New Business

www.affiliate-windfall-secrets.com" />After going through this mistake, you might decide that affiliate marketing is not right for you at this point. And that's fine. It means that you can invest your time, money, energy and effort elsewhere, which could be the right thing for you to do at the moment.

1. Unrealistic expectations

I personally feel that the biggest mistake most businesses make when starting any new venture - whether it's affiliate marketing, joint ventures, referral systems, or commission-only salespeople - is that they're too optimistic. They assume money is just going to come rolling in because now they have this huge fleet of salespeople working on commission, who will be referring people left, right and centre to their business.

2. Poor sales conversion

If you don't get good sales conversion yourself, do you think your affiliates can do any better? If you haven't road tested your system before offering it to affiliates, they won't succeed either.

This is especially true of the Internet. I've heard people say to me, "How can I get access to affiliates with big databases - 100,000 people or more? Then they can promote my products and service to their list." Well, the first question I have is, "What's your conversion rate?” They usually say nothing because they don't know what that means - let alone what the rate actually is.

3. Poor incentives for affiliates

The third mistake is that any business people don't offer enough of an incentive to their affiliates. For the affiliate it really comes down to what's in it for them. It's not so much about the percentage of commission; it's about how much money they're going to make; and how many sales they need to make in order to create a decent income.

Take again the example of the seminar that I promoted. They were offering 50% commission to their affiliates. Is 50% good? Than you have to visit www.affiliate-directories-online.com Well, sure! But 80% is better or how about 100%? I've seen some affiliate programs that offer 80 or 100 percent.

You have to also ask, "80% of what?” I’ve seen people who sell e-books for $29.00 and they offer 80% of that to an affiliate, or $23.20. That's good, but not nearly as attractive as 50% of a $1,600 seminar ticket and making $800 for every sale.

4. The wrong partners

The next most common mistake is to choose the wrong partners. Because it costs you and your affiliates nothing, it's tempting to offer your affiliate program to anybody on the planet who could be willing to promote you. But if you're just starting out and especially if you're just running this as one marketing method in your marketing mix, it's really important to pick the right partners.

5. Too much, too soon

The fifth mistake is to get too sophisticated too soon. There are some very sophisticated affiliate marketing systems available, for more detail www.success-affiliate-marketing.com and some of them are excellent. However, most are geared towards those who want to run their business using affiliate marketing as the only marketing tool they use. I mentioned in the introduction that this book focuses on you as a small business owner looking to add affiliate marketing to your overall marketing mix.

www.master-affiliates-marketer.com
www.affiliate-windfall-secrets.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - If You Haven't Road Tested Your System Before Offering it to Affiliates!