DerrickVanDyke.com

If you promote products as an affiliate and you’re not experiencing the success that you want and deserve, then I can almost guarantee you’re making one or more of these critical mistakes…

Critical Mistake #1: Not Building a List

The biggest mistake that affiliates make is sending prospects directly to a merchant’s website. If you do that, you’ll miss out on the chance to build your own list, and that list is the basis of your long-term profits.

Think about this…

If you spend time and money to drive traffic to a merchant’s website, fewer than 5% will buy. So what happens to the 95% who don’t buy? If you aren’t capturing your visitor’s email addresses, you’re throwing money right down the drain.

Why drive traffic to a merchant’s website and hope for a sale, when you can get them on your list first and have more control over the conversion process?

If you get people to join your list first, that gives you a chance to build rapport with your subscribers and they’ll be much more likely to buy the products that you recommend.

The long-term profit potential of your business will rely on repeat sales from the same customers. If you have a list of subscribers who trust you and believe the products you recommend will truly help them succeed, then you can sell multiple products to the same people and maximize your income.

Can you see why it’s so important to capture leads? That ends up being the most critical skill in affiliate marketing, and many people neglect it entirely.

If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer, you simply have to capture leads and build a responsive list of raving fans and repeat buyers.

Critical Mistake #2: Focusing on Short Term Profits

Most of the “How to make money products” focus short-term profits. Because that’s what the market wants! It’s like illegal drugs: if there were no demand, the supply would dry up and go away.

The problem is that once the techniques stop working, your income stops and you have to scramble to find the next shortcut.

When AdSense was hot, I bought some software that created hundreds of pages that were picked up by Google and I was making $50 to $100 every day from one site. So I thought I was going to be rich practically overnight! All I had to do was make hundreds of these sites and watch my income skyrocket…

Shortly after, Google “slapped” the whole industry and I watched my income dry up overnight. Thankfully, that wasn’t my only source of income. Short cuts don’t give you the consistency or confidence you need.

What you really need is a business that produces consistent income that grows over time and is impervious to Google or any other factors.

Critical Mistake #3: Choosing the Wrong Niche

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Well I say, “Follow the money and then you’ll have the time and freedom to do what you love.”

You don’t want to waste your time promoting products that won’t make you any money. So you need to select a market in which there is already money being made.

Many new marketers think you need to find untapped niche markets to be successful. But markets with high demand and no competition are rare. You might be able to make a little money in a niche market where there is little competition. But you can’t build a business in a market with low demand.

You want a passionate market of people who will do anything for a solution to their problem. And you want a competitive market where a lot of money is already being spent.

There will always be room in a market of cash-in-hand buyers. All you need is a small slice of the pie.

Critical Mistake #4: Promoting Too Many Niches

When I talk about niches, I mean categories and subcategories within the same market. For example, let’s look at the “Make Money” niche.

There are many ways to make money like Forex Trading, playing poker, and betting on horses. So “Internet Marketing” is actually a niche market and “Generating Traffic” is sub-niche of that market, and “pay-per-click advertising” is a sub-sub-niche of that market.

That may be confusing, but stay with me…

If you promote a Google AdWords product to your list one day and then a Twitter product the next day, your readers will just get confused. Instead you should survey your subscribers, find out which traffic generation technique that their most interested in learning about, and then get those people onto a sub-list.

Then you can provide them with the content they really want and will be more likely to buy the niche product you recommend.

Critical Mistake #5: Promoting the Wrong Products

The products you promote to your list will reflect on your character and your marketing ethics…and will eventually affect your income. If you promote the latest, greatest product launch just because everyone else is, or you promote products that you haven’t purchased and evaluated, you risk losing the respect of your subscribers. You may a sale, but you won’t sell anything else to a person who bought the junk you recommended.

If you don’t truly believe that the product you’re promoting will help your subscribers succeed, then you shouldn’t recommend it.

I know that’s difficult to accept, but it’s true. When you believe in the product you’re promoting, it’s be so much easier to sell and you’ll make much more money in the process.

Critical Mistake #6: Promoting Too Many Products

Have you ever been to a web page or blog where there are dozens of flashy banners and affiliate links? It’s scary, I know. That type of “shotgun” approach is another huge mistake that most affiliates make.

But it’s not their fault…they’ve been fed the wrong information by “me-too” marketers who don’t know what the heck their talking about. And it’s not their fault either. They just regurgitate information that they were fed by someone else!

Let’s set the record straight…More is not better! And the sooner you realize that, the sooner your income will start to grow.

Focus on one product at a time. Learn everything about it and develop unique marketing materials to promote it. Create a free report, set up a squeeze page, and add multiple followups to your autoresponder. Once you have consistent sales, then you can repeat the process with another product.

Critical Mistake #7: Only Promoting Front End Products

The most expensive cost of any business is the acquisition of a customer. And even if you’re promoting as an affiliate, it still costs you time and money to get people to buy.

If you just focus on front-end sales, you’re missing out on the life-time value of your customers. You need to focus on converting front-end customers into life-long buyers and make more money on the back end. And if your market doesn’t have a back end, then you’re in the wrong market.

You also want to make sure that your front-end product has massive value, because customers are more likely to buy additional products in the same niche if they had a pleasant experience with the initial sale.

Critical Mistake #8: Trying to “Sell” Your Prospects

Have you ever been in a store and you know exactly what you want, but you can’t find anyone to sell it to you? It’s very frustrating. On the other hand, it’s annoying when you walk into a store just to browse and you’re hounded by relentless salespeople!

The only time I like to be sold is when I’ve already made the decision to buy. I’m sure you feel the same way. You want to make an informed decision and not be rushed into a purchase.

Your job as an affiliate is to be a trusted advisor because people buy from people they trust. And if you only promote high-quality products that over deliver, then your subscribers will look forward to your next promotion.

That doesn’t mean you have to wait weeks to promote anything to your subscribers. In fact, you should promote your front-end product right away. It does mean that you should give first and sell second.

Give your subscribers valuable content to that’s good enough to sell. And don’t ask for anything in return. Then give them a special offer that they’d have a hard time turning down. You’ll be amazed at the results!

Critical Mistake #9: Believing in the Easy Button

I’ve always been told that the word “work” is a “four letter word” when it comes to writing sales copy, and that it should be avoided at all cost. The reason is because most people truly want to believe that there is an “easy button” somewhere that they can just push and money will come flying out of there computer.

Does this sound familiar? “Make money online without a website or a product working just 15 minutes a day in your pajamas!”

The sooner you acknowledge that the “easy button” doesn’t exist the faster your business will grow. Once you accept that you have to build a real business to make money online, you’ll see more success that 95% of all affiliates.

As long as you believe or even think that there might be an easy button out there somewhere, you won’t invest in yourself and you won’t have the drive or determination to build a real online business.

I don’t mean to scare you, but it will take some work. But compared with starting an offline business or getting a college degree, this is easy and you can get started with just $100 or less!

Critical Mistake #10: Not Believing in Yourself

Have you ever tried to explain what you’re trying to do online to a friend? Did your friend think you were crazy and tell you not to quit your day job?

That’s the same reaction I got when I first started and I know it’s not easy to stay motivated and committed when people are telling you that you’ll never make any money at this and you’re wasting your time.

Here’s the cold hard truth…

If you don’t believe in what you do, then no one else will believe you either. And if you don’t believe in the products you promote, then no one will buy from you.

If you’ve tried and failed, you can’t put the blame on anyone else. You and you alone are responsible for your success and your failures.

Stop looking for excuses and accept your results. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Make the decision to succeed and keep taking action until you reach your goal.

If you believe in yourself and what you’re trying to accomplish, you’ll open a new door that leads to an abundance of wealth.

I hope this article inspires you to make some big changes in your marketing that will help you prosper in 2010!

All the best,

Derrick VanDyke

Click here to see the three powerful strategies I use to make over a million dollars online.