Affiliate marketing businesses are what I like to call ecommerce for the rest of us. They are high profit and low risk monetization methods for websites.

- You don’t have to develop your own product.
- You don’t handle shipping and handling.
- You don’t have to take stock of inventory or manage a store.
- You don’t have to handle customer services.

The best part is they can be started and operated on a shoestring budget.

Perhaps the most widely adopted business model is affiliate marketing. According to a recent Forrester Research Inc survey, nearly 80% of online merchants actively use affiliate marketing.  However, despite its popularity and simplicity, the sad fact is most affiliate businesses make less than $500 a month.

In fact, numerous affiliates never see their first check before they throw in the towel.

E-commerce for the rest of us has become e-commerce for the best of us

Why?

The easy answer is they do it wrong. Most affiliates run their affiliate marketing businesses wrong from the very first day of start up.

Now, affiliate marketing does produce high income earners– people who earn $140,000 or more a year and others who earn full time incomes of 50, 000 or more. However, the vast majority simply fails to earn.

Here are some of the key reasons affiliate marketing businesses fail.

1. Failure to prepare. Lack of research about the business of affiliate marketing, your niche and the affiliate program all contribute to early failure. The over excitement, and lack of knowledge, cause people to jump at anything and act before they think.

Doing feels productive. Planning doesn’t. Even if we do not know what we’re doing we feel better about ourselves when we are doing something. However, being underprepared causes the potentially successful to become unsuccessful. Curb your enthusiasm and do your planning.

-Develop a strong web concept/theme
-Select the best affiliate programs
-Get to know your competition

Yes it’s boring, but it’s better than closing up shop after a year.

2. Poor quality traffic. Most affiliates think if they build a website they will come. Not so. Having a website doesn’t mean you will receive quality traffic. I say “quality” because not all traffic is beneficial to you. You site needs quality traffic that will do more than just browse.

To become part of the top 3% of affiliate marketing businesses you want to:

-Create content that is attractive to search engines
-Track how each page performs and how each page ranks
-Analyze Click in and Click through patterns
-Use more than one traffic generation method
-Be consistent. You can’t generate constant flow of traffic with a “stop-and-go” work method.

3. Dependency on Merchants: It is very helpful that your merchant has banners for you. However, most merchants stop there. They don’t offer any startup training or any new ideas for their affiliates. Tis happens with both good and bad companies.

The best way to avoid merchant dependency is to go beyond affiliate marketing. You can not expect the affiliate merchant to teach you everything; it’s your job to educate yourself. Ignore the marketing material and learn how to do it right on your own. This is what super affiliates do.

Affiliate marketing businesses aren’t destined to fail. You can keep yours from doing so by considering the tips above.