Beginner Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Stepping on a chewing gum

In this post, I will point out the beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid. Unfortunately, affiliate marketing is easy to make mistakes. I’ve done it myself and fortunately, I was lucky enough to discover what I was doing wrong and fix it. However, six months of effort and time were wasted. My aim here is to provide information to you, so you won’t repeat the same mistakes as I did.

I hear from disgruntled affiliate marketers and their supporters, that affiliate marketing doesn’t work and is a waste of time, money, and effort. To me, they are totally wrong and in this post, we will see why.

Everything we do needs effort and affiliate marketing is not the exception. Although affiliate marketing is easy and simple, failure is the result of ignorance and incorrect training.

For example, adding affiliate links to a website is not enough. You need to know how to attract traffic to your website and doing that is not easy at all. In particular, you need to learn how to promote the affiliate links and how to target the right audience.

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes List

1-No Landing Page

I am a landing page fan. To me, a landing page is the most important page on a website. The right landing page will boost your leads and conversions.

The website visitors need a place to land, this is why we call it a landing page. They need to stop somewhere before they end up to your affiliate link. The purpose of a landing page is to:

  1. -Generate leads
  2. -Track data
  3. -Force a decision
  4. -Improve your SEO
  5. -Drive traffic
  6. -Build your brand

Landing pages lead customers to a specific product, service, or offer and encourage them to take action. If you don’t use a landing page, you are missing out and you need to add one ASAP.

2-No Email Lists

A successful internet marketer possesses a large internet email list. Through the email list, you will be able to start campaigns, to promote products, and to start email marketing.

According to research, most visitors do not make a purchase on the very first time. You are there to remind them through email marketing. You might have to remind them not one or two times, but three and four times before you get a sale. A large email list is key to marketing success.

3-They do not Check-Improve the Campaign

Many affiliate marketers when they start a campaign they just let it run by itself without further checks. An online campaign needs regular control and supervision. Does it work or not? What is your audience? Are you getting any traffic? Which are the keywords that work? Is there something that needs improving?

Usually, the first campaign is not successful. You might have to change your keywords, your images, your theme, your landing page, even change your campaign. You might need to perform trials especially if you are a newbie until you find what works for you.

4-Focusing on Making Sales-Money

Most people (including me) start an online affiliate business to make money. To make money you need sales. However, you should never focus on selling.

Instead, your focus should be to help people solve problems through information. This way you add value to your affiliate offers and you win your audience’s trust and now they want to buy from you. It doesn’t matter what your market is, your job is to help people.

If you are not making any money at the moment, just take a look at your content as it is now. You might realize the only thing you do is to suggest products, but you don’t give any value. If that is the problem, then you will have to solve it.

5-You Over-Extend Yourself

The temptation to overextend yourself is great, especially for a new affiliate. You might fall into that mistake by signing up for too many affiliate programs, getting involved with too many niches, and branching up into too many markets.

Your aim here should be to focus on one offer. Once, you’ve made some real money then, you can diversify. Spreading out too far too fast is a mistake you should avoid.

6-Not Tracking Results

Many affiliate marketers when they see a good number of sales, do not search to find which marketing efforts are the most productive. This is a big mistake.

You need to find which marketing efforts work, so you can concentrate on the marketing efforts that work and make more money. That’s why you need tracking. Tracking is useful because it lets you know where your traffic is coming from, where is going and how it is converting.

7-Giving up too Early

The internet is filled with blogs that only have one or two posts and affiliate accounts that never send the first referal. Here are some reasons that cause people to give up:

  • -Not making enough money fast
  • -Not getting any traffic
  • -Feeling there is too much work
  • -Affiliate marketing is not for me

Like all legit business, affiliate marketing is not a get rich scheme. If you think, with affiliate marketing you will get rich overnight, think again because this is not the case. You cannot expect to make $1,000 or $10,000 in the first month.

Building a successful affiliate marketing business takes time and effort. Success doesn’t come overnight. Give up too early and you will never know what it could have been.

8-Do not Give People What they Want

Most people when they build an online audience, make the big mistake to provide products and services for that audience, without knowing if that audience wants them or not.

You might like a particular product or service, that doesn’t mean your audience does the same. Many internet marketers are actually doing the same mistake and in the end, they all wonder “why the product doesn’t sell?” That’s not what the people want is the answer.

You need to find out what the audience wants and in order to do that, you will have to ask them. You might send them surveys and ask them to take a couple of minutes to fill them out. You might be surprised by the results. The easiest way to do is when you get new members in your social media group, to ask them questions such as:

  • -What is the biggest problem you are having?
  • -What is the number one thing you want to learn?

9-Trying to Sell the Wrong Offers

You could be in the best niche ever, you might have created the world’s greatest website, you could also have attracted the right audience but, you’re not making enough money.

For example, a friend of mine created a fantastic website and he was trying to sell a weight loss program that works. It was a $40 e-book. In order to make a full-time income, he had to sell hundreds of them per-month. These sales need you to have a massive audience.

A newbie will have to promote higher value products and recurring commission programs.

10-Fear of Competition

Frustration and fear

Sticking to the low hanging fruit is great advice as long as it is a strategic decision and not a decision taken out of fear of the competition. It is not advisable for a new affiliate marketer to tackle extremely tough niches immediately but, you cannot choose obscure tiny niches that are likely not to make you enough money either.

When the time is right, you will be able to compete with anyone because you will know how to do it.

Final Words

I am not here to create false claims and promises as many internet scammers do. I see them on YouTube driving expensive cars promising you will become a millionaire overnight. Unfortunately, this is not the case. On this website, you will only see the truth, no more no less.

Affiliate marketing is a good way to achieve a passive or residual income. If you want to taste success with affiliate marketing, you will have to work hard. This way you will be able to live a life without having to worry about financial issues.

You do not need to be an expert in affiliate marketing to succeed. In fact, most successful affiliate marketers started with little or no knowledge at all.

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Affiliate marketing needs work persistence and faith. It will take some time for you to build your knowledge and resources. All you need to do is follow the training and take the recommended action.

==============>to read my Wealthy Affiliate review and how you can make money online press here

Author: admin

18 thoughts on “Beginner Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

  1. Thank you for this article about beginner Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid. These are very helpful and I think I can fix some of my mistakes right away. I don’t have a real landing page and I don’t have anyone on an email list. I need to figure out how to get emails asap. I probably should start with a good landing page though. Thank you. 

    1. Thanks for the comment. A landing page and an email list are basic tools for a successful marketer.

  2. Hi! Well you said everything correctly, and I believe the biggest con when newbies start their journey is the result – most of affiliate markezers don’t see results more than a year, and of course a lot of peeps don’t want to work for “free” really hard, but what is the behing published content? It is there, on the internet forever, so if you think about it, maybe some particular post does’t make traffic or conversions right now, but in a year or so could probably grow high in the sky.

    Loved your article,

    Cheers,

    Primoz P.

    1. Thanks for the comment, I totally agree with you. We are impatient, we want to make a lot of money overnight, with minimum or no effort at all. This is not possible unless we win the lottery. Affiliate marketing is totaly legit and at the same time requres work. Those who stick to the plan and show persistence sooner or later will taste success.  

  3. Hi there, This is a great post on mistakes that affiliate marketers must avoid making. I need to work on my landing page and my email lists, as I somehow thought that was more applicable to email marketing, rather than affiliate marketing, so thanks for pointing that out. 

    It is very true that one needs to look at the needs of the market, and then fulfill that need. Affiliate marketing takes time to achieve success, so as you say, do not give up. 

    1. Thank you for commenting on my post. Email marketing is important and without a landing page, building a mail list becomes a difficult task.  

  4. Hi thanks for sharing this informative and helpful article on beginners affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid.wealthy affiliate platform.after signups my affiliate account,I actually made alot of mistakes in which I got help from my aunt to fix it.at first it was all about earning but later got to discover that there’s more to it like learning about new business ideas and all.your article was really lovely and I learnt a lot from it.

    1. Thanks for taking the time to comment. Congratulations for not giving up and for getting help. When things do not work out it’s OK to ask for help. Affiliate marketing  mistakes are responsible for beginners failing in affiliate marketing. If we persist and ask for help success eventually will come. 

  5. This was a very insightful post. I learned something new and I like that when I read a new post. Hopefully I can learn from your mistakes. I will definitely create a landing page. I have been thinking of that for a while but not done it yet. This will be a priority now. I do have mail and a mail list so that is good. I agree with you that you need to ask what your customer want, but when you are brand new in the niche it takes some time to get to know your audience as with any other relationship. A lot of helpful and greatful tips you provide here. I will put them to use immediately. Thank you very much!

    1. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am glad my post was actually useful to you. I wish you great success with affiliate marketing. 

  6. Thank you for your information, and your suggestions about the 10 important things for a new affiliate online business person to avoid. I do agree with you on your important areas for newbies to not make mistakes.  After a while of business online, revamping and refocusing on my business, I was able to see immediate improvement.  Was it any one thing? I don’t know but things got better.  

    I think that all new affiliates want perfection, and learning to live with something less can be the easiest way to help your business grow.  Identifying the one exact thing that makes one’s business take off immediately is difficult.  I think for me changing a few things, learning a few things, and doing a few things differently all combined to help the traffic flow to my site.  It just doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye.  Thanks for your well-timed suggestions for success in online business building.  Sami

    1. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I totally agree with you. Change is the key word. You changed a few things here and there you learned a few things as well and at the end you got the traffic you deserved.

  7. Hey nice article you have there. Your thoughts are indeed invaluable. This is the exact article I need right now as a beginner in Affiliate marketing, this article has given me a broader perspective of the pros and cons that are involved. I am delighted to have come across your article and reading through it, it really impacted me. More of it from you. Best regards.

    1. Thank you for taking the time to comment. I am trully glad my article was invaluable to you. I wish you success with Affiliate marketing.

  8. Hello there thanks for this helpful review on this topic. Well I must say affiliate marketing is not as easy as it may sound neither is it a safe heaven. I have made some of these mistakes listed in your article and this has in one way or the other affected my online marketing. I think I might just have to correct these mistakes 

    1. Hi and thank you for taking the time to comment. Doing mistakes is easy. Recognizing and correcting those mistakes is hard. Those who are always on the look out for getting better and correcting their affiliate marketing mistakes are the ones who succeed.

  9. Hello there, thank you so much for this very detailed post on affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid, I really find this post very useful because I just started learning about affiliate marketing as a mean to get passive income especially in this time that we are in that everyone is at home due to the corona virus pandemic, I feel so good to have seen this information before kicking starting my business. This will help me as to the successful of my business. Thank for sharing.

    1. Thank you for taking the time to comment on my post. My aim is to share all the information I’ve learned and at the same time to learn more as knowledge never ends. I am glad you found this article useful.

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