Affiliate marketing is big businesses these days. The increasing number and variety of ecommerce sites these days means that there are lots more pieces of the pie to go around and affiliates can make money whilst sending more sales to an online retailer. When it comes down to it, both parties win. That said, there are some big problems that affiliates face, and they usually pop up time after time. Lets take a look at three of the most common and fatal mistakes made by affiliate sellers.

Thinking too niche. Be very careful when moving into an unknown market that you don’t forget just how big it has to be to support not only the actually sellers, but also affiliates underneath them. This site selling snowboards for example may be able to survive, but seeing as they will only pass on around 10% of the profits to affiliates, it is unlikely that affiliates sites could servive in such a niche. Affiliates then need to think about the larger market and try to cover as many niches as they can whilst still remaining competitive.

Thinking too big. When products cost a great deal of money, like buying a swimming pool or even luxury cruises for example, sellers take a lot of time over their decisions.Not many people will click an affiliate link for something very costly and then convert in a small time-frame. They will spend time pondering, weighing the options and doing further research for example. When they actually get to a stage that they are ready to make the purchase, your affiliate referral will have been lost in the ether. Sticking to smaller items including gifts and downloads is far more likely to get results and people are more likely to buy these quickly.

Not competitive enough. You need to remember that the online publicity arena is very competitive and you will be in the ring with not only other affiliates, but also those merchants who you are affiliates for. The difference being that they are working to get 100% of the profit, whilst you are only working for a proportion of that. This means you need either work harder or smarter than they do to make any money.