Forum Moderators: skibum
I'd like to find out from the pros here, what are the biggest mistakes that a site owner should avoid in order to be able to make a living on affiliate programs.
Thanks
Affiliate marketing requires the patience of a saint. You need to try numerous programs, numerous techniques, numerous marketing methods, numerous tweaked pages to improve conversation ratios, numerous SE methodologies, numerous...and so on.
It is all "try and tweak".....and never quit
never quit!
I could have teh lot.
I have several questions that may help you guys to elaborate more on this topic.
1) Is there any money to be made in promoting someone else's program? For instance, trying to sign up second-tier affiliates?
2) Is it possible to make good money if you don't have a product, or is it infinetly better to invest in your own product? (let's focus on an average site of 500-to-3000 users/day).
Basically what you need to decide is, do you want to be responsible for inventory and shipping, dealing with customers and taking payments? or do you want to deal with promoting an item and pushing people toward sales?
The more responsibility you take on, the more money you stand to make. The point of being an affiliate is to have some income from a product without taking responsibility.
2. Relying on Banners.
3. Not adding value.
4. Not being persistent.
5. Not prominently displaying the buy message and linking it.
6. Not experimenting.
1)For instance, trying to sign up second-tier affiliates?
In my experience, signing up second-tier affiliates won't put enough money in your pocket to be worth chasing. I have several hundred sub-affiliates in a variety of programs, but it's a rare month when my bonuses on their sales add up to more than 1% or 2% of my income.
If you want to make money with affiliate programs, plan on doing it yourself!
- Are you paid per click / per free sign-up / or does the visitor have to buy a product?
IMHO these were listed in the ease of profit (for my scenerio) - the less your visitor has to do, the easier it will be to make your profit. Then again, if you have a great product affiliate program you could make a larger immediate profit IF someone buys!
- Don't fill your pages with hundreds of programs. "Enough is as good as a feast" balance is everything!
- I am coming from the perspective of someone that uses the programs and is not trying to market an affiliate program. The process should be win/win. We promote well, they sell we all make a profit.
- Is the profit ratio you will make from a program worth the time you spend promoting them? I agree, you don't have the same type of responsibility of boxing/shipping etc., but you do promote them through time and site strategies. If we affiliates didn't send them the customer, they would not have made the sale. Both parties do carry a responsibility, both parties want to make as much profit as possible from our time and efforts.
Everyone program thinks theirs is the best, it is up to you to decide if it best for you.
My 2cents
Well, surely that depends on the profit margin of the widget. If it was 5%, then the profit would be £65 and you are getting £30. I would think that was very good. But if the profit was 95% and you are only getting £30, then it is bad. It all depends on the widget. Some products I sell have less than 2% profit (after taxes/costs/shipping etc). If I didn't, I wouldn't sell any and I'd have to keep answering enquiries about why I didn't sell this common item. It is easier to make the tiny amount of profit for the small number of sales instead of answering the many queries, the majority of which never order.
My advice to any affiliate would be to consider the chance of conversion. For example, selling plasma TVs at a 5% cut would be tremendously difficult. One sale may get you a large lump of money, but you would not sell many and it would be a very irregular income. However, if you chose to promote music CD's for 3% payments, you would be far more likely to sell quite a few of these and probably make more money than selling the TVs, even though the % is lower.
Some things just sell easier than others.
In my experience - and I know not everyone will agree - it is a mistake to isolate your affiliate links entirely in a separate shopping section of a content site. Put them throughout the site.
The biggest mistake, in my opinion: Forgetting to put yourself in your visitors' shoes. NO ONE outside your family/friends really cares whether you make a dime, so try to design your site so that it makes people want to click and/or buy (and bookmark your site to use again later) for THEIR own reasons - constantly look at the site through an outsider's eyes. Make it really valuable for others, and people will want to come back.
