for your target audience.

Let’s say you lately began promoting a brand new product, and it’s working out well. Everybody’s glad—you, your target audience, and the corporation. But then the business enterprise gets sold out, and new management takes over. This creates a ripple via the entire employer, affecting your audience’s purchaser guide revel in with the product.



Sound unlikely? It’s befell to me earlier than, with the internet web hosting company Bluehost.

I nevertheless endorse Bluehost, and in fact, they’ve been one in every of my pinnacle associates over the years. But it hasn’t usually been a clean road.

I started out recommending Bluehost in 2009, and was quickly making a few thousand greenbacks a month from affiliate promotions. Even higher, the company changed into taking remarkable care of my audience. Everyone changed into glad. The next year, my monthly income persisted to develop into the five-digit range. Things have been looking proper.

But then in 2013, I started getting a few emails from individuals who weren’t too satisfied with Bluehost’s patron help, mainly once they had troubles with the service.

The following year, matters got a little better—the poor emails dropped off—however then they got worse again.

Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

At that factor, I began to truly pay attention. I determined to fly out to Utah to satisfy with the employer and percentage my worries with them directly. I met with the founders and told them, “Hey, this isn't always ok. This can’t occur.”

The Bluehost crew informed me they have been privy to the problems, and that they had been making modifications to deal with them. I said, “Okay, however these adjustments need to occur now.” Of course, with a massive organisation like that, I understood changes can take time, but I desired to do as a lot as I could to transport them along.

Thankfully, the Bluehost group took my phrases to heart and put together an movement plan to cope with the issues. They also agreed to permit me offer my audience a unique connection to a purchaser guide individual who may want to take care of them greater speedy than the enterprise’s traditional assist channel.

During my go to to Bluehost headquarters, I also kept in contact with my target market approximately how my meeting changed into going, and what the Bluehost crew become doing to improve things. I despatched an email to my list about what was happening all through my visit, and wrote about the revel in in my May 2016 Income Report.

Pat visits Bluehost

Although this sort of situation might not occur with each business enterprise you associate with as an affiliate, you have to be open to it. Companies grow and evolve, and people come and pass. You can’t expect that if things are going well, they continually will.

The lesson here, especially for affiliate relationships you’d like to maintain for the long time period, is to keep near tabs on your target audience’s revel in with the product. In addition, you need to cultivate relationships with the product proprietors, so they understand how important your target market’s revel in with the product is to all of us involved. In an excellent world, your target market’s experience with a product should best enhance over time—but if it’s going within the opposite direction, you’ll need to act to make things right, and having an immediate line to the business enterprise leadership makes it less complicated to do that.

Affiliate Marketing

You additionally want to have a backup plan. Right now, I’m definitely comfortable selling Bluehost, especially knowing they have a patron assist person I can send humans to when matters go incorrect. But there’s a factor at which, if things had been to head badly again, I’d consider selling a different web hosting provider. Most of my audience continues to be having an awesome revel in with Bluehost, however it’s important to stay aware and be prepared if matters need to exchange.

3. NOT BEING HONEST ABOUT A PRODUCT OR PROMOTION.

When I advise merchandise, I’m usually very honest approximately what the product can and can’t do. But I’ve been on the opposite stop of this earlier than—and now not in an excellent manner. I won’t call names or products, but let’s simply say I’ve been advocated merchandise that came with sure promises, guarantees that didn’t come to fruition. These were merchandise that, rapidly after I began the use of them, I found out they weren’t in any respect what I‘d expected.

When you’re selling your associate products, you want to ensure you put the proper expectancies for your audience. Otherwise, what occurs? You lose the believe of the character to whom you encouraged that product.

In one case, someone I knew and regarded up to endorsed a software tool to me. His recommendation also came with some lofty claims of the way the device should help me. I ended up shopping for the software based on his advice. But what I speedy discovered was that so that you can take advantage of the capabilities I was promised, I would have needed to pay greater—more than five times the price I turned into paying already.

Needless to say, I wasn’t satisfied about this. I shared my frustration with the character who’d endorsed the device to me, and he apologized. It was an oversight on his part, and we’re nonetheless on desirable terms nowadays.

Our story turned out okay—but this won’t always be the case in case you’re no longer totally sincere and upfront along with your target market approximately the associate merchandise you promote.

You need to be cautious, due to the fact in case you make a mistake that skews your target market’s expectations, you may lose them for properly. You want to be absolutely honest approximately what a product can and might’t do, and make certain you’re not recommending it to a person who’s not a great healthy for it.



What in case you find yourself in a tricky state of affairs in which you’ve promoted a product to your target audience, then found out later that it wasn’t what you thought it turned into? Thankfully, I actually have a unique “rule” that comes in reachable here. I call it the eight Mile Rule.

[SPOILER ALERT] If you’ve by no means seen the film eight Mile, Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem), performs the major character, a rapper named B-Rabbit. In the finale, B-Rabbit faces off towards another rapper in a massive rap struggle. B-Rabbit decides to rap about all of the bizarre matters approximately himself, matters his opponent might in all likelihood name him out for in his rap. Why does he do this? By calling himself out first, he leaves his opponent without any ammunition to use against him.

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes in 2020

Do you see in which I’m going with this? When you’re promoting an affiliate product, take the eight Mile method. If some thing goes wrong, be the primary one to say some thing. If you make a mistake, personal up to it. Perhaps you endorsed a product you found out wasn’t an awesome suit for your target audience. The quicker you may say, “I’m sorry. That product wasn’t the proper suit for you. I desire you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and stick round,” the much more likely your target audience will be to do this.

Eminem 8-mile
In 8 Mile, Eminem’s person B-Rabbit wins the large rap battle by means of rapping about his personal weaknesses earlier than his opponent can. You can use the equal approach in affiliate marketing to earn people’s trust.
This rule is accessible for a variety of other regions of your enterprise, too. It’s all about taking possession and being sincere and forthright. This is not usually smooth to do, but always the right element to do.

Being honest fosters consider, even though the situations aren’t completely favorable. And if you’re being sincere and serving your target audience in a manner that’s treasured to them, they’ll frequently soar at the hazard to help you returned. This is in which the regulation of reciprocity comes in—when you do some thing helpful for a person, they regularly sense forced to do something for you in return—and affiliate advertising may be an top notch way to give your audience a manner to pay you returned.

So while you tell people upfront, “Hey, you already know what? This is a product I’m selling as an affiliate, so I get a fee in case you undergo that hyperlink,” I assure a number of those humans may be excited by using the possibility to click on on that link. There are human beings available you’ve served who are looking for approaches to pay you lower back. So make it smooth for them.

4. EARNING ALL OF YOUR INCOME FROM AFFILIATE MARKETING OR TREATING IT LIKE A GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME.

This leads me to my very last factor related to the dark aspect of associate marketing. That is, you don’t want all of your profits to return from affiliate advertising and marketing. Back when I began out—and this is nonetheless real these days in some spaces—a lot human beings have been doing associate advertising and marketing via running promotions, no longer through a emblem they’d created or believe they’d earned from an target audience, however by the usage of copywriting, targeting, and marketing techniques to get people to click on on associate links.

Remember my $469 hundred mistake?

Before I ran that fated advert, I signed up with an affiliate advertising and marketing network (extra on those in Chapter 7). This is basically a website that allows you to sign up and pick out from a large range of products you may promote. Once you select a product, you get a hyperlink you could proportion with as many people as possible. Because most those who go this route don’t already have a emblem established, they should motel to advertising and marketing—such things as Google Adwords—to get their link in front of humans.

Unfortunately, there are several matters incorrect with this model. As you learned from my $300 mistake, if you just throw a link up there hoping it’ll do all the work for you—well, it won’t. That’s not to say that you may’t make cash with this sort of affiliate advertising. You can, if you go about it smartly.

But there are still two important approaches you can cross wrong with this model. First, as quickly as you prevent putting effort into it, the profits stops flowing. It’s now not passive. Second, as it doesn’t require you to build a logo, it way it’s no longer particular to you. Just about everyone could leapfrog you in the event that they master the copywriting and targeting required to be successful with it.

As a result, this kind of associate advertising can come to be a totally frightening game to play.

That’s why I advise instead that you make the effort to build your very own emblem and develop an target market you can serve. Build that target audience’s accept as true with in you as the move-to resource in your area of expertise, now not just someone they don’t realize who’s best serving them ads.

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

This is on the coronary heart of the way I teach online commercial enterprise: to assist people turn out to be diagnosed for his or her efforts in serving an audience, whether or not that’s thru growing their very own merchandise, blogging, podcasting, building bodily merchandise, or affiliate advertising and marketing.

Screenshot affiliate networks
There are lots of associate networks that allow you to fast and without problems get started out with associate marketing—however no longer always build a lasting logo or an audience you could serve.
Focus on building your emblem and serving an target audience. When you're making this your primary aim, you’ll locate you have got plenty of options to make cash—with associate advertising and marketing being simply certainly one of those options.

Think approximately it this way: With whatever path you pick out to generate an earnings, make certain you supply the human beings you serve a way to thank you. If you’re now not thanked for the products you’re selling, you’re doing associate advertising incorrect.

In episode 9 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, writer and online commercial enterprise consultant Nicole Dean shared one of the most memorable rates from the masses of interviews I’ve finished. She told me the motto of her business was “to make the web and the arena a better place.” And while you method your business like that, it trickles down to the whole lot you do. It impacts how you market it and promote. It affects how you have interaction with people. It facilitates you look beyond strategies and tactics, like affiliate advertising, and live targeted on the most critical factor: making things higher for others. So supply your audience a purpose to thank you, and the (affiliate) earnings will drift in.

Serve First to Succeed with Affiliate Marketing

As you’ve seen in this chapter, there's a darker facet to affiliate advertising. But in case you know what to appearance out for, you could keep away from falling into the commonplace traps and errors that befall so many aspiring affiliate marketers. As a reminder, here are the four keys to staying inside the “plus” column along with your affiliate advertising and marketing:

Avoiding Doing These Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Being cautious to promote only products that make feel for your target audience
Keeping tabs for your target market’s experience together with your affiliate products
Being honest and forthright approximately the products you sell
Not depending totally on associate advertising or the usage of it as an impersonal, get-rich-brief scheme

Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Use these four keys as your guiding light, and you’ll be able to make the maximum of this powerful tool that lets in you to tap into the incredible array merchandise, services, and tools available that can assist your target audience succeed.