INTRODUCTION
Affiliate marketing is a good online method for making money from home or office. But many affiliate marketers, including myself, struggle to become successful in affiliate marketing
In this blog, I have mentioned some of the common reasons why most of us fail in our Affiliate Marketing efforts. I have also mentioned how we can use Google Analytics to track our Affiliate Marketing performance and improve it
First let us understand WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?
In Affiliate Marketing we promote the products or services of other companies via a unique link. When a prospective buyer clicks on that link and makes a purchase, we earn commission. Affiliate Marketing is a great way of marketing the products and services and earning money online
WHY IS AFFILIATE MARKETING IMPORTANT?
For the companies, Affiliate Marketing is important because it allows them to spread their network to newer geographical regions, which they would otherwise not be able to reach
The Affiliates Marketers promote the products and services of these companies on their own websites, blogs, social media platforms, or even through YouTube Channels and e-mails. The Affiliate Marketers can capture leads that the companies may not have reached otherwise
Now a days, almost every company’s website offers Affiliate Marketing program under different terms and conditions. Anybody living in any part of the world can join these programs. Of course, there are a handful of companies who do have region specific Affiliate Marketing requirements, if they are selling their products only in a particular country or in a particular geographical region only
WHY DO MANY AFFILIATE MARKETERS STRUGGLE?
According to me, the four most important reasons are:
- Lack of proper input or guidance from the companies. Some companies for whom I am doing Affiliate Marketing do not reply to my e-mail queries, and they do not even answer my repeated phone calls. Even their websites do not contain much information about their affiliate marketing program
- Some companies work in a “closed contact” type of system. It is difficult to reach them directly. I have experienced this myself. Whenever I have tried to contact them, I have been directed either to their FAQ section, or to some other page in the website. These websites do not give any clarity on Affiliate Marketing guidelines. Sometimes, I have had to rely on blogs posted by others
- Lack of proper understanding on our part. That means we, as Affiliate Marketers, often do not fully understand how affiliate marketing works. Maybe we don’t know how to pick the right products or niche, or we do not invest enough time and effort into building an audience
- Stringent Affiliate Marketing targets set by some companies. They give us very difficult targets, which becomes difficult to achieve, because of too many online competitions among different companies and sellers. The buyers have a wider option of buying from different online shopping platforms. That reduces the possibility of a buyer clicking on your affiliate link to make a purchase
Affiliate Marketers also struggle because the companies advertise their online stores on Television and social media platforms, which creates a great impact on the minds of the prospective buyers
But we can definitely make an effort to improve our Affiliating Marketing efforts. I can tell you about a few mistakes that we make; and how we can try to improve upon them
COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY AFFILIATE MARKETERS
Promoting Too Many Products
If you promote too many products at the same time, it can lead you away from your target group of audience and readers. You should focus on promoting a few high-quality products that you truly believe in, and you think your audience and readers will be interested in
Of course, you cannot rely only on a few products for success. So, the ideal method will be to advance step-by-step. Promote only a few high-quality products at one time, then move on to a few more high-quality products, and so on. Each time, select products which you like and you feel will get you good response from your audience and readers
I generally repeatedly promote a product after a reasonable gap, if I feel it will get good response
Promoting The Wrong Products
Often, we are in a hurry to promote the product links on various platforms, without realizing what is actually in demand. We fail to pick products which have good conversion rates
I, for instance, pick a target number of products and post the affiliate links of these products on various social media platforms. But I make it a point to promote those products which have high ratings, and are likely to be accepted well. I feel that I must promote the target numbers of links each day, the more I promote, the more people will notice them, click on the links and purchase at least a few
For my blog posts, I select products which are rated as popular brands, and promote them
If you are promoting affiliate links of products through YouTube Shorts, then be extra careful to select products which people are more likely to view. The Shorts must be created in an attractive manner, with voiceover and good background music
For your e-mail marketing too, don’t make the mistake of selecting products which are likely to be ignored (but, I would advise you to avoid e-mail marketing. From my experience, I can tell you that people don’t read such e-mails, and there is the possibility that such e-mails will go to the Spam folder)
Choosing the Wrong Niche
Choosing a niche that does not align with your profession, interests, hobbies or passion can lead to failure. This is applicable to all the bloggers, who promote their affiliate links through the blog posts
I am a blogger, and I do promote my affiliate links through my blogs. But as long as I don’t write good high-quality informative and engaging articles that provide value, I cannot expect a good traffic flow. As a result of this, my affiliate marketing efforts may also suffer. Some of my blog articles get a lot of traffic and some get just 2 or 5 numbers of traffic
Therefore, it is very essential to pick something that you are confident and knowledgeable about, and that you can write about with authority. Such a blog will rank high on SEO and the traffic flow will be good
Choosing the correct niche is also applicable to those who have their own websites and other online promotional platforms
Niche building will help you to build a more targeted audience and reader
Failing to Create High-Quality Marketing Content
We most often are not ablet o find the right words to put in our sales pitch or marketing content. The sales pitch or marketing content should be informative and engaging, and it should be able to provide value to our audience and readers. If the sales or marketing content is not good, then the people are not going to click on the affiliate links
Internet is a vast playing field. You will find many online tools which can give you a good sales pitch or marketing content for your product
Here I am giving the name of one such website which I use sometimes, it is https://rytr.me
Rytr is free, but with certain limitations. I use the free version and it is good. If you can afford it, then you can go for the paid version of Rytr
With help from Rytr, you can create good quality sales pitch and marketing content for e-mail marketing, or even for your YouTube Shorts
Failing to Use Relevant Keywords
Using relevant keywords is very essential for any content that you create - blog content, website content, sales pitch or marketing content. SEO friendly keywords will help your content to rank higher in search results, which will lead to more people seeing your affiliate links
Once again, you can use https://rytr.com to generate SEO friendly keywords
For Me, there is a very easy way of finding relevant keywords that people are likely to search for - it is Google search engine. I search for SEO friendly keywords in Google search. For example, if I am looking for keywords for my blog on “Opportunity Assessment”, then I will simply type these two words in the Google search bar and press enter. After that from the drop-down menu, I will pick the most relevant ones and use them in my blog title and also in the “Introduction” of my blog. You should always make the keywords “BOLD”
Failing to Build an Audience
You may not be promoting the products and services effectively to the people who are interested in what you are promoting
Without a loyal audience to promote to, your affiliate marketing efforts will not succeed at all. This is true for all of us. Every social medial platform is dependent on the follower, friend, like and subscriber volume
There should be a concerted effort at building an engaged community. But we don’t always succeed, because there is the option of un-following, un-friending, un-liking, and un-subscribing
This is online life, and because Affiliate Marketing is an online work, that is why succeeding in this field is so tough
ROLE OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS IN IMPROVING OUR AFFILIATE MARKETING STATISTICS
We usually have no way of knowing what types of product links are clicked by the people how many numbers of times. If we can know the preferences of our audiences and readers, we may be able to get the clicks converted to sales. This is where Google Analytics plays a very important role, by allowing us to track our results and know what is working and what is not working. This way we will be able to make necessary adjustments to our affiliate marketing strategies
You can set up Google Analytics on your website, on your Blogger, and even on your WordPress. For this, first you will have to create an account with Google Analytics. After that Google Analytics will give a tracking code. You need to add this tracking code to our website’s code. You can track more than one website in the same Google Analytics account
This unique tracking ID is used to track the traffic flow and find out how the affiliate marketing links are performing
Like me, if you are a non-technical person and you don not know how to add the tracking code to your website yourself, then you can hire a service provider to set up the Google Analytics code for you. There are some companies who offer this service for a reasonable price. Google Analytics, Piwik and Clicky offer such services
Google Analytics tracking ID can also be added to Blogger and WordPress, to track traffic to your affiliate links
After adding the tracking ID to Blogger or WordPress, Google Analytics starts tracking the traffic flow to the affiliate links. You can use this data to find out which links are performing the best, and make adjustments to your affiliate marketing strategies accordingly
To know more about how to add Google Analytics tracking ID to Blogger, you can visit support.google.com
Similarly, to add Google Analytics tracking ID to WordPress, you will have to first install the Google Analytics by MonsterInsights plugin. You can browse the net for information on adding Google Analytics tracking ID to WordPress (I am not aware of this because I do not use WordPress)
image generated with Blue Willow, used here only for representation
SOME ADDITIONAL TIPS FOR PROMOTING AFFILIATE LINKS EFFECTIVELY
Run Paid Advertising Campaigns
If you can afford it, you can run paid advertising campaigns on social medial platforms. This will surely allow you to reach your target audience and get more conversions
Be Honest And Transparent
You should always be honest about the affiliate links that you promote. I add the affiliate links in the description section of my YouTube videos, and I make a disclosure in the “Disclaimer” that I will earn a commission if someone clicks on any of the links and makes a purchase
Use Relevant Anchor Text or Call To Action Text
The anchor text or call to action text is the text that you use to link to your affiliate product. Make sure that the anchor text is relevant to the product you are promoting
If I cannot think of any suitable text, then I take the help of https://rytr.com and ask for a short sales pitch. Then, from this sales pitch I pick up the best sentence. I edit the sentence if I feel the need, change the font style, make it bold and noticeable, and then add the link of the affiliate product
Place Your Affiliate Links Strategically
Do not just place the affiliate links wherever you feel like. Place them strategically where they are likely to be seen and clicked on
The product you are promoting should be in tune with the content of your blog or your website
All said and done… Be Patient. Succeeding as an Affiliate Marketer takes time and a lot of hard work
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