Looking for a free affiliate marketing ebook? In my ebook “Affiliate Marketing For Beginners” I share some of the most important things I learned over my first several years as an affiliate marketer. Click here for access.
Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to earn an income online. However, that being said, there’s many pitfalls with affiliate marketing too and a high drop out rate (around 95%).
In this post (and in my ebook) I share some of the common mistakes affiliates make and how to give yourself the best possible chance of success.
Free Affiliate Marketing Ebook – What Is Affiliate Marketing?
So what exactly is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a simple business model which rewards affiliates (third parties) for sales of other people’s products online.
For example, I recommend a training course for new affiliates on this website. If you purchase the course I recommend, I earn a commission based on the sale. Affiliates can sell almost anything online providing the product has an affiliate program that they can join.
One of the most popular affiliate programs is Amazon. Amazon can be a good choice for affiliates because it sells over 12 million items! So if you have a website already which attracts a certain audience, you can place certain products on your site and start selling quite quickly. For example lets say you have a Yoga related website which already gets traffic. You could place a Yoga product of some kind (such as a Yoga mat) on it and start selling it quite quickly.
People are familiar with Amazon and so there’s already a level of trust on the site. The downside of using Amazon affiliate products is that the commission level is pretty low with some of its products paying as little as 1% commission should you make a sale.
That brings me nicely on the the types of products you can promote as an affiliate. We know Amazon offers millions of physical products you can sell as an affiliate, but what about other types of product? Well I’m glad you asked that question!
Free Affiliate Marketing Ebook – Types Of Affiliate Product
The two main types of affiliate product are physical and digital products. Digital products can be a good choice for affiliates because there’s no manufacturing costs or postage costs.
Buyers of the product can download the item immediately – much like my free ebook download it here! This makes it the perfect product for affiliates because they can benefit from these reduced costs. Most digital products pay affiliates a much larger cut of the sale price because affiliates are doing the lion share of advertising (the largest cost for such products).
So with digital products an affiliate can earn much larger commissions -typically 30% to 40% of the sale price. Compare this with physical products and you see the immediate difference (most physical products pay between 1% and 10% commission).
Do you see how this information can shave years off your affiliate journey? I wasted so much time as a beginner affiliate because I simply didn’t know which were the best products to sell. What’s even better news is that you can also sell digital products which carry monthly recurring commissions too.
These are typically training courses or software products which offer ongoing value. Physical products simply can’t compete here because you only buy a physical product once, therefore you are only ever going to get paid once for the referral as an affiliate (per item sold).
There’s also high ticket products too, which typically sell for many times the cost of a standard item. As such they pay a whole lot more too. (More about this in my ebook).
Promotion Methods
One of the most common problems for affiliate marketers is getting enough traffic to their affiliate offers. With so many other affiliates online, it can be very competitive in terms of buying traffic or if you’re building content. With over 600 million blogs online, getting traffic for free from the search engines can be quite a task.
However, if you’re determined enough, there’s nothing that can stop you from building an income with affiliate marketing, whatever method of promotion you choose. However, if you want to build your business quickly, you’ll need to use some paid advertising.
Otherwise your choices are limited to content creation, which can take a little longer before you generate any traction. Blogging, or creating a video channel on YouTube for example are two methods of generating traffic for free. But this can take several months of content creation before you start to see your traffic growing in the numbers required to make consistent sales. More about this in my free ebook – download here.
Generally speaking, if you lack time, use paid advertising. If you lack money, create content.
Common Mistakes Newbie Affiliates Make
I made a lot of mistakes as a newbie affiliate. I simply didn’t know how many mistakes I was walking into! Shiny object syndrome for example is the name given to the chasing of a new course, rather than sticking to a specific strategy. I was a sucker for this and before I’d spend even a few weeks on one particular strategy, I would find another course which taught something different – a new “shiny object” which promised me easy riches!
But switching direction and tactic often only dilutes the effectiveness of any given strategy. You need to give affiliate marketing a chance for it to work. I was impatient and wanted it all yesterday.
I was a “busy fool” too! A busy fool, I later learned is a term given to the newbie affiliate who spends time on activities which although might be interesting and even fun, don’t move your affiliate business forwards. Unfortunately these activities are often the ones you will gravitate towards, rather than the ones which actually affect your earning potential with affiliate marketing.
I used to spend hours upon hours crafting a beautiful logo, when I had no traffic to my website. Or even months writing blog posts which virtually nobody found because I didn’t promote them! As an affiliate marketer you must always remember that affiliate marketing is a performance based business model. No sales means you don’t get paid! As I was from an employee background (as most people are), it’s easy to assume that time spent on your business equates to income, but it doesn’t. Only sales equate to income.
Summary
Download my free affiliate marketing for beginners ebook here. So let’s recap some of what I’ve shared in this post. There’s various products you can choose to promote as an affiliate but some of them pay better than others.
Digital products which carry recurring income are a good bet because you can earn ongoing income from each sale. This simply isn’t possible with a physical product. Then there are high ticket affiliate products too which can pay many times that of an item priced below $100, for example.
Promotion of affiliate products can take a couple of main routes: either paid marketing or free organic traffic can be sought. Ideally use the one which you can stick to for several months. Use paid marketing if you can afford it and have little time, or use content marketing if you have the time and inclination, and/or no marketing budget.
There’s several pitfalls in affiliate marketing which I discuss in more detail in my ebook. Shiny object syndrome is the desire to find the “magic bullet” which gives you an “easy path” (which doesn’t exist). Being a busy fool means wasting time online and not focusing on money producing activities.
You can also fall into the trap of getting stuck in learning mode – spending hour after hour watching training videos and thinking it’s going to move your business forwards on its own. Sadly this isn’t true and you also need to take massive productive action once you’ve acquired some knowledge. At first you will be learning, spending 80-90% of your time studying. But once you have some information you can use, switch this to 80% of your time implementing and 20% studying.
