12 Mistakes people make while selling affiliate product
Making money from selling products which is sold by other vendor and you make some sweet cash out of it. This is a well-known system of affiliate market, most of the bloggers use this system to make money from affiliate sales of the products they suggest to their users.
In fact affiliates are the main source income from many bloggers especially in my niche, I’ve seen many new bloggers gets attracted to affiliate market, there is nothing wrong in that. If you don;t know about affiliate market then you should check out
While choosing the products they make many mistakes which lead to very low or some time no sales at all, choosing the right product can make a huge difference from making little to a pile of money.
There are few common mistakes which most of the new bloggers make, I’ve listed them in one place.
1 – Affiliate Product not related to your niche
Most of the time people try to sell the product which is a hot selling item regardless the fact that the product is not related to their nice, this is like selling a microwave in a fashion store. If the product is not related to your niche then there is very few chances that the users of the website is going to buy it.
There are products related to every niche out there all you have to do is find the product related to yours, you can do a simple Google search by the product name and adding affiliate to it, the result will show you the affiliate page of the product, there you can register yourself in order to get commission for selling the product.
- Product should be related to your website.
- Non related products experiences no sale.
2 – Thinking about money not the product
Money is a great factor while you make an affiliate sale, well this is not the only factor you should consider. If you endorse a product which yields you a big percentage in profit but the product is not good than you should avoid it.
If you try to sell a product which is not good enough to the users of your website then after a get a bad product due to your recommendation they lose trust in both you as well as your website. Which will make your other good affiliate products which should sell will drop in sales, this can even make a website fail as the time passes.
Keep product over money, gaining user trust is more important, this trust will lead to long-term income & returning users.
- Buyer is more important.
- A good product can make more money.
3 – Not trying the product
Trying the product is very important when you go for an affiliate sale, mostly many of you won’t like to test the product thinking that there is no need. This is where every thing can go wrong, by trying the product yourself you will be able to know the functioning as well as pros and cons of the product.
There will be chances when you’ll get some question from people about the product before they make a purchase, if you have not tried the product yourself then you won’t be able to answer these questions. If by any chance you give a wrong answer & based on that the person makes a purchase and finds out that hat you said was wrong can result in loosing trust on you.
If you recommend any other product to the person in future then they won’t trust you resulting in loosing a potential customer.
- Try before you sell.
- Test the product thoroughly.
4 – Not Writing a Review
Many people don’t write a review of a product they endorse, writing a review helps the potential customers to know about the products. A review will give them a knowledge about the experience you had while using the product, while writing a review make sure to list all the pros and cons of the product.
If you like a feature of the product then don’t forget to highlight it, your review can help user to get lot of answers for the question they have regarding the product. This also helps the users to ask fewer questions about the product.
Some of the companies even tells websites to write a review of the product, if they are making affiliate sales of their product. While writing a review be sure to write what you feel, never write a review just to make a sale.
- Review is must for a product.
- Write a review honestly.
5 – Research the right product
There are many alternatives of each product, before jumping on the affiliate of the first product you see you should do a little research to find out what other options are there. For all the products that you think can be suitable for a certain work you should make a list.
After you made the list, you should get on with the research about the pros & cons of each product on your list. You can even check the reviews given by people using the products, this will help you find the best product for your audience.
A nice product is appreciated by all, this research for finding the right product for the users of your website will be appreciated as trust on you, resulting in long-term income of affiliate sales.
- Do proper research.
- Only Right product sells.
6 – Balanced affiliate products list
You should know about the balance on the numbers of Affiliate products on your list. Many have either only a few or many affiliate products which they like to endorse.
If you have too few products on your list then there is a chance that many people don’t want the product that you endorse. Lets take me for an example like in my niche if I’m selling hosting alone and nothing else than there are chances that many of the readers don’t want hosting, I’ll be missing many potential customers who may want a theme or a plugin, it can even be a book, a software.
So having a small list can be bad for affiliate sales, try to find the products which can be useful for your website users.
Having a big list can be bad as well, if you have many affiliate product on your list than you won’t be able to focus on all the products. This will make you divide the time you need for the promotion of each product. Less time on each product promotion will lead to reduced sales, on every product.
Having more products have one more problem that it can confuse the customer about which product to buy, this confusion can make the customer leave your website in search of proper solution.
The solution is having a balanced affiliate product list in which you have only that much product which are necessary, useful and don’t confuse the customers. By having balanced list you can give ample time on promotion of each product.
- Have a balanced list of products.
- Don’t have too many or too few products on your list.
7 – Ignoring promotion
Promotion of a product is very important, without promotion a good product can be a failure. By promotion i mean targeting the right customer, everyone is not going to buy your product so you have to get to the people who are interested in buying your product. You can use your email list, banners, links etc.
Social media promotion can help too, there are people who make a lot of money by promotion affiliate products on social networking sites. Social media is a powerful platform to use it for product promotion.
While promoting your product you should keep in mind that all the necessary information should be there like the offer, price, image of the product etc. Try to make your product interesting while keeping the info intact, while promoting your product don’t over do it, means don’t makes your banners too flashy or sending lot of emails.
- Promotion is must for sales.
- Always use Right ways of promotion.
8 – Ignoring SEO
Yes SEO, the affiliate product you endorse should be search engine optimized too. Selection of proper keywords suitable for your affiliate product is one of the most common mistake people make while choosing affiliate product. To sell a product SEO optimization is must, it will help drive traffic from search engines.
If you fail to choose keywords carefully than you will lose traffic from search engines. Search engine traffic have more probability of buying than others as they are specifically searching about the product.
- SEO is very important for traffic.
- With SEO sale can increase in folds.
9 – Ignoring content creation
Many bloggers when start making money lose the sight of their true goal, they emphasize more on affiliate product promotion rather than creation of content. You must keep in mind that your blog runs on content, users comes to read your content. If you focus on affiliate product alone and stop the consistency of content, you’ll lose the audience which is your potential buyer of affiliate products.
I always emphasize on the consistency of a blog, if you deliver valuable content on a consistent basis then the uses will be more interested.
- Content is the key to success.
- Try to deliver content consistently.
10 – Keeping the latest product
When you endorse a product you must keep in mind to keep yourself updated about what new is happening that effects your product, if a new version of the product you are selling comes out and you are stuck with the information about the old one then the customers will think that you are not serious about the product. I’ve seen many people who think that they have placed an affiliate link and they are done, these guys never update the changes which occur with the product.
Some times when the price of the product changes, the blogger who does not keep themselves updated keeps on displaying product with older price tag, When a potential buyer goes to product page via your link and see that the price of the product is not as you said it is, then the buyer feels like cheated, resulting in loosing trust on you. As o said earlier loosing trust means loosing a customer, this will lead to a big loss in long-term.
- Keep the latest product on your list
- Avoid outdated product.
If you are endorsing an affiliate product than keep yourself updated about the product news, what’s happening that can have an impact on your affiliate sales.
11 – Not Changing the product at right time
In this world changes happens quickly, new products are launched each day, you should also change products accordingly. If you think that there is a new product that can be more beneficial for you users instead of the product you are currently selling then you should replace it on your website. You should also try to inform your users why you changed the product, what are the additional features they will get with this new product.
some times the change of the product depends on the situation, take for example you sell books online for a certain course, when the syllabus for the course changes you have to change the books too. If you still keep old books on your website than no one is going to buy it, so you need to change the products at the right time to keep on making money from affiliate products.
- Keep up with market
- Change the product for more relevant one
12 – Making links everywhere
There are few new bloggers who places their affiliate product links everywhere on most of the content they create, they think that this will help them to make more sales. It’s the reverse as the users of your website will think that you are forcing them to buy the product, this ia piss them off and they leave your site with a bad experience. It has been seen that when some one leaves with a bad experience they never return.
Linking to an affiliate product is not bad if you do it right, never try to force a link in a content, place it only where they are needs. If the content is related to the affiliate product then you can place the link in it, in fact this linking will fetch you more sales than placing many links where they are not needed.
- Don’t make links everywhere.
- Product Links should be related to content
Conclusion
If you want to make money by selling affiliate products then you must make sure that you are not making these mistakes. Affiliates done the right way can be a gem for the income of a blog, If you know any other mistake that people make while selling affiliate products than please leave us a comment bellow we will add that in our list too.
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