Affiliates - Avoid These Two Big Mistakes
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Affiliates - Avoid These Two Big Mistakes
You hear the success stories and you see the potential for
earning an income on the internet. Mistake number one to avoid
is jumping in and joining a bunch of affiliate programs, then
picking up the services and software that you're told you need
for marketing, here and there, willy- nilly, spending way too
much money, and then making your- self crazy keeping it all
straight and trying to make it all work together. Do yourself a
favor and do some research. Then make a plan. Fail to plan =
plan to fail!
If you are already an affiliate for any program, you've probably
heard that to really succeed you need a website. Mistake number
two is to ignore this advice. You DO need a website. Yes, many
affiliate programs give you one or more websites to use to
promote their program or product. However, these aren't true
sites, they are glorified sales letters. There's nothing wrong
with these and you will use them, but they are not the kind of
site you need to have to really succeed with affiliate programs.
You need a site that is your unique web BUSINESS. If you're not
building a business, you're not going to go very far.
Avoid these mistakes by planning your affiliate business and
having a website. These two things go hand in hand. Your website
is the presentation of you business, as well as how you DO
business in the Net.
Now, a few questions:
First, what kind of affiliate business will you build?
This is why it is a mistake to just go out and join all kinds of
affiliate programs - the type of business you choose will
determine which affiliate programs you join. And please forget
about just putting up a list of affiliate links. Be honest with
yourself. Does that type of site encourage YOU to buy? Always
keep in mind that most people are on the Net looking for
information, NOT the opportunity to buy something. Offer good
information and you will find a grateful audience. You'll also
find plenty of affiliate programs to fit with almost any kind of
information!
A word of caution - if you want your business to be about
internet marketing - trying to sell all those programs and
services I mentioned - please consider the competition. A lot of
people are doing this and few do it very well. Consider trying
to work a niche market. Ken Evoy explains this really well in
his free Affiliate Masters course (See Author's box at end of
article).
Need some inspiration? You can see examples of a great variety
of different web businesses at
http://www.mikino.com/?assist3.html .
Second question, what kind of site will you build?
If you've spent any time on the internet, you've seen all kinds
of sites. Which ones captured your attention? Which made you
want to click away as fast as possible?
The internet is full of bad sites, ugly sites, annoying sites,
and sites that just float in cyberspace because they have no
value and can't get listed in directories or get ranked well at
the search engines. (You can forget about the little tricks
you've heard about to get a page a high ranking. The engines are
becoming more and more sophisticated and the tricks aren't
working. Besides, this is your BUSINESS, make it respectable.)
Please don't add to the junk.
Third question - How will you build your site?
Good question. Again, we're talking about the internet, so there
are a lot of options out there. And of course, lots of services
and software available. Do yourself a favor and forget the
freebies, they simply won't give the impression you want to
convey, and don't offer the functinality you'll need.
Think about what kind of site you want to have and what you will
need it to do for you. Is bandwidth important to you? Do you
want to own your own domain name? (Some hosting companies retain
ownership) Do you want to totally design everything yourself, or
save time with templates? Do you know HTML, etc? Or would you
rather use a site building program that takes care of all that
for you? Do you want to be able to collect email addresses?
Mailout an ezine? Sell your own products and collect payments?
Answer as many related questions as you can before chosing
services. (If you don't know what some of these things even are
or why they matter, find out. You'll be glad you did.) Shop
around and see who offers what. If you want to start small and
simple, and you're willing to do the research and work to make
your site viable, maybe all you need is a domain name and
hosting. Don't spend $1000's to get a lot of stuff you won't
use. But if you find yourself also looking for link tracking
software or mailout capability or, or, or ....(you get the
idea), consider looking at the programs that group services
together. See a comparison of 4 site-building programs at
http://buildit.sitesell.com/compare.html . If you need a lot of
functionality, purchasing these services separately can break
the bank, not to mention complicate your life!
By planning your business and building a quality site, you will
avoid the two big mistakes that many affiliates make. You'll be
way ahead of the pack and on your way to building a viable web
BUSINESS.