At this point, you might have already heard all the sweet promises coming from so-called online marketing guru's. Especially affiliate marketing is hyped up to be the sleeping way to riches. The stories of rags-to-riches and success tales shouldn't be a stranger to you by now. If you are to believe these stories, everyone seems to be making a fortune out of it. But I can safely say that for every success story you hear, there are at least 10 marketers struggling or giving up.

Why do a lot of people fail to realize the rewards available to them?

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If you're looking for one of those "$30,000 in 2 days" stories, you're looking in the wrong place. Not to say that it's untrue; but those people have reached a point after immense hard work that they can achieve such results. You read that well: lots of time, energy and effort needs to be put in before you can achieve those results.

About 98 percent of all marketers do not obtain those precious results because they make these five awful mistakes, right from the start.

Mistake #1

I've emphasized this point several times already and I'm sure you've heard it numerous times: you can't earn anything without doing anything. Affiliate marketing may be known to launch anyone to success extremely quickly; but only because it skips the product-creation process. That also means you still have to do all those marketing strategies, traffic generation, SEO methods, copywriting and relationship building that the online business world requires of you.

Mistake #2

You can't just build a website and expect traffic to flow to it. You have to take steps to generate that. And if you don't, no traffic means no sales. Dumping all your affiliate links into one website does not mean anything if there's no marketing and traffic generation. Basically, traffic comes with the marketing, so keep marketing on your list of priorities!

Mistake #3

If you think you just need to set up your affiliate site and market it for awhile, you're are dead wrong. Just as the world is a dynamic place, so is the Internet. Trends and people change in the online world. If you do not study the latest techniques and strategies, your competitors will pass you by, and you'd be left behind eating their dust! Commit yourself to learning new things and developments as well as customer trends to beat the market.

Mistake #4

So, you've picked the first affiliate program and you like the idea so you decide to promote it. You then find another good program and do the same, and the same and the same until you have a giant list of unfocused affiliate programs. There must be a sense of coherence in your system. You'd want customers to buy a program from you knowing they can buy others from you in the future. Tackle your sites one at a time and create a better flow in your system and soon you'll experience soaring response rates.

Mistake #5

There's this affiliate program that simple gets you off your feet. It comes with the tools you need to promote it: sales letter, solo ads, e-mails and everything you need. You rush to set up a site and get everything in motion; but hardly any response arrives. Why so? Everybody else has done the same, and there is a vast number of 'cloned' websites around. That means you got many competitors for the same program. You need to be creative and innovative. Tweak the sales copy and e-mail ads. Make it more personal and unique; you will almost definitely be noticed and people will look at your affiliate program.

Knowing and working around these five critical blunders will give you a great start to your affiliate marketing career. By knowing the path to failure, you can then position yourself best for success.