Super Affiliate Dan Ho Outlines the Most Common Affiliate Traps

Written by Rosalind Gardner  

Dan Ho has been a full time Internet marketer for over 7 years now. Up until recently, he was one of those Internet marketers who just quietly made money promoting non-Internet marketing related products and services and built up a multiple six figure passive income.

Over the years he also worked with people who were trying to establish a successful Internet presence (mostly people who wanted to succeed as affiliate marketers), and he saw patterns emerge regarding the the most common traps and/or obstacles that limit a person’s ability to succeed online, particularly at affiliate marketing.

Are your efforts as an affiliate being hampered by these common obstacles and mistakes?

1) Poor Affiliate Program Selection

Look, if you expect to succeed at affiliate marketing, you have to pick good programs. There are thousands upon thousands of affiliate companies to choose from. It would always boggle my mind when a client of mine would tell me what they were promoting because when I would look, I would almost always discover it was a low ticket item that paid a small percentage, and, worst of all, only paid one time.

My philosophy when it comes to promoting affiliate programs boils down to this: whenever possible, promote programs that pay lifetime income. You also want those programs to offer products that are going to be in demand for years to come. Pick products from merchants that have a professional design and good copy, leading to strong conversion rates. If the price point of the product isn’t high, make sure that it is a consumable product that will lead to frequent reorders.

In short, picking the right affiliate programs can mean the difference between making a pittance or making a fortune — with the same amount of effort expended in each case!

2) Technical Hurdles

For me, when I started, this was a big one. I didn’t know a lick about HTML, how to build a website, do website art/design, and so forth. Because of this hurdle, a lot of struggling or newbie Internet marketers will just sign up for affiliate programs and try to drive traffic directly to the replicating affiliate site that they are given. Of course, this is a massive mistake and one that will virtually guarantee you won’t make much, if any, money online.

3) Poor Presell Copy

From my knowledge, Site Build It! popularized the notion of “presell.” At the very least, I believe they coined the phrase. (I was one of their certified webmasters for years). It’s a very powerful concept. And to this day, a lot of people get it wrong. When such people promote an affiliate program, the copy on their site may come across as too salesy. This leads to a sell–>sell approach which backfires. A presell–>sell approach is what you need to succeed online. A presell is a way of writing about a product so that it reads like an informative review rather than a sales pitch.

Which “approach” would be more effective on you? An ad by a laptop manufacturer extolling the virtues of their own laptop or a laptop junkie who did a thorough review, comparing and contrasting it to 10 other laptops in its price range, giving you its pros and cons?

4) Improper Keyword Research

The most painful consultations I’ve had over the years weren’t the clients who came to me just starting off. It was the people who already had spent a year or more working on a website, only to see it generating very little traffic and sales after all of that sweat equity. Almost invariably, I would discover the reason why: poor keyword selection! Look, keywords are the key to getting not only a lot of traffic, but more importantly, targeted traffic. And targeted traffic is what makes you money. It was very painful for me to have to tell those clients that, the good news is I discovered their primary problem, the bad news was that there wasn’t much they could do about the year or more of effort they had already put in.

Although there are other obstacles and mistakes that set many people back from achieving the success they desire online, the aforementioned are the most common ones I’ve come across.

So what’s the solution?

Based on my years of experience, back in May of this year a partner and I created a service called Mosaic Internet Success, which addresses all of these problems and obstacles.

I realized that people, who have not had much success online, or those who are just starting out, could avoid these costly mistakes if “I” actually did the vast majority of the work for them. This was a huge revelation and as little time as six months has proven itself with the massive successes of our current students.

Ask yourself these questions. Do you think you could greatly increase the chances of you succeeding online if an experienced super affiliate:

  1. chose the affiliate programs for you (because he already makes a small passive income fortune from them himself);
  2. have his technically able partners build you a presell site (including artistic design, domain registration, and hosting);
  3. have all presell copy already written and provided for you for these affiliate programs; and, lastly,
  4. did all of the keyword research for you?

What if your only “job” was to create/write the actual content for the affiliate programs and you didn’t have to worry about any of the above? And what if that training was already provided for you via video, audio, bi-weekly training calls as well as a private community forum that’s open 24 hours a day?

Do you think you could succeed then? Would you agree that this just might be the Internet “foundation” you need to begin building your future?

Until you try it for yourself, you’ll never know. Over a hundred people to date have taken me up on this offer and have been pleasantly surprised with their results, some even downright shocked. We’re talking people who had floundered online for lengthy periods of time and had never succeeded. And people who were just starting out and realized the immense value of having a good mentor from the get-go.

Why not find out for yourself by seeing if our affiliate training is the missing key to your success. Visit Mosaic Internet Success today.


Related Posts

  1. Desperate Affiliate turns SUPER Affiliate
  2. Super Affiliate Marketing Strategy
  3. AC Certified: Become a Certified Affiliate Manager or Learn to Attract MORE Super Affiliates to Your Program
  4. Affiliate Spammer and the Super Affiliate Handbook
  5. How Common Courtesy Benefits Your Online Business

Comments

6 Responses to “Super Affiliate Dan Ho Outlines the Most Common Affiliate Traps”
  1. Sunshine says:

    This article is spot on. So many people fall in love with their website without doing proper keyword research. If it’s not in a viable niche — chuck it.

    Sadly many of these folks expect to either make loads of money from their site because they spent months working on it or like the case of a gentleman I chatted with at our neighhorhood sub shop, hope their site will be the next Google and believe that someone will buy their website for millions.

    Yes, those buyouts can happen but usually for sites that are very niche centered like this one, http://www.bankaholic.com, which sold for 15MM .

  2. To build out a little on this excellent article, specifically the “Poor Affiliate Program Selection” section, marketing should come into consideration. For example, if you do fear marketing, picking a product that’s landing page has fear in the sales copy is usually a good product to choose.

    I see so many affiliates make the mistake of just looking at a product in making a determination of selling a particular product and completely ignore the sales copy on the landing page.

    Another thing affiliates should look for along these lines is product specificity. A good affiliate program has lots of different landing pages based on a specific niche within the larger niche. For example, a good affiliate program that sells a how to rent out your own house book, should have a landing page for renting out your home if you live in California, and a completely different landing page for renting out your home if you live in Texas. An affiliate program that has one landing page for all of the U.S. is bad. I have seen this type of affiliate program fail over and over again. People want to know how to rent out their house in relation to their State laws governing landlords and tenants. Everybody knows that each state has different laws. What someone living in California wants is a book that is specific to California with expert advice on just California. So specific landing pages for various sub-niches within the larger niche is key.

    You then drive traffic to the most appropriate landing page based on what article they are reading on your site. In marketing, this is known as a message to market match.

    In summary, people should consider the sales copy on the landing page in addition to the product when choosing an affiliate program to join.

  3. Kok Choon says:

    This is a new concept to learn and make money online, I am pretty sure it will have some great success!

    I am not sure how would it benefit the members..since they do all the work, may be the best part is making money while learn from those guru!

  4. As an affiliate marketer one very important factor on choosing a product to sell is to ask yourself if theres market for that product. And how will you know that? Research it is important that you base your decision on the data that you’ve gather.

  5. Kacy says:

    It’s a good idea but without even a hint of what types of products will be offered it is buying sight unseen.

  6. Dan Ho says:

    Hi William,

    You made a fantastic point. Which is exactly why the industries we promote in my service are products that have great demand now and into the forseeable future. I know this because I’ve been promoting these companies for years and it’s my belief that they will be around for the rest of my life. And I’m only 37.

    Which leads me to Kacy’s excellent point.

    The 2 companies we are promoting are as follows:

    1) a nutritional supplement company that also recently released a line of excellent anti aging skin care products (which is what we are promoting with my service right now….the skin care products and they are selling exceptionally well). I’ve been promoting this company 7 years now and know the founders well so I know their products are phenomenal and that the compensation to affiliates is excellent (and lifetime commissions)

    2) A company that sells a line of water purification products. This company has been rated by Inc magazine as one of the top 500 fastest growing privately held companies in the US. I know the Vice President well, and have been promoting them for a few years and they are an outstanding opportunity for affiliates (and they also pay lifetime commissions).

    Hope this answers your questions.

    Regards,
    Dan