Happy new year esteemed Nairalanders. this is Import expert/Affiliate Jagaban praying that may this new year mark the fulfillment of your heart desires.
For newbies that do not know what affiliate marketing is. The ideology of affiliate marketing is simple. Eg you sell a product, I get you buyers and you pay me commission for every single sale I brought to you. There are hundreds of millions of products to promote in the various affiliate market places and your target audience is the billions of people that uses internet daily.
Starting up as an affiliate marketer in Nigeria, below are some of the mistakes I made that I really want you to avoid.
1. Planning:
Before implementing any strategy in affiliate marketing, planning is very important. You need to have a clear picture of what you want to do. What I mean is that, if for example I want to promote a product, I will search for my target buyers and define a clear picture of the promotional method I will use for that audience. When I was a newbie in affiliate marketing, I only promote whatever appeals to me to whomever I can reach.
Remember the 6p formula. Proper prior planning prevents poor performance. The 90/10 rule says that, the 10% of the time you spend in planning saves 90% of the time and effort. Planning is critical to your success
2. Search Engines Are Enemies:
Search engines are some of the best things that have ever happened to the internet. They have made the internet a true global village. They provide valuable resources instantly and different solutions to a particular problem.
From my experience, they have a major shortcoming, for anybody that really wants to make money online, search engines are time wasters. They are very good in supplying crappy information that looks like Gold from the surface. It usually takes about a period of 2years before you know that you have been digging on craps. The end result is that you will start suffering from a popular online sickness called “information Overload”. The major symptoms of this sickness is that it will make you think you have known everything about a particular business but it can never realize into monetary value (I mean what you have been learning can’t make you money)
3. Squeeze Page is A Key
Starting up in affiliate marketing in Nigeria, i was sending traffic directly to affiliate offers. This strategy contradicts the internet marketing philosophy that says “the money is in the list”. To make real money in affiliate marketing, you need to build an email list of potential buyers.
By building a list, you already have an audience to market various products to. Remember the popular 20/80 rule: this rule states that, 20% of the customers makes 80% of the sale. Put in other words, 20% of the effort yields 80% of your result.
I simply mean that a certain percentage of your list will trust you and keeps buying the products you recommend to them.
4. Take Your Affiliate Marketing Business Serious:
When I started as an affiliate marketer, I felt I was too busy doing things that were paying less and thinks that I do not have 1-3 hours daily to do the affiliate marketing that was actually paying more. It is just like a young child telling you that he is too busy doing a 50k job and will not have 1-3hours to sacrifice for a 300k job.
You have to take your business serious and treat it like a business just like you will do to other offline businesses.
5. Traffic
Traffic is of different quality. 100 visits from high quality traffic site is better than 2000 visits from a low quality traffic site. You traffic should be both qualitative and highly targeted. My initial source of affiliate traffic was from file sharing directories. They have some of the cheapest traffic that do not convert. When I was a newbie, I calculated traffic by volume not quality. It is later on that I realized that the quality has a better impact on my bank account.
6. Review What You Are Promoting
your email list subscribers must be treated with love and respect. Only promote products that you are sure will add value to them. Starting as a newbie affiliate marketer, I promoted products based on how appealing the sales page is to me. Unfortunately, most of those products with better sales pages were craps.
Ask the vendor/publisher for a review copy of the product or search for reviews about the product on forums. Read people’s feedbacks and ask the vendor few questions to see if he will respond. If he responds within 24-48hours you are good to go. The reason why you need to ask the vendor a few question is to be sure when your customers have challenge he will attend to them.
7. You Need A Guardian/Mentor
The truth about affiliate marketing is that you need a successful insider to walk you through the inside. Without a mentor/guardian the inside is dark. The greatest mistake I made in affiliate marketing was starting without a mentor. I spent my first 2years in affiliate marketing with only 3 sales of sixty dollars to show for the 2years. I wanted to give up at a time because I felt I have learn everything about affiliate marketing and it is not paying. I never knew that if a strategy really makes much Money, they do not find their way to google and other search engines.
I started seeing significant difference in affiliate marketing when I decided to get coach, a coach that is making the type of commissions I want to make. Although I spent much for his course but I now make much more than what I spent in a single day.
Hold on to me if you really want to learn affiliate marketing in Nigeria and you will celebrate in 2017.
8. Think Globally
When starting up as an affiliate marketer, I had a Nigerian mentality. Anything that I felt as a Nigerian I will not buy, I use to think the rest of the world will also not buy. A typical example is that when I started as an affiliate marketer, I do not promote products on dog training and other related courses. But after a little more exposure to the global audience, I decided to give such courses a trial. The truth is that I have made some of my best affiliate commissions promoting dog training on dog training forums. my advice is to un-cap the Nigerian mentality and think globally.
Conclusion
These are some of the mistakes I made when I started as an affiliate marketer that I do not want you to make.
Their is no better time to start an online business than now, this is because if you are waiting for the right time you will end up never starting. remember the old popular adage that says "Goods tidings goes to the people who hustle while they await it". start your affiliate marketing business today.
I will show few lucky Nairalanders How to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing within a Month. Join The Lucky Few at www.affiliatejagaban.com/p/jagaban.html
http://www.nairaland.com/3551071/8-mistakes-made-starting-online
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