The Mistakes I've Made With Affiliate Marketing

bysherlock77

13.7K followers

9 years ago

When I first started my affiliate marketing journey just over 2 years ago, even though I went through all the great training here at Wealthy Affiliate that teaches us what to do and how to do it right, looking back I still made some fundamental mistakes.

In this post I'm going to briefly touch on a few of the mistakes I made so other marketers just starting out don't repeat the errors of my ways and will see online success more quickly.

Start With One Niche and One Website

There's nothing wrong with having several websites down the track, but when you are first learning the ropes, trying to grasp and apply the training, it's too much to take on choosing a number of niches and trying to build out 2 or more websites at the same time. This business takes focus and dedication, and even more so when you are first learning.

Start with one niche - preferably a niche based on a passion - and focus on building out the one website based around that niche. Give it your all until you see it bearing fruit, then give it even more love. Don't branch out into a second niche and website until the first one is doing well with traffic and income.

Take Things One Step At a Time

Don't try and learn everything there is to know about affiliate marketing all at once. Being keen is great, but if you overload yourself with information and work, you will burn out quicker than cheap Chinese fireworks.

Everything is about balance. Do some training, apply what you learn to your website, take a break, then go onto the next training module of the Wealthy Affiliate Online Entrepreneur Certification course.

Just go through the training here first, at your own pace, and wait until you feel you fully understand all of that before trying to advance your online marketing skills.

Stick To Just a Few Affiliate Programs

I joined so many different affiliate programs when I first began that I pretty much confused myself to the point where I wasn't even sure what to promote as an affiliate. It's better to start off with just a few affiliate programs and really get to know the products you are selling/promoting/recommending.

Another thing to consider is this: Each affiliate program usually has a payout threshold. As an example $50. If you promote just one product from 20 different affiliate programs, even if you make a sale, because your promotions are stretched so thin, it may take forever to make enough sales through one affiliate company to actually receive a payout.

Practice Patience

It can be hard, especially at the start, because you are all gung ho to learn and earn. When it comes to making money from affiliate marketing, many of us assume (myself included) that we'll start making money almost immediately. Generally it takes time before you see any money coming in, so it's important to expect not to "get paid" for at least several months or more. Once things are up and rolling, the money starts to come in more regularly and grows.

Most Importantly, Follow the Training

Like I said at the start, I did the Wealthy Affiliate training, but I didn't always follow exactly what was being taught. Generally I did, but I kept rushing things and going off on tangents. This included not being specific enough with my first niche, as well as creating 4 websites within the first 6 weeks of starting with Wealthy Affiliate. Way too many websites to deal with!

This post has touched on a few points to consider. I hope you've found it helpful. To sum up:

• Focus on one website to start
• Take things one step at a time
• Limit your affiliate programs
• Be patient, especially with earning money
• Follow the training