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Essentially, affiliate marketing is all about promoting someone else’s product or service in return for commission. Of course, it’s quite easy to see why so many people choose to become affiliate marketers, given that there’s no need for you to create your own product or service. Furthermore, you can begin immediately simply by signing up to one of the many programs available from Clickbank, PayDotCom, or Commission Junction. Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of being an affiliate marketer is that you never need to carry any inventory and neither do you need to worry about customer service.

An affiliate marketer is really just a middleman who either suggests or recommends certain products or services to people. For example, you may be interested in losing weight and after browsing around online, you come across my website or blog where I have numerous articles relating to weight loss, some of which may recommend a particular website which sells a product you may find useful. You in turn click on the link and go to that site and purchase the product. And because I connected you to the seller, I stand to receive a commission.

As you can see, there is no need for you to create your own product, but instead you simply send potential customers to a merchant who sells the type of product those potential customers are interested in. For the most part, an affiliate marketer is involved primarily with pre-selling, in that your focus is on providing potential customers with useful information relating to a certain product, in order to allow your reader to make an informed decision.

Here are 5 common affiliate marketing mistakes:

Mistake #1: Lack of Focus

Since there is such an incredible amount of products out there which you may choose to promote, many affiliate marketers try to take on too many at once. For your own sake, you should rather start with just one single product and then progress when you’re ready. Whatever you do, never try to hard-sell because your goal is to portray yourself as a neutral party, and your only responsibility is to provide possible solutions to potential customers. You can be rest assured this method will see you making far more sales.

Mistake #2: Not capturing your leads before you send them to your affiliate product site.

Remember, if someone visits your blog or website and you fail to capture their information, you have absolutely no way of contacting with them again. Therefore it is absolutely crucial for you to build a mailing list, or as Internet marketers call it, list building, if you wish to build a successful affiliate marketing business. Starting from day one, make sure to use an opt-in form to capture your lead’s name and email address. That way, if they don’t buy the first time, you can always follow up with them later and try again and again and again. That’s what I call… priceless!

Mistake #3: Failing to treat your affiliate marketing business as a proper business.

In fact many people actually start off with an attitude of, “I’ll just give it a try and if nothing happens within a week, I’ll simply scrap it.” However, one should realize that affiliate marketing is just like any other business and in order for it to work, you have to follow a well planned strategy. Providing you’re willing to treat it as you would a proper business, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on growing your business and remember, the more you’re willing to put in, the more you’ll get out.

Mistake #4: Failing to research the affiliate program prior to promoting it.

I’ve seen this many times, affiliates grabs the first affiliate program that they think is going to be extremely profitable simply because it has a high commission rate or promote it just because every other affiliate marketer is also promoting it. If the affiliate program you’re promoting doesn’t complement the overall theme of your blog or website, you may find it difficult to convince your prospects to purchase the product.

Mistake #5: Not registering your own domain name and web hosting!

Eww, now who wants to visit a site that looks like it was hosted on a free host like Blogger or Tripod. If there’s anything wrong with free hosting, it’s because it looks unprofessional and is not a long-term solution to running a successful affiliate marketing business. $8.81 a year (with coupon) for a memorable domain name at NameCheap and around $5 per month for a web hosting account at HostGator is not going to break the bank. In the long run, it may just help to put more money in the bank.

Do you make any of these affiliate marketing mistakes? What other common mistakes do affiliate marketers make? Please share your comments below.