Random Mistakes in Affiliate Marketing

Just kinda goin’ with the flow here, thinking of some popular mistakes affiliates can make…

1) Wrong targeting. I’d say the most common issue is things like forgetting that in Yahoo Search Marketing, the default regions are the United States AND Canada, so a ton of guys are wasting money on Canadian traffic. Another mistake I guess is the international targeting Adwords secret I sort of stumbled upon. This can add up to a lot of wasted traffic.

2) Not tracking click fraud. Click fraud happens all the time and it’s money in the bank baby…set up Adwatcher and then send your fraud reports to the PPC companies. They’ll refund you a nice chunk of change a lot of times, depending on the number of fraudulent clicks.

3) Not setting a budget, or setting a budget that’s too high. This is a mistake I’m teaching you through LOTS of personal experience. Sometimes you forget to set a daily budget, and others you’re so excited about a campaign you want to send lots of traffic to your page. $3,000 later you’re wondering why in God’s name you didn’t just set the budget to $300 and saw that you got 0 leads instead of spending $2,700 more to see almost the same result. Always start a campaign off with a restricted budget, and only loosen up when you know it at least has potential.

4) Lack of research. I used to like to just keep firing away at niches with hopes that one day I’d get really lucky and find something golden. Through experience, I’ve learned it’s always best not to rely on luck. I’ll relate this to roulette. So I’m in Vegas for Affiliate Summit West, and I’m sitting at the roulette table with some friends. Some guy simply walks up to the table, slaps $2,400 in crisp $100 bills on the table, gets his chips, and plays all of his money on one spin. He rations his money here and there, and places it on a bunch of RANDOM numbers. The wheel spins…he doesn’t hit anything and just lost $2,400 in an instant. Now roulette is the best example because either way it’s a game of chance, but you see what I mean. You can go to the table and drop a bunch of money on a ton of random offers hoping that one will hit, but the odds in this case are usually against you. Moral of the story, research what you’re going to go into, even if only a little.

5) Not buying a domain name. Don’t make superstardeals.com/ringtones your landing page for ringtones, spend the $19 to buy a domain name dedicated to that niche. And yes, buy the private registration.

6) Quit reading 100 blogs and browsing forums all day…distractionsssssss. Cut your RSS list down to ONLY the blogs in which you frequently read information that actually helps you make more money. Save the entertainment blogs and forums for the weekend, or late and night when you’ve finished all your work.

7) Get a good night sleep and exercise. If I don’t exercise and/or sleep well, I feel tired, lazy, and lack the motivation to work all day long. Sleep in, it’s a luxury of being in this industry. And exercise for Pete’s sake, you’ll look better and more importantly feel a lot better.

8) Think for yourself. Just because I say things on my blog doesn’t mean they’re true. I speak from personal experiences, not from what Google has called and told me. So you read all over that Ask and Looksmart suck…hey I’ll say it myself that LookSmart sucks, I’ve lost a lot of money with them. Doesn’t mean it can’t work for you. You’re not going to be promoting the same niche as me, and you may have a different promotional method that works. Everybody’s wasting their time with Google that there’s a bunch of cheap traffic in LookSmart. I’m not saying it’ll work out for you, but you can’t always go by what other people tell you.

Alrighty I think that’s enough for now, time to hit the sack.


19 Comments

  1. March 12, 2008

    Well, I think I’m going to get some sleep. Been lack of sleep lately and yes, i become tired, lazy and more importnt is NOT FOCUSED

  2. March 13, 2008

    “7) Get a good night sleep and exercise” – Dang it is 3:30AM here because I’m just finishing setting up the majority of a kick ass idea I had for a campaign. I better take your advice and hit the sak… Thanks for the tips paul.

  3. March 13, 2008

    I listed some of my mistakes over at Revenews a couple of days ago:

    http://www.revenews.com/jeremypalmer/dangerous-mistakes-experienced-affiliates-make/

    Affiliates at all levels make mistakes, and we can all learn from each other. Thanks for sharing yours.

  4. March 13, 2008

    Good stuff as always, implementing some of your last ideas on other posts have been working out great, thanks.

  5. March 13, 2008

    yea those are some great tips buddy. I have been spending too much time reading around blogs and forums and being so lazy building my sites…damn!

  6. March 13, 2008

    nice advice – I was thinking on the subdomain stuff – but you are right – domain buying is way better – just got to figure out how to organize them all

    great post!

  7. March 13, 2008

    Oh nice, didn’t even see that article.

  8. March 13, 2008

    Very nice post Jeremy. I read that post and it was pretty good :)

  9. March 13, 2008

    Some pretty awesome advice there Paul!

    By the way, you can get a domain with FREE Private WHOIS at namecheap.com for less than $10 and they have very fast DNS there :) Just thought I’d let you know.

  10. March 13, 2008

    Great tips / post. :) Truths

  11. louie
    March 13, 2008

    Sooo guilty on #6!!

  12. Hey Paul,

    I see you mention “research” in just about every other post you make. Could you possibly dedicate a post on HOW to do research, or what exactly to look for? I can research things until my brain falls out, but doing so blindly isn’t helping anything.

    -Eric

  13. March 15, 2008

    Brings back some memories! :P

  14. March 15, 2008

    Awesome, by read your post it motivated me to do better way when playing with PPC game.

  15. March 16, 2008

    Paul, Nice article you have written. It will help all of us keep ourself motivated and be more focus on are goal. thanks! keep doing what your doing mate.

  16. John
    March 16, 2008

    Do you use Adwatcher hosted on their domain or on your own?

  17. March 18, 2008

    Well, I violate #6 and 7. I’m really bad about the forum thing and I’m always checking my stats. I don’t know why really, it does no good to do it every 30 minutes!

    I get an average of 4 hours of sleep a night. I’m a mom so I don’t have time to blog in the day.

    I second what Eric said above, I would love to see a post on HOW you research. I

    I have officially subscribed to you:) I’m glad I was sent over here by Gyutae from WTW.

  18. al
    March 22, 2008

    I’m gonna have to agree here.. most people talk about starting things on the cheap and making it profitable. how about researching when you DO have the funds (not that it should differ that much)…

  19. March 24, 2008

    #8 is one that a lot of people don’t do. They read blogs, then when dipping their toe, they stay within the confines of what they have read. Experimenting and finding stuff for yourself with come with great rewards over time (although it will cost you in the short term)

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