At first glance, it might seem that financial products affiliate marketing is a field shrouded in mystery. The lack of information induces those who are really interested in it to make mistakes while attempting to employ an original approach. In reality, it’s not that different from other general areas of affiliate marketing.
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Therefore, most of the strategies widely used by affiliate marketers can be also applied to financial products. In my article I would like to address the main issues standing in a way of inexperienced affiliate marketers.
1. Lack of Initial Testing
First off, there is no such thing as quick and easy money in affiliate marketing. A sizeable budget is not a suggestion but a requirement. It is imperative to conduct various testings (such as A/B testing) and their returns will most likely not cover the costs. However, once you experiment with different offers and determine your target audience, it is much easier to turn profits.
This stage is especially crucial when dealing with highly sensitive financial traffic (e.g. binary options, Forex , payment solutions), because not every traffic source is capable of providing a substantial conversion rate for those offers. Patience is the key to success here.
2. Inadequate Tracking Measures
Launching a campaign is only a start. Many affiliate marketers don’t realize this and expect to cash in on it without any further efforts. Such mentality is utterly wrong, for it may harm the campaign in the long run. Most affiliate marketers are neglecting proper tracking tools which require funding as well.
So keep in mind, that you need to differentiate traffic sources and for that you have to spend some part of your budget. Ignoring the traffic analysis is basically sending your campaign into a freefall. However, if you’re able to obtain accurate metrics, you will have no problems making adjustments to your media plan on the go, thus providing the flexibility needed for a financially successful campaign.
3. Wrong Targeting
One of the core principles of affiliate marketing is determining your target audience. Failing to do so will result in wasted efforts and money. It is especially critical when you’re dealing with financial products, because only select traffic sources can be convertible there. Tapping into the right source will provide you with stable income over prolonged period of time. On the other hand, show the ads to the wrong people and watch your financial funnel bearing no results whatsoever.
4. Affiliates Don’t Fully Utilize Their Traffic
Often affiliate marketers stop taking any measures after the leads start coming in. They seem to simply forget about the importance of conversion. That is a huge mistake on their part. If you actually work with your leads by employing trigger mails, mobile messaging, remarketing and many other methods, you are most certainly guaranteed to gain considerable profits.
5. No Knowledge about the Product Being Promoted
In order to be really successful with your campaign, you have to promote a product from the standpoint of a happy customer. Meaning that you’d better actually try the product for yourself. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to financial products. Blindly pushing traffic to an offer you know nothing about is a bad idea. You have to receive the information from the products’ creators to promote them.
There are affiliate networks which don’t provide briefings about their products, so you better stay away from those. Knowledge is power, so try to study a product of your choice as closely as possible.
6. Spreading Across Multiple Offers
More offers — more money, right? Wrong! The biggest mistake beginner affiliate marketers can make is trying to profit off of several products simultaneously, spreading their efforts and available traffic so thin that everything becomes pointless. During my career I had been falling into this trap over and over until it struck me to try a different approach. Concentrating on a particular offer turned out to be more effective in terms of profitability.
7. Low CPA
Sometimes the problem may lie in products providing low CPA. Even if your traffic is filtered correctly and the conversion rate is high, it still can be unprofitable due to the terms of a particular affiliate network. My suggestion would be to avoid low CPA offers altogether and aim for the most paying offers. Many affiliate marketers are afraid to deal with them but in reality, there’s no real difference between the two. So the high CPA doesn’t mean that you can’t handle it.
8. Bad Choice of Offers
You must be particularly careful about choosing your offers, otherwise you have a chance to stumble upon something that might seem like a great deal, but can suck your budget dry in the end. Not every offer is as lucrative as advertised. There are several reasons for that:
- Bloated click price
- Inadequate or completely wrong localization
- Poor lead generating tools
- The dusk of the product’s life cycle
It is vital to make a research on every offer you’re interested in.
Summary
If you wish to make real money on financial products affiliate marketing, you have to remember that it takes a great deal of learning and work. Slacking off has never done any good in this field. Your mind must be clear and sharp so that you would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
This article was written by Pavel Bykov – Mr. Bykov runs several companies, branded under the "Faunus" umbrella, namely Faunus Affiliate Network, a prominent network dealing in financial and other traffic industries, Faunus media and Faunus Analytics .
