The 3 WORST Affiliate Mistakes – And How to Avoid Them

We all fear something, but for affiliate marketers, some fears are more real than others. And most of them are related to the three most typical rookie affiliate mistakes:

• You set up your campaign incorrectly
• Your offer goes cold
• You waste your traffic

These are the things that cost us time, money and keep us awake at night. They prevent us from leaving our computer desk, and keep our eyes glued to a computer screen. But what if I told you that there is an easy way to avoid these affiliate mistakes?

That they aren’t just “part of the game” but easily preventable.

This is not your typical affiliate babbling and smooth-talking, there is an actual solution that will help you stay clear of those affiliate mistakes. A tool that warns you when you’ve got a problem and invites you to take action.

Want to get rid of your affiliate insomnia? Just keep reading.

Be Always Up-To-Date

Normally, being on top of things would require constant jumping between different browser tabs with a finger repetitively pressing refresh key. But Voluum has introduced a feature that tells you when something worthy of your attention happens. This feature is called Custom Notifications, and the name says it all.

With Custom Notifications, you do not have to constantly worry if your affiliate campaigns are running smoothly. If they are not, you will know even if you are away from the computer.

Custom notifications appear when certain things that you define happen. These things include:

• The event counter going above or below a set value within a given time frame
• Financial or performance metrics going above or below set value within a given time

You can also set a condition that requires multiple things to happen before a notification is shown, define a specific time frame (1 hour to 2 days), apply these options to many offers or campaigns and receive notifications on desktop or mobile devices. All you need to have to benefit from this is:

• Voluum’s pricing plan that includes Custom Notifications. Or a FREE trial of this feature enabled on a lower pricing plan.

and…

• Voluum Mobile app installed on your mobile device.

Got all that? Good!? So read further to learn how to cure your fears.

1. You set up your campaign incorrectly

The first affiliate mistake is obvious: you have found some lucrative, tasty offers. And a crowd of hungry visitors. You go to sleep hoping to wake up to some promising stats. But there are no stats or they are not the ones that you hoped for. How could it be? The deal was foolproof, it was sure to work. But some things happened.

A typo in one of the URLs. A blank space inside a tracking token. A wrong domain name in a click URL. A postback not passing a click ID value back. A landing page not displaying correctly on mobile devices. Just a few of the many affiliate mistakes that anyone can make even after setting up a thousand campaigns. We are human, we make mistakes.

But only a crazy person makes the same mistakes over and over again.

We can also learn from previous, or other people’s experience and take precautions. We can read the entire knowledge base. Or learn how to make your landing page work on mobile devices.  But the most notable precaution is testing each campaign setup. And the best test is to get your first conversions. If you got one, you can get more.

Also, as a second precaution, you can be notified if an error occurs in your campaign.

What to do: Create the first custom notification to be launched when the number of conversions exceeds 1. Set a time range that you expect is enough for a conversion to occur – you don’t want to wait forever to realize that you have made some affiliate mistakes. Additionally, create the second custom notification to be launched when the number of errors in a given campaign is more than 1.

What will happen: Once you get the first notification you can rest easy knowing that your setup works fine. The second notification will be sent if your setup is not working correctly. You should react quickly when you get this notification.

2. Your Offer Goes Cold

You close your eyes to sleep, but your mind can’t shake the fear that everything will go south. One moment your offer is converting like crazy, the next it is dead as a suicidal Dodo. The conversion rate plummets to the ground, people see a 404 error after they clicked your ad, the cost goes up while revenue stands still. And while this all happens, you lay in your bed.

Offers do die, like everything else. We are not talking about traffic fluctuations, daily and weekly cycles or market saturation. We are talking about your offer not being alive anymore. Stopped and killed by the offer’s owner. This may happen without any notice or warning. So you need to keep checking if at least some conversions are happening.

What to do: Create a custom notification to be launched when the conversion rate (CR) is below 10% and a campaign has spent more than 100$ within a given time frame.

What will happen: This will tell you that your traffic is still flowing, but your offer has suddenly stopped converting.

3. You Waste Traffic

The last mistake you may be afraid of (and to be honest, you should be afraid) regards wasted opportunities. Wasted traffic, money spent without the option to earn it back. It’s like being in a casino where your chances of winning are actual zero, not a metaphorical zero. Playing in this casino is not only no fun. It is, most of all, economically insane.

Affiliate marketers test different hypothesis all the time. And testing costs money that you pay for traffic. You don’t want to keep pushing traffic to offers that just won’t convert. It is wasteful and, as we have said, not fun. You need to set yourself some minimum goals. Goals such as “I won’t pay for more than 100 visits if my test campaign hasn’t converted at least once”. And use Custom Notification to oversee your goals.

What to do: Create a custom notification to be launched when you get more than 100 visits but with no conversions within a given time frame.

What will happen: The time range is your testing period. If you get this notification, that means that your hypothesis is not valid and you should try something else. Change some traffic targeting options or adjust your lander. But at least you know that you have to do something.

Sleep, Free From Affiliate Mistakes

Do you hear that quiet humming noise? No, it’s not your white noise app. That’s Voluum relentlessly checking your stats to warn you the minute something bad happens and making sure that after you wake up, you will be greeted by reliable and informative stats. And not by the “Oh my god, this is useless, I’ve spent 500$ showing my visitors the 404 page”. It is no fun. 

💤 Access Custom Notifications in Voluum and sleep easy tonight! 💤

Contact our sales team for more.