The internet is a treasure cove of income-generating opportunities that can not only augment your current sources of income but eventually make it as a full-time business venture that allows you to quit your day job someday. While there are thousands
of people around the world joining the bandwagon of internet marketing every month, more online marketers are giving up on this business venture.
The road to success is tough, and many failed to achieve sufficient amount of income through the internet due to several reasons poor success in getting high quality traffic. The main causes may differ from one marketer to another, and some experts have collected data and analyzed the online business environment to come up with the most common reasons why many internet marketers failed.
Listed below are some 5 of the many causes of failure. By knowing these things, you can avoid the bumps along the way, thereby keeping you on tract of your goals.
5 Common Pitfalls of Internet Marketing
No Website
It’s a fact that some marketers are quite successful in earning huge sum of money even without having a website on their own. However, you will have better control of everything if you own one.
An excellent example of successful entrepreneurs without websites is some top-sellers in eBay. Many are able to sell a lot of things and stuffs in auction sites like eBay, and the good part is that they are able to collect thousands of dollars per month selling various items despite having no personal blogs or a business website to promote the products they are selling.
The method of earning is quite simple. Just open an eBay account and you are good to go. You can even promote within the eBay community using different strategies without going out of the site.
However, in internet marketing the world is different. While some affiliates are able to attain success in earning good affiliate commissions using only free blog platforms like Blogger, the success level of marketers without websites are not as high as those who have one.
Although it is good to start with free blogs just to earn enough money for your initial capital, you should eventually build your own website that gives you not just better marketing flexibility but a competitive edge over your competitors.
If you are going to promote affiliate programs, you should have a blog that serves as your main marketing platform where you will be funneling traffic to. Aside from that, you will also easily earn respect and build credibility among your prospects if you have a premium site.
Most buyers are hesitant to pay and shell out their hard-earned money in a blog hosted on a free platform. This only indicates that the owner is not earning enough to pay for the required monthly hosting fees.
If you are promoting a product that helps people to make money and yet you are using Blogger to promote it, just imagine what people would think about your sales page; your actions do not reflect the benefits you are offering to your prospects if they buy the product. Therefore, get a website and set things on the right foot forward.
No Traffic
One of the most challenging parts is getting traffic; this is, perhaps, the main reason why a lot of marketers failed. Once you have your site, your next job is to start getting more visitors to it by implementing different leads-generation strategies.
There are different techniques of getting high quality leads; use different methods and diversify your techniques. A lot of affiliates use only few strategies to capture prospects, and they mainly focus on organic traffic from the search engines.
While some are becoming more successful with affiliate programs as their blogs progress in dominating the search engines for their target keywords, when Google strikes against black hat SEO strategies via Panda and Penguin updates, many of them were hit by the changes when their sites suddenly lost their respective ranking. That is why it is important to diversify your marketing campaign.
Relying purely on organic traffic is not a good way of setting your business on solid grounds, since the amount of traffic that you will be getting is greatly dependent on the ranking of your site, which is not stable and very unpredictable. Thus, explore other options, and one of them is simply to buy high quality traffic from a reliable service provider.
Poor Landing Page
The landing page is also called a sales page. This works like a sales presentation in the real marketing world. Therefore, you must carefully present your products in such a way as to convince your visitors to make the purchase.
Many successful marketers even hire professional copywriters to do the job. While the fees of top copywriters are quite expensive, they are also worth the amount since the results will give you higher conversion rate.
If you are promoting affiliate programs, make sure to check the landing page provided for by the program. Empathize by imagining that you are the client. If you find the sales page very convincing enough then go for it. Novice affiliates did not bother checking the landing page; that is why they failed in converting their web-visitors into customers.
Inferior Contents
Traditional marketing involves publishing a single article in different online venues. While this used to be effective, this is no longer applicable today with the Google Panda and Penguin updates.
In fact, this is now referred to as spamming the web with content farms. And if you are still following what the experts used to do in the past in this aspect, you are doomed to fail. It is no wonder why many affiliates failed; it’s because they are still following outdated methods that are now ineffective.
According to some experts, you must presell in your blog posts before directing prospects to the sales page. Pre-selling is a stage where you will be conditioning the minds of the readers on what you are about to offer. To be successful in marketing, you have to push the psychological triggers of the buyers, and you can do this by creating unique blog posts where you pre-sell the products.
Thus, make your contents meaningful and valuable. They must be grammatically correct as well. Publishing posts just for the sake of updating the site is not a good practice. This is a common pitfall that led some to their downfall.
To avoid this bump, make each post unique and provide value to your readers. If they find it useful, they can even help you get wider audience by referring your posts to their friends.
Incorrect Targeting of Prospects
Another common pitfall of marketing is incorrect targeting. This is usually influenced by the keywords used to capture leads. Opting for highly competitive keywords may be good, but if you are new to online marketing it would be best to target keywords with less competition.
Don’t go against the big dogs in your niche. It is better to swim in a small pond with only few fishes to compete with the available food, rather than going for the big pond dominated by bigger fishes where you have less chance of survival.
Thus, properly target the right market by researching for the best keywords to use for your campaign. If you err in this aspect, you will meet failure sooner than you expect.
To avoid these mistakes, keep them in mind when launching your internet marketing campaign. Don’t give up too soon, but try to bounce back from small mistakes. Take note that failure only comes to those who give up. If you bounce back from a mistake, it is just a challenge that gives you valuable yet painful lessons.