There are a lot of advantages to affiliate marketing over creating and selling your own product aside from the fact that you don’t have to be hassled with creating that product in the first place. However, over the years that I have been doing affiliate marketing myself, I have discovered that there are three main pitfalls that affiliate marketers run into that makes this a less than profitable business model. In this article, I am going to briefly go over these pitfalls and offer some advice for dealing with them.

At the top of the list has to be the actual choice of the product itself. Probably the biggest reason why this is such a problem is because of the vast number of products out there. Which one do you choose? How can you tell which products are actually selling and which ones are certain failures? This isn’t as easy as it seems. Not even the ClickBank marketplace is a fool proof solution as the “popular” products are sometimes artificially pumped. But that’s a topic for another place and time.

So, this is what I have come up with as far as a solution to this problem. And I don’t know why more people don’t do this. Contact the product creator and ask to see documented proof of sales and conversion rates. The honest ones will have no problem showing you these stats and from them you can then decide if the product is worth promoting. End of problem.

Another pitfall that affiliate marketers run into is deciding on the best way to promote that product. There are a lot of promotional methods available to marketers today including pay per click, article marketing, ad buys, social networking and so on. Which one is best? Which one is going to bring you the best results? Here’s the honest answer. There is no way of knowing. So this is what you do and it’s simple. Use as many avenues as you can. Test and track each ones. The ones that don’t perform, kick to the curb. The ones that do, ramp up. End of problem.

Finally, there is the problem of handling support. A lot of affiliate marketers feel that they shouldn’t have to answer questions about a product that isn’t their own. However, like it or not, if you’re properly promoting an affiliate product, YOU are going to be the one who gets questions and YOU are going to have to answer them IF you want to make the sale. After all, what’s going to separate you from other affiliates? It’s things like customer support that does that.

There you have it. Those are the three biggest pitfalls that affiliate marketers face and the solutions to each one. You may not like them, but failure to do them can lead to a disastrous affiliate marketing campaign.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.