Affiliate Marketing Mistakes I Still make

Posted by in July 6th, 2008

When I made my post announcing the MarketLeverage contest, I said that I would be writing a post of my own mistakes as if it were an entry.

Even though I’m becoming more and more experienced in affiliate marketing, I still make PLENTY of mistakes. Some mistakes I’ve been making since the very beginning.

Mistake #1 : Distractions

An oldie but ah, such a goodie. I’m constantly distracted by AIM, my phone, xbox, forums, blogs, and other nonsense that does nothing but hurt my productivity. In a recent attempt to cut the biggest problem out (AIM), I’ve stopped going on. Ever since I stopped wasting my time with 20 IMs at once all day long, I’ve spent a lot more time working and I have been making more money. At the least you should be going invisible so people aren’t IM’ing you. Distractions absolutely KILL you, trust me.

Mistake #2 : Campaign Overload

Another huge mistake I make is overloading my campaigns. I hear so many things from people and affiliate managers on offers that people are killing on, so I want to start everything. I end up starting 4 niches at once and it just becomes a huge mess. Niches seem hot and I always feel like I have to get on every one of them at the same time, because soon they’ll be gone. I would have made a lot more money in the past month if I had just focused on 1 of the new offers I’ve started, instead of working like a madman on 4.

Mistake #3 : Straight Up Laziness

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m one of the most lazy individuals on the planet. I think it’s why I landed in the position I’m in right now; I was looking for a job that involved doing nothing but laying in my bed butt naked. Recently I’ve become a little better at cutting out the laziness and actually doing some work, and lo and behold it’s producing results.

Mistake #4 : Neglecting Yahoo/MSN

There can be some mad money and volume in YSM, and usually all I focus on is Google. Stupid me.

Mistake #5 : Not Split Testing

This goes along with the laziness one. A lot of times when I get a campaign profiting I’m too lazy to continue to split test landing pages and ad copy. An extra 5% CTR here and there can go a long way over the long term and put a lot more money in my pocket. Never stop testing.

Just a few mistakes that I’ve thought about recently and still made. There’s seemingly nothing “special” about them because you probably do one or more of them right now. Fix the simple things and you’ll start making a lot more money.