Top 35 Hurdles of The Affiliate Marketing Challenges for Starters
Affiliate marketing is a small business passionate effort of the web marketing that enables you to earn commission on the successful sales (or attempt to sales) of the merchants’ products and services.
Now the days the mentors or bloggers used to highlight this industry to the potential starters as a big cash mine. Most perhaps, that’s the big reason newbies have been fascinated to this web marketing sector to start the journey of taking the million dollar opportunity.
Well, but the question, are you scalable to discover you as a potential for affiliate marketing? How could you be able to assess yourself that you are the right one? What are the affiliate marketing risks and challenges to be mitigated so that frustration couldn’t touch you on the affiliate journey? Answers are important for every starter.
That’s why this write-up to make you aware regarding the hurdles of affiliate marketing challenges you might need to be passed during the journey in a successful affiliate marketing startup.
So, let’s get a bit longer read of the affiliate marketing challenges patiently:
Affiliate Marketing Challenges for the Starters
1) Selection of Right Niche
The biggest challenge of your affiliate journey starts with this event. Selection of a right niche determines your success story. The right selection of a product line or service department goes to cover with your own top expertise, loving passion, and unbeatable perseverance and traffic zones on the affiliate marketing track.
Tip: Do research using keyword planner tools and look around the web according to your profitable niche requirement on the basis of expertise area.
2) Budget Plan
Affiliate marketing is a project that flies upon two wings – cost and benefits. In this hurdle, if there is no a minimum budget plan is a big obstacle to run the work smoothly. At least, every affiliate needs to be started marketing through his own domain-hosting blog is a prime part of the budget plan.
Tip: Get a help from an expert how to be budgeted for an optimized affiliate marketing project.
3) Targeting Right Audience
Who is your audience that you strive to outreach your affiliate products and services through your blogging sales-funnel is an important part of the affiliate marketing hurdles? How to be defined your audience group up for your own expertise, study, and intelligence.
Tip: Get your help on the blogs, videos and experts specialized with relevant to this issue.
4) Targeted Traffic Generation
How to be driven the potential customers who are really active in the sales funnel? This is a million dollar question now the days to find the affiliate marketing success. In this big hurdle part, all depends upon your own expertise and real-time efforts on the media and tools you would use them according to your pre-plan.
Tip: Learn the usages of SEO marketing, Social Media Marketing and opt-in (Email)<<AT Marketing to mitigate this one of the big affiliate marketing risks and challenges.
5) Conversion Optimization
As a key factor in affiliate marketing, conversion rate should be significant to reach the profit level of ROI. It depends upon not only SEO-SEM and Email marketing, rather on the issues of site UX, attracted traffic funnel, the usability of content, regular supply of the right content, right keywords usages in the blog and so on.
Tip: Get a significant consultation from an expert before you start monetizing your site. Or keep reading the blogs that teach you the conversion optimization so that it pushes you gain a significant level of Conversion Rate.
6) Real-Time Efforts and Maintenance
Affiliate marketing always refers the site maintenance to be up-to-date and real-time, hence monetization is being happened on the site for your affiliate revenue. It’s the little bit challenging for the affiliates to keep the monetized product up-to-date if you do not have a To-Do-List always.
Tip: There should be keeping up a To-Do-List of the products regularly and to be taken action in real time.
7) Proper Copy Writing
An attractive copy or content appears from an adequate language skill that mirrors the products and services passively. So, if you do determine to be a successful affiliate, you might take care this issue as a challenge. Let it be solved first in the competitive battlefield of affiliate marketing – I’m sure you will be succeeded.
Tip: Get a practice of regular writing. Never hesitate to make a habit of picking out the relevant terms and phrases as well as use of proper language tools.
8) Investment Intention
Whereas Affiliate Marketing is a business game, so, it isn’t obviously a clever job to run the enterprise within a frame of your efforts and time only. Because invested money might be smarter than you. In this regard, a simple math of comparative return analysis between an investment and non-investment could help you go investment. So, it’s a matter of playing with the ROI. Then it becomes one of the Affiliate marketing challenges if you fail to consider it.
Tip: You might invest in your user-friendly site development and targeted traffic driving methods like email marketing and PPC advertising or your better revenue earning.
9) Proper Outsourcing
It’s required to boost the ROI using the ways of marketing best. Such as, you might need a web developer to make your site more user-friendly, or you need an expert email marketer, then you have to outsource them for your adequate return. In the freelance marketplaces, it’s available to find the services and tools. But the challenge is to pick out the right service, and tools, which depends upon your knowledge base of strategic requirements as well as the product you seeks.
Tip: Before going for such services you require, you should consult it with the expert areas, such as forums or groups available in the social media.
10) Content Marketing
Content is a real driver of your traffic on the blog site, whereas your site deserves to be a fascinating funnel magnet. How could the content be able to draw sufficient quality traffic in your funnel? Obviously, it depends upon the content quality and usefulness. But, without content marketing, it’s impossible to outreach the qualified content every corner of the web. So, content marketing is a challenge for the newbies in affiliate marketing.
Tip: It’s required to learn the basics of content marketing (how to create, publish and spread out) available around the webs.
11) Avoid Following Up The Crowd Blindly
There’s a maniac might be in some of the starters regarding the viral thought of an affiliate work that the majority is doing something, why not ME! Then they might get urge themselves concluding that idea to do a common something. It’s a little bit challenge against own right direction to gain an appropriate way of affiliate marketing.
Tip: Strive to kick off your innovative different idea of affiliate marketing that leverages you to reach the target customers for affiliate success.
12) Usage SEO opportunity
SEO is a biggest thematic area of the content world, and it’s needed not only for the harvesting benefits from Search Engines, is a vibrant direction in the content factory as well. So, it’s a big challenge for the starters, how they could pick out the advantages of SEO making their enterprise really amazing.
Tip: Let it be learned to keep it up as a first powerful option of the ways so that you could at least know how to outsource it for proper usage of SEO in your startups. You might buy a special tools and training package as well if you do not have enough time to pay for learning either.
13) Taking Advantage of Bing Marketing
There’s a big propensity in starters to get SEO benefits by only using Google Search Engine, taking away the Bing marketing. It’s not a challenge, although, rather a big ignorance, big loss. Now it becomes a challenge, because of competitive usage of SEO strategies to increase the area of traffic paths for the entrepreneurial success.
Tip: Get the Bing marketing a pretty challenging in your startup and enlarge your marketing kingdom.
14) Diversifying Affiliate Product and Network
You might be getting ready for your blog with multi-segmental categories that represents an appropriate niche, is a wise set up, well. It will leverage you monetize the different relevant products of the affiliate program with the risk-free portfolio method. Unfortunately, it’s a big hurdle for the beginners. Because it’s not easily scalable by the starters until you do pass through some experiments or AB tests to figure out the issues. Likewise, In terms of risk management, sustainable program management doesn’t refer to monetize only single merchant’s products.
Tip: You should use diversified products and services from different program networks to control affiliate marketing risks and challenges.
15) Building a Responsive Mailing List
A most expected challenge goes through a process of a lead generation that every affiliate strives for building a significant mailing list. How much sound a newbie could make his content for the potential customers that they could be able to provide enough juicy utility to fasten them with heir profound interest is a vital issue of list building challenge.
Tip: If your content factory doesn’t provide significant support to build a list like that, you might get the help of third-party sourcing out from freelance marketplaces.
16) Usage of Email Marketing
Email marketing is a way that urges the rapid earning of revenue. So, its a topmost expected method for the affiliate marketers. But, how to deserve it, is a bit of challenging the issue of learning and investing. As the biggest path to affiliate traffic, you can’t avoid this way to win your affiliate marketing.
Tip: Get a professional training on the email marketing before you kick off a startup for your significant ROI.
17) Video Generation With Own Voice
While the time is being appeared to meet the buyers through relationship, building the authority actively, then own voice carries enough importance. This is a challenge for the affiliates who conducting on physical product marketing like Amazon product.
Tip: In this circumstance, a proxy voice could help you, might obtain it at an affordable cost from the freelance marketplaces.
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[table id=32 /]18) Product Updating
It’s one of the difficult hurdles of the affiliate marketing challenges to maintain the monetized products and services up-to-date and dynamic. The variable factors, such as price, discount, special offer, free offer, stock out and the latest news are required to be maintained in time through a skilled management routine. So, gracious affiliate happens, when products are really going to hang out in the content spaces within valid time and information.
Tip: You have to keep up a scheduled action plan on the up-to-date issues regularly so that customers do not get the hopeless message.
19) Trying to Sell Out the Product Direct to the potential customers
The propensity to direct sell it might be a habitual hurdle for a new affiliate that happens from over expectation in the affiliate marketing. It doesn’t go to the real affiliate marketing culture of selling to the customers passively. The real value will be added to your affiliate marketing since you could motivate to the potential customers in a right direction to act on the certain deal.
Tip: In direct sales, there is a chance to miss the commission as well, due to the cookie issue. So, you shouldn’t strive and drive such approach to kill the affiliate marketing prospect as well.
20) One-Time Selling Efforts
If you do not monetize a product that naturally goes to the customer for once is a different issue. But if you might run your ‘content marketing’ that doesn’t influence the sale to happen in the same buyer repeatedly is a wrong policy. Since 2015, experts tweet to the affiliates that the approach should be refreshed with profound relationship marketing, so a one-time-selling effort is a hurdle indeed.
Tip: Revise the policy in terms of fastening the one-time-buyers to be repeated customer through your opt-in email or inbound content marketing.
21) Affiliate Link Management with HTML Tag
The link is all in all key factorial products in affiliate marketing that deserves proper management for a significant result. Affiliate link cloaking, link tracking, link shortening, segmenting the links in affiliate are important to function every affiliate needs to do. An affiliate also is needed to use tagging language in some of the cases, such as making the link ‘no-follow’ in terms of SEO. So, affiliate link management is a challenging part of the business for the starters that indicates the success path of the goal as well.
Tip: Learn the issues of link management as a strategic chapter of your affiliate marketing before stepping up the affiliate startup.
22) Secured Advertisement
In this part of your assigned product monetization, maintenance and advertisement, overall security are a continuous fight. To protect the advertisement from multi-click or click-fraud toxin, security either needed so far prior basis to shield the overall security for safe and sound affiliate marketing.
Tip: There are various plug-ins in the site system you might use consulting with your site-designer.
23) Customer Relations
Indeed, Affiliate Marketing is not an effort of earning from a one-time sale. The targeting and re-targeting must be gone there with the policy of repeated sale for sustainable affiliate marketing. Then, it stands, customer relation is an issue that transforms into the sound relationship marketing method. Especially, in terms of physical product marketing, customer care, nurturing and relations are growing voice of the days, claims to drive through the innovative manner surviving the significant sale in the increasingly competitive market.
Tip: Discover your own approach through brainstorming on your niche audiences and let it go through the continuous process.
24) Relationship With Affiliate Manager and Vendor
An optimized relationship is either needed in the new affiliate marketing challenges to be maintained by the program managers and product vendor as well. As per product nature as well as a requirement of the marketing tools, they do provide valuable support to the affiliates. Although affiliate managers are might be impossible to be found in a relationship with the big merchants, like Amazon, but it’s needed and possible in most of the programs. But, how? It depends upon on own efforts of the affiliate is matter.
Tip: Take your policy building a possible relationship with the program manager and vendor so that you could find more clarification and support to protect your interest from affiliate marketing risks and challenges.
25) Optimization of Outsource Program Management (OPM)
OPM is not a course of merchant only, a matter of affiliate marketers’ as well. In a sense, you are the merchant of your product, you serve (affiliate) through your website. You also need to outsource enough resource whether they are free or at your cost. Your site contains affiliate product from the merchant(s) who own their significant OPM, and you are to maintain the relationship with the system. The hurdle is there where you need a significant expertise to maintain an optimized relationship with all parties. It’s becoming a crucial issue in the upcoming days.
Tip: Different professional firms provide OPM services you could outsource, such as SEO firms for Search Engine Optimization and LPO firms for Landing Page Optimization. It’s really big factorial opportunity to increase the small business benefits, controlling affiliate marketing risks and challenges.
26) Understanding Merchant’s Policy
Every merchant furnishes an optimized policy that provides the ruling information to direct affiliates in favor of their program management. The hurdle reveals when an affiliate ignores to learn the policies and get a ban on the affiliation.
Tip: You should think that the policy of affiliate program is not only the ruling directions, rather a part of the marketing as well. Read them with patience before counting your big loss due to a silly mistake.
27) Continuous Reviewing Own Work
Betterment is indeed a realistic requirement in affiliate marketing that comes through a continuous reviewing of own work with a third party or any professional expert. It’s a hurdle, while you do not intend to follow this way for sooner development in the affiliate marketing.
Tip: You might get an expert review to pass over this pretty hurdle. Or you could conduct a regular checklist that provides you switching tips for the betterment.
28) Following -“Help first, sell later” Policy
Indeed, ‘affiliate’ means ‘help’. In affiliate marketing culture, helping is first, then sell. Means, selling is a passive outcome which should be happened by dint of helping satisfaction. That’s why in the content marketing for acquiring potential customers goes through this helping motto. Obviously, It’s an ultimate challenge for the starters to create convertible content in the sales funnels adapting a higher level of helping culture.
Tip: Remember that it’s a game of creating useful emotion with the right content that plays a vital role to happen sales. So, always strive to create a win-win atmosphere, providing helpful information that enables to grow trust, credibility and interesting emotion for conversion.
29) Backward Geo-location
Geo-locally backward distance is a sort of challenge for the affiliates to build a sustainable relationship with the targeted customers who are indeed located in the merchant’s area, but far beyond of you.
Tip: Emphasis on your generating more audio-visual contents, Insert live chat, Keep the clear contacts in the blog area and keep them in real time touch.
30) Up-to-date Device Optimization
The devices like smartphones and tabs are now coverage maximum audiences of the web traffic who feel comfortable to purchases using them. Then, the blog or sales funnel platform must require being responsive for the devices to get advantages the access to a large number of potential buyers. It’s an obstacle while a starter ignores it or do not aware the issue to be changing the web design.
Tip: Could test out your site’s responsiveness, UX and UI use free tools available on the web or get the help of an webmaster either.
31) Sustainable Site Platform and Plug-ins
A responsive site’s platform with risk-free and useful plugins is essential in an affiliate marketing blog. It’s a bit challenging to find a site simultaneously SEO friendly, user-friendly design, fascinating user-interface there with the right platform and plug-ins.
Tip: There are lots of reviews on the right platform selection and legitimate plug-ins you might look for. In my opinion, WordPress is the best platform in this regard.
32) Continue With Patience and Motivation
You must find the obstacles, according to your level of expertise in the way of your up-and-down marketing journey. It’s totally a challenge and matter of continuation with patience to reach the perfect level. In spite of reaching capability, somebody could leave the journey due to lack of proper scalability, patience, and motivation.
Tip: You should achieve proper measurability and figuring out capability through your adequate learning on the issues before you kick off the affiliate journey. And if you’re already on the track of this business, you should never be hopeless. You should trust on the way and get confidence that every hurdle will message you a new improvement suggestion that impresses to be hungry to joy the hurdles of affiliate marketing challenges.
33) Research On the Affiliate Marketing Trend
Affiliate marketing is a live business that results in a story on the basis of a various factors co-related with world web marketing phenomenon. Naturally, it has analytics. Here is the challenge for the new affiliates to understand the market trend from the analytics and research the factors from the trend. And compare the factors with competitor’s as well previous results.
Tip: Never ignore the research on your own marketing trends, comparing competitors in terms of getting your business prediction.
34) Willpower and Passion to Learn
An affiliate success could embrace your business if you are naturally driven by your willpower and passion to run the particular set of actions for results. Setting or re-setting the particular actions and re-targeting the audience could require applied learning. It’s a continuous process as well. So, it stands rather a challenge for the starters.
Tip: In terms of nurturing audience needs, your passionate study is the key fuel for your content marketing affiliate vehicle. Never should stop it.
35) Outreach Skill Level
A starter affiliate will be felt soon in a bitter challenge by his wrong decision if he fails to predict himself to draw a clear perspective up to reaching skill level. Skill level is meant by sustainable relax level of the marketing campaign, which could happen the success story without fail.
Tip: You might dream the successful skill level in your mind map if you determine affiliate marketing is for you.
Conclusion:
Make your plan of considering the hurdles of affiliate marketing risks and challenges. Because, affiliate marketing is a serious business which includes numerous things of components, issues, events, actions, campaigns, and sub-decisions to be packed under a unique umbrella that runs through an optimization process for a better return on investment (ROI). The success is not mattered with the affiliate marketing challenges at all if you could gain enough efficiency, scalability and conduct right management of technology, tools, and outsourcing. So, it’s a matter of continuous management, investment, performance, analysis, evaluation and re-implement to resolve the hurdles for gradual affiliate marketing improvement.
Watch The 35 Hurdles in The YouTube Music Slides- Click Here.
What are the obstacles you find challenging in your deal? You might share.
About the Author Swapan Chandra Sutradhar
Sutradhar is a keen enthusiast in web marketing, a big fan of SEO, Getresponse certified Email marketing Expert, and a global b2b marketing professional - engaged in the business network for long. In his blog time, he love's to work on web traffic for helping small businesses and affiliate marketing people around the web.