Common Mistakes Most New Affiliate Marketers Make	Visited: 1634 5.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Joseph Townsend February 24, 2006

An Internet business that makes profit on auto-pilot can be an excellent opportunity. Making money as an affiliate marketer is easy, but making a lot of money is where the real challenge comes in.

You can avoid some common mistakes made by most new affiliate marketers and learn how to select programs that make residual income for many months by simply following the advice in this article.

Through affiliate marketing, you are able to sign up as an affiliate by advertising for certain vendors and earn a percentage of each sale you refer. This creates a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the vendor. The affiliate only refers people to certain websites without the worry of fulfillment and delivery, and the vendor only pays when a sale is made without the extra advertising expenses and upkeep.

Here are some common mistakes most new affiliate marketers make, and reasons why you should avoid them:

1. Sending people directly to a vendor's website.

You spend too much time, effort, and money advertising to send people directly to your vendor's website for a one sale opportunity. If they don't buy you lost the sale and future potential sales. To prevent you from losing your future earning potential send people to an opting page, where you exchange something of value for their email address. By doing this you create a way to follow up with all your potential customers for future offers and sales.

2. Creating a website with too many affiliate links, tons of flashy banners, and all the colors of the rainbow.

Make sure your website is easy on the eyes. You don't want to give a million affiliate options just give honest reviews of your products and services pre-selling your visitors on its benefits to them.

3. Falling victim of affiliate commission theft.

This could be a very big problem if you are not cautious. Although you can't eliminate it completely you can take some steps to minimize it dramatically. You can cloak and redirect. Don't allow your affiliate ids to show in your urls.

It takes the same effort to refer a one-time purchase sale as it takes to refer a residual type sale. With that said, it makes excellent business sense to market as many affiliate programs with recurring commissions as possible.

When selecting affiliate programs with recurring commissions you should consider the stickiness of the services you are promoting.

For example, you refer a sale for a membership website which only offers resale rights to products and nothing else to keep the customer from canceling. People might join, download all the products, and cancel within the same month.

On the other hand, if you refer a sale for an essential service such as web hosting or an auto responder for your customer's business, then you are more likely to retain there business on a monthly recurring basis.

In conclusion, try to avoid common mistakes made by new affiliate marketers by sending your visitors to an opt-in list first, pre-sell them on the product's benefits to them, and avoid affiliate commission theft. Don't forget to look for affiliate programs that have recurring commission potential and research the stickiness of the product or service you recommend. You can try each product and service yourself first to help in your evaluation of each affiliate program.