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Confessions Of A Failed Affiliate Marketer

by Greg Jackson

It all seemed so easy. Just join up for a free affiliate marketing program and watch the money roll in. I don't know about you, but I feel for it. It had to work after all Rosalind Gardner made almost half a million dollars with affiliate marketing. Other people were getting rich. But after a few failed efforts I realize that I must be doing something wrong. I knew that rather than build a business on hype, I needed to start treating my business like a business.

More and More people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet. It's a fair deal between the seller and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate's advertising, promoting and selling strategies. Everyday, as the affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens. To be succesful, an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase or avail of the products and services offered.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this area. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn't as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, you have to invest time and great deal of hard work in promoting the products. As I already mentioned, the competition is very tough and customers are very wise. After all, who doesn't want the best deal possible.

A second reason many affiliate marketers fail is, lack of preparation. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means of looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site's visitors must match his targeted customers. From the affiliate view point, you need to do research on the best merchandisers before you sign up for an affiliate program. You must ensure that the merchants' products and services match your interests so you can give your full attention and dedication to the program. You can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where you can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.

The website is another very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to look. Everything from the domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads is important. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and if they find an ugly site, they won't read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with "rich-content" websites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality content and relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisement, allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you're asleep. If you won't be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won't be able to lead him to the merchants' site. No click-through means no sale and no sales means no income on your part.

Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don't appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Before you decide on the domain name, you need to decide what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and won't enter the site.

Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. I try to learn something new about affiliate marketing every day. There are still a lot of things to learn and you must continue to educate yourself so you can improve your marketing strategies. Many fail because they don't grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.

Last of all, Keep on trying; don't get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don't get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don't expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You'll never know how much you can get if you don't persevere. Look at it this way if it takes you $50 in advertising to make a $55 sale you've just made a 10% return on your investment in a really short period of time. Rather than looking at it as a lousy five bucks. Figure out how you can do the same thing 100 times a day and you are now making $500 a day. What you may have viewed as a failure may have been a great success.

Greg Jackson teaches at a community college and is actively engaged in Internet Marketing.

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