Affiliate Marketing - Are You Failing?

I can not tell you how many posts over the years complaining about their
affiliate site; ie: How to make money with affiliate marketing, I am getting
visitors, but no sales, my site has been up for 6-12 mo, and I have not made
a dime, then come to find out, the site owner never did one thing to promote
his site, sitting back eating waffers, watching TV, and trying to figure out
why his affiliate site not taking off the ground making him/her big bucks....

Here are a few reasons:

1: laziness - This is probably the biggest reason for failure....

2: quit to soon- The is another big reason for failure, of course there
are many other factors that play a role in success or not, and some
people get upset, and quit in a short period of time. The fact of the matter
is that affiliate marketing can include, alot of work, alot of time, and money....

3: site: cheap, undesirable website. The quickest way to repel visitors is to
have a crappy site that no-one finds appealing, much less wants to buy anything....a few years ago, I read a comment that design does not matter; true & false, i agree, craigslist is a rare exception, do you really find CL that appealing? however, one your site makes it, then it has somewhat made it past that stage; If your site is new in 2016, then you want every visitor on your site to stay as long as possible, so you should consider making your site attractive, appealing, and desirable to be on....

4: SEO/Marketing: Bad SEO & Marketing efforts can be your failure if not done correctly, most newbies may not follow on-page seo practices, and when it comes to marketing, they set out to grab whatever backlinks they can aim for, more links is not better, in fact, new sites should get as few as possible, and increase more quality links over-time. The last thing you want to do is draw googles attention because of bad or shady link deals, of course, if you can take advantage of white-hat links, then go for it, however, do not abuse your link building efforts, otherwise, google will fart on you, and drop your site into the wind. You do not need 10,000 links per month, you just need the right links; be mindful on who you use. It does not matter how desperate you are, link building is not the most important aspect, link building is just another factor in a bigger role of getting your site to the next level....

Why is link building not as important? Do not get me wrong, link building is important
to a certain degree, however, if you abuse this temptation, then doom will follow. Recently, I ran cross this story from an affiliate; He claims he went from $0-$5k/mo in 6-9mo, and his biggest secret was; obtain quality links, not just any link that come across your desk. I get it! Links are desireable, everyone wants them, but all of them will not help you, in fact, you may even pickup bad links along the way, and this could cause harm to your site, and if you are unsure, then you should audit your site every 3mo or so, and get rid of bad links, as they certainly could be holding your site from reaching the next level in the evolution chain.

Content: This is another challenge for most people that are not natural born writers. If you are looking for the biggest rankings in google which can bring good income, then the worst thing you can do is hire content writers that can not even write coherent English. Your site is an investment, if your goal is to setup poor quality content, then do not bother, you will end up wasting your effort, time, and money, as your site will simply continue to decline in the ranks.

Lets refer to that affiliate above that claims he was making $5k in 6-9mo; He said he had put 100's of hours into his one site, which implies that he did everything himself, including writing his own content, which means, he was in-control of the content he was putting online. He also did his own link building to a certain degree, however, he stated, link building was not his biggest concentration, he used link building in the start to get things rolling; His biggest concerns was implemented on offering high quality content. He was not big on keyword research, however, he made sure his articles were between 2k-3k words in depth....Why would 500-600 word articles even be appealing to google anymore? This means, if you want to do as good as the affiliate above, then maybe you should shoot for 3k-4k words per article, and content alone is not the biggest factor; the biggest factor would be knowing your products. If you do not know your products, then you can not write about them, right? How are you going convert visitors if your content is all over the place, bad content confuses people, then what happens is that your visitors start leaving your site early, then over time, you start to lose rankings simply because your visitors are not staying on your site; they do not like what they see, so they take off before they even click on the product so they can buy...

I have often read comments like: If you hire writers to write about products they
know nothing about, then you will not make it; This is true, and false; your writer
should be able to put up a good story when writing your content, even if they
know zero about your affiliate products; However, it is not impossible, I have heard
of cases where affiliates know zero, and they hired writers, and they become
successful with their affiliate sites; ie: bad writer = fail, good writer = success....

5: taking on to much: Another reason why new affiliates fail; They see the
the possible ways to making cash, cash, cash, and this will blind them; They
immediately lose focus, and site, so out of greed, they may try to take on to
many affiliate sites, or even products, then their affiliate site(s) suffer as a result.
people want to see cash overnight, and this is not how affiliate sites work any
more, this is 2016, not 2010 (it was easier to get affiliate site making money....)
since then, you have more players in the game, and google crackdown on bad sites.

Drawback- The biggest draw back in affiliate marketing is that it is not
your own business; you can be terminated for a small violation of tos, so
if you want to get into affiliate marketing, then keep your nose clean, as
you will be investing effort, time, energy, work, and money into your venture.
before you even start planning, know your affiliate agreement, and terms, as
this can be your doom if conduct your business in an unfitting manner.....

Setting up your own affiliate site seems easy, you are always running
across those affiliate sites that appear to be making money hand over fist,
however, most of these sites have most likely been up for years, and
you are simply another newbie on the block that wants some pie;
so setting up your affiliate site is easier said then done; There is
alot of research that needs to be done, seo/marketing need to be
done correctly, and you need to use high quality content, however,
most will just end up back into their same old endless habits, and
their site will continue to fail from one month to the next, and will
continue to fail from one year to the next; affiliate marketing does
sound easy, and desirable, because that is what you want it to be...
but when you reach under the cover, then you find out quickly, the
entire process seems like a money pit, and constant endless work...
sorry, you have to earn your way just like every site before you....

There are many factors on why a site may fail or succeed. I have listed a few.
If you have any good affiliate marketing tips, please post below....

 

That's some great insight. Thank you. As always, Content is King, no matter what people say

 

saying that "content is king" and doing nothing else is a misleading statement.
Having good content is having a foundation stone; If stones are missing, then
everything will collapse; content alone will not help if other stones are not in place.

for example: time is another stone in the foundation; for the most part,
even if you have done everything else right, google normally does not
allow sites to progress within the first 6-12mo of life, simply because
the site is new, and google does not trust new sites, and it is obvious
why, most often quit within the first year. I have heard so many stories
similar too "my site started taking off between year 1-2...Every now
and then you hear stories like, my site took off within the first 6mo...
(I suspect these people have more experience, or just got lucky....)

so if your site is 5 years old, and your site has never taken off the ground,
then it would be obvious that you do not have other stones in place in
order to support your foundation, and as a result, your home/foundation
collapsed, or failed to take off. and this could be due to other issues in
your foundation ie: bad site, onpage seo, link building, etc....

 

You're right. I'm just not sure if the people who says their sites took of real soon has lots of experience... or black hat SEO. Those sites are normally for short term cash, then abandoned to rot, as I usually see

 

Great article!

I would like to add, another reason why people fail in affiliate marketing is they don't build an email list.

Building an email list is so important that it has to be done on day one.

During the Adsense Gold Rush before the Penguin and Panda update, I raked a lot of adsense coins. I was ranking sites so easily using PBN.

I was so blinded by my ego I didn't built any email list which was a HUGE mistake. When the penguin update came, all my blogs disappeared from on the first page of Google.

I was left alone blogging and preaching in front of an empty stadium. If I had built an email list way back then, I could have continued earning via affiliate marketing. I could have established a healthy relationship with my subscribers but I did not.

Going back, ALL successful and famous bloggers and affiliate marketers (John Chow, Ramit Sethi, Jeff Walker, Ramsay, Rowse, Seth Godin, Ben Settle, etc.) out there will tell you the importance of building an email list, so do it on day one.

So if you want to succeed in Affiliate Marketing, follow DSCURLOCK's advice above and then build an email list.