Affiliate marketing can help you make money online, but before you go off and promote a bazillion different products, you need to avoid making this number mistake which thousands of affiliates unwittingly make.
Are you sending traffic to a merchant, who later on no longer correctly credits you for the sale?
Let me tell you a story…
There once was a merchant who set-up an affiliate program via a third party affiliate network. This is wonderful, because now both merchant and affiliate have a third party who can track, verify, and credit affiliates for their efforts.
Typically, there’s an affiliate link which is used to track visitors referred by that affiliate to the merchant’s online store or salespage.
There’s also an order link, so that the affiliate network can determine which affiliate will earn the commission.
Unfortunately, that special order link has to appear in the salespage or order page of the merchant. If the merchant edits their webpage and uses a different kind of order link, then the affiliate network will not be able to track that sale.
Which means: the affiliate will not earn the commission.
The lesson here is clear. When you promote an online merchant, please take the time to check if you will still be credited with a sale, from the traffic you send to that online store. It helps if you monitor this on a regular basis.
Over time, you will gain a better understanding of which merchants to trust, and which ones to avoid. In the long run, however, it will be better if you become the merchant (and not just an affiliate), so that you can make better use of your time.
Afterall, checking regularly will eat up a fair amount of your time. This is particularly true if you are an affiliate of several products. Now ask yourself this: Would you rather spend time checking, or earning checks?
Don’t be surprised if you find salespages that are transformed into opt-in pages. Some marketers are using traffic provided by affiliates in order to build their own mailing lists. And if you find yourself on the short end of the affiliate stick, what can you do?
You need to find a way to create your affiliate links, so that a quick change in one place will rapidly adjust all the links you have promoted all over the web.
Yes, it is possible to send all your links to a single landing page (which you control). The main advantage to you is that if the merchant you’re promoting one day intentionally or accidentally shafts your affiliate marketing efforts, all you need to do is edit the single landing page (or link) that you created.
TIP: Avoid directly linking to the merchant. Use your own URL, preferably one which you control.
Until the next tip, have fun making money online with the help of affiliate marketing! 🙂
