Why Signing Up for Multiple Affiliate Sites is a Big Mistake

It can be tempting. You see a cool website and check . . . yes, it has an affiliate program . . so you sign up. The problem is, it's your fifteenth affiliate program! While you may have enough blogs to cover all the different things you sign up to sell, that doesn't mean that it is a great idea.

Sure, you might figure that offering a wide variety of products to your visitors will entice them to buy, but actually the opposite is true. People need to see or hear about a product up to 15 times before they will buy! If you are blogging about a new product every week, complete with affiliate links, you will probably find that you aren't going to sell many of each item.

That many affiliate programs can get confusing, too. Even if you have a spreadsheet set up to organize passwords, log in IDs and URLS, you're bound to miss out on some of the programs. It isn't easy to remember what you have signed up for if you are involved in 50 different affiliate programs!

So, what is a blogger to do? Stick with a handful of excellent affiliate programs and work on promoting those religiously. You will see a lot more results and it is way easier to stay organized and keep track of your earnings when you only have a couple of options! Do a few things well, rather than many things badly, as they say. This advice really fits when we are talking about affiliate marketing.

It helps to have a very specific criteria when deciding whether or not to sign up for a new program. Set a minimum percentage that you would like to earn and stick to it. Make sure the product is something that would benefit your readers, not just pay well. If you are grabbing affiliate products simply for their high payout, that's the wrong way to go about it. You want to match the product to the reader, or no one will buy. It's that simple.

Sites like Clickbank, Shareasale and Commission Junction all offer one sign up and literally hundreds of products and companies to choose from. The main problem with this is that you can still end up promoting too many products! Use your criteria to narrow down the selection and stick to just 3-5 products, even within a larger site such as those listed above.

Stick to a handful of great products, promote them relentlessly and you will be amazed at the results. Your sales should definitely go up!