Common Forex Affiliate Mistakes to Avoid
Monday, Jan 25, 2010
While Forex affiliate programs can be very lucrative, those potential profits come with a cost: increased competition.
Lots of affiliate marketers have heard about the great money that can be made as a Forex affiliate and entered the niche, so you'll have to be on top of your affiliate game to succeed.
The good news is that if you simply avoid a few of the common traps that new Forex affiliates fall into you'll be well on your way to success.
Know Your Market
The most important mistake to avoid is to not know your market. You don't necessarily have to be an active Forex trader to succeed as an affiliate, but you definitely need to understand the basic principles.
If you're relying on free traffic to your affiliate websites, you'll need to understand the unique nature of the Forex market, and the type of trader it appeals to. You can't just add some Forex banners to a website you have devoted to mutual funds and expect to succeed, as those markets appeal to very different types of customers without a lot of overlap, despite the surface similarities.
Think Longterm
Don't get discouraged, especially early on. Like other competitive affiliate niches, you very likely won't enjoy much immediate success when you start marketing Forex affiliate programs. You'll have to work hard developing and optimizing your sites and you probably won't have much to show for it in the way of revenue in the early stages.
It's easy to just look at the lack of profits and get discouraged and give up, but most successful Forex affiliates went through exactly the same dry spells at the beginning. The Forex affiliate world is very similar to promoting online poker and online casino affiliate programs, requiring much patience and persistence when you're first starting out and finding what works best for you.
CPA vs Revenue Share for Forex Affiliates
This doesn't necessarily apply to all affiliates, but try to avoid the lure of quick bucks by going with CPA deals for Forex affiliate programs. While CPA offers of $200+ may be very, very tempting, stop and think about why the affiliate programs are offering such deals. They're trying to make money, just like you, so if they're willing to offer you very high CPA deals it must mean that the average customer makes them far more than that in the long run.
Revenue sharing plans are where the real money in the Forex affiliate world is out, and you're usually better off picking revenue sharing plans instead of CPA. Just like in the casino affiliate world where affiliates chase whales, a very active Forex trader can make you thousands of dollars as an affiliate over the lifetime of their account on a revenue sharing plan, so try to avoid the siren's call of quick CPA riches.
Diversity
Avoid locking yourself into just one Forex affiliate program. While that does make it easier as far as checking stats and finding promotional content and banners, it also ties your fortunes as an affiliate directly to the success (or failure) of one Forex broker and affiliate program.
Diversifying the fx affiliate programs you work with not only lets you test various campaigns to see what affiliate program converts best for you, but it also provides you with an immediate backup plan if one Forex affiliate program goes out of business.
With all major Forex affiliate programs free to join, there's no reason to put all of your eggs in the basket of a single program, no matter how good it is.
