It’s true,affiliate marketing has really become a perfectly accepted and feasible business model for internet marketers and you can make a great living only by doing it.  For example,  most of the affiliate marketing programs are completely free to join and you will even have free access to a whole range of  promotion tools to get you going in the business. So yes, it’s true you can make money with affiliate marketing for free if you choose to do so. No wonder everybody is recommending it wholeheartedly.

But…as with any business, there are certain pitfalls that you need to know about, so you can avoid them, in order to be really successful. If you choose to ignore these mistakes, you might find yourself working to no end to make only pennies from your affiliate marketing – and that will NOT make you free of your so dreaded 9-5 job that you want to get away from.

Mistake #1: Choosing The Wrong Affiliate Program

Before you run off to promote an affiliate program that you get attached to, you need to know why you want to select that program. The cute header and nice words, or your personal affinity to the niche subject won’t do here. You need a  hungry crowd, meaning a targeted market that is in desperately searching for something.

Let’s say you researched a bit and found that  acne sufferers are finding it really hard to get rid of their acne, but they want to do so using natural treatments.

Now you will go to Clickbank, for example, and find the right product to promote. You will search in this case an ebook on using natural treatments for acne, which does not harm to the skin, doesn’t need for the patient to spend thousands on pills and expensive creams, and is successful in a relatively short period.

Mistake #2: Going after Too Many Affiliate Programs

If you’re like me when I first started out,   you will join several affiliate programs, as each sounds better and better in terms of payouts, etc.  You will think that by joining more programs, you will make more money. Wrong. You will soon find yourself overwhelmed and will tend to give up affiliate marketing so much faster. When starting out  go after only a few products all evolving around the same niche, so you can stay focused until you get those ones making sales.  Once you’re comfortable using those, you can always expand, and dump those that proved to be non-money makers.

Mistake #3: Not Familiarizing Yourself With The Product

To properly promote a product or service it really helps to know as much about it as possible. As a matter of fact, it’ is recommended that you buy it and experience yourself if you really want to be able to talk about it well.  Some programs allow you to buy their product using your own affiliate ID at Clickbank when it’s simply for learning, reviewing and promoting it. But it’s always best to first check with the product company, to make sure they approve. There may come a time when someone asks you a question about it and you have no answers. Knowing everything there is to know about the product will allow you to write a really good and unique review, which will separate you from the crowd who never bothered with this third step, and always copies boring reviews from others.