Why You Are a poor online Affiliate

I’ve been at this for sometime and fallen in the basic traps that most do. I’ve heard many say the same things over and over again. Why can’t I really make money online - am I the only one, or was all this a scam? I’ve tried everything they say, Commission Junction, LinkShare, AdSense. Didn’t matter. I failed at all of them.

The problem is that we want instant results - meaning success, meaning lots of cash pouring in today. And we fail to realize that the biggest problem was / is the routine and the approach to affiliate marketing we take. Ladies and gentlemen - trust me when I say this is not rocket science. We have to remember that this is a business and run it as such.

Below are 4 stumbling blocks that I found that prevent many from making money online with affiliate and PPC advertising.

People do more planning and research for their vacation than they do for their online business. Research is critical to any business, affiliate programs are no different. When I started out, all I thought you had to do was slap a page up with affiliate links on it and you would make millions. Uh, No, not so. My problem was there was no plan for that campaign. A successful affiliate campaign requires you to have a plan. Part of that plan is knowing the product you are trying to sell. Your content surrounding those affiliate links has to win over the viewer. The only way you can do that is by knowing the product.

You also need to understand the market. How saturated is the competition? How many keywords can you come up with? How many impressions, clicks and sales do you anticipate or need to reach a goal?

Lastly, you need to have an exit strategy. You need to know when to cut and run if the campaign is not performing. You need to know how long to sit on a campaign so you don’t throw in the towel 30 minutes after the campaign launches.

If you have a plan and stick to the plan, you will not be guided by what you feel. Your feelings can kill you when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Time management is key to making money online. Most people spend 50% of the time reading other people’s stuff, 40% checking stats and 10% of their time actually doing something that could make money. That is totally off balance. You should check stats and commissions for about an hour in the morning and maybe another hour late in the evening. Check out blogs and tips from noon to 1 or so. Maybe an hour max. Google reader has really helped organize many peoples time. You can get access to all the same info in a quarter of the time. This leaves the biggest chunk of the day to work on things that “YOU” can make money on.

Your time goal should be - 80% productive day, 10% stats and stuff and 10% industry news.

You are not focused on the right things. Most new online marketers spend 75% of their time checking their analytics for traffic and they affiliate programs for sales. All of your focus is on the results part of the business instead of the actual work it takes to get results. You will not get traffic, conversions, or commissions if you don’t do the work.

Keep your focus on the plan, your content, the industry and the end user. If you focus on these things, the conversions will come.

Also remember, results don’t happen over night. Don’t fall for the “make money” and millions overnight hype. Many successful online Affiliate marketers were made in years not months or days.

Traffic is key to every affiliate campaign. Without traffic you have no visitors. No visitors = no conversions. Get it, got it, good.. The best way to get traffic to your site is through either social marketing, organic search or pay per click. Initially a strong and planned out PPC campaign is a perfect and targeted traffic source.

Yes, you may have to spend some money to make money. But think of it this way… Let’s say you are selling pink golf balls for a flat fee commission of $2 per sale. It takes a bid of $0.25 to get the top position. That top position generates 100 visits for you. You convert at a rate of 30% so that should work out to 30 sales. You made $60 in commissions, but took a loss of $25 in click fees. But who cares because you still made $35 out of the deal.

The old saying is - it takes money to make money. Now I’m not saying go crazy, but consider it and be wise.