The affiliate marketing industry has grown at the same rapid rate as the Internet itself. As online retailers become more widespread and better established, affiliate sites provide another way to drive targeted traffic and at the same time make some bucks for themselves. It really is a deal that benefits all involved. That said, there are some big problems that affiliates face, and they usually pop up time after time. Here are 3 of the top errors that are found in affiliate marketing and how to avoid them yourselves.
Thinking too niche. Overestimating the size of a market is a common mistake for affiliate sellers as they tend to forgot that they will only ever be able to capture the percentage of it that is being offered by merchants. This site selling snowboards for example may be able to survive, but seeing as they will only pass on around 10% of the profits to affiliates, it is unlikely that affiliates sites could servive in such a niche. This means that affiliates are required to umbrella a good number of smaller niches in order to stand a chance of capturing a decent amount of the overall market.
Thinking too large. When products cost a great deal of money, like buying a swimming pool or luxury cruises for example, sellers take a lot of time over their decisions.It is quite rare for buyers to follow affiliate links for expensive goods or services and then buy them on the same day. They will spend time pondering, weighing the options and doing further research for example. When they actually get to a stage that they are ready to make the purchase, your affiliate referral will have been lost in the ether. Sticking to smaller items including gifts and downloads is far more likely to get results and people are more likely to buy these quickly.
Too weak. You need to remember that the online publicity arena is very competitive and you will be in the ring with not only other affiliates, but also those merchants who you are affiliates for. The major difference of course is that you are hoping to get a certain percentage of the overall sale, whilst they have the larger incentive of getting the total amount of the sale. What this essentially means then is you need to put in more effort or more ingenuity to keep ahead of the others.
