Affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn a living.

You don’t need to create a product. You don’t need to build a customer support system. You don’t need to create sales materials. You can even get by without a website if you choose to do so.

You can market any product you choose. You can use either free or paid traffic methods—the choice is yours.

Your customer base is not limited geographically—your customers can be located anywhere in the entire world.

All you need to do is find a product and promote it. For every sale you make, you earn a commission. Pretty neat!

It sounds easy in theory and it can be. But there are some common mistakes that affiliate marketers often make. These mistakes can hinder your progress or even kill it off entirely. It’s good to know up front what they are so you can avoid them.

Focus

This one affects everybody, yours truly included. With emails, Facebook news feeds, banner ads, etc. we’re bombarded with ads extolling the virtues of some new program, method or piece of software. They all have one thing in common. They all claim you’ll create riches with very little work or effort.

The ads are nicely done and we can get easily distracted.

In addition look at the choices we all have: ecommerce, affiliate marketing, product creation, Facebook ads, YouTube videos, and so on.

It becomes so easy to become distracted and fall victim to “shiny object syndrome”.

The answer is really simple, but it takes discipline (which can often be in short supply). We have to learn to focus on what we’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If your choice is to market affiliate products with YouTube videos, then you must ignore everything else. No seo or Facebook ads.

You simply can’t do it all.

Become a master at one or two things and you’ll be able to earn a nice income. I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s crucial to your success.

Take Action

We’d like our work and our products to be perfect, but perfection is not required. Too many new affiliates spend countless hours consuming information, but not putting it into action until everything is perfect.

Action builds momentum. Once we’ve written our first blog post or placed our first ad, the next ones become progressively easier. But, you must take that first step. Until you do, all the training you’ve consumed is not going to earn you a single cent.

Affiliates Are Problem Solvers

The wise advice says: “Find the problems and the pain points that your audience experiences and offer solutions”.

That’s great advice. What it’s telling you is to be a successful affiliate marketer you must first know your audience well. You should know what problems they are desperate to solve and what keeps them awake at night.

Once you have that information, become a problem solver.

Give them your best information. Always provide top notch value without selling. Never use hype and high pressure sales tactics. Your audience will turn you off.

Instead offer help and advice and make product recommendations. You’ll build trust first and the sales will be certain to follow.

Testing and Tracking

It’s pretty difficult to create a campaign that will be a huge success right out of the gate. You might get lucky and do it once, but who wants to rely on luck?

You have to test.

Things like ad copy, images, ad placement and headlines should all be tested to determine your best combination. Hand in hand with testing, you must reliable tracking in place.

A good tracking system will let you know, with certainty, what’s working the best for you. Without tracking you will have no idea where you’re making money or losing it.The tracker I use and recommend is Click Magick. It’s easy to set up and use and it’s very reasonably priced as well.

Mindset

Affiliate marketing can often be a lonely and frustrating profession. You work very hard to create a productive campaign and, instead, it flops miserably. This can be extremely depressing to the point you may want to quit the business.

Remember, there are numerous people making a great living from affiliate marketing. There’s no reason you can’t be one of them.

You need to work on your mindset.

Having the right mindset will certainly help you focus and it will help you overcome the obstacles that all affiliate marketers will ultimately face.

There are many great books available that can help you develop the right mindset. One of my favorites is The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. It explains some very simple, but highly effective, techniques for creating the right mindset.

Affiliate marketing is a terrific way to make a superb income. If you can avoid some of these common mistakes, your success will come much quicker. Best of luck.

I’d appreciate your comments and your affiliate marketing experiences.