This is a guest post submitted to JMMO by lisafolder from the site Little Money Maker. The author’s email address is: lisafolder@gmail.com .

Although anyone can start an affiliate marketing business, not everyone can achieve success. Why? Well, here are 10 affiliate mistakes that deter people from succeeding in the business of affiliate marketing. To avoid all these mistakes, you first need to study them and to understand them thoroughly.

1. Believing that visitors would only click on their affiliate links. Although the task of an affiliate is only restricted to pre-selling, it isn’t just limited to displaying the affiliate links. It also entails enticing visitors to click on them by listing out the benefits of the affiliate products, giving positive recommendations by writing reviews to encourage readers to check out the products.

2. Promoting too many affiliate programs at the same time. If an affiliate markets 8 affiliate programs at the same time, he or she will have 8 affiliate marketing campaigns to handle. Most probably, the affiliate will find difficult to manage all his campaigns and unable to concentrate on each one of his or her affiliate programs in this situation and ends up losing money.

You should begin with one affiliate program. So, choose a program that you are passionate about. Then, put your best effort to market the product. Test different marketing strategies to see which one works best. Once you are making a steady commission with the product, then maybe you can look for second affiliate product to sell.

3. Believing that using a single method of marketing technique is sufficient. There are people actually think that submitting a few articles to article websites will generate the amount of traffic they expected. But this is wrong. Focusing only one marketing technique will limit the number of potential buyers you can send to your affiliate merchant’s website

4. Failing to improve the performance of your marketing campaign. Many affiliates tend to concern on checking their daily commission only and have no interest on studying and analyzing their marketing campaigns performance. When their campaigns don’t work as expected or don’t generate sales, they will fail to make corresponding adjustments because they don’t know which aspects of their campaigns need to be improved. It is essential to learn every aspect of our marketing strategies. Which marketing techniques are attracted most visitors? How many unique and returning visitors generated? How long do they stay in our website? Where they come from? These are the questions that could help us enhance the performance of our affiliate marketing business.

5. Promoting affiliate products that are lacking of demand. Some affiliate programs offer extremely high sale commission to their affiliate. But, the products aren’t salable and thus earning nothing.

6. Failing to find an affiliate program with a proven record of consumer satisfaction. The trustworthiness of a company relies on how people view it. If the affiliate program has established good relationships with their customers, then it has established a brand which is recognizable for its excellent service. You will find easier to pre-selling such an affiliate product.

7. Failing to keep abreast with the latest developments in the industry. There will come a time when the marketing knowledge we know would become obsolete, more so in the field of internet marketing where everything transpires at a rapid pace. You have to constantly update yourself with the newest trends, techniques and news in this field to always keep your competitive edge.

8. Failing to invest on knowledge. Knowledge likewise evolves and you have to evolve with it. Buy noteworthy eBooks, special reports and the likes… those which would teach you the latest tactics to help you conquer your field.

9. Resting on your laurels once a semblance of success is achieved. Success is not eternal. You have to sustain it. If you leave your business alone once it shows the promise of success, you’re just setting it up for failure.

10. Thinking that affiliate marketing can help you to become rich fast. No, affiliate marketing isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme. You have to put in a lot of effort and time, and some capital before you can make money in affiliate marketing.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

10 Mistakes in Affiliate Marketing that Can Stop Your Success

One of the things that I’ve been doing here at JMMO is highlighting various affiliate programmes available for online entrepreneurs. And today, I’d like to share DIYThemes’ Thesis WordPress Theme affiliate programme.

Admittedly, the reason I’m sharing this particular affiliate programme is due to the fact that I have recently bought a Developer’s License for the theme. And, I decided to use it when I updated the look of my personal blog. I guess, that’s why I’m quite excited about it. I actually bought and used the product – and like it.

If you’re someone who’s looking for a clean, simple theme to use for your WordPress blog, then you might want to try Thesis out. And, if you’re someone who’s in touch with people who might be interested in buying WordPress themes, then you might like to sign up as an affiliate here today.

Image source: DIYThemes

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Thesis / DIYThemes: Affiliate Spotlight of the Week

I’m not a Broadway-wannabe or anything like that. But, for some reason, I came across this Talent Database website offering services to people who wish to break in to show business a couple of days ago. Then, today, I ended up reading this article on About Theater where writer Paul Cozby gives 5 tips for beginning actors on how to get started.

Is someone trying to tell me something?!

Uhmm… well, before you think I’m planning on doing any auditions, I have to say that I’m not. I don’t see myself on stage any time soon. At least, not in a theater production sense.

The reason I’m writing this here is because I thought Mr Cozby’s tips for actors actually may be useful for folks wishing to start making money online too.

In his first tip, for example, Paul says: “Treat it like a job.” And further suggests that people who want to get things done should devote at least an hour a day to do what they need to do in this job. I think that works very well for people who wants to start working online too (or any job for that matter). It’s so easy to say, “I want to make money online” (or “I want to be an actor”) – but never follow through with actions. If this is something you really want to do, then spending an hour a day on the job is worth doing.

You don’t need to quit your existing job (if you have one). Or come up with masses of time just to get things going. An hour to do research, start a web site, experiment on eBay, or talk to people who can help in your business will definitely be useful.

For tip numbers 2 & 3, Paul gave the advice: “Set Goals” and “Make a Career Plan”. I’m big on goal setting and career planning. In another life, I’d be doing goals and career counseling (yes, I was trained in psychology!). I’m a firm believer that people who set goals and create realistic plans attract productivity and success much more.

And yes, I believe that setting goals and career planning also apply to people who wish to become Webpreneurs. It doesn’t matter what area of online business you want to get in to – be it selling, teaching, blogging, or consulting.

Mr Cozby’s additional tips on these topics also are worth reading and using.

Tip #4 mentions: “Acquire Skills and Tools”, which reminds me a bit of the post I wrote yesterday. If there are skills and tools that you lack in order to pursue your hopes of making money online, then work on getting them bit by bit. Even if it’s just reading about website building or taking a course on bookkeeping.

And finally, for tip #5, Paul Crozby says: “Get Beyond Your Comfort Zone.” Doing things the way we know how is the easiest way, of course. But, doing things out of the ordinary usually pays off a lot more. So, for example, in the online business world, if you’ve just been used to simply trying ‘popular’ affiliate programmes like Amazon or eBay – why not venture out a bit more and try affiliates that aren’t as well known? I know that when I started experimenting with a lesser-known affiliate programme, I ended up getting a lot more money than I ever did from Amazon or eBay in the same time span.

So, you see, whether we’re trying to pursue acting – or hoping to be the next Internet Millionaire – we all could use these tips. Right?

Image: Microsoft Stock Photo

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Act Like It Matters { When the Web is like a Stage }

In this post about making money online as cheaply and as quickly as possible, JMMO reader Mark shared some additional insights:

I love how a genuine question made by the author results in these barely concealed “pitches” from people who are supposedly participating in the aforesaid “genuine” discussion. It’s funny and a little ironic.

Personally, I’d probably do the following:
1. Find a cheap hosting company that has Fantistico – create a WordPress blog.
2. Head over to Commission Junction or any other affiliate management company. Choose a product or service you think is interesting and sign up for their advertising program.
3. Write at least one insightful article reviewing the product or service on your blog and make sure the link to the product or service that you’re talking about is your affiliate link. (that the affiliate manager like CJ provides you.)
4. Spend some time on blogs and in forums that deal with this product, niche, or sector and make insightful and valuable contributions to the discussion. Make a footnote reference to the fact that you’ve done a review and include the link to the article if possible.
5. Analyze the traffic using a tool like Google Analytics.
6. Hopefully watch sales be made.

I’ve done this and made hundreds of dollars over a very short amount of time. I use this method to test interest in particular products and services.

For an example see this post I made on one of my blogs: http://vacantdesk.com/review-of-earth-class-mail/

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NOTE:
It’s always great whenever I find interesting comments from readers and visitors to this blog. And sometimes, I wish to refer to those tips and ideas. So, I decided to feature some of the best ones that I found here on Just Make Money Online.

Image: Microsoft Stock Photo; Edits, Shai Coggins

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Reader Advice: Making Money with Affiliate Sales

If you want to make money online selling iTunes products, then you might want to become an iTunes affiliate. They run the affiliate program via LinkShare. And, it’s available to residents of the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

The program offers a 5% commission to all qualified sales that are generated from your affiliate link.

Types of products that you can sell from iTunes: music, audio books, videos, podcasts, radio shows, TV shows, and iPhone applications.

For more info, check out the iTunes Affiliate FAQ page.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

iTunes Affiliate Program

Recently, I came across this affiliate site called Web Warrior Tools. And, I was immediately attracted to its clean, simple look. When I signed up and checked it out, I found the process quite easy and simple as well. Then, I found out that it was started by bloggers Leo Babauta from ZenHabits and Glen Stansberry of LifeDev.

Basically, the products they sell at the moment are ebooks related to business, money, lifestyles, and technology. Some of its sample products include: The Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting and Jump Start Your Work Space. Many of their products are well priced and affordable.

They run an affiliate programme that pays resellers 30% from the sale price. Plus, if you recruit other resellers, you can also receive a tiered commission from their sales. And, they offer to pay via Paypal. So far, I have not seen any payment threshold and other restrictions on their site. So, we’ll see how it goes.

If you do try it out, let me know. If you have other thoughts on Web Warrior Tools’ products and services, I’d love to hear about them too. If I learn anything else, as always, I’d be reporting them right here.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Web Warrior Tools: Affiliate Programme

In true JMMO Show Me The Money tradition, I’m sharing with you a report on a first payment from an affiliate experiment. This time, it’s from The Pepperjam Network. Yes, I received my first payment via Paypal with them the other day. Woohoo!

If you want to check out my previous blog posts about Pepperjam, here’s one where I talked about their Blogger Incentive Programme. And, this one where I announced that I signed up with them and started experimenting with their service.

So, if you want to try it yourself, Sign up with the Pepperjam Network today. They do pay via Paypal, with a payment threshold of $25 in the cycle. If you don’t reach that threshold in a month, it gets rolled over to the next month. It took me just over a month from sign-up to payment.

And yes, I believe they’re still running their blogger their blogger incentive programme and sign-up bonuses.

If you’ve received your first payment from Pepperjam too, let us know right here.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Pepperjam First Payment In!

A few weeks ago, I came across another content site where you can make money online. It’s called HubPages . The basic idea is that you can make money either through (or both):

1) Affiliate Referrals – You sign-up in their affiliate programme and you promote different articles called “hubs” using your unique affiliate referral tracking links.

2) Writing Content via Revenue Share – You write content about any topic you might have in mind (or create content as a response to requested topics).

With the revenue share, you need to provide your affiliate account info with: Google Adsense, Amazon, Kontera, and/or eBay Affiliate Network. From HubPages:

After you’ve joined the affiliate programs from eBay, Amazon and Google, ads for these three companies (and we’re looking to add more) appear on your Hubs. Any revenue generated during one of your impressions (a click-through with Google, an actual purchase with Amazon or eBay) is 100% yours.

HubPages splits the impressions with you in the following way:

1. Your own Hubs: Hubbers receive 60% of total impressions.
2. The HubPages Affiliate Program: You can refer new writers to HubPages and they become Hubbers within 30 days, you receive an additional 10% of their Hubs’ lifetime impressions.
3. Traffic Referral Program: If you send traffic to any Hub, you’re entitled to either 9% or 12% of total impressions. You’ll receive 9% if the Hub you’ve referred people to already has impressions allocated to an Affiliate. If there are no Affiliates, you’ll receive 12% of the total impressions.

Whatever is left from the splits above goes to HubPages. Note that these splits apply only to HubPages and User Profile pages. On all other pages, such as a referral to a Tag page or the HubPages home page, you’ll receive 30% on a traffic referral, with HubPages getting the rest.

Basically, it reminds me a lot of Squidoo, with some adjustments here and there (and not as many affiliate link partnerships). One thing I like about it is that it seems to have a decent community. And, the points system seem to encourage better content quality (or at least, better networking skills).

I have yet to see what are the advantages (or disadvantages) of Hubpages, compared to other content revenue/affiliate sharing sites. If you have any experience working with HubPages, I’d love to get your feedback.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

HubPages: Writing Content for Cash

Amazon just released a new widget called the Page Recommender. Basically, it’s a Javascript widget that you can add to your blogs or websites.

The beauty of this widget is that it comes up with recommendations to other pages within YOUR website or weblog. Thus, giving readers and visitors a chance to discover more of your content. And perhaps, increase the chance of you earning an Amazon affiliate referral.

So, how do you get it installed? Just log in to your Amazon affiliate account, look for the ‘Page Recommender’ widget, then add the javascript to all the pages on your site or blog that you wish to be recommended through the widget.

Anyway, here’s an example (but, the page recommendations might not be that great yet, as I have yet to add this to other posts):

If you give it a go, let me know. I’ll be interested to know what you think of it.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Page Recommender: Amazon Widget

Last month, I asked JMMO readers and visitors the question: Which affiliate service do you use the most?

And the clear winner: Amazon (46%).

Next in line are: Clickbank (15%) and Commission Junction* (14%).

The other options didn’t get as many votes, such as: EBAY* (8%), ShareASale (6%), and Linkshare (6%).

And these two had the least votes: Chitika (3%) and myHelpHub (2%).

These results are based on total votes: 66.

I wonder though how much money people make with their affiliate links?

* These affiliates were suggested by readers.

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

Poll Results: On Favorite Affiliate Services