Some of these major mistakes are avoidable with a little understanding of your market, as well as some other areas. However, still, affiliates commit such blunders when they aren't aware. So now let's talk about how to avoid some of these mistakes, and then you'll be ahead of the game.

Everyday there are hundreds of people that are joining the affiliate race, and many of these beginning affiliates make the same mistakes over and over again. There are some people who like to be thought of as gurus, and it's not at all uncommon for these people to be the source of these mistakes. It's absolutely no shock that the majority of affiliates aren't making any money at all. But you know... this is not rocket science, so why are the same mistakes always happening? The answer lies in the methods being followed and because of ignoring the important rules. And now, we'll cover some affiliate marketing strategies that do work, and they'll help you to get going in the right direction.

The most highly successful marketers all use email marketing to their great advantage. The money is in the list is a tired phrase, but it's totally true. You can be successful in IM, but you can use email marketing to make you extremely successful. If you're seeing decent profits without a list, after you have one you'll experience amazing profits - if you do it the right way. It's a fact that selling to repeat customers is easier than getting new ones. Apart from this, if you don't build an email list, you are simply giving away business to the product owner. You really should avoid this at all costs. This is long-term growth strategy, and you can use it to have long-term profits.

Usually popular products are highly competitive, so making successful sales with them gets difficult, especially when you're starting out. So a workable choice is to find something with less competition, less popular, but you still want to only promote high quality offers. You will almost never go wrong if you learn how to choose the products to promote that are "right" for your situation. Also, experiment and run test campaigns with different markets and products. Having little to no knowledge about your target market is another deadly mistake. If you want to have success, then you need to do some market research. So the best approach is to learn about the market you want to get into, before you actually try to market anything to them. Ignoring this part is taking a risk because they may not be a market that buys anything online. You need to make a critical connection with your audience, and market research will reveal how to do that. If you don't know anything about a market, you won't know what the jargon is or what is important to them. This is why always take out time to first do your homework and then choose a product based on your research.

Another common mistake made by affiliates is that they jump into many affiliate programs at once. Unless you're battle-hardened and proven, this is not recommended. Your attention gets diverted and you won't be able to give your best to any of the products. You can work on several test campaigns until you find one that looks promising, then scale it up. When you get good results from your tests, then scale that one up and keep testing.

You should also be aware of commission theft and take precautions against it happening to you. Many affiliates have been using affiliate link cloakers to help shield the identities of their links. It appears that a lot of marketers new to IM are not aware of this practice, and it's evident by the unprotected affiliate links we see all the time. Don't let your hard earned commission fly out the window. It doesn't matter if you're new or not, if you don't have a list, then simply start making one ASAP. There's more to be learned, but now you're armed with solid information that will help you.