Do not make these mistakes

Hey everyone! I just wanted to share a little bit about my first couple of months here at WA, and the mistakes I have made. The reason I am sharing these mistakes is so that others don't make them!

Mistake #1. Make sure you aren't doing it just for the money.

I got so excited when I first learned about affiliate marketing. It completely clouded my judgement, and the result was me building a website all about referring college students to WA and selling school products from amazon.

Guess what? I haven't made any money yet because I was only thinking about myself in the beginning! While my website still has some great information for students, it really isn't too appealing, and my sales record proves that. I feel like I picked a topic wayyy too broad, and I'm only scratching the surface. College life is a MUCH larger topic than I thought it was.

Mistake #2. Getting too excited about affiliate links

This relates directly to mistake #1. Once you join affiliate programs like amazon, its a terrible idea to fill your site with banners and links! This results in people leaving your site in under 5 mins. (I know this from google analytics).

A good tactic you can use to avoid getting caught up in affiliate links, is by trying to join the AvantLink affiliate program. They have a very strict criteria and you wont get accepted until you can meet it. They only accept websites that have a steady stream of traffic, and they only accept people who understand how to build a site BEFORE they try to monetize it.

Mistake #3. Trying to promote something you don't fully understand or use

For example, if you're building a website that promotes a certain brand or product, make sure that YOU actually USE THE PRODUCT. This way, you will be much more knowledgeable, and you wont just be saying things like "this product can help you in these ways". People want to know how the product helped YOU personally, and WHY it's a good product!

It's also a bad idea to pick an extremely popular product. Instead, pick something that most people don't know about OR narrow your focus a bit. Like Kyle said, "weight loss" is extremely competitive, but "weight loss after having a baby" is more focused.

Lets finish off with a helpful tip :)

The Tip. When commenting on someones website, don't just comment and leave, stay for a bit and navigate through a few pages! Think of every website as somebodies house. You're their visitor, and normally, you would go on a little tour of their house to see every room. This applies to websites too.

Reason being, when you do this, it looks much better in Google Analytics. It shows them that people are navigating pages (which means the pages most likely offer helpful content), and the average time people spend on the site goes up.

I hope this helps, and thank you all for listening to me rant about my mistakes. Now that I've gotten these mistakes out of the way, the months ahead look very bright. If you don't make these mistakes right off the bat, the months ahead will look very bright for you too :)

Have a great day,

-Dan