Affiliate marketing is often regarded as something that can provide a passive income but actually, there is a lot of work involved if you want to hit your targets. Yes, you can set up a landing page and leave it to run but will this really result in traffic for the brand? The truth is that you need to put in the work to make it a success.
New affiliates and even those who are well established in the industry make mistakes all the time when putting in the work. Here are some of the common mistakes that we have encountered and some advice on how to avoid them.
Creating low-quality content
How long do you spend on your content? If you simply throw a bit of content that you have created in a few minutes on your website, the likelihood is that it isn’t a high-quality piece of content. Yes, it can be tempting to go for quantity over quality, especially if you are running low on ideas but this can be a big mistake.
The truth is that multiple average posts aren’t going to outperform one really high-quality piece. Spend time working on a content plan and determine a strategy in order to avoid posting content that doesn’t hit the mark. Research topics in your niche and stay on top of trending stories in order to create excellent content.
Not doing your research
In 2021, many affiliates are part of a range of affiliate programs and so they don’t have one specific niche. While this can be useful when it comes to bringing in a lot of revenue, it is almost impossible to become an expert in every field. This often results in affiliates creating content to promote their products that doesn’t impress readers.
Customers tend to do their research before buying products and if they read your content that isn’t quite correct, they will go elsewhere. You need to spend time researching your niche and educating yourself. The more you understand, the easier it will be to effectively promote a product. We recommend spending a few hours per week reflecting on your industry and reading up on the latest developments. Read more about this here.
Ignoring site speed
Does your site load quickly or do you have to wait more than a few seconds? Many affiliates find themselves focusing on the content they are creating rather than the functionality of the website and this can be a big mistake. According to the experts, your bounce rate can actually increase by 50% if your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load.
2 seconds might not sound like much time at all but due to the incredibly high speed of most sites, this has become the expectation of website visitors in 2021. Interestingly, site speed isn’t just important for retaining customers, it can also be useful for improving your overall SEO ranking. Google measures site speed and ranks accordingly so this is something to consider.
There are tons of ways that you can improve your site speed such as compressing your image sizes and cutting down on the content on your site. You might also want to look into a tool like Cloudflare CDN to help speed up the delivery of the content.
Forgetting to track links
If you want to build a successful affiliate business, you must ensure that you are tracking and managing your links effectively. This is a common mistake that tons of affiliates make over time as they are solely focused on creating the content rather than actually monitoring their links.
However, when you spend time tracking your links, you can effectively determine which marketing strategies are working and which aren’t. This is a key part of affiliate marketing as you won’t want to be wasting your resources on campaigns that aren’t delivering.
There are some great tools out there that can help make tracking and managing links much easier. We recommend looking at Pretty Links and Easy Affiliate if you want to avoid this common mistake.
Not reading up on SEO
For any affiliate marketing business to succeed, SEO must be carefully considered. If you are just getting started in the affiliate marketing industry then you could be forgiven for not understanding everything there is to know about SEO. However, if you have been working for marketing for a while, there really is no excuse for neglecting to work on your SEO.
Google regularly updates its algorithm and so keeping on top of this can be hard. However, you must do what you can in order to build your organic traffic and get the results that you had hoped for. Use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, include meta data on every page and follow the industry guidelines to avoid this common mistake.
Do what you can
Everyone makes mistakes when they are just starting out but once you know what to avoid, you can make the right decisions going forward. We recommend that you avoid these common mistakes in order to improve your affiliate site and hit your targets each month.
Try to improve your content and focus on the UX of your site, as well as the SEO elements. Over time, you’ll learn from your mistakes and this will have a positive impact overall. If you need some assistance with your affiliate marketing strategies, book a free call with our team!
