10 Mistakes Online Marketers Make

and How to Avoid Them

The mistakes below are not in any set order and all are easy to correct and by taking simple steps to correct these common mistakes you can not only avoid issues but you can dramatically increase your online earning power.

= Using replicated sales pages, banners and ads that mention the company, product or service that you're promoting.

This is great for the company but bad for affiliates because if your sales page or ad has the name of the product you’re promoting, there is nothing to stop someone from doing a search on the name of the product and going directly to the main home page of the company.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting Alphabet Cola and Alphabet Cola is nice enough to give you banners and a replicated sales page that both mention Alphabet Cola. You spend your time promoting these banners and sales page and while many people will simply click on the banner, or use the link you give them, a percentage of other people will do a search on Alphabet Cola and bypass your page.

This is why you want to have your own capture page and prospecting system that includes your own Autoresponder because if you don’t take control of your online marketing, you will be controlled by someone else and without full control, you will lose a percentage of your sales.

I was looking at a site the other night and this is one of those alleged guru sites and he has his name and picture plastered all over the site which is not a bad thing--a little egotistical, but not bad.  Then I went to his affiliate area and every banner and replicated webpage he had for his affiliates, also had his name, site name and picture on them—Every One!

As a test, I left his site and did a search on the site name and when I clicked on the link and went back to his site and then clicked on the buy now, he was my sponsor—even though a friend had given me his affiliate link.  This guru—NOT--is stealing from his own clients and they have no idea this is happening.  Why? Because they are using the banners and replicated and self serving pages that he provides to them.

Almost all affiliate programs work this same way and they plaster the site name all over their affiliate sales pages and banners and all this does is help them and hurt their affiliates.

12SecondCommute.com gives you your own Autoresponder and Capture page creator so you can create and take control of your online marketing and control is a powerful thing to have when you are trying to build a business.

= Using the sign up form on a replicated sales page instead of having your own Autoresponder.

Along with the use of banners and a replicated sales page, all affiliate programs also have their own in-house Autoresponder system that is not a true Autoresponder. Yes, it might follow up with prospects, but the problem is everyone you sign up is now the property of the company and not you. Sure, you get a commission if they buy or upgrade with the program you’re promoting, but what happens if they don’t upgrade or buy? You get zippo and the company gets a prospect they can use in the future.

Let’s go back to our affiliate program with Alphabet Cola as they have given you a great replicated sales page and told you to go out and promote the special URL and let their replicated sales page do all the work. Wow, this is really nice of them—or is it?

Assume, you send 100 people to the page who subscribe to get more information on the Alphabet Cola opportunity and of those 100 people, 3 buy. Hey that’s great you think, but what happens to the other 97 people? The short answer is Alphabet Cola owns them and can send them anything they want in the future and if you ever leave Alphabet Cola, you leave all your prospects with them.

You do all the work and they earn all the money—just the opposite of what the scam sites tell you, but this is the fact and if you don’t have your own Autoresponder and Capture page system, you are only building the prospect list for someone else.

= Using your PayPal password and email address on both the registration page and the affiliate setup page of any program.

Many programs use PayPal to pay your commissions and this is great, but the one thing you never want to do is register for a program and use your PayPal email address and or password when you register.

For example, if you registered for Alphabet Cola and you used your PayPal email address on the registration form and then you also used the same password to create your account as you use to login to PayPal, then if the owners of Alphabet Cola are dishonest, you just gave them access to your PayPal account because they are going to have your email address and your password in their membership database.

They can sell this information to some nutcase hacker or bad guy and that person can then drain your PP account and since Alphabet Cola did not actually break into your PP account, you will not be able to track this issue back to them.

If you have a PayPal account and only one email address, then get another email address or only use your PP password at PP and no place else. Many people like to have only one password and while this is convenient, they are playing with fire because if someone gets hold of that password and your email address, they essentially have access to just about any secure site you are involved with on the Internet.

= Using an affiliate link without using an ad tracker or some other URL redirect to mask the URL.

Actually using any link without a tracker is just wasting time and money because if you don’t know where your hits are coming from, then you are flying blind online.

Sending your affiliate link out anyplace will simply allow someone to remove your affiliate ID and go directly to the site and register or let them do a search and find out the direct link to the company or someone else in the company and you will lose the sign up and possible commission.

Using our made up Alphabet Cola company as an example and assume their affiliate link is something like, http://www.AlphabetCola.com/48934/rep with the 48934 being your affiliate ID and you go out and promote that link then 2 bad things happen.

First, Alphabet Cola.com is in the link which gives people a direct link to the site.

Second, if you post that link on 10 different sites, you will get hit stats from the affiliate area of Alphabet Cola, but you won’t know specifically where those hits are coming from.

Now, if you use a good ad tracker like there is in 12SecondCommute.com, you could create 10 different URL’s using the ad tracker and since Alphabet Cola will not be in the URL, you are protected from someone taking any part of your URL and going directly to Alphabet Cola.

Plus, you will know exactly where your hits are coming from, so if you have 10 links out there but only 2 are giving you any hits, get rid of the other 8 and focus more time and energy on the types of places where you are getting hits.

To avoid losing commissions and not knowing where your hits are coming from, you need a good quality ad and link tracker so you can mask or hide your affiliate links and also so you can track all your links and know what is working for you and what is not.  The ad and link tracker in 12SecondCommute.com is one of the best on the Internet.

= Not responding to email requests in a timely manner.

I was talking with an associate of mine a few months ago as I had sent him an email on a partnership we were involved with, but I had not heard back from him so after 2 days, I called him. He told me that he only responds to emails in the evening but sometimes he runs out of time, so it might take him a day or two to get back with people. He said he learned this trick from another prominent online marketer.

Some trick because one of the worst things you can do when working online or anyplace is not take care of your clients and associates. Unless someone is on vacation or sick, there is no reason to not respond to people in a timely manner and believe me people will notice.

There have been times when it took me several hours to get back with someone on a support issue and 9 times out of 10 they will thank me for the speedy response. Now to me a speedy response is within minutes and while that is not always possible, I have found that if you respond to emails as you get them, it makes your day easier and shows respect to the person who sent you the request.

Plus if someone is interested in your product or service and they have to wait a day or two to hear back from you, they will simply go on to the next and forget you ever existed.

I suggest you invest in Outlook or some other email management program that runs on your computer and let it check all your email accounts for you so you get notified when you have an email. You can setup Outlook to check for emails every 60 seconds or every 60 minutes and it will do this automatically for you.

I have mine set to check for new emails every 60 seconds and it checks 3 different email accounts and then notifies me when I have a new message. It can help to control spam, you can setup folders to manage emails on different programs or people and once you get the hang of it, you will not want to live without it.

Outlook Express is usually installed on most computers and is free and while it will work for many people, the actual Outlook program gives you a lot more options and power.

= Not having your own domain and using email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL or any others for your business.

There are times when you will want to use your Gmail or Yahoo or other email accounts, but for business, you should have your own domain with email capability. This makes you look more professional and gives you a variety of options such as creating alias’s, multiple email addresses and you’re not at the mercy of any email provider.

This is also where you will need to invest in Outlook or something like Outlook to help you manage your email accounts and messages so Outlook will check all your mail accounts and send back to your computer.

Having your own email from your own domain shows that you are serious and long term in your business and that is the message you want to send about your business.

You can get hosting for a few dollars a month and your own domain will cost less than $10 a year, so for about $4/month, you can take full control over your email accounts.

= Waiting too long to get started building their list.

This unfortunately is the killer of most people online because they keep putting off building their own list for months or years and many never start. For those who don’t build their list, they will not make money online, pure and simple.

I made this fatal mistake when I first came online and it cost me big bucks and years to catch up. The bottom line of working online is that you must have your own list, your own Autoresponder and you never stop building your list.

You cannot use a free Autoresponder and you cannot use an Autoresponder script that runs on your computer. You need a good third party and objective Autoresponder that will allow you to grow your list and build your business.

12SecondCommute.com gives you a great Autoresponder plus every other online tool you need to succeed.

I was watching a video from one of the alleged guru’s of the internet the other night and while this particular person is actually a pretty decent person, he is doing what most people do.

He signs you up in his training site and charges close to $40/month for this and then he directs you to get an Autoresponder and that is another $20+ per month of which he makes a commission and then he directs you someplace else to get a website and he makes a commission from that and then someplace else to get other tools such as an ad tracker and conference room and guess what? He makes a commission from those as well.

Now, this is actually smart on his part because he is making money by referring others to all these places, however it is not good for the client as they end up spending close to $100 per month for tools they could get in 12SecondCommute.com for a fraction of the cost, but I digress from the main topic and that is building your list.

Hey you can get any Autoresponder you want, but get one and hold onto it with your life because if you don’t have this one simple tool, working online will be like swimming in mud. You will spend a lot of time and energy and never get anyplace.

And yes I know everyone is telling you how simple working online is and how all you have to do is promote the links they give you and let their Autoresponder do the work for you, but all you're doing by following their advice is building their lists--NOT YOURS and you are in this for you, aren't you?

There is an old saying that goes like this:  The best time to have planted a tree was 5 years ago and the second best time is today.  This simply means that a tree takes time to grow and whether you want shade or you want fruit, the tree you plant will not give you either for at least 5 years.

This analogy works great for list building too because, the best time to have started building your own prospect list was the first day you came online, but the second best time is today.  It will take time to grow your list so that it starts givng you back a decent income, but once you get to that point, nothing can stop you.

= Quitting programs without ever giving the program a true chance to work.

This is another reason why people fail so much online. They get involved with a program, work it for a month or two and if they have not made any money or very little money, they jump ship and go out and find something else and the process repeats itself until they are broke.

Usually people will want to blame the program, but in most cases it is not the program, it is the person who quits the program.  Quitters never win...

I have been working online since 1999 and while there have been times I wanted to quit and give up, I did not and my decision to stick it out always resulted in a lot of money being made. I personally cannot understand the thinking of people when they come online and expect to get rich instantly or think that by joining a program, they are going to somehow make it big with no work.

Now, some of the blame has to go to the program owners as they mislead people into thinking things are going to be easy and they are going to get rich and they won’t have to spend any money or time to accomplish this.

However, anyone who believes that they are going to retire in months or make thousands quickly is only asking to get cheated. People need to use a little common sense when it comes to working online—it is called working online for a reason but a quitter will never come out ahead.

So to avoid this issue, start building your list first and then find a program you want to get involved with. By having your list in place first, you can start off making money with just about any program on the Internet.

This is another reason that 12SecondCommute.com is so powerful because everyone working online needs the tools and resources supplied in 12SC so while 12SC helps you build your own prospect list, it is also working for you to make you money as it includes a great 3 level payout affiliate program.

Even if you don't have your own program yet, you can resell 12SC while building your list and be ahead of the game.

= Trying to do too much.

I talk with people all the time who brag about all the programs they are involved with. Many people jump into 3 – 5 or more programs right out of the gate and this is a huge mistake. Yes, everyone is telling you that you need multiple streams of income, but you need one stream of income before you can have multiple streams.

Trying to promote one program is difficult, but trying to promote multiple ones is extremely difficult. People get involved with all these programs and they don’t consider that they need to promote each program and monitor the progress of each program and keep up with their downline, etc.

They think and are lead to believe that having more is better and this is not the case when you’re building a business. More money, yes, more programs to promote, no--at least not when you're just getting started.

Also along these lines is when people put all their programs on one page and promote that one page. When I was in corporate marketing, the owner of the company and my first real mentor always told me that if you give people too many choices, they will choose not to decide and this holds true online just as much as it did offline.

One of the reasons Google is so successful is the simplicity of their home page. While Yahoo and MSN were around first, they had their search page so cluttered with ads, links and other things that when Google came around and the only option on their search page was the search bar, people flocked to them.

Putting all your programs on one page might sound like a good idea because many people think that someone will want something out of all the choices, but in reality viewers of those pages just leave because they have no idea what they are supposed to do and it also comes across as looking like the owner of the page is only trying to sell anything and not really an expert on one product.

With 12SecondCommute.com, there is a lot included but it is all included for one price so the only decision someone has to make is when they are ready to succeed and have every online tool necessary for success, they simply upgrade in 12SC and poof, they are good to go.

To avoid the issue of trying to do too much, simply focus on building your list and once you have a decent size list of several hundred people, then go out and get involved with one program and promote that one program using your list.

By doing this, you will find your ability to generate an income will be faster and easier than anything else you can do.

= Lack of consistent advertising.

This is another part of working online that people fail to take into consideration and most fail to do it at all. You must advertise your business and you must advertise your business consistently. This means that you don’t run one ad and quit or run a few ads and quit, you need to advertise your business every day in as many places as you can afford to advertise.

There are plenty of free advertising services on the Internet and while these will work eventually, what you will find with free advertising services is that you are promoting your offer to a bunch of freebie chasers and their only goal is to sell you what they have.

This does not mean that only paid advertising works because that is not always the case either and in fact there are many paid advertising services that are completely useless.

One thing you will want to do is get an account at http://www.KnowforProfit.com as they go out and monitor advertising services and give you the results of their campaigns. The cost of KFP is $7/month, but you will save this much even if you only use free advertising services because they monitor both free and paid services and even free advertising services take time to setup and use and time is money.

You will also want to have a good ad and link tracker like the one you get in 12SecondCommute.com because you must track every link you put on the Internet—yes every link should be tracked.  By the way, KFP is included in your 12SC Elite upgrade.

There are hundreds of ways to advertise online and while some will work better for you than others, you won’t know what works unless you’re tracking your ads.

Just like building your list, you will never stop advertising unless you want to stop making money. If you don’t believe this, just look at McDonald’s, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Dominos, Budweiser, Microsoft, Dell Computer, Google and every other successful business—online or offline.

The companies I have listed are all leaders in their fields, but they continue advertising and they will never stop because they want to keep growing.

If you want to make money online, you need to allocate some money and time to advertising your business because without advertising, everything stops.

Now these are 10 mistakes people make and they are all easily correctable. You don’t have to be an Internet wiz and you don’t need to know how to use HTML, SEO or anything else. All you need to do is use common sense, build your list and take a few steps to ensure you stay on course.

Written by Darryl Graham

Founder of the 12SecondCommute.com System