13 affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid in the beginning

Unrealistic income expectations

You have no profit caps in affiliate marketing. You can check out the homepage of Moyens I/O where we have listed the BEST payouts. For example, the highest payout for an affiliate in November 2018 was $63,165. Of course, there are situations when people do not earn even a dollar.

Your final income is related to several factors:

• how long did you study
• how smart you worked
• Your skills in using traffic to earn money
• selected niche

And many other factors. It is very important to avoid these two main mistakes:

1. Expect high income from day one
2. Give up quickly.

All people making over $10,000 monthly with Moyens I/O started from scratch. You have to work hard and believe in yourself, but your faith and expectations need to be realistic otherwise you will easily lose motivation.

Thinking that paid traffic is too expensive

Paid traffic can be expensive if done the wrong way. You need to create a strategy that includes paid traffic. The best way to optimize investments is to choose the right keywords to buy and diversify the sources of purchase and type of ad.

Here is a short list of how you should behave:

• Use long-tail keywords and avoid main keywords and use a keyword planner or SemRush to help you find the right words to use.
• In addition to Google, you can use Bing, Yahoo and Yandex
• Use social networks as they are cheaper and often very effective.
• Diversify your ads to learn more about which ads to target.

We have an article where you can learn more about traffic arbitrage.

Not building your email list

You can’t just point to paid or organic traffic. A big change to Google’s algorithm and you could lose 90% of your traffic! Diversify traffic sources and start building your email list as soon as possible.

Moreover, many people don’t buy anything when they first meet your project, so building your email list is essential. By presenting your products in a more targeted way, it allows you to earn more from your user.

This is one of the biggest affiliate marketing mistakes many people make by underestimating the power of the listing. You can use these simple software products to get started:

We use Mailchimp and GetResponse at Moyens I/O and consider them reliable and functional services.

Choose a niche that is not interesting to you

Choosing your niche is important. If you choose to write about topics you are not excited about, you will find it difficult to progress. Find the right niche where three factors collide:

• your passion for a subject
• How the subject fascinated the public
• If the niche is profitable

Create a list of your interests and compare it with the other two points, the more intersections there are between the points, the easier it will be to create your niche correctly. Use Google Trends to find your inspiration.

Do not run tests and experiments

Nobody likes to eat soup all the time, do they? Similarly, you should change the way you present your offers. Experimentation should be your travel companion and you should not stick to one idea or method of doing things.

Don’t ask yourself why affiliate marketing isn’t working. Instead, ask yourself what isn’t working in your strategy. Diversify your content, try to change the colors of a presentation or change the text of your ad and improve your knowledge for better and better results.

Do not relax when you find the best way to win. You can always improve! Do A/B tests and try to find the best way to work with affiliate programs. For example, you can try:

• Change the color of the search form
• Use new types of partnership tools
• Change the size or format of existing tools
• Place ads in new places
• And such.

Create low quality content

Writing quality content is not easy. If you can’t find inspiration one day, it’s better not to write at all than to make low-quality content. Whether you sell products in the supermarket or write on the blog, no business can be sustained without quality, you must offer the best of yourself.

We’ve shared how to write high-quality content before, but here are a few of these tips:

• Write for the user, not the search engines
• Format your text to help your reader
• Use images, listings, H2 and H3 in your articles
• Use Ubersuggest-type programs to find new topics to write about

In addition to writing excellent content, aim to be consistent in your post. Creating good content has additional benefits – you can get backlinks for free! Learn how to create content to increase your website traffic and bring backlinks.

Rely only on search traffic

We’ve mentioned this before when we’re talking about mailing lists. Think bigger though! You don’t just have search engines and emails, you can get traffic from other sources.

Having a good SEO plan is certainly important, but focusing solely on organic traffic has a major downside – you could lose it all one day. Don’t just rely on search traffic and start diversifying your traffic through social networks and create your own paid campaigns to get more traffic sources.

Do not analyze analytics / traffic data

How can you improve your business if you don’t know what your users read, how they got to your site, or how long they stayed on your site? If you’re not a magician, is it impossible?

Setting up Google Analytics is the first step to help you understand what needs improvement. In fact, you can track the number of users visiting the site, their geographic origin and the source they come from. Moreover, you can tell whether your campaign is working or not, like a multi-purpose knife you always have with you. Learn more about how to work with Google Analytics in the official knowledge base.

Don’t try new products, offers or niches

If you are not innovative, you run the risk of confusing users and driving them away from you. Services that were popular two years ago may lose their popularity. If you’re not trying new products and offers at the same time, you’re limiting yourself. Maybe you can earn more in new niches. How will you know until you try?

Always try to use new products and offers and focus on the niches you’ve discovered. Moyens I/O helps you avoid this error. We are always working to add new offers to our affiliate network. We added three offers in August, and today you can find offers in more than 10 different travel-related niches on affiliate networks.

Offering irrelevant offers for your target audience

Be careful when trying new offers. Know your audience and don’t offer them irrelevant goods and services. For example, if your audience is interested in cheap flights, it doesn’t make sense to advertise cryptocurrency monetization, even if you think you can earn extra income from cryptocurrencies.

Only offer products from your niche. If you go outside of that, the benefits of each niche must be connected in some way. For example, if you’re selling travel insurance, you could carefully try selling property insurance or health care.

Offer low-quality goods and services

Trying the products you offer will make you more reliable. Good service and products are easier to sell. Even if you don’t get a chance to try the service yourself, always read reviews of the services you sell.

All offers in the Moyens I/O affiliate network are trustworthy. You can use them personally to make sure of their quality. However, if you are working with another affiliate program, always check the quality before spending money/time on the promotion.

Use spam techniques

Properly promoting your products is important. Sending spam emails or messages via social networks is not only prohibited by Moyens I/O rules, but is also a bad way to distribute goods and services according to the affiliate marketing model. It’s almost impossible for a person to sell something they don’t want to buy. But SPAM is a very easy way to annoy a person.

You can even spam yourself unintentionally. For example, you build the email list and then send emails full of affiliate links without adding relevant content. Or worse, sending dozens of emails in a few days is harmful as it can cause the user to unsubscribe. Follow our tips on how to avoid these problems:

• Only send your material to users who have given consent to receive your emails
• Use social media not just to promote, but to add value to your brand.
• Comment on forums related to your niche to make you a trusted expert in your field.
• Never send more than one email a day, try to just one or two emails a month except for important offers

As a final tip, you can also use an A/B test to see how your audience responds to your emails. For example, open rates may decrease if you post daily, but rates will be highest if you post twice a month. Experiment to see.

How to avoid mistakes?

It is impossible to avoid mistakes in CPA marketing. It’s part of the job, and even after years of practice, you’ll make mistakes. We try to avoid common mistakes, but you will do a little more. Use them as lessons and always experiment to learn how to work more efficiently.

As Albert Einstein said, “There is a more powerful driving force than steam, electricity, and nuclear energy: Will.” The greatest advice is to never stop trying, to believe deeply in what you do, and to dedicate yourself every day to achieving your goal.