Most people start a blog thinking off ways they can monetize it and that’s not a bad thing. Starting up an online business with the help of blogs is way more frequent than you’d think and with the increasing rate of tools that show up daily, it’s getting easier every day.
When looking up for ways to monetize a website, people turn to ads and some of them venture in to the world of affiliate marketing. If you are looking for ways to monetize your blog without using Google Ads, you should definitely try affiliate marketing but be smart about it.
The key of affiliate marketing gravitates around not making any mistakes while promoting the best products for your audience. Most website owners will just start a blog and start promoting affiliate products but they soon give up because they don’t have any strategy and keep doing the same mistakes.
Before starting your blog and going in to affiliate marketing, be sure to read this article so you won’t make the same mistakes.
Worst mistakes people make when choosing affiliate products to promote!
The smart thing to do before you jump in any online business is to do your research and see what are the most common mistakes people make. By doing this, you’ll have a slight advantage and avoid some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding affiliate marketing. Here are the worst mistakes you should avoid while choosing affiliate products to promote:
1. Not doing proper research before starting
I know so many cases of blogs with affiliate marketing potential that went dark and stopped trying because they started on the wrong foot. You’ll have an idea of affiliate products to promote but have you done the research? Is that niche still viable? Are those products still converting? Would you have an audience for your affiliate blog?
These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself before starting and affiliate marketing blog. Depending on your niche, you should do a proper research of the market and possible income you will get. Make a plan and see if the idea you had can convert into a full-working online business.
No reason in starting a low-converting affiliate blog or choosing bad affiliate products to promote.
2. Not promoting the right affiliate products
Another big mistake when starting off with affiliate marketing is to promote products that aren’t relevant for your niche or affiliate products that have a bad reputation online. If you’re starting a gadget blog, don’t promote books or magic pans to make pancakes. While pancakes are delicious, your audience isn’t looking for that. They want what they came for and they’ll leave the next second they see you’re trying to sell them other stuff.
Finding the right affiliate products to promote is the key of having a healthy blog that drives a steady income flow. Even if a product is relevant for your niche, you should still do some research and see what customers are saying about it. Even if it brings you a big commission, you shouldn’t promote it when the community says it’s no good.
Not choosing the right affiliate products to promote to your audience is a big mistake that will drive your blog to the ground.
3. Promoting too few or too many products.
When choosing affiliate products to promote, you’ll need to find the silver lining in affiliate marketing. You may promote too few or too many products and the only way to find out is to experiment.
When people come to your website and see you’re only promoting 2-3 affiliate products, they’ll think there’s no valuable information there since it’s just a blog promoting some stuff to buy. You need to have a good database of products you can pitch to your visitors but having too many isn’t an option either. Promoting too many affiliate products will confuse your readers and your conversion rate will soon drop.
You have to experiment and see how your audience is responding to your affiliate products. Check the traffic you get and analyze what happens when you add more products to the mix.
4. Focusing on affiliate products and not the programs.
One of the worst mistake bloggers or website owners make is to focus on specific affiliate products and not the program itself. While promoting a specific brand of camcorders will increase your conversion rate for those specific products, it will limit your growing potential.
My advice would be to analyze the affiliate program you’re betting on and see what’s the full range of products they’re trying to sell. When you have a clear image of what you can promote, it will be easier to provide your audience with more options, detailed guides and advanced content (audio, video, infographics, etc.).
Products are pulled out of production quite often so focusing only on affiliate products and not the program itself can bring your blog down.
When you finally choose the right products to promote, Scriptly can help you sell more by providing a targeted affiliate marketing email sequence for those who use email lists!
Activate your Scriptly account today and take full advantage of its affiliate marketing features!