One of my friends is a great chef.
I think he would be a star if he was on some TV show about chefs. Several years ago, he decided to make a huge leap in his career - he was going to create his first restaurant from scratch.
Most new restaurants go broke within a few years, so I told him that I could help if he needed advice. I don't know anything about the restaurant industry, but I'm sure I could give him at least some marketing advice.
A few weeks later he called me:
"Charles, I need to figure out how my restaurant might end up on the first page of Google?"
You can imagine my dismay - aren't there much more important things a restaurateur needs to worry about at the start?
He spent the first few weeks designing business cards, building a website on his own. While that is of course important too ... but he didn't even have a lease or a well-developed supply chain yet!
What do you think is more important at this stage?
He focused 80% of his time on 20% of tasks that don't really matter.
We've all made a similar mistake.
Instead of filling the presentation with content, we “play” with fonts, designs, slide transitions, etc. Instead of training, we spend weeks trying to find the “perfect” training program.
After reading thousands of letters from affiliate marketing newbies over the years, I've discovered some patterns.
The main thing is that beginners think too much. Seriously. They waste energy on things that don't matter in the big picture.
Why is this happening?
1. You don't know
You think the task is important, but you don't have the experience yet to know for sure.
2. You want to make progress without failure, hard work or getting out of your comfort zone
This is a very important point. Talking to and negotiating with suppliers is uncomfortable. They may decide they don't want to work with you. Refusal sucks.
How about affiliate marketing? Nobody likes to lose money on campaigns.
As such, it's easy to spend hours every day reading blogs, Facebook groups, and forums instead of campaigning. You get the feeling that you are making progress, but a few months later, you are still there.
This is not progress. Nothing beats action and real-world experiences.
3. It's fun
Training for a 10K run? It's hard and painful. Shopping for sneakers? Cool!
Well, you understand. Humans naturally follow the path of least resistance and greatest pleasure.
But let's get back to affiliate marketing.
I want to point out a few minor tasks that newbies got stuck on in front of my eyes. Try to spend less time on them and focus on what really matters.
Let's start.
Your domain name doesn't really matter
Your domain name matters when you are building a brand or company.
But the domain name of the landing page doesn't matter when you're running your campaigns. This is especially true if you are still in the testing phase of your campaign.
At one time, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect domain name.
"Dude, all the cool .coms are busy."
You can use .co, .us, or .biz, it doesn't matter.
Don't spend more than $ 10 on a domain name. I've seen guys spend hundreds of dollars trying to buy a cool domain in order to end up with a losing campaign.
If you're new to affiliate marketing, you can save money on hosting / domain names by keeping everything on a shared domain.
832recommends.com/diet
832recommends.com/carwarranty
832recommends.com/sweepstakes
I remember that one of the biggest campaigns I’ve ever seen in my life didn’t even have a domain name - the ads were just going to the IP addresses of the landing page.
Pick something and get started!
Your landing page shouldn't look like an offer page
I have often heard the phrase: "Look at things from the perspective of your client." Put yourself in their shoes.
One thing that I have previously been adamant about is trying to create a user funnel that makes sense. In particular, I spent hours making my landing page look like an offer page.
It had the same font, the same green color scheme, and the overall design.
Visitors will click on your ad, go to the landing page, and then convert on the offer page. I thought conversion rates would be higher if the client believed that all the pages were the work of the same company.
I was so proud of myself.
Then my affiliate manager told me about an offer that was producing phenomenal results. He advised to protest it as soon as possible.
But for my campaign, this was not possible - my landing page was bright green and the offer page was bright red. I didn't have time to redesign my landing page.
In the morning I started the split test and went to work. I checked out the campaign during lunchtime - and the conversion to
