5 Sure Ways To Fail As An Affiliate Marketer

Count on luck. Nothing beats good prep. Do your homework. Research affiliate products carefully...the trends, the competition. Patterns will begin to develop. Count on those. Don't waste time or money on products with no intrinsic value. Don't waste time on products with an army of affiliates already attached. The idea is to stay ahead of the curve, not behind it. The more competition you have, the harder it is to lure traffic.

Promote products you don't believe in. Phoniness is easy to detect. Don't select a product just because it's the one with the highest commission payout. Promote products with value. Buy the product you're promoting, use it. You'll be able to offer your personal insights to customers. Insight sells. If you believe a particular product is a scam — or at least a sham — say so in any reviews you write. And stop promoting it. Damaged credibility is tough to repair.

Build a Link Ghetto and expect visitors to invest in a click. Visitors avoid Bad Neighborhoods. They won't linger on a website that serves page after page of ads and outbound links. No lingering, no click-throughs. And no respect from the search engines you depend upon for continued traffic. You could even end up getting yourself banned from the search engines. More and more, search engines are policing the integrity of search results. (For more on Bad Neighborhoods, see our story at http://www.entrepreneuradvisory.org/A-SeoBadNeighborhoods.html.)

Bombard your e-mail subscribers with follow-up product pitches. Don't be a pest. Give subscribers a little breathing room before you ask them to invest again. And when you do, pitch products of value that will make money for both of you. Go for the win-win, not the quick buck.

Throw up a hodgepodge affiliate website and force products to fit. Have a plan. Choose topics that you enjoy and are knowledgeable about, then design a product strategy around those topics. You'll find it easier to be creative — even unique — when developing content. And far more rewarding. Working with products you enjoy is what being an entrepreneur is all about. Next thing you know, you'll become the expert in your niche. Other like-minded sites will happily link to your site, generating bonus traffic — targeted traffic, the only kind that counts.

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