The biggest mistak you're making with affiliate marketing is that you're not selling products you're interested in. If YOU won't buy the products, then how do you expect someone else to purchase them? My expertise is home fitness. I've been training at home for years. I started a blog, built up a community, and now that community trusts me enough to buy from me. So for all those that are struggling with this, start a blog today. Get yourself a hosting servcise and domain name. Install wordpress, choose a nice theme, and start blogging. By the way, blogging has the best SEO. I barely do anything and I rank high in the search engines. It takes time, but what doesn't? If you want a good, steady, long-term source of income, then blogging is the way to go. Check out my blog for ideas on product promotions, writing, and layout: http://shahtraining.com/
I don't really agree with that, yes it is a good idea to start in a niche you're interested in but there's so many profitable opportunity's out there why limit you're self?
What I'm saying is that there are so many beginners going into niche's they have no idea about. Once you know what to do, then yes, you'll probably be succesfull with anything. But shorten the learning curve my talking about products and niche's you're familiar with.
You can always research and study a niche that you want to enter. Limiting yourself to a niche that you are interested in is not a good idea, but for a start it's not bad.
Yeah well you're right, it is important to do your research first because if you don't then you are not going to know what you're talking about. Asking for review copies is fine, that's a way to learn something about the product and the niche, but some pub's don't respond LOL When a potential affiliate asks me for a review copy I send it to him. Also that's one of the reasons why we created our special affiliate guide which you can find in the affiliate section of my product, it is basically all the necessary info and data you need to enter the niche.
The BIGGEST mistake is that you give up early before you can make your first sale. Then you switch to other product, then you give up once again. Easy money will never come to you if you dont work hard.
Signed, I think that's the biggest mistake. Too many people think it's easy and fast money. It isn't, there is no shortcut to success.
In my experience it is best to pick a niche that you are interested in. It is absolutely true that you will miss out on a lot of better/easier/faster sales opportunities, but if you want to create something in the long run you need: Niche insight (you need to know where your buyers are and what they think) and indurance (it is very hard to be persistent in promoting a product you do not care about). This being said I have had a lot of short term succes with products I wasn't interested in, but I would never start a blog or a website about these kind of products.