When people learn about affiliate marketing, they can encounter the lifestyle of top affiliates, who brag about luxurious houses, expensive trips, and exotic meals. The reality is more down-to-earth because such channels serve as a showcase of success, omitting the long journey of trial-and-error.
This, in turn, can set unrealistic expectations for new affiliates — the very first misconception when you enter our line of work. But there are more affiliate marketing mistakes that we’re willing to tell you about. Read on to learn why affiliates fail, what not to do as an affiliate, and how to avoid losing commissions.
Mistakes during pre-planning
Common adult affiliate mistakes start long before launching a campaign. Let’s start with the nuances of pre-planning.
Picking an offer without testing. At A.W. Empire, we provide not only access to LiveJasmin cams and niche products for promotion, but also tons of tools to support any of our programs. The performance of the same product can vary depending on your ad format, creative used, and even your payout model. Track vital metrics like eCPM, consult with your affiliate manager (AM), and remain adamant in conducting test runs for the best performance.
Neglecting your audience’s details and uniqueness. When approaching GEOs where the native language is anything but English, you have to be careful not to miss potential users. Sure, it might be tempting to run German-only creatives for DACH countries, but many locals have their browsers in English. In other words, using a native language in such a case can ruin the immersion and render your ad lost among the crowd.
Perfectionism in creatives and funnels. One of the most common mistakes in affiliate marketing is an obsession with the quality of creatives and funnels. Don’t get us wrong, they need to be seamless, but at one moment, you must stop polishing and start promoting. In fact, when everything looks too sterile, users get bored. Engaging content is not about perfection; it’s about being good enough.
Concerns when running a campaign
Continuing our list of affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid, we go from pre-planning to campaign execution. There are many LiveJasmin promotion errors here, but we’ll help you circumvent them.
Overreliance on a single source of traffic. One of the most common affiliate traps for newbies is when they find a source and stick to it no matter what. Over time, sources and/or approaches tend to exhaust their potential. Therefore, you either search for alternatives willingly when you’re in black or forcefully when your goldmine depletes its ore deposit.
False claims you can’t deliver. Whether you work with LiveJasmin or not, you shouldn’t mislead the users by promising something that can’t be delivered. Even if such users convert, they will leave with a sense of bitterness and probably won’t come back. We don’t want that to happen, so play it fair.
Skewness into either free or paid traffic. Oftentimes, affiliates view these alternatives as extremes and favor one over another. In reality, paid and free traffic go hand-in-hand: the former delivers users here and now, while the latter helps to retain them.
Spreading too thin in efforts and budget. It’s always better to specialize in one niche instead of chasing gay, lesbian, MILF, couple, fetish, and other categories all at once. Audience segments have varying preferences, requiring totally different approaches to succeed. Trying to nail several niches at once usually leads to burnout and wasted budget.
Compliance issues. LiveJasmin can’t be promoted on specific websites or platforms without our permission. For example, we can approve you working with social media, but we need to make sure the creatives posted there will not discredit LiveJasmin first. Besides, if you work with ad networks or any major platforms directly, they have their own terms and conditions that you have to respect. Finally, countries all across the globe have their unique laws that must be obeyed. If you want to make things easier for yourself, stay in touch with your AM, as they are aware of all the limitations.
Tracking and analytics missteps
Adult affiliate marketing errors can creep in long after a successful campaign. It’s time to talk about optimization, tracking, and analytics.
No tracking. While our dashboard provides all the analytics needed for work, if you want to achieve high performance or expand your scope of work, you need a 3rd-party tracker. Make sure to use the promo tools of A.W. Empire, as they are optimized for tracking and accurate attribution.
Ignoring analytics completely. Gone are the times when you could run a campaign without monitoring its performance, hoping for the best. The competition is stiff nowadays; users have many platforms to choose from, so you have to adapt and find the perfect match for your product. That’s where analytics come in handy, as it helps to save on costs and find the most engaged audience segments.
Summing things up
Beginner affiliate mistakes are easy to avoid if you do your work diligently without cutting corners. But if you want to increase your chances of succeeding even further, we recommend maintaining contact with us and your AM. Check out the conferences and attend them with us — they’re great for learning new insights quickly.
Register on A.W. Empire if you haven’t yet to begin your journey in the world of adult affiliate marketing. We’ll help you out with tools, recommendations, retargeting pixel, Whitelabels, and so much more. We’ve been in this business for 20+ years for a reason, and we want you to join our team of professionals.
