Most Common Bloopers in Affiliate Marketing

Owners of the most advanced online stores won’t accept lying to their customers, one of the ways to expand market share and increase sales is affiliate marketing programs. It is estimated that the daily turnover in the field of online sales is $1,000,000 and there more and more professional webmasters every day. The main advantage of this method is that you pay for the result you need.

Affiliate program is a universal method to generate more leads. You can do it by using your own website as an advertising platform, by selling your web space to advertisers. The second way is that you can rent a banner space on other websites and place your ads there, or even in the signatures on the forums.

Affiliate programs may be single-level when you earn money from every lead who followed your link.

Or it can be multi-level.

For example, you can earn money not only from selling goods or services, but also receive a percentage from sales of those people who became partners under your affiliate link and sell the same product by their connections.

What are the most usual types of affiliate programs for online stores?

Types of Affiliate Programs

Pay per click

There is an affiliate code on the site under the advertising form, which, pours money right into your pocket every time people click it. These include teaser and context ads, Sliders banners, Pop-ups, Click under and push-notifications.

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Pay for impressions

The principle is similar to the previous one, but in this case, each time the ad unit is displayed, you gain a certain amount of money to your affiliate account. This type includes Iframe affiliate programs, programs that work with the Rich-media format and banners.

Percentage of sales

Such affiliate programs are more suitable for information products. In this case, you get a unique link which you can spread by whatever means. Each sale brings income to the product owner and therefore your personal margin (or percent depending on affiliate program).

When you’re working in an affiliate program, you often face obstacles and difficulties. That is why it can be problematic to solve situations when you do not earn the prospected amount of money.

So read this “5 common mistakes every affiliate makes” carefully and CUT YOUR LOSSES.

The following discussion thus turns to most common affiliate marketing mistakes:

Forgetting to provide regular and high-quality content

Networks regularly demand fresh, unspoiled & relevant information. The most efficient and result-bringing way to promote an online business is to create a blog or another area where you can publish high-prime content. It is a long-term strategy: it doesn’t pay off overnight. But every entrepreneur should appreciate the power of this method in online marketing.

Creating a proper information blog or website, posting relevant materials in diverse niches will help to enhance customer awareness and increase the number of leads, which can be afterward converted to real customers.

Characteristics of high-quality content:

• Designate a clear goal in your content. Bring the meta tags, title, and structure of the text to a single whole. The material that tells first about the fish, and then sharply goes for the tomatoes will not be in demand and cannot be defined as high-quality content. The disclosure of one subject throughout the site is considered to be the production of exclusive content.
• The user should get benefit from the material presented in a blog, a group in social networks or a personal page. No matter, which motivation means you will choose - discount, money motivation or greater awareness of the product itself.
• The content must be credible. Trust - the first reason that encourages people to read, follow links, test and buy your product, etc. It is quite simple to make your content trustworthy. To achieve such an effect, you should not just rewrite someone else's material, but you better reinforce knowledge from different sources, for example, experiments and statistics. It is called a professional approach and inspires confidence. The more trust you have, the more chances they get back to you.
• Use the catchy headline to increase reader interest. The bottom line is that each of your materials should evoke emotion - rhetorical question, call to action and so on.
• Write a cool lead (introductory paragraph), which wakens customer interest and willing to read the topic from the very beginning to the end.
• Avoid too long and complicated texts. Better add to such fragments some thematic photos, videos, and GIFs. This will give users a visual discharge that allows them to expand their knowledge of the content and product itself.

At least 2 high-quality articles should appear on the blog each week. Our TemplateMonster team is ready to provide you with the timeliness and content.

2. Forgetting to notify customers about discounts

For current buyers, the social network is no longer a simple way to communicate. Besides, people consider such platforms as one of the best tools for exploring new goods and services for all occasions, buy and use them. Users and prospect clients constantly subscribe to those groups or accounts, which provide the most relevant, helpful, entertaining and moving content.

Everyone loves and enjoys discounts, contests, promotions. So, share this information with all your readers and get high-level feedback.

All the detailed information about promotions can always be found on our blog and social networks.

You can build a dialogue with your subscribers and vendors, in order to draw attention to existing products. Tell about new products. Start discussion where a desire to win will increase activity and attendance of the subscribers as a consequence leading to better indexation and more shows of your page or blog.

3. Not adding affiliate tracking parameters

Affiliate parameter must be added to all links, in order to understand your customers and understand the productivity of your post and ads.

4. DON’T LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMER

If you struggle to create long-term relations you should never lie to your reader or subscriber, you always have to be honest and tell all the info as it is. You must describe all the information and parameters that the client may need to know, otherwise you can lose trust with the customer and get a bad reputation. And finally, a customer may leave and never come back. 86 % of buyers will pay more for better customer experience. Namely, this small remark can save you from negative consequences and unnecessary questions from angry vendors.

5. NEVER Store all eggs in one basket (NEVER Use only one affiliate tool)

TemplateMonster affiliate program offers many partner tools (articles, videos, banners, widgets, RMS, promotional news and much more) and individual support to each affiliate. Each tool has a different degree of influence on sales and customer interest.

Therefore, it is impossible to stand still; you should always continue to learn, experiment and open new horizons.

When online trading appeared, it became clear to the owners that even without looking at the very low overhead costs for the sale of goods, in order to get real profit, you need to reach a certain level of sales. Even though the reach of the online store’s audience can be very large (any user of the network can become a buyer), competition still remains high. Therefore, there is a task to attract customers to your store

We have tried to solve and prevent the most common mistakes, and if you have questions or suggestions, you can always contact your manager of the TemplateMonster partner program.

Moreover, if you are a TemplateMonster Author who also participates in the affiliate program and promotes our items to your audience, you can reach up to 95%.

6. Not devoting time to learning

 Affiliate marketing mistakes that are not unique to beginners. At first, it is worth giving theory, at least no less time and attention than practice.

Dive into your niche:

• read books;
• study the offers of affiliate programs;
• follow the trends of the market in which you work;
• communicate in thematic circles;
• subscribe to mailing lists, blogs, and Telegram channels of experts.

Do not forget that other webmasters have already gone through the path you have chosen. And therefore, it is worth studying real cases and debriefing.

7. Trying to do everything yourself

Not only beginners but also specialists with solid experience and a full hand often ignore the availability of a significant bonus from affiliate programs. Namely — the possibility of fruitful cooperation with a personal manager.

For some reason, most people think that account managers are unable to help. This is not at all the case. Judge for yourself; support agents are directly interested in making sure you succeed.

Often their earnings are directly related to your profitability. At the same time, they constantly work in a niche and see typical affiliate marketing mistakes of other specialists. You can negotiate with them about raising the rate, using various tools and techniques.

8. Try to sell the offer, not solve the consumer problem 

This is a typical mistake in CPA marketing, which arises from a rash desire to make money quickly. A marketer creates a technical specification for a copywriter, and he writes directly to users that this is exactly what you need here and now, without registration and SMS, etc. Newbies commonly affiliate marketing mistakes are that they think that the more links and Buy Now buttons, the faster they'll get to lead. In practice, it turns out that everything develops in a diametrically opposite way. Today people try to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of a product and who represents it. Trust becomes paramount (to the retailer, manufacturer, brand). And if in some niches consumers order only because they are familiar with goods/services, then in more complex ones - this option will not work.

It would be best if you were as honest as possible. Tell us about the product, its main advantages, and disadvantages, demonstrate it with visual examples, and then the result will pleasantly surprise you.

9. Working with many affiliate programs at once 

Don't rush to connect all offers at once and try a dozen verticals. Affiliate programs will not go anywhere, but your budgets and enthusiasm will very easily exhaust themselves with this approach. When you work in several directions at once, it isn't easy to understand the audience's specifics and develop effective strategies. The emphasis should be on quality, and then the results will be appropriate without any affiliate marketing mistakes. Focus on offers with high bids and conversions. Pay attention to geography, niche expertise, and competition. You have to think through advertising campaigns and pay attention to detail.

10. Not using testing

Many affiliate marketers underestimate the value of tests. But only experimenting and comparing different creative things will help you find out what is effective and what you are just draining your budget with and avoid affiliate marketing mistakes.

It’s important to understand which landing pages work and which combinations of page elements give results.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do:

1. Try different approaches to the target audience (content types).
2. Run several landing pages/ads at once.
3. Check the effectiveness of different elements (descriptions, images, creatives, calls to action).
4. Leave only the most working tools and continue to work with them.

You can create the perfect page from a marketing perspective, but it won’t work for a specific topic. So experiment with content. And most importantly — don’t forget to measure your results!

11. Trying to repeat other people's cases and Work with Unverified Partners.

There are many cases and articles on the network about successful projects with beautiful numbers, examples, and specific offers. But even if you carefully study a particular instance of another affiliate marketer and repeat everything one-to-one, 90% will fail.

And all because a specialist does not take into account time, budgets, expertise, and several other factors. Indeed, the pros rarely reveal working topics.

Cases and various instructions are good tools to understand how a schema can work with specific variables without affiliate marketing mistakes. But you must have your ideas.

Other affiliate programs and networks will often lure you. But you should only trust trusted services that have been working for more than a year and will not disappear tomorrow, along with your income.

And if you still dare to work with the "dark horse," — study the specifics in detail. It often turns out that only one non-obvious parameter crosses out all the other goodies.

Only the one who does nothing is not mistaken. But at the first stage of working with affiliate programs, you can at least avoid the banal mistakes described above. And with proper motivation and work, over time, you will come out to good results!

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes FAQ

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