Are you making money with affiliate marketing yet? It’s certainly something to consider. If you do it right, this is a legitimate and limitless income stream that you can access from the comfort of your own home.
To be successful in this field, you need to build and leverage your internet following. There are some pitfalls you should avoid along the way, and if you read on, you’ll learn all about them!
What is affiliate marketing?
Companies launch affiliate marketing programs to promote their products and expand their customer base. They do this by offering incentives to affiliates, who then use their online platforms for advertising purposes. Usually, this takes the form of a percentage commission on every sale made through their affiliate link.
Affiliates don’t post advertisements in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, they find ways to connect products to their online content, making the promotion feel more organic. This can be a very effective strategy — especially since most of us take extra measures to avoid adverts as we scroll.
Influencers have a loyal following. Their audience is more willing to engage with recommendations because they come from a trusted source. For companies, awarding affiliates could cost less and achieve more than an old-fashioned advertising campaign!
The motivation for affiliates to participate is obvious: by leveraging their online following, they can make an impressive income. All they have to do is post their content and share their link. When someone clicks their affiliate link and makes a purchase, they receive money for the sale.
How can I make money with affiliate marketing and Printify?
You probably already know that Printify is a print-on-demand and dropshipping platform that empowers vendors to easily customize and sell products online. And we have an extensive range of products to choose from!
What you may not know is that Printify also has an affiliate marketing program. We invite people like you to introduce Printify to new audiences, and in return, you receive a portion of the revenue on any purchases they make.
The Printify affiliate marketing program offers many attractive benefits for those who want to make money online. However, to maximize the money you make, you’ll have to avoid the errors that have tripped up other affiliates.
Helpfully, we’ve listed them all right here. Consider this affiliate marketing for beginners! Once you get started, make sure you avoid making these 6 common mistakes.
Mistake 1: Picking the wrong products to promote
As an affiliate marketer, your role is to pick certain products and promote them using your online channels. Picking the right products is just as important as how you promote them. The goal is to make as many sales as possible, so you should highlight items that are likely to appeal to your following.
If you’re promoting the wrong products, you’re wasting your time. You could be creating the most convincing content ever, but it would still fail to make an impact if your audience is unreceptive to the item itself.
One way you might make this mistake is by choosing all high-ticket items in a bid to boost your commission rates. Unless your typical follower has huge disposable income to spend, your strategy will probably have the exact opposite effect…
The risk of not choosing your products carefully is that you could even alienate your audience. For example, a Printify affiliate whose Youtube channel is devoted to fashion and beauty might find that their audience is confused by a sudden pivot to promoting tech accessories.
Sharing who sells their favorite custom cosmetic bag would make much more sense. The idea is to choose items that are compatible with your personal brand so that the promotion feels as organic as possible.
Before you choose the products you want to promote, it makes sense to perform some analysis on the people you’re planning to reach. What would they be most motivated to purchase? If you understand their interests, you can avoid this costly mistake.
Mistake 2: Publishing low-quality content
The internet is a notoriously busy place, and you have to work hard to attract attention — never mind keep it for any length of time! That’s why your promotional content should be as high quality as possible.
The more entertaining or informative it is, the more likely you are to generate interest — in both your content AND the products you’re promoting.
If your content doesn’t offer value to your following, they have no reason to engage with it. The great success of affiliate marketing lies in the fact that the audience doesn’t feel like they are being advertised to. The only way to achieve this is to publish content that’s really worth consuming. Why would anyone watch or read it otherwise?
If a Printify affiliate was posting unrelated images alongside their affiliate link, it’s very unlikely that anyone would be motivated to make a purchase. In fact, they may choose to completely ignore that affiliate’s content in the future. This is a major missed opportunity! With the right content, they could have captured their imagination and generated a sale.
You can avoid this error by ensuring that your content remains true to your brand and relevant to your following. Incorporate humor, participate in popular internet trends, and embrace engaging formats such as product reviews or how-to videos. As your following grows, so does your potential audience for affiliate marketing.
Remember, you want as many people to click that affiliate link as possible. It’s your job to convince them with some original, high-quality content.
Mistake 3: Ignoring SEO
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, refers to the practice of making your content as attractive as possible to internet algorithms. Have you ever wondered how sites like YouTube and Google decide the order of their search results? SEO is what determines the rankings.
Why does it matter? Because very few of us scroll through endless pages of results when we’re looking for something online. If your content isn’t one of the first results shown, you’re losing opportunities to sell.
Think about it: to maintain the popularity of the search engine, Google needs to ensure that it is quickly and consistently meeting its users’ needs. Its algorithm is a technology designed to provide the closest possible match to every term searched on the site.
To impress the algorithm with your content and climb your way up the rankings list, you need to apply some SEO strategies. One way you can do this is by inserting keywords into your content.
For example, if you upload a YouTube video that is reviewing and promoting an item of Printify clothing — like a custom hoodie, for example — you might choose to use terms like skatewear, winter clothing, and street style in your product description. That makes it more likely for people searching those terms to come across your video — and hopefully, make a purchase!
Mistake 4: Poor landing page design
You may wonder if you even need a landing page: you can always simply post your affiliate link, right? Some affiliate marketers prefer to have one because their followers are reluctant or cautious about clicking strange links to external sites.
A landing page for your brand can make the process feel more legitimate for potential customers, especially those that don’t quite understand how affiliate marketing works.
When designing your landing page, you’ll probably be tempted to tailor it to your tastes. It’s for your followers, right? So why not include lots of fabulous photos and fun facts about you?
While it’s right to ensure that your landing page reflects your brand, you shouldn’t distract from the purpose of the page. You should always have the experience of your follower in mind, and you should be primarily focused on making the sale.
A Printify affiliate with their own landing page knows the products are high quality, and they may believe that means they “speak for themselves”. The problem with that attitude is it might lead them to neglect the text on their landing page.
This would be a big mistake. After all, when someone clicks through to your site, it’s because they’re interested in what you have to say. This is your moment to close the deal with some super convincing copy!
Beyond the text, you should also make sure your landing page has a clean design that’s easily understood. Otherwise, you’re adding unnecessary obstacles in the path toward a purchase.
Mistake 5: Copying from other websites
Apart from the fact that it’s just bad form to copy other people’s work — didn’t you learn that at school? — there are other reasons to avoid what SEO experts call “duplicate content.”
The reason they’re so familiar with the term is that it relates directly to their job. The algorithm punishes pages with duplicate content, sending them to the bottom of the rankings. It’s much better at catching copiers than your school teacher ever was!
You might see a successful affiliate marketer and think “I’ll just recycle their content.” That isn’t the way to make sales, though. Remember what affiliate marketing is all about: leveraging the following that YOU have built. If you tap into what makes your brand and your content unique, you’re much more likely to attract people to your page and the products you’re promoting,
Why? Because affiliate marketing depends on authenticity. That’s what makes it feel so different from traditional advertising. Rather than being hit with an aggressive sales pitch, people feel like they’re receiving recommendations from a knowledgeable friend.
But before your audience can feel confident to act on your referral, you need to build a relationship with them. This is achieved by providing them with consistent, high-quality content. Trust the Printify team when we say are no shortcuts when it comes to this part!
Mistake 6: Not measuring your performance
Once you get started with affiliate marketing, your focus will be on the future. What should I post next? What should I promote next? However, you shouldn’t neglect to reflect. Analyzing what you’ve achieved and how you achieved it can help you to continue improving as an affiliate marketer.
You might, for example, love to post on Instagram when promoting Printify products. It’s much easier than recording a YouTube video, after all. That’s fine, but your preferred method may not always be the most effective one. The only way to learn this is to measure how each piece of content is performing.
If you discover that one YouTube video generates more sales than 20 Instagram posts, that might be enough to make you reconsider your approach. Then, you can drill down into the data even further…
Which kinds of YouTube videos have brought you the most success and sales? Reviews? Product comparisons? Instructional vids? This is very useful information when it comes to your future strategy!
Make analytics tools work for you and you’ll soon see an increase in sales. By following what works and scrapping what doesn’t, you can refine your affiliate marketing content so that you’re working smarter, not necessarily harder.
Why participate in Printify’s affiliate marketing program?
When you earn with Printify, the sky isn’t even the limit. That’s because there are no limits! You’re welcome to refer as many people as you can and continue earning 5% on every order.
When you do refer a customer, you keep earning money on every Printify purchase they make for 12 whole months! There’s amazing potential to enjoy passive income.
This is a legitimate way to make money online without any upfront investment required.
If you need ideas for crafting content, the Printify team is on hand. Contact Sonia, the Printify Affiliates Manager, and she’ll help you come up with something engaging for your audience.
How to become a Printify affiliate:
You can log in or sign-up as a Printify member here. Registration is easy — you’ll only need 5 minutes to get set up as an affiliate marketer with Printify.
Make it happen today!
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