It's either the gurus don't teach you, or you knew it but you don't do it.

What are the mistakes that we can avoid to ensure your affiliate marketing business is profitable? Build your affiliate business on solid foundation and you will have a bullet-proof money maker that keeps your bank account fat.

1. Failing to plan your campaign.

The famous saying "Failing to plan is as good as planning to fail" will stay valid forever. Plan anything and every aspect of your affiliate business as detail as you can. Highly paid executives like CEO are paid handsomely to make a solid plan for the company and for the subordinates to execute. Because only with solid, realistic, and detailed plan a business can thrive in the market.

2. Launching your affiliate project before testing it thoroughly.

So you've got a brilliant idea that just popped to your head. You get so very excited, drop whatever you are doing and start working on your new project. It's normal and it happened many times to me. But it's wrong.

Whenever you start a new project, test it on a small market first before launching it to the world. A good idea is to make use of Google Adword's geographical targetting to test your sales system on a small number of visitors. If it works on those small group of people, and gives you satisfactory result. Replicate it for a bigger market, continue testing and refining.

Don't be afraid to lose a few bucks testing an idea that eventually doesn't work.

3. Failing to test your campaign at all.

Don't be surprised if I say that most of us are afraid to test our campaign because we are not prepared to see results going against us. Some of us are lazy to test because to be honest, although it's not difficult, it's tedious and sometimes can be quite troublesome. However, testing can actually be the most profitable activity that gives you the most return for every time spent on it. Test every of your marketing activities whether it is profitable or not, your headline, your email subject line, your background colour, your opt-in form, your sales copy, your thank you page, your bonus, everything.

4. Testing the wrong way.

I have a friend who started with $1,000 budget and a brilliant idea, but ended up losing everything and feeling like a total failure. Why?

Because whenever he saw that a particular project not giving him the result that he wants, he immediately changes his campaign around. And to make things worse, he never keeps a record of what he changes and why he changes it. If after testing, the result went against you, make sure that your test sample is sufficiently large for you to draw your conclusion. For example, if you are testing an Adwords campaign, 100-200 clicks is a good number before you actually make the decision. And also most importantly, keep record of what you change and the effect of your changes.

5. Not knowing your USP.

Even if you are an affiliate marketer, you need to have a Unique Selling Proposition too. Yes, you can have a USP even without having your own physical or digital product. Why must people choose to buy from you rather than through thousands of other affiliates out there? What is it that you offer that others don't?

As a closing remark, remember to always plan before executing, followed by persistent testing and refining. You want to kill of those non-profitable campaigns and multiply the profitable ones as many times as you can.

Learn to build a solid foundation for your affiliate marketing business. Let your business thrive through the economic downturn, lengthy recession, and emerge stronger. Get your FREE 57-pages Underdog Affiliate Marketing Blueprint at:

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