10 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid for Beginners

Disclosure: CyberNaira content is reader-supported. This means if you make purchases through our affiliate links, we may earned commission but at no additional cost to you. 

A week ago, we discussed a very crucial topic – What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work? If you haven’t read that post, I advise you do so first before going ahead with this one – the ten affiliate marketing mistakes you should avoid.

This will give you a good understanding of affiliate marketing and how it works. Also, it will prevent you from making these mistakes in affiliate marketing.

Mistakes are part of life. We all commit blunders at some point. So don’t hit your head against the wall if you’re guilty of these common mistakes affiliate marketers make.

These are mistakes that have been holding back your success over time.

Suppose you’re conscious of what you’re doing, despite these common affiliate marketing mistakes. You’ll discover the opportunities that come along with it. It only takes an open mind to recognize these treasures that come in disguise.

With Every Failure, Comes an Opportunity

Often, they come in disguise, failure always comes along with more significant opportunities.

So, just like we do make mistakes in real life, the same goes for affiliate marketing failure. Since there is always a beginning to something, every super affiliate marketers you heard of today are once a novice.

They all started somewhere.

I have been doing affiliate marketing for a while.

During this period, I have found myself in a very state of want. Confusion and even wanted to close up on everything concerning affiliate marketing. Every strategy I applied doesn’t take me anywhere good.

After a long marketing journey, apply different affiliate marketing tips and strategies.

Things that have kept me in the dark for so long, I decided to share with you some of those deadly affiliate marketing mistakes I have committed.

I wish you could learn from them so that you can scale years of trial and error.

10 Reasons People Fail at Affiliate Marketing

1. Focusing Too Much on Selling

Your job as an affiliate is not to sell the products but rather, to educate the prospect on the benefits/disadvantages of using the products. Write honest product reviews not intended to make money alone.

I find it very hard to accept the above statement during my early days in affiliate marketing. All I was conveying to the prospect was to sell the product directly with my sales copy.

The more I tried to get good at this marketing strategy, the more I get frustrated because instead of going forward, I can see that am heading nowhere.

The task of selling the product is the duty of the merchant’s website. That’s where the prospect found all the details that sell him the products. Like the product features, functions, benefits, claims, etc.

Please don’t get it mixed up. Selling a product is different from educating prospects about the product’s benefits.

People don’t want to be sold how great a product is by displaying all the fantastic functions/features.

No!

They want to be told how those great product functions/features will enhance their business. How it will help them makes more profits, increase efficiency, and productivity, and helps them scale up faster.

Think about this, if I market to you a WordPress mobile responsive theme and all I told you are:

Hey Jack, this theme is good, made by Studiopress for genesis framework. Mobile responsive, with six layout options to choose from and blah blah blah great colors.

What I only did above is tell you about the theme features.

That’s a good way of selling. But there is a better way to help your prospect make the right decision without appearing as a high-pressure salesperson.

Explain to them why they need to purchase a theme made by Studiopress. Give them reasons why you think Studiopress is a leading developer to trust in the business of WordPress themes.

Don’t just tell them the theme is mobile responsive (Not everyone knows why their blog theme should be mobile-ready). Give your prospect reasons why every website today should go mobile optimized.

You can tell them Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, so webpages need to be more mobile-friendly.

Also, they could be losing traffic if their web pages are not optimized for mobile visitors.

All this information should be available on your sales copy.

No matter how great a product is, it won’t sell if it offers no tangible benefits to users.

2. Not Building an Email List

This one is a beginner’s affiliate marketer’s mistake. It’s okay to make this one mistake in your early days of blogging/internet marketing.

But as soon as possible, start building your email list today. Don’t wait until the right time. You’ll never find the right time because there is nothing like that.

Time will not always be perfect to start something. Just start today and now.

For a successful affiliate marketing business, you’ll need to have access to on-demand traffic. An audience waiting to reach when there is a marketing campaign.

Start building your email list today, and establish good relationships. Communicate with them regularly, and don’t make it only when you pitch product offers.

There are free email services to get started immediately. Mailchimp is an ideal option for beginner marketers. It is free till you reach 2,000 email subscribers.

3. Too Many Affiliate Programs

Possibly, you have been reading that having multiple streams of income is the ideal way to go.

 Yes, that’s true. 

But not so true with having too many affiliate programs to manage.

Stop signing up for every affiliate program for bloggers you see out there. Look for a few high-in-demand affiliate products and do all you can to get the best out of them.

Having too many tasks to handle is one of the biggest obstacles to success in internet marketing.

Sign up for a good affiliate product with a high commission. Put all your resources into promoting it, and the reward will show for itself.

It is never in quantity; it is in the quality of the product and your marketing and how well you can do.

4. Not Testing

Before I started promoting SEO Powersuite, which happens to be one of my most converting affiliate products based on the total income generated from it.

I downloaded and test-run the product to see what it looks like and how it works—the benefits of using it, features, user interface, usability, etc.

I downloaded some videos on YouTube too. This helps to see what others have made out of using it. It also helps in making the right decision if this product is worth promoting or not.

Though, you may not have this type of opportunity with every affiliate product you want to promotes. But it is a good thing always to test run the affiliate product you wish to promote.

Another thing you should always test run is the affiliate links in your copy. This is easy to neglect. But I tell you the truth, don’t ever neglect to test your affiliate links in an email newsletter or your blog post.

Test it, and confirm it leads to the correct webpage destination when users click on it. I have lost potential sales opportunities having broken affiliate links on this blog.

5. Not Tracking Your Progress

One of the biggest mistakes I made is not tracking clicks on my affiliate links. It is like walking blindly and doing things without knowing how you get there.

Seeing those earnings is a good feeling, but knowing how you make those sales makes you a better and wiser affiliate marketer.

If you’re not tracking which affiliate links people clicked the most on your blog? What pages on your blog brought the sales? How many clicks in total?

You’re marketing blindly and will miss out on the opportunity to quickly grow your affiliate revenue.

Most affiliate network programs have tools that allow you to track your affiliate links. Collect relevant data that will help you understand how your affiliate marketing strategies are performing.

Affiliate management plugins like Easy Affiliate Links have a link analysis feature to help you understand how your affiliate link is doing.

This is a helpful tool for affiliate link analysis and tracking.

6. Not Doing Keyword Research

While it is straightforward to choose an affiliate product and start promoting immediately, it’s better to do keyword research properly before choosing an affiliate product.

Nobody wants to spend his time promoting products people are not buying.

One of the strongest factors that lead to affiliate marketing success is promoting products people are already buying.

How to Discover High in-Demand Affiliate Products?

Very simple – keyword research is the answer.

Let’s use SEO Powersuite as an example.

Initially, I never knew about this product, never heard of the name before. I was doing keyword research using Google keyword planner when I stumbled upon a keyword related to search engine optimization tools with high commercial intent.

Then I decided to give this keyword phrase a run. So I headed back to the Google search engine and typed in my proposed keyword; from there, I learned about SEO Powersuite.

I went through a few pages that write about this product in review posts. I was impressed with what I read because mostly, these reviews were from real SEOs/marketers with practical experiences to share.

Next, I head over to the merchant website to find out if they run an affiliate program. Luckily they do through the Shareasale affiliate network program. I joined and am now part of their affiliates.

The rest, as they say…is history.

If you want to succeed in the affiliate marketing business, always do keyword research to know what’s trending and in high demand. So you can ride on the wave of success before it is gone.

7. Not Disclosing Your Affiliate Links

Affiliate marketing is a business of “transparency,” credibility, and trust from your audience. If you’re not disclosing affiliate links in your content, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

Besides, according to federal trade law, disclosing all affiliate links in your copy is mandatory, and the disclosures must not be hidden on the page. Or need users to hover their mouse before it can be seen.

It should be clear, concise, and available on pages with affiliate review posts, links, products, etc. Transparency is what makes Pat Fylnn one of the best affiliate marketers of our time.

8. Promoting ONE-TIME Commission

This may not be a mistake, but it is advised to balance promoting one-time commission and recurring affiliate products.

The one-time commission may give you that BIG paycheck, recurring affiliate commission will earn you consistent income for the lifetime of the customer.

There are good recurring affiliate programs you can sign up with.

Such affiliate programs include:

• Web hosting.
• Membership sites.
• Productivity Software.
• Email marketing services. ETC.

9. Fake it, Till I make It!

This happens mostly to newbie affiliate marketer that has never made a dime online. But they go after promoting make money online affiliate products and services.

You’ll notice this kind of salesperson by their email signature in forums, sales copy, review post, etc. They have no practical examples to show for their income.

All they do is talked about it but will never show it.

Don’t follow in such a step. It is hard to convince people to buy your affiliate product in the make-money-online niches without practical examples to prove you’ve earned from the same program or products yourself.

If you don’t have a case study to tell. You have no earnings to prove.

Don’t make a false claim in your copy. Just talked about the product’s benefits, features, and whatever.

One crucial piece of advice, please, don’t fake your earnings. It will ruin your credibility faster than anything if your audience later knows about it.

10. Not Educating Yourself

Affiliate marketing is a serious business, and you should treat it as such.

There is never an end to learning.

If you’re not upgrading your affiliate marketing knowledge, you won’t make much from it.

There are many good resources on the internet that serve as the go-to for affiliate marketing education.

You can start your education with one of these affiliate marketing blogs below. They offer comprehensive guides and tutorials helpful in improving your knowledge.

6 Affiliate Marketing Blogs to Follow

• Wealthy Affiliate.
• Udemy.
• Affiliorama.
• Smart Passive Income.
• Affiliate Tip.
• Affiliate Marketing Training.

Get started today, and get your affiliate marketing knowledge going in the right direction.

Conclusion…

There is no big deal in making mistakes in life. What matters most is what you make out of those mistakes. Who and what you’ve become from the lessons you’ve learned about life.

So also, in affiliate marketing, there is no big deal in committing these affiliate marketing mistakes. What matters most is how you can use these mistakes to your advantage and strike the best out of the next opportunity that awaits you.

However, I will love it if you share your experience with us in the comment box below.