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Dangerous Mistakes Experienced Affiliates Make

Mar 11, 2008
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Yesterday I read an interesting article over at Time Magazine talking about the “Science of Experience”. In the article they discussed the value and pitfalls of having experience in your profession. Here are a few interesting points from the article:

“decades of research into expert performance has shown that experience itself — the raw amount of time you spend pursuing any particular activity, from brain surgery to skiing — can actually hinder your ability to deliver reproducibly superior performance.”

“Experts tend to be good at their particular talent, but when something unpredictable happens — something that changes the rules of the game they usually play — they’re little better than the rest of us.”

“Experience is not only insufficient for expert performance; in some cases, it can hurt. Highly experienced people tend to execute routine tasks almost unconsciously”

As I was reading the story I started reflecting back on some of the mistakes I’ve made as an experienced affiliate. I thought I would share a few:

1. Assuming that a keyword is bad before trying it. I recently launched a campaign in haste and forgot to add negative keywords. To my surprise many of the keywords I would have added as negative qualifiers, actually converted into sales. For example, “cancel (insert service name)” may seem like a negative no-brainer, but I’ve found in some cases that customers just want to know how to cancel before they buy.

2. Assuming that trademarked keywords convert best. It’s been widely accepted that brand keywords convert better than generic terms; however, I would contend that this isn’t always the case. I’ve found that many people searching with the brand name are existing customers, not prospects. In order to make a trademark strategy work you need to have a long list of negative keywords – e.g. (brand) problem, (brand) help, (brand) support, (brand) shipping etc.

3. Relying on one source of traffic. Since late 2003 I’ve been generating most of my traffic from paid search. While I’ve become very adept at pay per click, I’ve failed to be at the leading edge of new traffic generation techniques like social networking sites, and Web 2.0.

4. Taking advice from an affiliate manager (without due diligence). Most of the time the tips offered by your affiliate manager can be helpful, however there are occasions when their own experience gets in the way. For example, I had a merchant tell me that their current landing page was the top converter. They had done months of multi-variate tests and come to the conclusion they couldn’t move the needle any further. I decided to do my own landing page, bypassing theirs, and linked directly to the shopping cart – my conversions doubled.

5. Dismissing advice from people with less experience than you. After you’ve been in the business for a while you turn into a hammer. And when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. Newbies see things differently -they don’t have the same pre-conceived notions that you do.

Experience can lead to over confidence. Think about the last time you went into the doctor’s office… chances are they diagnosed you before you even finished describing your symptoms. This can have serious consequences, from prescribing the wrong treatment to worsening your condition. According to the FDA, medical mistakes are one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States.

Luckily, bad judgments in affiliate marketing seldom kill anybody; however, it could lead to the death of your business.

Going back to the Time Magazine article:

“If you’re coasting you’re not improving”

“we like to practice what we know, stretching out in the warm bath of familiarity rather than stretching our skills. Those who overcome that tendency are the real high performers.”

Don’t get caught up in comfortable routines, going through the daily motions. If you really want to have continued success you must push yourself into uncomfortable territory and learn to try new things.

One last thing, you can make this post better by sharing your mistakes.

About Jeremy Palmer

You can find Jeremy on Twitter: @quityourdayjob or @jeremypalmer.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing

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  • http://www.onlineartsmarketing.com Chris O’Byrne

    Excellent post and what a great job at applying those principles to affiliate marketing… I’m impressed!

    So many of these can be chalked up to hasty and faulty assumptions. When I was teaching, I did this too many times and was often brought to task by my own students. Humbling, but educational (for me).

  • http://www.experienceadvertising.com Evan

    Great post, well done. Some great tips in there about canceling and negative keywords. I pride myself on always learning something everyday and not just relying on my experience. Experience come in handy quite a bit too when faced with issues and have already been resolved in the past.

  • http://www.shareresults.com Julia

    Very interesting read, I especially liked the fifth point you made, about listening to advice from those less experienced than you. One doesn’t need to necessarily follow the advice, but it’s definitely refreshing and often helpful to get a new and unbiased opinion on an old topic. :)

  • http://www.shopping-bargains.com/ Mike Allen

    Great post, Jeremy. I benefited from this.

    I’d like to add one thing. Sometimes I’ve ignored my “gut” and taken bad advice. My “if it doesn’t feel right then don’t” and “if I’m pressured for an answer now then the answer is ‘no’” guidelines has kept me out of trouble many times.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com/ Carsten Cumbrowski

    Nice post.

    Actually the affiliate marketing is a fast and constantly changing one, which keeps you up on your toes.

    Whatever pattern you might fall into will not last for long in almost every case. This does not mean that you will never be surprised and clueless about what to do next, on the contrary.

    However, since a good affiliate marketer is one how is able to adapt and reinvent himself over and over again, you have a competitive advantage over classic marketing and advertising folks :) .

  • http://www.tophghpills.com Gary

    Nice post and good reminder. We affiliates can get boxed up too easily. Got to try to remove some negative keywords and see how it goes.

    Some other things that might need breaking :-

    1. PPC – don’t always bid for top 3 spots on G.
    Sometimes positions 4 and 5 convert better and are definitely cheaper anyway.

    2. SEO – don’t only go for longtail keywords. This can backfire as there may not be enough search traffic.

    3. SEO – too much emphasis on keyword density can kill the copy

  • http://smartbiz.co.cc Mel

    Great Information. Thanks for spread this news. It is useful to all people. Thanks

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  • http://www.barefly.com Tj @BareFly.com

    Well I wanted to improve the post by dropping my mistakes but I yet to figure out how do I improve my landing page!

    Thanks btw for the awesome read.

  • http://www.workathomegoldrush.com marketingtips

    Your writing made me to stop the mistakes every affiliate do in his initial stages by assuming trademarked keywords convert best,not trying new keywords,relying on one source of traffic and dismissing advice from people with less experience.

    Thanks for your affiliate marketing tips.