Top Five Reasons Why Affiliate Marketers Fail
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing.
This includes affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates or publishers who promote the products and services of their partners. Affiliate marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing.
Affiliate marketing is supposed to be about long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships between product owners and affiliates. It’s a fun and exciting home business that you can run from your personal computer or laptop. Affiliate Marketing is basically a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant and is considered one of the best ways to earn money online.
Affiliate marketing is often called; performance based marketing, because you don’t pay the advertiser or product promoter until they sell something. Affiliate marketing is a solid and very effective web marketing tool and appears to be, at the moment, an industry dominated by top performing super affiliates.
Marketing material is provided by most of the product owners or companies but promoting a particular product can be a challenge if you are new to internet marketing and don’t have the proper guidance.
Most Affiliates engage in a variety of internet marketing tactics but one of the most popular seems to be Banner Advertising. Affiliates place the ads of companies on their websites and place a tracking code for these ads into their HTML code. This allows Affiliates to track how many visitors actually clicked on the banner to visit the company’s website.
Many Affiliates fail for numerous reasons but there are several that seem to stand out. First of all many of them don’t realize how much work is involved in marketing a product or service online. They go into the program thinking if they build it they will come.
Unfortunately that only worked for “The Field of Dreams” which is where some of them seem to be residing. After you’ve built your website then the real fun begins when you try to attract targeted traffic to your products.
Another concept some Affiliates don’t seem to grasp is that you not only want first time visitors but you also want return customers and this is where list building comes into play.
You need an Opt-in Form or Squeeze Page on your site with a free offer to entice them to enter their vital information such as their email address and name. When you have your list built you can then email different offers to your members when they become available.
Some Affiliates also make the mistake, when they’re starting out, of paying for traffic. They either get caught up in the nightmare of Adwords, which is what it can be if you don’t know what you’re doing, or they throw money at sites who offer 10,000 targeted visitors a day for $20.00.
Adwords and Google is a great traffic generation tool for experienced marketers who know how to get their site ranked as cheaply as possible.
Other Affiliates make the mistake of not understanding or using the products their promoting. You have to believe in what you’re selling and know what problem the product can solve or what advantage it can offer the perspective client.
And finally, going back to the idea if you build it they will come, this only works if you fill your website with a lot of quality content. Content drives traffic which drives sales. Without quality content you are doomed to failure even before you begin.
Affiliate marketing is a legitimate and effective method of making money online, but if you don’t have the proper marketing plan in place you won’t be around for the long term.
Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on Affiliate Marketing to apply his trade. Bob changed career paths four years ago when both he and his wife began working with Autistic adults in the US, which along with his Home Business and Affiliate Marketing, is his focus right now. If you want to get in touch with Bob or learn more about Affiliate Marketing and Home Business opportunities please visit:
Free Home Business and Affiliate Marketing Advice
This is my new Blog and having been away from it for a couple of years it’s great to be back because I really enjoy it. Just to tell you something about myself, my wife and I are currently working with Autistic adults in the state of Maine and we love it. Although we’re from Canada, originally from Newfoundland, this is our second stint working in Maine and the two men we are working with this time around are great. We’ve become very attached to these young men and we consider ourselves to be a family. Actually our job title is that of Therapeutic Foster Parents and of course we take it very seriously. One of the main reasons we take it so seriously is that we are advocates for these young men because at times they can’t speak for themselves.
The sad part about our job here in Maine is that we have to leave the country after 18 months. The reason for this being the company who hired us and sponsored us into the US could only get us into the country by way of a Training Visa with the main condition being we have to leave after 18 months. We were here under the same circumstances in 2007 and had to leave the guys we were caring for at that time at the end of 2008.
This of course was very difficult for the three men we were working with and living with at the time and it was also very difficult for us because we became very attached and as I mentioned earlier we became a family. One of the main benefits of coming back is that we get to see the guys we worked with on our first visit and we also get to do what we enjoy which is caring for and helping these young men.
Because of our love for what we do and for the people we work with I will be dedicating a Page on this website to Autism and to the people who live with it on a daily basis. I’m hoping this will help educate people who aren’t familiar with what is fast becoming a global concern and help to raise funds for research.
The other objective of this website is to offer Home Business advice and present opportunities to people who are interested in making a legitimate living by working from home.
I’m hoping to have a great deal of relevant content added soon and I hope people will make it a point to visit often. Thank you for visiting and for taking the time to read this information.
The following two videos should give you some idea of the majestic beauty of Newfoundland:
I’ve added a video below, one of which is actually an advertisement by a local brewery located in St. John’s, Newfoundland which is where I’m from. But it contains some great shots of the area and I like to think portrays what we, as Newfoundlanders, are all about: People who care about people, who work hard and play hard but aren’t afraid to laugh at ourselves. In the following videos you will see many examples of this outlook on life as portrayed by local entertainers performing at what we call “Kitchen Parties”.
These are events where neighbours come together to have a few drinks and entertain one another through song and dance. Please take the time to have a look.