If you’re making any of the affiliate marketing mistakes mentioned in this blog post, it could be holding you back from being as successful as you desire.
Affiliate marketing is a business model where you promote products that you do not own. By exposing advertisers to new audiences that they may not have reached with the right message, you set yourself up to make commissions paid on any sales you convert.
One of the benefits of starting an affiliate marketing business is that it has a low barrier of entry. You can start with little to no money. This ease of entry means that just about anyone can start doing affiliate marketing.
In doing so, some beginners to affiliate marketing look at the opportunity in different ways, taking different paths and different actions. As a result, some affiliates will struggle for years before seeing any success or quit when their expected goals aren’t met and some will start seeing success at a much faster rate.
Here are 11 costly affiliate marketing mistakes that may explain the difference between those that fail and the successful affiliates.
1. Not Seeking Expert Training
“How to learn affiliate marketing for free” is a very popular search term where people are trying to learn how to do affiliate marketing without having to pay.
Sure, you can learn how to do some stuff using YouTube or by reading tutorials on blogs but you need expert, structured courses and guidance to learn how to do affiliate marketing the right way.
And, while there are free courses available, most of the best affiliate marketing training courses cost money. They are taught be experts who have used the same methods they teach to build successful affiliate websites.
Seeking out expert training can help you understand affiliate marketing at a much faster rate and help you to succeed faster than others who don’t. It doesn’t matter your level of experience either. There is always something to learn whether you’re a beginner or an advanced marketer.
2. Setting Unrealistic Goals
A common mistake some persons make is setting unrealistic goals. They expect to be making thousands in a short space of time even if they don’t fully understand what they’re doing as yet.
It’s the reason why “get rich quick” scams exist – to exploit these unrealistic expectations. Most people quit when they aren’t getting the results that they were promised.
Making money with affiliate marketing takes time. You’ll need to understand how building a website works and how to gradually build traffic from creating content.
Setting goals that you can realistically achieve within a reasonable time-frame. One popular training course called Project 24 only charges yearly fees to give their students a fair chance of achieving the course objective – to earn a full-time income from affiliate marketing within a 24-month period.
3. Lack of Research
Lack of research is another mistake that can hinder the success of affiliate marketers. The importance of conducting thorough research to understand the market, your target audience, and the products or services you’re promoting cannot be understated.
Here are some key areas where research is often overlooked:
Keywords and User Intent
Keywords are the words or phrases people use when searching for information online. Many beginners do not thoroughly understand how to do keyword research to find keywords that they can rank for nor do they do enough research to see if they can compete with what’s already ranking.
Understanding user intent, or the reason behind a search, is also vital. This involves knowing what your audience is looking for when they use specific keywords. For example, are they looking for information, comparisons, or are they ready to purchase?
Product Research
Not thoroughly researching a product or service before promoting it is another common affiliate mistake. Before promoting you should make sure that you understand the product features, benefits, target audience, and unique selling points.
You should also consider the product’s reputation, customer reviews and any potential issues or limitations.
Not thoroughly researching products can cost your own reputation and you may end up getting refunds instead of a check if your chosen product doesn’t sit well with your audience.
Competition Analysis
Analyzing your competitors can provide valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not in your niche. This involves identifying your main competitors, understanding their strategies, and determining their strengths and weaknesses. This information can help you differentiate yourself and find unique angles to promote products or services.
By conducting thorough research in these areas, affiliate marketers can better understand their target audience, identify lucrative opportunities, and create more effective marketing campaigns. This, in turn, can lead to higher conversions and increased earnings.
4. Not Having a Website
Even if you decide to start out with a non-website strategy like promoting affiliate products with a YouTube channel or using social networks like Instagram or Facebook, you really will need a website at some point.
You need your own asset where you can operate by your own rules. Building an affiliate marketing business on someone else’s property is risky. If they change the rules tomorrow, it could change the results you were having before. Not being in control can be costly.
Having a website can give you the flexibility to do additional promotions and enable you to scale affiliate campaigns. Plus, most affiliate networks require that you have at least one functional website.
In 2024, it is pretty easy to get a website up and running for the cost of a domain name and shared web hosting. WordPress is the most used application for building a website and you can get your website going most of the times in a couple of clicks.
5. Ignoring Legal & Disclosure Requirements
If you’re recommending products, which is essentially the role of affiliate marketers, then the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) requires that you disclose your affiliate relationship clearly.
Perhaps, you’re seen short notices on blogs stating that the website is user-supported and they may earn commissions if you purchase through their links. This is an example of disclosing your affiliate relationships.
Failure to disclose can get you into trouble and most advertisers encourage disclosure by affiliates as part of their terms. Not adhering to an advertiser’s terms can also cause them to suspend you from their affiliate program.
Some affiliates think that disclosure isn’t that important and ignore it but this could potential result in fines and penalties as well as a damaged reputation.
There are other legal requirements that need to be disclosed other than the FTC affiliate disclosure depending on where you’re doing business or where your website traffic is coming from.
6. Relying Solely on One Traffic Source
Relying solely on one traffic source can be risky for affiliate marketers. When you depend on just one source, like social media, paid ads, or even just SEO traffic, your entire business is at the mercy of that platform. If the platform changes its policies or algorithms, your traffic could drop suddenly, leading to a significant loss of income.
By diversifying your traffic sources, you can spread out the risk and ensure that your business isn’t overly dependent on a single platform. This might include using multiple social media channels, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and other strategies to attract visitors.
Additionally, different traffic sources can attract different types of visitors. By diversifying, you can reach a broader audience and increase your chances of converting visitors into customers.
Overall, relying solely on one traffic source is a mistake because it leaves your business vulnerable to sudden changes and limits your ability to reach a diverse audience. By using different traffic sources, you can reduce risk and increase your chances of long-term success as an affiliate marketer.
7. Lack of Authentic Content
A few weeks ago, I saw one super-affiliate marketer telling his followers to use a shady AI trick. This tactic was so shady, it could possible get someone into legal trouble but it would undoubtedly work on unsuspecting audiences.
Do not make the mistake of using misleading tactics. They may give you short term gains but in the long run, only serve to damage your reputation.
Instead focus on what works in the long run. Honest, high-quality, and creative content will do more for you and your personal brand than some fly-by-night strategy to get some quick sales.
Any reputable advertiser worth promoting will probably drop you from their affiliate program and reverse any commissions made if they find you misrepresenting their brand.
8. Not Fully Understanding Products
Some affiliates make the mistake of not fully understanding the products that they promote. They just grab an affiliate link, read the sales page and write a review.
Affiliate marketing is the business of promoting other people’s products but you need to treat every product that you promote as if it were your own. Get to know the product by purchasing and using the product yourself. This gives you the best insights and you can write about it from experience.
Also, getting to know the product as best as you can will allow you to effectively highlight all of its unique selling points.
Maybe you don’t have the budget to buy every product you plan to promote and that is understandable. Many products, especially SaaS, allow you to sign up with a free trial. You can take the trial and use it for the trial period. Other products have a demo and if it’s a physical product, maybe you can go to a store and ask a sales-person to show you how it works.
If you’re going to write about a product, get to know it inside-out and definitely do your research (see #2).
9. Ignoring SEO Best Practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving targeted organic traffic to your affiliate website. Ignoring SEO best practices can lead to poor search engine rankings and less visibility.
Things like site speed, canonical urls, frequently updating existing content, image optimization, and internal linking are some aspects of SEO that are often ignored.
Affiliates who want to compete for even the less difficult keywords need to make sure they’re following and applying SEO best practices. Two great SEO bloggers who I follow to help me keep up with SEO stuff are Matt Diggity and Matthew Woodward.
10. Ignoring the Potential of Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that will be relevant long after it is published. Most affiliates who publish content make the mistake of just hitting the publish button and then forgetting about this piece of content.
Even though the content may be relevant for a long time, this doesn’t mean that it cannot be updated with new info. In fact, regularly updating your content will update regularly, link to your content will help to maintain it’s relevance and its SEO effectiveness.
This could mean adding new info, deleting outdated sections, adding links and refining the layout (maybe add a table, video or list). You should also try to link to new posts you make on your website and also link to your evergreen content.
11. Failing To Stay Current with Market Trends
Can you imagine not using artificial intelligence and AI technology in 2024 to assist with some of your affiliate marketing tasks?
Some affiliates fail to stay current with market trends in the ever-changing affiliate marketing landscape. This results in them falling behind while everyone around them advances.
AI technology can help with tasks such as writing content, outlining posts, generating images for your posts, creating ads, and much more. It can help save time and make your output more efficient – as long as you’re not being totally dependent but using the technology for assistance.
And there are more market trends to keep up with than just AI.
One of the ways you could stay up-to-date is to be a part of an affiliate marketing community. Someone is always going to mention new developments and have discussions about them. This is how I learned about Twitter many years ago before it became mainstream.
Conclusion
These 11 affiliate mistakes are very common and affect the outcome of your efforts. By avoiding them, you can change your rate of success for the better.
Maybe you’re not making them all but the ones that you’re making are easy to fix. Fix them and you should see a more positive improvement in your results.
