7 Reasons Why People (and Companies) Fail at Affiliate Marketing

Quality is never an accident …it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution
–William A. Foster

If you’ve attended Affiliate Summit West 2012 (or are subscribed to the magazine) you have a copy of the latest FeedFront. For those of you who don’t have it, I’d like to draw your attention to my newest published magazine article — one entitled Seven Precursors of Affiliate Marketing Failure.

I believe that there are 7 major ways to fail at affiliate marketing. In the article I outlined 4 reasons why merchants/advertisers fail, and 3 reasons for affiliate failure. Here they are:

◊  Merchants fail in instances when they

(1) have unrealistic expections of what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and what it will do for them,
(2) try to manage affiliates who are 100% self-managed and hate that “managerial” approach,
(3) expect something for nothing, and/or
(4) launch their affiliate program, and then let it roll on “cruise control”.

◊  Affiliates, on the other hand, fail when they

(1) aren’t devoting the time to thorough due diligence and education,
(2) fake passion, interest, and/or hard work, and/or
(3) fail to diversify and focus on only one niche, or one marketing method.

Whether you are an affiliate or a merchant — the problem most frequently “lays in the misalignment of hopes, goals, expectations and realities” of what works and what doesn’t.

You may download the full issue of this FeedFront here. My article may be found on page 10. It’s got a number of other excellent article in it, and I certainly recommend at least flipping through it.