Before we get into building you your first website, let’s quickly talk about mistakes I see from many affiliate marketers:
1: Affiliate Marketing Is Easy. It’s not. No matter
what product you are promoting, it’s not going to be easy. It takes a
lot of work, and you need to be smart. You have to keep updated on
what’s going on in the world, especially when it comes to search
engines. Trust me – you’re not going to throw up a WordPress Blog and
start making money immediately. I know some successful affiliates who
took over a year to get their first real money player at poker. Their
secret? They just kept trying.
2: Content Is King. You may hear this phrase a lot
when it comes to affiliate marketing, which is that Content Is King.
Hell, I’ve actually written an article stating that Content IS in fact King.
The phrase itself isn’t incorrect – however content is just one large
part of affiliate marketing. There are so many other important factors
including link building, search engine optimization, visitor
optimization and calls to action to name just a few. If you’re not
making money on a content rich website and you keep just throwing
content at it – you’re making a big mistake.
3: Affiliate Marketing is Over saturated. It’s true
that there are a lot of affiliate websites out there, however there is
still room for many more affiliates. Sometimes, you just have to focus
on smaller niche. For example: let’s say you want to build a website
around “poker strategy”. Unfortunately if you search poker strategy you
see a large variety of websites, and realize that you’re unlikely to
take over any of these sites in Google rankings. In this case, just
start to add more words to look for a niche to dominate, like “razz
poker strategy”, “horse poker strategy” or “7 card stud poker
strategy”. Suddenly the websites listed there aren’t too intimidating,
and it’s easier to take over them in the rankings.
4: SEO is Easy/Overwhelming. I hear conflicting
reports from new affiliates on search engine optimization: “its super
easy” or “its very overwhelming”. Let me clarify this: basic SEO is easy.
The most basic of SEO, like using H tags, and keyword phrases and
keyword density – all that is easy. However to really get ahead in this
world you need to learn advanced SEO techniques. This isn’t
overwhelming – it just takes time, and takes a lot of trial and error.
5: You Need Money to Make Money. A lot of people
seem to think that to get into affiliate marketing, you need money.
However while you need SOME money for the basics like website hosting
and domain registration, you really don’t need a lot of money. You can
start with as little as $20. You don’t need to pay people for a design,
you don’t need to pay for good links, and you certainly don’t need to
pay for those “How to make $100k a month” ebooks that you see all over
the place. So if you’re concerned about needing money to start with
don’t be – other than a domain and web hosting, you can do everything
for free.
