I’m creating today’s blog from more information found on Allan Gardyne’s site, Associate Programs. Mr. Gardyne is the founder/CEO of Associate Programs, as well as other affiliate-driven sites such as Pay Per Click Search Engines and Lifetime Commissions. He’s been affiliate marketing since the late 1990s and makes his living doing just that. His Associate Programs site is a treasuretrove of information in regards to affiliate marketing. I recommend that people take the time to read it from top to bottom and keep up with his blog if affiliate marketing is the route you are interested in taking with your site.
Mr. Gardyne published 12 mistakes affiliates make back in 2004, but I think that marketing is marketing is marketing—that is, the issues that pertained to marketers in 2004 are very much still applicable today. Just make sure to add a couple million additional sites competing with you to the numbers that he describes. It’s even harder now to stand out in the sea of sites out there. Utilize his suggestions, add a few of your own, and ALWAYS make sure to keep researching and learning as the internet, and internet marketing in particular, shift, change and move with the advances in technology.
As Allan Gardyne says in his blog, “Affiliates struggling to earn $100 a month often find it hard to believe that other people could possibly earn as much as $10,000 or even $100,000 a month in commissions. Believe it. Big commissions do happen. And you can expect to hear about even bigger commissions….In most programs, 5% of the affiliates generate the vast majority of the sales. If you’re not in that 5% and want to be, you’ll have to change what you’re doing.”
He then goes on to list the 12 biggest mistakes that affiliates make. I’ve mentioned several of them in earlier posts, but here is his comprehensive list:
1. Are you telling people how to make money on the Internet when you don’t know how to yourself?
2. Are you promoting the program instead of the product?
3. Are you using banners instead of endorsements?
4. Are you failing to capture email addresses?
5. Do you have visitors but no sales?
6. Are you doing the same tired old things over and over?
7. Are you building a business on a foundation of sand?
8. Are you selling ONLY other people’s products?
9. Are you selling instead of helping?
10. Are you learning from mediocre sources?
11. Have you forgotten to add a dash of personality?
12. Are you failing to plan?
Now, I could go into detail about each of these mistakes, but Allan Gardyne really does a much better job of this than I do. He’s got years of experience under his belt that I just cannot draw from right now. So please, visit his blog post on the mistakes, and see if you can’t apply some of them to your own affiliate marketing program.
Permalink: Allan Gardyne’s “12 Mistakes Affiliates Make”
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kelly, I have something interesting to share with you in regards to this which may interest others.
V x
Many moons ago I joined an US affiliate and basically built a small site around their content. It was a half hearted effort if I’m honest as a few months later I focused my attention on other things. In time the domain and hosting expired and I never thought anymore about it. I didn’t see any commissions at the time then years later, I kid you not, a check for $24 came through the post. I had to think back to where it came from and then I figured it was from the affiliate I’d set up years back. Every other month or so the checks carried on coming increasing by a dollar here and and a dollar there until they finally stopped just shy of $40. Not a great amount but it gave me a few lessons.
Someone had obviously clicked through and joined the affiliate via me which gave me a small percentage of their sign up plus a % of anything they sold.
The second thing it told me is if you’re joining a US affiliate make sure it’s not check based only because cashing US checks outside the US is an expensive business and you’ll end up losing most if not all your commission that way. if they are only check based ask them if they can roll over your commission to a comfortable amount – so it’s worth cashing. I only learned about this way after the fact hence why I never cashed my checks.