Affiliate Marketing Absolute Dos and Don'ts

If you’re just starting out as an affiliate on Clickbank, it can be pretty difficult to know what you need to do in order to become successful. And on the other side of every success story, there are a few things you really should not do as well! In this article we will talk about both sides, so you can avoid many made mistakes that makes life harder for many beginners in Affiliate Marketing.

Dos

Do Promote high-quality products that you personally consider interesting and would also purchase yourself. Believing in the real value of a certain product will make you much better at promoting these, both because your promotional efforts will be a lot more believable, and because you will have a better understanding of what attracts potential customers to that product in the first place. Try promoting products that you feel honestly passionate about, rather then only promoting products that you know are popular with everyone else.
Take a lot of advantage of the tools and tips that vendors offer on special their Affiliates pages. They will often include very useful information about the best ways to promote the products they offer, and it may also provide useful images and suggestions for related keywords, and even more.
If you use Clickbank then be sure to test your HopLinks and campaigns regularly to ensure that they are working properly.
Spend time doing research on various promotional techniques before you are getting started. A very good resource if you are just starting out are our Traffic Generation articles. Searching on Google for more specifics on each promotional technique should get you a pretty good deal of useful information for free.
Be very flexible about your techniques and methods, and be willing to make mandatory changes if something is not working. Different methods work for different kinds of products, so what did work for you in the past may not be working anymore in the future. The industry of affiliate marketing changes quickly, so you always need to be fully ready to adjust to the latest market trends, newest products, and other unforeseen circumstances.
Store copies of your Clickbank HopLinks in a file on your computer. It is also a good idea to include a simple note about which product your HopLink corresponds to, and any other additional details you specifically want to remember about the product. ClickBank does not store any copy of your HopLinks, so if you want to have quick and easy access to them for future promotions, you will need to save them yourself.
Choose an clean and inoffensive account nickname for Clickbank. While your nickname never has to be perfect (see the Don’ts below), it will still be visible to your customers, so it is a good idea to make it something that will not offend anyone or make them decide not to purchase through your hoplink.

Don’ts

NEVER spam. There are a couple of good reasons not to spam others with affiliate links and promotions. From a business point of view, ClickBank does take complaints of spamming very seriously, and it will result in a loss of your Clickbank account and any earnings you have made if they determine you are guilty of spamming. Also, many sites, social networks, blogs, forums, and Internet Service Providers take any reporting of spamming very seriously, so you can quickly find yourself forever banned from the most popular places to promote products if your activities and promotions are considered to be spam.
At Your Clickbank account, do not fill out the My Site/My Images/My Products sections of the Settings tab. These specific account settings are only intended for the ClickBank vendors, never for affiliates. Please leave these untouched unless you have a product and you want to become a ClickBank vendor.
Do not use any “negative” advertising campaigns. While some affiliates assume it is a brilliant idea to create advertisements like “Is Product X a scam?” and then directly link to the product, I strongly recommend that you never use this kind of method where advertising your products is concerned. There are many vendors that are opposed to people associating their products with being a scam, and may request that ClickBank ban certain affiliates from promoting their products if they catch them promoting this way. This means that all of your advertising efforts will go to waste and you will not be able to promote that product anymore in the future. Clickbank implemented this rule because it makes ClickBank products in general look pretty bad, and it can make customers hesitant to buy the product since you have introduced doubt in their mind. it is better to highlight the positive benefits of a product right from the start, instead of introducing a certain fear about the product and then trying to sell the customer on the product anyway.
Do not feel that you always must purchase the product you want to promote. You are never required to purchase a product before you can promote it, although sometimes owning it and using the product yourself can lead to new ideas and insights on how you can promote this product.
Never offer any bonus of cash or cash equivalents such as gift cards for people who buy a product through your HopLink. This is definitely not allowed in the Client Contract that you agreed to follow when you signed up for Clickbank. You can however offer other kinds of bonuses, such as extra ebooks or other related products to customers who buy through your HopLink.
Never expect to quickly generate loads of traffic using any free promotional methods. While the free promotional methods such as SEO (search engine optimization) and social media might eventually lead to a lot of traffic, beginner affiliate marketers will most likely not drive much traffic from these methods at all until they have had time to build up their reputation, efforts, and search engine rankings.
Do not “mask” or store your HopLink in a frame. For your Clickbank HopLinks to be properly traced, it must not be stored in any website frame. If your website domain is masked, your HopLink will be stored in this manner, and therefore very unreliable.
Do not promote the “resolved” form of a Clickbank HopLink. Angood example of this would be www.examplesite.com/?hop=pvde. Instead, you always must use the Clickbank HopLink format ending in hop.clickbank.net so the Hop can be tracked right right way, if you want to be ensuring you receive affiliate credit on the final sale. (This has to do with a cookie that the Hoplink creates when a Hoplink is pressed)
Do not use your password as a Tracking ID. This may seem obvious, But I’ve read a newsletter from Clickbank about this. If you are choosing to include a Tracking ID on your HopLink, it will be visible to everyone who clicks on your HopLink, so is your account nickname. Having both sides of this information visible to others may lead to unauthorized access to your account.
Never be too busy with choosing a “perfect” ClickBank nickname. Your promotional efforts are what really counts, never the Clickbanknickname you use.