The reasons why people fail in affiliate marketing are aplenty. But in my opinion, there are 3 common mistakes that often pull the plug on potentially successful affiliate promotions. In this article, I'm going to list those 3 mistakes so you can avoid them.

First, choosing the wrong product. Either that, or choosing a product that everyone and their dog is promoting. All right, that's 2 mistakes but you get what I mean. Don't choose the wrong product to promote! If it's a popular product, fine. Make sure you have a big list to back you up so your competitors can't compete with you. Either that, or promote 'under-the-radar' products that have quality content and a great sales letter.

The second most common mistake is that of using 'copy and paste' ads. Sure, it is very easy to just copy and paste the ads your affiliate program manager or merchant gives you. But if you're writing email ads or classified ads, you will want to create your own ads. The only exception is if the ad that they have provided is proven to convert.

The third most common mistake is promoting the affiliate product the wrong way, or not promoting it enough. Writing 1 article a day is definitely not going to make you rich off the Internet. Going in AdWords full-throttle without the required experience is suicide. So make sure you go with proven advertising avenues and make sure you know what's working so you can scale it up and go big with it.

Copyright 2009 by Fabian Tan.