Affiliate marketing is a very appealing business plan. You join a program for free, and when you refer people to it you get paid, sounds great! It is so great in fact, that more and more people are turning to it as a means of starting a home based business everyday. Although, there are a few mistakes that every affiliate marketer seems to make, and if you make these mistakes then you are hurting your business tremendously!

If you can avoid these mistakes, then you will quickly get over the learning curve and increase your commissions dramatically. So without further delay, here are the top four mistakes that affiliate marketers make:

Mistake #1: Not Researching An Affiliate Program

Many new affiliates make the mistake of jumping on board with a program just because it has a high commission rate and a lot of affiliates. You must at first search to see how happy people are with their payouts, how quickly these payouts are sent, and if the network that your promoting fits your website, articles, or however you are collecting customers.

Mistake #2: Incorrect Use Of A Signature File

A lot of affiliates send out e-mails, or post on forums, by just writing about ten lines of content and then jamming the whole thing full of outgoing links to an assortment of different products. The problem with this is that it can easily be filtered out as spam, and nobody is going to click through to your products if it doesn't look like you actually care about what you send to them. Take the ten minutes out of your day to write a good 15 lines with an intriguing first line, and then place your link: simple.

Mistake #3: Using Pre-Written Ad Copy

This is obvious when you think about it from the eyes of a customer. You've been searching for 2 hours for a good product to teach you "whatever," and what do you see? The exact same ad copy that you saw on the other 15 product sites that you went to.

As a marketer, you need to write your own unique ad copy so that you can stand out from all of the other promoters out there. If you won't take the time out to write your own ads, then why should they take the time out of their day to read it?

Mistake #4: Not Capturing Leads

Do you know what you get paid when a person clicks on your paid ad and then gets sent to a product site but they don't buy? NOTHING! You earn no money if they don't buy. So what you should do is collect their name and email so that you can consistently send these people recommendations for good quality products.

By getting their names and emails, you know have a group of potential customers with whom you can connect and form a personal bond with. When you have an email list, you have a source of residual income waiting for you to tap into. So make sure that you treat them well.

Now that you know the four mistakes that you MUST avoid, you are well on your way to becoming a super affiliate. Go out there and earn your commissions the right way while all of the other newbies continue to make these mistakes.

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