Why You Should Not Join Too Many Affiliate Programs

As an affiliate marketer, one thing you definitely should not do so early in your career is signing up for too many affiliate programs.

If you think that more is good then you are wrong, the notion that having more affiliate programs to promote, the more money you are going to make.

This post is going to show you why promoting too many affiliate programs can hurt you and some things you can do to avoid falling into this trap.

Don’t Be Lured Or Tricked Into Promoting Affiliate Programs Simply Because The Money Looks Good

Wanting to make extra money for your affiliate business is understandable, but in the not too distant future, this tactic is going to cause you more havoc and even confusion than any affiliate profits you think you are going to make.

The reason being is that if you are joining too many new affiliate programs regularly to chase some additional cash you are going to find that after some time you will start to get confused and if you are working on your own you will not be able to monitor what is or isn’t working for you.

This can add a lot more time to your already busy schedule due to the workload that is required to maintain all the different affiliate programs you are associating yourself with.

Good Quality Content Helps To Promote Your Affiliate Programs

You may run a good quality content blog, and you figure that offering lots of different affiliate products to your visitors may encourage them to purchase from you, but you are very very wrong. Most online users today are very wary and need to hear about a product or service more than once before they even consider buying it and if you are not the authority on the subject they can also leave your site to find someone who is.

A statistical fact that has not changed since the inception of affiliate marketing is that most potential buyers only purchase a product after doing some research, it is the same as with email marketing where you need at least seven emails to get a person to buy. People like to know why they must have this product and especially today if it is an online purchase they are going to make.

Having A Tightly Themed Affiliate Site Will Make It Memorable To Your Visitors

If you have been online for any period, you will also know this to be true and that it’s too easy for people to bookmark your site and then basically forget about it, just like you have done many times yourself if you don’t believe me have a look at your bookmarks.

Then there are those that will bookmark it and go back and forth checking out every aspect of your site and even what others are saying about you for a period before committing to the product or comparing prices and reading product reviews elsewhere.

Even though it is an excellent idea to place a new blog post or article to your site each day, it is not a good idea to be doing this with articles and products that are not related to the theme of the site as this can be seen as very confusing for not only your site visitors but also the search engines.

Do Not Confuse Your Website Visitors With Too Many Offers

One thing that stops many affiliates early in their career is trying to manage too many different products or services all at once, and this can also be very confusing to your website visitors. Keeping track of more than a handful of affiliate programs needs a lot of organisation by you.

Having too many usernames and passwords only make your job as an affiliate harder and keeping track of sales or lead from the many different affiliate programs can be overly time-consuming which means you are not working on the things you need to be.

Find A Good Affiliate Program And Stick With It

Most profitable bloggers will stick with a profitable affiliate program where they can choose merchants that mix in well with their niche blog, and this is very important to be successful. If you work on promoting your affiliate products on a consistent basis, you will see more results which inevitably will lead to more sales for you.

Visitors need to see that they can take your word on product recommendations so making yourself look like an authority on a particular product, not products will help your online efforts.

If you are recommending everything under the sun (and many sites do), you and your blog will lose credibility very fast, and all your hard work will be for nothing. Even if you find your commission payouts are small to start with, always persist with it, keep adding new themed content and resist the temptation to add new affiliate products.

If you are using a blog to create your affiliate business, it is acceptable to add additional categories within your blog but again make sure that the only products that you are promoting are a very close fit to your niche market.

To find out what other categories may be a good fit for your affiliate site make sure you read our post on Evolving As An Affiliate Marketer to see a handy tool that is free to use.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, it can take up to 6 to 12 months before you see any consistent profits from your work. Please don’t be scared off by the last sentence because what I mean by constant is making a profit every day. The reality of this no matter what you think you know is it takes time and depending on the selected niche some take longer than others you need to be building trust as an affiliate marketer.

You need to be seen as an authority in your niche especially today with so much mistrust and deception all around us online. By building an authority site that adds value to your customers and not merely says “Click Here Buy This” you are creating a long-term affiliate business that will be around for many years to come.

You Should Always Keep Track of Your Affiliate Programs

A good idea is just to create a spreadsheet where you can keep track of all the affiliate programs you have joined with the percentage rate of each affiliate program as well as what each merchant offers with a sale or lead. You should also do this to keep track of your profits to ensure that the amount is correct after all it’s your business right?

If your only intention is to sign up for affiliate programs because the money (commission) looks good, you are looking at these affiliate products the wrong way. Always ensure that any affiliate products or services you are promoting on your site are themed to your selected niche after all do you think that your readers or anybody are going to buy fishing equipment when your blog is about pet care.

We would like to hear about your experiences with your affiliate programs, simply post your comments below.