The Biggest Mistakes That Affiliates Make

So, you decided you want to own your own website and make money online. Well, here are the most common mistakes that I think affiliates make. Several of these I have made myself. I also see these same issues come up over and over again in several forums. Some of these are specific to creating an ebay niche store, the build a niche store software, and others apply to affiliate marketing overall.

1. Not Filling in All of the Critical Boxes.

   This is one is specific to the Build a Niche Store software. It is not necessary to fill in every box when using BANS, in fact, you will want to leave some blank depending on how you want your store to look. However, there are some boxes that are critical.

   When you are building a page of any type in BANS, you MUST fill in the page url box. Whatever you put in that box, there can be NO BLANKS, NO SPACES. If you do not do this, depending on what else you have done to the site, the page will either show no products or will show products but not update.

2. Under utilizing the Search Query Function.

   This is again specific to BANS and the eBay affiliate program. Affiliates are not using the software to its full potential. I am talking about the search query.

   The search query gives you tremendous power in selecting the products that you can offer on your site or on your page. The eBay search commands should be used in this box. Here is a list of the eBay search commands. Here is a small example of what you can do:

3. Choosing a Category Not a Well Defined Niche.

   This one applies to affiliate marketing overall. You need to choose a well defined niche for your site. If you start trying to replicate eBay in its entirety or offer televisions of every make, model, size, color, and feature, you are going to have problems. First building this sort of site is a huge undertaking. Second, you will be competing with just about every large retailer in the world, all of which probably have a bigger advertising budget than you do. Keep your niche tight, learn as you develop that site, and then go onto to build other highly focused niche sites. Looking for ideas for your niche? Want to learn why choosing a niche is important?

4. Not Reading the Manual or the Advertiser’s Rules

   Whether its how to get the software to work properly or questions about an advertiser’s (e.g, eBay or Amazon) policies, many beginners simply fail to read the information given to them. For example, eBay says you and your agents cannot buy through your own links. This is critical because eBay has terminated affiliates from their program for not complying with the rules. Another example, some advertisers have certain words that you cannot use in pay-per-click marketing (see below). Inform your self.

5. Failing to take Advice - Taking Shortcuts.

   I recommend Hostgator webhosting, PepperJam to manage your ebay affiliate program, BANS software to create a store-based website, and PHPbayPro if you are looking to make money with a blog. There are reasons for these recommendations.

   - Hostgator is super cheap for what you get Unlimited Hosting Only $9.95 a Month. Plus, you can build multiple websites without getting a hosting account for each site. Hostgator is also one of the easiest to use if you decide to go with BANS. I just read in a forum again today somebody having trouble using hosting with BANS. They wanted to take a shortcut. GoDaddy is great for getting a domain name, but that is all I use it for.

   - PepperJam. Look at my previous post for reasons to use PepperJam.

   BANS, in my opinion, is the easiest and fastest way to build store-based sites. If you are a blogger and want to sell eBay iitems then get PhpBay Pro software to make money with your blog.

6. Jumping Over Board With Paid Advertising

   Many affiliates either do not educate themselves on optimizing their sites for search engines (SEO) or do not employ those SEO techniques. Instead, they want a lot of traffic and want it fast. So, they advertise their new site on Google Adwords through what is known as sponsored advertising or pay-per-click advertising (PPC). Depending on your keyword selection, you can pay as little as a few cents (.02-.05) up to $10 every time someone clicks on your ad. The big shock comes 30 days later when they get a $100 or $200 bill from Google.

   There is nothing wrong with PPC, however, you need to check with your advertiser to see what they allow or prohibit with PPC advertising (Mistake Number 4 above). It’s OK to spend $200 on advertising and generate $400 in affiliate commissions. There are affiliates that are very successful using PPC. However, not every one that comes to your site or clicks on one of your links is going to buy something. I do not sell a car every time somebody visits my car site, but I have a good idea for every 100 clicks how many cars will be sold through that site. As an example, if on average I sell 1 car for every 100 clicks and make an average of $30 for each sale, then .30 cents is my break even point on for keyword bidding. (.30 X 100 clicks =$30). If your selling iTunes Store Music many of these items are less than $2, so your commission is .10 cents or less. Even if 100% of your visitors downloaded a song or movie, you have to spend less than .10 cents a click to come out ahead.

   The point is that you need to understand PPC. If you are going to use PPC, inform yourself of how it works before you start. Also, start with Yahoo! It offers PPC through it’s Sponsored Search and lists your business on top sites like Yahoo!, AltaVista and CNN. Plus, you can get a some free advertising credit for a short time. Sign up and get a $25 credit. That will buy you a few hundred clicks if you keep your bids under 10 cents.

7. Not Adding Content or Doing any SEO

   You will not succeed if people do not come to your website. There are two types of traffic free (also known as organic) and PPC (see number 6 above). If you are looking to get traffic to your site for free, there are some steps you are going to have to take to get the search engines to notice your site and to rank it high in search results.

   - First, know your keywords. What are the words and phrases people use when they are looking for your products. How often do they use those phrases. That is where you want to focus.

   - Second, your site needs content. Just putting a few banners or a whole bunch of eBay listings is not going to get you very far. You need articles, reviews, information on your site that adds value and content. Put content on every page, if you can. Go and look at any big online retailer, you will see there is more just a picture and a “buy it button.” There is a reason for that. Now, you do not need a novel on every page, but content helps.

   - Get backlinks. A backlink is when another site links to yours. There is a lot of information about getting backlinks on the web. There will posts on this about this topic later, as well.

8. Make it User Friendly

   Now this is a little different from mistake number 7. The search engines do not care how pretty or ugly your site is. So, you can have a site that shows up at the top of Yahoo or Google search results for your keyword, but that site can be U.G.L.Y.

   If your site is ugly, whatever traffic you do get will probably not stay very long. You can make a site appealing with some very simple design and color choices. If you use BANS, you can change colors and layouts to make a site appealing and user friendly. If your a blogger and use Wordpress for blogging, choose a good theme.

9. It’s a Business - Treat it Like One

   Many affiliates jump in and do not treat this like a business - that is a mistake. You should have reasonable business goals, including a budget. Just like any business, your site will not be the only one on the web selling fuzzy, green widgets and every visitor that clicks on one of your links is not going to buy something. It does not matter if your an affiliate or Amazon, that is true across the Expectations

   You need to have some reasonable expectations. There is a learning curve whether it is becoming a successful affiliate of any program, making money, building a website, using BANS, or anything else related to affiliate marketing. You will need to dedicate time to building your sites and optimizing them. The less you know, the steeper the curve. However, that curve is not insurmountable.

   Patience. You can make money, it takes time, effort, and patience. Getting decent free traffic takes time. It could be weeks before a search engine even knows your site is live. It will then take time, depending on your efforts, to get a decent placement in the search engine’s result pages. You are not going to get rich over night or next month. However, if you spend the time and make the effort necessary, you can create a good income for yourself. Did I mention patience?

   Work. I don’t care what approach you, if you just slap up a site and do not make it appealing and do some SEO, you are not going to be successful. The best example I can give is to analogize BANS to a hammer. BANS, like a hammer, is a tool plain and simple. If used correctly, a hammer will help you drive nails so that you can build your project faster and better than you could by hand. But if you don’t use it correctly, you are just going to bend nails, have to pull them out, get frustrated, and every once and a while hit your thumb. You cannot just through up a site of any kind (BANS included) without some customization and SEO and expect to be successful.

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