Today I am going to share with you another affiliate marketing mistake. Actually is The BIGGEST mistake that an affiliate marketer makes.

The biggest mistake is..

Not Building A Subscribers List By Capturing Email Address

What most newbie affiliate marketers do is sending traffic directly to the affiliate product. If you are doing this then you might loosing money even when the half of the visitors you send buy through your affiliate link! You will never leverage your affiliate commissions by sending them directly to the merchant.

Let me explain. When you want to drive visitors to an affiliate product you are going to use different traffic and marketing methods. These could be pay per click search engine advertising, banner advertising, search engine optimization, link exchange, article marketing, forum marketing, social marketing or web 2,0 traffic from websites like YouTube, Squidoo, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious etc.

What you will do is struggle to get new visitors every time you want to promote a new affiliate product. If you promote 5 different products you have to do all this work 5 times. If you promote 10 products then you will have to go through these 10 times. Have you ever wondered how much time, energy and money you will have to spend to promote 50 or even 100 different affiliate products or services?

Yes that’s right. 100 more times!

You will never going to leverage your affiliate commissions! Never, unless you hire a large team of people just to promote all these products each using a traffic method.

By driving traffic at your own websites and build your email list, the next time you want to promote something you will not have to go through all these traffic methods from the beginning. You are only going to use one.

Email marketing traffic.

Suppose that you drive traffic of about 1,000 visitors to an affiliate product. Most of all these visitors have never heard of you or about the product. They are not sure if they can trust you, the merchant or the affiliate product.

You are making only one attempt per visitor to achieve a sale. They either buy or not. Well 99% of all those visitors will not buy right away, if they buy at all.

Once you have your own email list of subscribers all you have to do is write and send a simple email message promoting an affiliate product.

People rarely buy from their first visit. They are not sure if that product is going to help them. Most of them want to see multiple solutions so that they can compare the different affiliate products.

So if you don’t collect email addresses, your marketing effort is a one-shot wonder. People like buying from people they know, like and trust. If you’re not giving people a chance to get to know and trust you, don’t be surprised if they don’t buy.

“So what exactly do I need to do Andreas?”

What you need to do is build a list of contacts from people that want to solve a specific problem. You have to use an autoresponder company such as Aweber, GetResponse, Prosender etc. By having them on your subscribers list you will be able to offer them different solutions and when they buy you make a commission.

That is the important thing here. You are providing a valuable service by saving people the time and money of research. You are helping them by giving them the shortcut to the best possible products so they don’t have to waste their hard-earned money on rubbish products.

So how do I start building that lists?
There are hundreds of products that can show you how to build that list and hundreds of different list building methods. If you are a newbie affiliate marketer here is a video course that will show all the steps on how to build an email list properly, step-by-step.

Ok please dont make the same mistake that let me struggle for YEARS online. If you dont have a list get one today!

Thanks for reading. I would love to  read your comments and hearing from you!

Andreas

PS. You can find more affiliate marketing mistakes here:

1. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #1
2. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #2
3. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #3
4. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #4
5. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #5

OK today I am going to share with you another affiliate marketing mistake. This is the 5th mistake that I am give away for free on my blog.

You Are Promoting The PROGRAM Instead Of The PRODUCT

Many affiliate companies offer a two-tier affiliate programs. In a two-tier affiliate program, affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program. The first tier of commission is the same as in a regular affiliate program. The only difference is the additional tier(s), whereby marketers also earn a commission on sales generated by people they referred to the program. Sometimes compensation will be written in shorthand as tier1/tier2 (ex. 10%/5%)

Well yea, you can make money by using this technique however I will highly recommend you NOT to use this.

A reason it’s because it is harder since you have to market the “affiliate niche” and find thousands of sub-affiliates to sign up.

However the main reason is because none will actually promote the product and just consecrate signing up more affiliates. If you get some people sign up from your affiliate link most of them will just copy you and try to sign up more affiliates.

Who’s going to actually SELL something and earn commissions?

Exactly!

It’s like the worst aspects of MLM (multi-level) marketing. Almost all affiliate marketers will wait for the other affiliate marketers to make sales so that they can make money.

The affiliate marketing niche (NOT affiliate marketing) is a very tough market. The competition is a very high. After making a quick search on Google you will see that there are millions of pages on affiliate marketing. Just think on how much time and effort you have to give so that you can compete with all these people.

What you should do is learn affiliate marketing and promote products to people that are looking for solutions on specific problems. Find affiliate products that have an incredibly good value and that will help people. Don’t even care if they offer a second tier program.

This is a mistake that many newbies make. I was making this mistake too a couple of years ago. All I was doing was promoting the two-tier affiliate program and dreaming about the BIG and EASY $! Well by now you know that you should avoid this.

So always remember. Promote the PRODUCT! NOT the service.

Thanks for reading. I would love to  read your comments and hearing from you!

Andreas