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New affiliate marketer mistakes are gonna happen. But preparing yourself against them can help you rise to the top and become a successful affiliate marketer. Lets take a look at the top ten new affiliate mistakes.

1.) Using an existing script or someone else’s work

This doesn’t work for one big reason, everyone else is using it too! If you think you bought something that is “unique” then run it through CopyScape. This is a free service that searches for website plagiarism and duplicate content online. Upload your content and run the site url and you will be surprised on how many copies of your “unique” bundle they sold. Read my story on Sue who thought she bought a special site package and the disappointments that I found for her.

2.) Filling site with ads

I see a lot of new websites created by new affiliates filled with adsense, adbrite, and other ads. As this is a good means of additional income for your site, it should not be the main attraction. Making the ads your main attraction takes away from your sites usefulness to the visitor. For example, if I where to visit a site with lots of ads and then see a tiny blob of content I will just leave the site without clicking on the ads. But if the website had a nice informative content and mentioned XX product I would click on the ad to learn more. I would then browse around the site for awhile and see what other information is useful to me. If the site is really good, I would then bookmark it and tell my friends. My rule of thumb is; build the site for the visitor, not for the money.

3.) “Jumping the Gun”

Launching a new site without fully testing it or creating a campaign without researching it can cost you thousands of dollars. It’s easy to waste $5,000 on a search engine ad that yields little results but could have been avoided researching more and finding that if you might have used another keyword could have yielded you the same results but with only $500. I see this happen a lot and have seen new affiliate marketers waste $40,000. Really makes you sick.

4.) Picking the wrong host/domain

Not to many new affiliates realize how important their domain and hosting company is. Having a good domain could mean better natural search rankings, easy for your visitors to remember, and so much more. Even more important is a good host. I highly suggest staying away from free hosting companies. These where good back in the day when hosting was expensive, but now you can find hosting for cheap. I suggest Hostgator for any newbie. They have great 24/7 support and provide you with free templates to use. Having a bad hosting company results in server downtime. This means that your website will return a “404 Page Not Found” error when people try to visit. If you are running any paid traffic, then you are just wasting your money.

5.) No link management system

Now many affiliates might not think this is too important, but when you consider dead links, link thefts, expired links, bad links, ect. then you might consider getting a good affiliate link management software. I suggest Manage Affiliate Links for any affiliate marketer. Not only does it cloak and protect your links from link theft, it will email you when a link is dead, expired, or broken. This is very important if you manage more than one site or don’t check your links often. A down link can costs you thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

6.) Spamming!

This is a big no no and will make a lot of other affiliates upset. I for one, hate getting spam email or messages and neither does the next person. Spamming on message boards, blogs, forums, websites, so on is a good way to get you banned or blacklisted. Try to look at this way, would you like it if I where to dump my trash all over your yard everyday? Spammers are the scum of the affiliate world.

7.) Not putting in the time

Making a million dollars does not happen overnight. It takes time to build a successful online business. Many new affiliates think that if they do this or that they can easily make a lot of money. This is one of the biggest misconception new affiliates have of affiliate advertising. Like any other business, you have to put in the time to reap the benefits.

8.) Copying someone else’s idea

Similar to using someone else’s content and articles is copying someone else’s idea. This is done when you basically clone their site and its concept. For example, eBay is a billion dollar idea and has been doing good because it was the first to bring the concept online. Now, how many eBay clone sites do you see making a large profit? Not many at all. Especially since so many more people create a new auction site everyday.

9.) Bad sales pitch

Once you get the visitor to your website it is time to convert them to a sale. Having a bad sales pitch or landing page is another way to loose thousands. Using Google Analytics Website Optimizer can help you compare different landing pages and help you find which one converts the best. To help create a better sales pitch ask friends and family to review your website before launching any ad campaigns.

10.) No idea of what you are doing

Very similar to jumping the gun is having no idea what you are doing. Yes, you could make some money but if you studied and learned how to build a great website you could be making a lot of money. I still run across top 100 sites that could be making more money just by changing a few things, nothing would be different to the user. A lot of websites have high earning potential but just don’t know it. Research, study, and learn and maybe one day you will be one of the top affiliates “Gurus”.

Many new affiliate marketers fall into this scheme and buy pre-written articles and content and think they are going to make millions. The sad truth is, they are not even going to make $5. The reason why they are not going to make money is because that same article or content has been sold numerous times over and over again. There may be over a thousand copies of that article or content online even before you get your site up.

Why this is bad?

Google and other search engines rank your site on how unique your content is. They will punish the site owner who uses other peoples work, especially when there are thousands of copies already online. By then the search engines will just skip over you and your site will not be ranked and possibly considered as spam.

Take for example Sue, she came to me one day saying she bought a special package that was going to be on sale for today only and limited to 500 copies sold. We talked for a bit more and I told her to upload the info and send me over her site url. I then entered her site url into CopyScape and you wouldn’t be surprised to see she had 3,293 identical matches to her website content! The sad part was that she spent $12.95 for it. Even though this wasn’t much, I have heard of people spending $300 for an all access pass to thousands of articles….which most likely have already been put online millions of times.

How you can prevent this

If you happen to have already purchased pre-written content then I suggest you run your site through CopyScape. This will check your website against duplicate content and show you how many other websites have the same content as you. Don’t be surprised if you have more than one hundred matches.

To prevent this, don’t buy pre-written content. The best content for your site is written by you and is unique online. The time you invest into your content and articles the better your results will be.

The following is a list of 31 ways which i use to get all my websites ranking at the top. All these work, believe me.

All OFF PAGE SEO

1. Contact site owners, give them relevant articles in exchange for links. (When you contact the site owners, do not ask them, hey do you want an article for your site but I’ve my link in it, he will just say no. say it like “hey, i have some really good articles that might interest you and your readers, I’ve also included my url but feel free to remove it if you don’t like the article” 90% of time the link is left in the article if its good.

2. Insert articles in article directories with relevant links back to site. track these articles and when other websites pick them up offer them more articles free in exchange for links, works like a charm. (you should also cross link all your articles to pass juice, it also doesn’t look as spammy and gives more credibility.

3. Contact site owners for link exchange (Think outside the box here)e.g type in your main keyword in google, go to the 3-4th page, these sites usualy have a good PR and are willing to exchange links than page 1 results. check the link page is recently cached and has less than 50 links, check for nofollow.

4. Contact site owners and ask them would they be willing to convert a keyword on their existing article to point back to your site in exchange for articles (articles with your links)

5. copy all of your competitors back links (use seo elite for this, get lots of different IP addresses

6. Use Isnare article distribution. (be carefully using this, make sure you have quality backlinks first and only use once a week, twice at the most)

7. Back link solutions

8. article underground

9. paid per post reviews

10. Directory submissions (especially paid ones, but only who pass PR juice)

11. Social bookmarking (from different IPs)

12.PR Pumpers site creation on different IP addresses. (build 20 mini niche sites, each site should focus on 1 or2 keywords of your money site, build links to these sites and PR, pass the PR to your money site, link out to your competitors once or twice so it looks natural)

13.Post internal URLs to deep linking directories

14.All the top article directories

15.Link baiting (quizzes, Buzz, lists, Humor etc)

16.Write something very con traversal and post on your site (this 1 method made me about €11,000 in 1 month for 1 article!)

17.sponsoring sites

18.Press releases, (The right way )

19.Yahoo answers/questions

20.Google groups, ask questions leave answers, iie links

21.Video Creation

22.Twitter ( I LOVE IT, A DREAM COME THROUGH IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE)

23.Wiki site submissions

24.Facebook and myspace (Top Method)

25.Proper paid links

26.RSS feeds submissions

27.Track backs

28.web 2.0 marketing, (My Way!!!!)

29.Squidoo & hubpage creation

30.multi blogs creation

31.submit a good story to digg that has a link back to another article on your site

Basics on Quality Index and Ad Copy

Your ad quality, which is based in part on how frequently people click on your ads relative to your competitors, matters a lot. High-quality ads can receive higher ranking on the search results page at a possibly lower cost-per-click. On the other hand, poor-quality ads can cost you more and are most likely not attracting customers. So it’s critical to write good ad copy that will help improve the quality of your ad and help you get more clicks.

Monitoring and Maintaining Your Quality Index
In your account, ad quality is represented by your quality index. You will see the quality index shown as one to five bars—the more bars an ad has, the higher its quality. Monitoring your ads’ quality indices, which are displayed on the Ad Group details page, can help you figure out which ads need more work.

Writing Effective Ad Copy
Well-written ads get the attention of your customers and may improve your click-through rate (CTR) and ad quality. Here are some tips for writing great ads:

• Be clear and precise - Write ads that are clear, concise, honest and, of course, grammatically correct. Don’t over-hype your business.
• Use your keywords in your ad - Use the Insert Keyword function, available when you create a new ad or edit an existing one, to automatically insert your keyword in your ad. Keywords in your title or description help your customers recognize that your ad matches their search.
• What’s in it for your customers? - Be specific as to how your service or product can benefit your customer.
• Include a call-to-action - Words like “Buy Now” in your ad may encourage customers to click. If you have a specific offer, make sure you state it.
• Set yourself apart - Let people know how you’re different from your competitors—free shipping, a money-back guarantee, many years in business and so on—and give them a reason to click your ad instead.

Find out which Ads Work Best
Make sure you use ad testing, also known as A/B testing, to test multiple ads. When you create more than one ad in an ad group, our system will automatically display the higher performing ads more frequently in search results. With different ad copy, you can see which ads attract the most customers.

Get the inside scoop! Yahoo’s Smart Start Guide for new advertisers can assist you as you manage your search marketing account. The guide also includes tips and best practices to help you spend wisely.

If you have a website selling a niche product and you are thinking about expanding and starting an affiliate program you have two choice; create your own in-house affiliate program or join a network. It’s a tough decision to choose between. I recommend to do both if possible.

Benefits of Joining a Network

There are lots of reasons to join a network and the biggest reason is exposure. You will instantly be exposed to thousands of affiliates looking to promote offers. If your product is popular or has a good conversion ratio then more affiliates will run your offer. If your offer is mediocre or doesn’t convert well then you will have a harder time finding affiliates to run your offer.

Another advantage of working with a network is that you hopefully can have a “Super Affiliate” run your offer. A super affiliate is what every network dreams of, an affiliate that has a high level of traffic and brings in a lot of conversions. Most super affiliates stick with one or so networks because the networks take good care of them. Having a super affiliate run your offer means you will see a lot of traffic.

Most importantly, a large benefit of joining a network is having someone else manage it for you. This leaves you more time to manage your site and focus on sales.

Disadvantages of Joining a Network

Joining a network means fees, it will cost you more money to join an affiliate network. Besides paying your setup fee which can sometimes be upwards of $5,000 you could be paying 25% more CPA. For example, the networks service fee is 25% and based on the commission amount paid to the Affiliate. So if the Affiliate is paid $10 commission, the network will receive $2.50. The total cost to you is $12.50.

Another disadvantage of joining a network is that some, not all, CPA networks push lots of spam. CPA networks gets their money through the performance of their affiliates so I know quite a few are pushing affiliates to make a sale/lead/etc without much ethical concern. This could come back to hurt your product and your reputation.

Depending on your product you might be better suited to join one of the larger networks or stick with CPM or Adsense style advertising. It would be better not to judge CPA networks as a whole, but research some individual networks, and see who comes out clean.

Benefits of an In-House Affiliate Program

Using your own in-house affiliate program allows you to customize it to suite your website. Having your affiliate program branded with your website logo and having the design and layout match your website will make it look more professional.

You will also be able to offer your affiliates more ways of promoting your product, like off line advertising, special discount codes tailored to certain affiliates.

One of the biggest reason to have an in-house affiliate program is search engine ranking. By having an in-house affiliate program every affiliate link generated is with your websites url. When your affiliate links to your website this creates a back link which will help your Google page rank and search engine ranking.

Example:

Network Link: http://www.network.com/afclick.php?o=9199&b=gmzmrt0y&p=0009&l=1

In-House Affiliate Program: http://www.yoursite.com/?Ref=398

Also, with in-house affiliate programs you have the option of link structure for affiliate links. Here is an example of the top three link structures you might be able to use. This varies depending on which affiliate software you use or if you create your own.

Example:

http://www.yoursite.com/?Ref=398

http://www.yoursite.com/398.html

http://www.yoursite.com/?398

With in-house affiliate programs you have 100% control over your affiliate program. You can review each affiliates contact information and check it for fraud or contact them individually and offer them special incentives for promoting your product.

Disadvantages of an In-House Affiliate Program

The biggest disadvantage is time spent on managing your in-house affiliate program. It takes a long time to setup your affiliate program. You will need to have a powerful server to handle all the traffic as well as create your own banners and advertisements.

Another big downfall of in-house affiliate programs is that you are limited in exposure to affiliates. If your affiliate has never heard of your product then they are not going to find the sign-up page to promote it.

What To Do

If you are going to go with a network to promote your products I suggest you visit our list of affiliate networks to find an affiliate network that is suitable for your needs.

Affiliate Network Software

JROX Affiliate Software

DirectTrack (Most Expensive)

If you are looking to buy software we encourage you to contact us we would be happy to help you select the affiliate software suitable for your needs.

The days of being able to bid for search engine ad placements for spots 1,2,3,4,ect. are over. I miss the days when they showed you who was first and what bid it would take to be #1. You could bid for the spots. Now its just 1.1, 1.9,..blah blah they just try to bleed you out to be #1 by paying way more per click then normal.

It used to be like this:

Then all you had to do was raise you bid to $1.99 and you would be in the first spot. It was fun, simple, and easy.

Which do you prefer Google or Yahoo for search marketing? I like yahoo because in my experience the keyword bids have been cheaper. Its just been so tough lately trying to knock out the spam, crap sites that just click on ads to make money. I have tried Microsoft AdCenter but had problems with them in the past (When they where in beta stage) and lost a lot of money. But thats another story found here.