In the last few years, the level of affiliate marketers and the products available to promote online has exploded. With the addition of hundreds of thousands of new websites every day, more and more opportunities are presenting themselves to make money online.

With a wave of new players in the market, comes many that are inexperienced and are unsure of what they are doing.

Before you start on your journey with affiliate marketing, make sure you don’t fall into the bracket of people making these most simple mistakes.

First and foremost, the most common mistake that is made by any new budding affiliate marketer is rushing into a project.

Let me tell you, I have first-hand experience on how choosing a niche (in a rush to start making money), spending weeks building out a site with great content and then realizing I have made the wrong choice.

Try to avoid this at all costs – a good affiliate marketer will understand the value of proper research when it comes to the products they are promoting and networks they partner with.

TRY TO AVOID THESE COMMON MISTAKES THAT AFFILIATE MARKETERS MAKE:

1. Taking the time to educate

First and foremost, how can you master the art of this business if you are not prepared to put in the time to learn the techniques?

Affiliate marketing is a big moving machine that has many components. From the design of your website to SEO and marketing, sometimes you can avoid the most common trial and error mistakes by watching hundreds of educational videos and resources online.

For someone wanting to learn how to be a successful affiliate marketer, there are more than enough resources online to support that.

2. Not enough research

As stated before, it is so easy to rush into choosing a product/niche to promote in. Make sure you properly assess what kind of value you can offer. If you are going to be promoting diet products, what angle can you do that is slightly different from everyone else.

Proper keyword research using Keywords planner and using utilizing tools such as Google trends will give you a clear picture of the kind of demand for a product.

A great way to work out your strategy is to look at what other sites are doing and try to make yours better. If you Google your target keyword (let’s say diet pills reviews), you will find a number of comparable pages that are great sources for ideas and inspiration.

MAKING MONEY ONLINE IS ABOUT DELIVERING RESOURCES FOR PRODUCTS PEOPLE WANT

Another element to make sure you consider is how you are going to promote your products. If you are going to be using WordPress, take care in choosing a WordPress theme that is going to be compatible with what you are trying to do. A big mistake of mine on many occasions was to customize and tailor a theme only to find out it didn’t work with my brand and direction.

3. Not taking enough action

Will it work? Am I going to make money? We have all had these questions run throughout the head at some point during our online ventures.

With the right amount of research before starting a project, sometimes the only way to find out if it will be successful is to jump in at the deep end.

I am a firm believer in TAKING ACTION and putting things in place, as with any business venture, be it online or offline, you will never know until you actually put your plan into action.

4. Not investing in the value of SEO

I have seen this so many times. Hundreds of budding online marketers spend a fortune getting their site online with great content and stunning images and then hit a brick wall. How the HELL do I now get traffic? This is the point where many fall by the wayside. Don’t be one of those guys….

Traffic generation is the hardest part of affiliate marketing and boils down your effort to SEO.

Investing and taking the time to understand how a site’s SEO should be implemented and the methods of sustainable traffic generation are one of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing.

Also, I see so many people making silly errors when it comes to their sites. You can be doing damage to your pages and ranking and you don’t even know it. In my early days, I didn’t realize how to properly format my site map and site structure, and it led to me having a ton of duplicate content I didn’t know about.

5. Picking the wrong product

Sometimes it is not all about promoting the most popular product. While we want something that is in demand, some of these more popular products can be saturated and you will be competing with other heavily experienced affiliates who have strong PBN networks and ways of traffic generation.

AFFILIATE MARKETING IS ABOUT BEING VERY SELECTIVE AND DRILLING DOWN INTO A NICHE. PICK SOMETHING THAT HAS A MEDIUM LEVEL OF COMPETITION AND AIMS TO DOMINATE THAT NICHE.

6. Joining Too Many Affiliate Programs

With the rise of programs for so many different products, it is sometimes hard to choose what to promote. I will hold my hands up and say I’ve done this exact thing before. Joining too many programs and trying to promote too many products – and getting nowhere.

It is so easy for those to get distracted in this business with something new and shiny comes along. Remember to stay focused on your goal and what you set out to achieve.

Those other products are always going to be there.

Furthermore, when it comes to joining an affiliate network, make sure you do your due diligence on the network. What are the commissions like? Are there any reviews online? How do they make payments?

This information is crucial as if you are going to invest the time into partnering with a network, you need to know they are capable of holding things up their end.

7. Trying to sell and not help

The days of making quick money online are over. Affiliate marketing nowadays boils down to education and building trust with readers.

It may be hard, but try picking a product/service that you have actually tried or something that motivated you. There is nothing better than writing and being involved in a niche in something that you are passionate about (it also shows in your content!).

Focus your affiliate plan on cleverly optimizing your pages for the best conversions (not just sticking a load of buying it now / click here buttons throughout the page).

8. Your content is shit

I regularly see this time and time again – really dull and uninspiring content.

AFFILIATE MARKETING IS SELLING – WHY IS SOMEONE GOING TO BUY FROM YOU IF YOUR CONTENT IS LAME?

If you aren’t the best writer, then invest decent money into getting some kick-ass content. Solid on-page structure, headings, call to actions, bullet points and imagery all help make for a much more interesting read.

NO ONE wants to read flat, boring content, so don’t do it!

Content is very important, whether it be text, images or video as it’s our way of converting a sale.