5 Affiliate Marketing MISTAKES Beginners Make (that lose $$$!)
– We're gonna cover the five biggest affiliate marketing mistakes that many beginners make
when they're getting started, that can easily cost you a ton of time, reduce your passive income, and add a lot of extra headaches. So if you're looking to start making money with affiliate programs, these are super simple things that you can put in place upfront, that will pay dividends down the road. But you won't find them in most affiliate marketing
tutorials for beginners. Hey, it's Justin Brown
here from Primal Video, where we help you grow an
audience and scale your revenue with online video. And a big part of that
is affiliate marketing. Now we've tried and
tested a ton of strategies over the last five years, and we now generate hundreds
of thousands of dollars every year, almost completely passively.
So the tips that we're about to cover, some of the biggest lessons
that we've learned the hard way in getting to this point. So this video is designed
to save you time. And as we're going through, if you're seeing value in this content, make sure you're giving
the video a big thumbs up. It really does make a huge difference. So number one then is to
always think long-term. Now, I used to think that
this went without saying, but unfortunately, a lot of people seem to
skip straight past this one. Whatever product you're going to promote, always make it a win, win, win. So it's a win for the
company, and for the product, or service you're gonna promote. It's a win for your viewers
and for your audience because you're helping them with a buying or purchasing decision, which then means it becomes
a win for you as well, receiving a commission for
that lead or for that sale. So what I'm getting at here is never be an affiliate
or recommend a product that you wouldn't recommend
to your closest friends or a family member.
Trust is hugely important, but a lot of marketers focus on which products and services
are gonna give them the biggest commissions rather than the best
solutions for their audience. Not only is that unethical, but recommending that other people spend their hard-earned cash, just so you can earn a quick buck is the fastest way to lose their trust. So they'll never listen to you again. So always look to maximize the value that you provide to your audience, and only recommend the
products and services that you know are going
to actually help them. So I focus on the best products and never the best commissions, and in the longterm, everyone wins. So now that we've got
that one out of the way, the second big mistake is number two, not using your own redirect links.
Affiliate programs, change
their links, all the time. Meaning your unique link
that's tracked back to you could change at any given moment. And if you've got a ton
of these things out there and they change, then you'd have to go back manually across everywhere that
you've ever posted them, and manually update them. If you don't have redirect links in place. So here's an example of what
a redirect link looks like. This is a link that we own
and that we can control and that we can update and change where this
is gonna be pointed to, or where the person that clicks the link is gonna be taken to at any given moment.
So when they're clicking this link, we're able to redirect
them to our affiliate link over if we'd like them to go. So to manage the bulk
of our affiliate links, we use a WordPress plugin
called Thirsty Affiliates. And for any of our Amazon links, we use a service called Genius Link to manage that redirection. That there's lots of other
options out there as well.
You've things like Pretty Links, which is also a WordPress plugin, or there's also services like BIT.LY. Now, if you don't have a WordPress site, this will be a massive tool for growing your affiliate
income over time. I guess this is like a little extra tip that will sneak in here, but this is an example
how powerful it can be. Check out our resources page. On here we put all of our up-to-date gear and software recommendations
all on this one page. And thousands of hours subscribe
as it each and every day to help with their buying decisions. Then whenever there is
an affiliate program that's available for one of these products or services that we recommend, then we'll register for it
and we'll use those links on that page. So this is a great
example of a win-win page that you can build to help your audience and to generate extra
income at the same time. These days, it's easy to
get a WordPress site set up and you can also use it then
to manage your redirect links with a plugin like Thirsty Affiliates.
For anyone starting out, and you can get up and running for just a few dollars a month
with a WordPress hosting plan from a low-cost host like SiteGround, which is where we started out ourselves. And why we recommend it. I'll include our affiliate link for that one down in the
description box below. See what I did there? And that brings us to number three, which is not actually
reading the terms of service or the terms and conditions for each of the affiliate
programs that you are a part of, some programs have super
strict terms of service. And one of the most well-known
programs for this is Amazon. It's a great affiliate program, but they have some very
strict requirements. And they're also notorious for just blocking affiliate
accounts with no notice, if you're found to be in
violation of their terms.
We've heard of several YouTube channels making thousands of dollars each month, having the Amazon affiliate
account switched off without any notice. And it can take months
to get it back online, if you can get it reactivated at all. if we're looking at yeah,
Amazon specifically, and you're feeling a little overwhelmed, then Genius Link has a great resource for helping you interpret the Amazon affiliate program requirements. And I'll link that one in the
description below as well. It's definitely worth the
read to get you across all the different ins and
outs of the Amazon program. So that brings us to number
four, which is not diversifying. Now, I've seen plenty of folks
build their entire business around just one or two affiliate programs, only to have the company
have their commission or block them from the program completely.
So make sure that you're
diversifying here. Now, interestingly, we were
working with Genius Link to split test our
affiliate link conversions, and we actually found that
giving people more choice. So BNH and Amazon versus just Amazon, resulted in more commissions. So not only does diversifying
reduce your reliance on any one program and build
a more sustainable business, it results in more income and a much better experience
for your audience. If you wanna find out
more about that testing I'll link to Genius Links' article down in the description box below as well. And when we're still on the
topic of not diversifying, is not just about linking
to the same products across multiple sites either. Start by making a list of all the products and all the services that you use and that you trust and that you recommend. And then you'll have the makings of an awesome recommended resources list, featuring a wide range of companies that you're happy to
recommend to your friends.
Our recommended resources
page is a great example that you can use to help
spark some inspiration. And number five then is not
reviewing your affiliate links. This is something that
a lot of people miss, and this is a place where a lot of people are leaving a lot of money on the table. So we're talking about here is over time, you could potentially have a ton of different
affiliate links out there across your YouTube channel
in your video descriptions, across your websites, and everywhere else that you're
going to be posting them. But also over time, things change, your recommendations might change. The company might change. The products could not exist
or might be out of stock, or even the affiliate programs may have moved to a different service or a different provider, meaning that your link
is no longer working.
So what I'm talking about here is to periodically check
your affiliate links, to make sure that they are healthy, to make sure that they're working, and that they're taking people
where you want them to go. Now, going back to number two, where we spoke about using redirect links and the plugins that we use, Thirsty Affiliates and Genius Link, both of these make this
link reviewing process really, really easy. They'll actually do a
link health check for you and quickly tell you at a glance which links that going to a web page that may not be there anymore, or on the Genius Link side of things, it'll even tell you if I
specific Amazon product is out of stock.
And that makes it really easy
for you to just replace that to maybe another seller on Amazon, that's selling that and has it in stock, or to swap that out for a
completely different product. So for us and reviewing our links, this is something that
we're doing every few weeks, just to make sure that we're able to help our
people get to the right place and that our affiliate
links are actually working. So those are the five biggest mistakes that new affiliate marketers make.
Now on the topic of affiliate marketing and Amazon affiliate
marketing specifically, if you want to know the six biggest ways that you can maximize your earnings, then check out the video linked on screen, and I'll see you in the next one. Cheers..