What is Affiliate Marketing?
One of the first types of digital marketing is affiliate marketing, in which you recommend an online product to someone and get paid when they purchase it as a result of your recommendation.
When William J. Topin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts, launched his own affiliate-marketing campaign in 1996, Amazon began to widely publicise the idea of affiliate marketing. Since that time, affiliate marketing has grown and changed all by itself. CPA (cost per action), CPM (cost per impression), CPC (cost per click), and pay per sale later developed.
Programs like Amazon Associates, Clickbank, and Google AdSense were introduced much later. As affiliate marketers began using big data analytics to maximise their marketing efforts, performance-based marketing strategy entered the marketing fray.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
Affiliate Marketing works in 4 simple steps:
- Join an affiliate program
- Choose a product to be promoted
- Share the link via Social media, Blog, YouTube videos, Facebook ads, or any other form
- Earn an affiliate commission when someone makes a purchase
Why do enterprises need Affiliate Marketing?
Internet marketers and advertisers may connect and conduct business with ease thanks to affiliate marketing. Affiliate networks are online marketplaces that let advertisers and potential affiliates quickly access a selection of publications.
Approximately 83% of advertisers today utilise affiliate marketing to negotiate contracts with publishers, according to a study by the Forrester Group. The research also makes the point that affiliate relationships are highly sought after by publishers through networks with a worldwide outlook.
Affiliate networks are responding by seeking to broker exclusive deals with global brands in order to sweeten the deal for publishers and stand out.
Why do people fail at Affiliate Marketing?
- Inadequate product knowledge
affiliate marketing is flooded with products and companies. One has to be careful with the products to be promoted. Most of the time affiliate marketing fails because of a crappy product. Quite often, it so happens that marketers are not sure of the products they promote.
If it does not offer something of value, the very purpose of affiliate marketing is lost. People often jump into a certain product because of the commission. But it so turns out that the product is of no real value. People realized it after they bought it. Eventually, online reputation is lost.
Marketers should promote products with credible advocacy. That way, they can achieve much more success than those who promote products they are not connected with (but hope to make money with because they are meant to be a bestseller).
- Fake training or affiliate programs
The online referral business is flooded with scammers who make fake promises to newbies of quick-rich schemes, with guaranteed success schemes. Most of these scams come disguised as online marketing training products or as a fake affiliate programs or a combination of both.
Marketers make the error of selecting the incorrect training programme, which leads to them being trapped in the endless upsell devices connected to scams.
Marketers are frequently subjugated by the abusive professional usage of manipulative neuromarketing. Scam-lingo catchphrases like “purchase this product and your one-million-dollar business are guaranteed” influence us in the scammer’s preferred way.
Then there are affiliate programmes that use MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) or pyramid schemes that pass for affiliate programmes and wish to charge you to advertise their items.
- Inability to choose the right platform
One of the most common reasons why affiliate marketing is failing is because people are unable to choose the right platform. Most of the time marketers are buzzing with ideas and end up building 4-5 websites within a few weeks. Next what happens is, that they work on all of them simultaneously, allotting little time for each website.
Eventually what happens is none of the websites give them the desired ROI. Neither do they have much traffic, nor have come up with something unique on the sites. A better idea is to put the efforts into one or two sites, with 2-3 new articles being published per week gaining attention. After 6 months you will surely get success with one or two sites.
- Failure to build a relationship with referrals
In affiliate marketing, strong relationships are built on useful content and your interactions with your audience. Unfortunately, most marketers overlook this, and instead of helping people ask for it, they assign customer care support.
They often fail to get in touch with their audience, and therefore, have to worry about attracting hit-and-run buyers over and over again. 
Marketers should be more approachable and answer questions people leave in your comment section or on social media. With a good relationship, the visitors on your site will not only follow your link for buying something but will trust you and keep coming back will to learn more from you before their next purchase.
This is the principle of turning one-time buyers into satisfied repeat customers, where many marketers fail to break even.
- Too much competition
Choosing the field of interest, you want to build your affiliate business it is often a big challenge for a majority of marketers. They are mostly tempted by the thought of targeting a fairly large market with their affiliate business.
But in reality, generic, huge markets come along with two problems: very competitive, and not ideal for finding targeted audiences. Instead, affiliate marketing should focus on a well-targeted audience made of visitors that are very much interested in the content and the related product recommendations you provide on your blog.
Marketers should rather specify your niche product to a certain level. Create search terms that are very specific and make sure that your content is a perfect match answer for it.
- Unrealistic expectations
Most marketers fail to understand that it takes time to build a solid foundation for long-term affiliate business. The reason why affiliate marketing is failing is because of a lack of patience. They must understand that it takes time to gain the trust of your audience and the search engines. You must give it the time to grow your affiliate revenue into a full-time income.
- Getting into spams
Spams are one of the biggest reasons why affiliate marketing fails. Spamming your link is detrimental for your reputation and chances are high, that you will be banned from various affiliate programs. Spamming can happen through your inbox or by unwise use of keywords in your articles.
Final thoughts:
As our observation shows a majority of people fail to do affiliate marketing with success and here, we have discussed some of the most common reasons why affiliate marketing is failing. Affiliate marketing is as easy as anything else in the world. You just need to understand the process, be willing to take action, find someone you can ask when you need help, be patient, and be willing to work for it.
Stay away from tempting scams, learn the skills from a trusted mentor, and apply your skills steadily, for assured success. Have you tried affiliate marketing yet? Please share your experiences and expertise in this business below. And if you have any questions – please drop me a line in the comment section below.
