Top 10 Problems With Affiliate Marketing

Last weekend I posted this question :

“What is your biggest challenge with Affiliate Marketing?

Do you struggle with creating links, getting traffic, making sales… ?

Get specific – I’d love to know what frustrates you most!”

There were just over 20 responses, and they were all legitimate frustrations.
I narrowed it down to 10 main issues most people have with affiliate marketing…

Top 10 Problems With Affiliate Marketing

There were replies from all levels of affiliates, including Jerry West – an SEO expert and Super Affiliate. The top 10 topics cover everything from beginning (technical how-to) to advanced affiliate issues…

I should warn you upfront, this is a rather long post. I have turned it into a PDF File which you can download and read offline on your favorite mobile device if you like. See the end of the post for download instructions.

Here we go!

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1. Choosing a Profitable Niche

@R.K. Castillo: “I think choosing a profitable niche that we can take from start to profit. So we can have a good idea it will be worth the time it takes to do just that.”

I have a quick exercise for choosing a niche that is worth revisiting. My advice is to consider your niche carefully. So much of your time and energy will be devoted to your career, so you want to choose something you’re going to enjoy doing.

This may be different than some teachings which will have you starting multiple sites in multiple niches just to “make money online”. It’s far better to build a profitable business, and to focus on that business exclusively. Which means choosing a niche where you can start a business with personal branding.

Now, more than ever, the niche you choose has the potential to shape your life. It can be used to create your ideal lifestyle. Think about the options and opportunities you wish you had. What would you do if you weren’t stuck working all the time? What would you do if money was not an issue?

The answers to these questions should be explored as potential niches.

Most people struggle with research and really get hung up on the numbers. How many searches is enough? What search volume am I looking for exactly? What IS a “good niche”? See: Frustrated With Market Research & Finding Niches?

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2. Working with Affiliate Links and HTML Code

The technical side of creating affiliate links, or working with HTML code, is a hurdle for many people when they first get into Affiliate Marketing.

Most merchants make it easy by giving you copy & paste code to work with, but there are times that you want to make changes to that code for a nicer end result. It’s really not that difficult!

In Anatomy of an Affiliate Link, Part 1 I give you the HTML basics and a walk-through video of using affiliate links from Commission Junction.

In Anatomy of an Affiliate Link, Part 2 I continue with a tutorial on breaking out of the (ugly) default affiliate code from Amazon.com to create great looking promotions and product reviews – complete with live examples.

If you struggle with affiliate linking, or if your links are ugly (don’t feel bad – it’s common), go through both of those tutorials and try the suggestions out for yourself. You’ll be impressed with the results!

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3. Getting Traffic

@DeAnna Troupe: “Getting qualified traffic is what I struggle with.”

Traffic alone is not enough. You definitely want qualified traffic. Meaning that the visitors are targeted, and that you have a strong message-to-market match between your offer and your visitor (and more specifically: their intention).

The most obvious source of traffic is search engines. You want to be right there, front and center, when your market is searching for what you’re offering. I always refer people to SEO Fast Start, which is a free SEO guide by Dan Thies.

Also see: Web Page Optimization (Checklist)

Optimizing your pages, and getting them to rank well in the major search engines is not enough, though. You want to qualify your visitors through the keyword phrases you target: Using Keyword Modifiers to Qualify Visitors

When it comes to traffic, always remember that quality beats quantity. You want to target as specifically as you possibly can. This will often result in fewer unique visitors, but higher conversion rates – and mean a higher number of sales than more unique visitors and a drastically lower conversion rate.

There are other sources for targeted traffic as well, of course. Once you have optimized your pages to rank well, you’ll want to work on these other sources while you wait for your site to become established in the major search engines. Most of these sources will contribute to your overall SEO strategy, but they’ll also bring in their own traffic while you’re waiting for your pages to rank well.

Other traffic sources include:

• Niche Communities
• Social Media
• Guest Blogging
• Off-Site Content Marketing
• Advertising

Guest Blogging is one of the best ways to get in front of your target market. You’ll also want to publish content off-site in other places such as article directories, squidoo, hubspot, wikis, etc. Niche Communities are a great place to find your market as well, and include: forums, discussion groups, and Facebook groups. In all of these cases, including Social Media, your goal is to become known and provide value to the conversation in your market.

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4. Making Sales

A lack of commissions boils down to one of two problems: traffic or conversions. Make sure you know which of the two is the actual issue, and work from there.

More often than not, when people say they’re having trouble making sales… the real issue is lack of traffic, or poor targeting.

You need at least 1,000 unique visitors to a specific offer, and highly targeted visitors of course, to determine the true conversion rate. If you have less than that, or your traffic is