Common mistakes in affiliate marketing

In affiliate marketing, massive amounts of money circulate — experienced webmasters run successful advertising campaigns , earning tens of thousands of dollars. Because of this, affiliate marketing attracts the attention of many enthusiastic beginners who also aim to grab a big profit.

However, in pursuit of large earnings, they make numerous affiliate marketing mistakes, launching inefficient campaigns and losing their entire budget. To learn not from your own mistakes but from others’, today, the 888STARZ Partners team will tell you about the most common pitfalls made by newcomers in the affiliate marketing field!

Mistake #1: Small budget

The first and one of the most common mistakes among affiliate newbies is a careless attitude toward the advertising budget. Affiliate marketing is a field where money can come easily and disappear just as quickly. Even experienced webmasters sometimes lose a significant share of their budgets and, in some cases, end up with major losses.

The main mistake beginners make is not knowing failing to understand the size of the budget needed to launch an effective campaign. Most inexperienced solo webmasters believe that a few hundreds of dollars are enough to start. In reality, a much larger budget is needed for a comfortable entry into affiliate marketing, one that you won’t mind burning to zero. Most of it will go toward advertising, while the remaining funds will be used to pay for various services and tools, purchase accounts, and optimize strategies.

The first advertising expenses should always go toward conducting A/B testing of your advertising funnel — this way, you’ll determine how effective your chosen strategy is and which creatives deliver good conversion rates. Once you identify the working funnels, you can gradually increase investments in them after disabling unprofitable traffic channels.

Mistake #2: Incorrect niche selection

The next mistake beginners make is choosing the wrong niche. Many aspiring affiliate marketers believe that selecting the most profitable vertical is enough to succeed.

But with this strategy, they encounter fierce competition, struggle to get promoted and eventually fail. In most cases, a webmaster should have at least basic knowledge and interest in the chosen niche to use their understanding to launch a profitable campaign.

To reduce competition, you can promote the same offer in less popular GEOs. For example, in Tier-1 countries with high payouts per lead in Betting, there are many experienced webmasters, and you’ll also have to compete with local companies’ marketers. Meanwhile, in Tier-3 regions, such as Bolivia, promoting betting offers will be much easier since competition is minimal.

Even if you are confident in your niche knowledge but the selected vertical has high competition and you lack experience, it’s worth considering other directions. Start with “white” verticals, like sweepstakes, installs, and services, as they have lower competition levels and don’t require professional affiliate tools, such as cloaking.

Once you gain your first experience and basic knowledge, you can try your hand at more profitable niches, such as Gambling and Betting. However, you should start driving traffic on such offers in less competitive GEOs, as launching campaigns in these regions is less costly and complicated.

By working with 888STARZ Partners, you will receive a personal manager who will select offers tailored to the most optimal GEO. We work with over 100 countries, so we always have proposals that fit your experience and budget!

Mistake #3: Incorrect offer selection

Choosing the right offer is also a key factor that will determine the entire promotion process. Often, beginners make their selection based solely on lead cost, ignoring important details and conditions like the advertiser’s or product’s reputation, hidden nuances and restrictions.

Of course, it may seem that a high payout per lead is undoubtedly good. However, it’s equally important to carefully choose the GEO tier. Traffic must originate from the countries specified under the offer’s GEO tier. There are 3 GEO tiers, each differing in profitability, advertising cost, and traffic specifics — Tier-1, Tier-2, and Tier-3.

• Tier-1 countries, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK, require significant budgets, large traffic volumes, and involve fierce competition. It’s easier to obtain high-quality leads here, but beginners may face challenges due to high advertising costs.
• Tier-2 countries, like Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe, have lower competition and don’t require excessively large budgets to conduct campaigns comfortably. However, these regions may have fewer highly solvent audiences, so the lead cost will be lower. You can read more about how to run traffic in Tier-2 countries in this article.
• Tier-3 countries, such as Algeria, Bangladesh, or Cuba, are the least competitive regions with less solvent populations, and ad placement costs here are the most affordable. When driving traffic in these regions, you’ll need to focus on traffic volume due to the low lead prices, which is why affiliate teams often work in such GEOs. For solo webmasters, Tier-3 GEOs can be an excellent opportunity to gain new experience and skills.

The next criterion is the payment model. Payments can be calculated for a targeted action (CPA), a sale (CPS), a click (CPC), a lead (CPL), revenue share (RevShare), impressions (CPM), and other models. The chosen payment model will determine the webmaster’s income since some models offer higher or lower payouts. The model also dictates strategy selection, as different models require different audience engagement methods.

Another essential condition when choosing the offer is the allowed and prohibited traffic sources. The venues that affiliate marketers might use to attract visitors to the offer are known as traffic sources. For example, an advertiser may allow traffic from Facebook and TikTok but prohibit incentivized traffic and spam. It’s important to note that different traffic sources require different promotion approaches and creative strategies. When it comes to email campaigns, for instance, the quality of the advertising text is crucial, but when it comes to increasing Instagram traffic, the main emphasis should be on visual presentation.

When selecting a suitable offer, you can also check how many days the hold period lasts. The hold is the period during which the affiliate marketers earnings are retained to verify traffic quality. Hold periods can vary across affiliate programs — typically from a few days to two weeks. During the hold, the affiliate program assesses how much of the attracted leads belong to the target audience and how many are non-target or bot-generated. If offer conditions are not met and some leads turn out to be non-target, part of the traffic you brought may be filtered out.

With 888STARZ Partners, you can drive traffic not only to traditional Gambling offers but also to our in-house Betting offers, which feature some of the most competitive conditions on the market. If you’re interested in promoting our products, contact your personal manager!

Mistake #4: Low-quality ad creatives

Special attention must be given to creating ad creatives when launching campaigns. The quality of advertising materials directly influences how many potential customers will click on your ad and how many will perform the target action. Beginners often overlook this aspect, relying on simple, low-quality, and unoriginal creatives.

For example, copying competitors’ creatives using spy tools is a poor strategy, as it reduces ad relevance and reputation, rendering the campaign nearly useless. Due to the sheer volume of identical creatives for similar products, users develop “banner blindness” and simply ignore your ads.

At the initial stages, it can be helpful to draw inspiration from competitors’ creatives, but this should not turn into direct copying. Good advertising must stand out among other offers, appear fresh, and appeal to the target audience. To achieve this, you should invest in creating unique creatives that will pay off through increased engagement and conversion growth.

Here are the key criteria your creatives should meet:

• Originality;
• Informational value;
• Localization for the GEO language;
• Eye-catching design;
• Clear Call-to-Action (CTA);
• Consideration of target audience preferences, pain points, and cultural aspects.

888STARZ Partners offers a wide range of creatives tailored for various offers and GEOs, which you can access by contacting your personal manager. In addition, our team regularly publishes fresh creatives for the hottest betting events in our event calendar!

Here are a few examples of creatives from 888STARZ Partners:

You can create engaging advertising materials on your own if you have skills in photo or video editing tools, or use AI-powered tools to generate suitable visuals. As your advertising budget grows, you can also hire professional designers to create eye-catching, relevant, and unique creatives tailored specifically for you at an affordable price.

Mistake #5: Lack of ad campaign performance analysis

Analytics is an essential tool for effectively evaluating your advertising campaign’s success. Many beginners either ignore analytics entirely or misuse it due to a lack of skills or a careless attitude. As a result, new webmasters fail to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their strategy, preventing them from optimizing campaigns based on valuable data.

Affiliate professionals use various trackers to measure campaign effectiveness and set up postback—a tool that provides crucial data on user actions on the target page, enabling campaign optimization. There is a wide selection of services and tools available online to help efficiently analyze campaigns.

888STARZ Partners provides its partners with the integrated AppsFlyer analytics tool, which collects campaign data and helps make the necessary strategic adjustments to enhance effectiveness. Additionally, we offer a full suite of affiliate tools: internal tracking systems, customized postback setup, Keitaro, domain parking for ad sites, and a UTM-tag builder!

Mistake #6: Ignoring new offers

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and affiliate programs regularly introduce fresh, profitable offers. While it may be tempting to repeatedly drive traffic to the same offer, it will inevitably lose relevance as new opportunities emerge with low competition and audiences unexposed to the product. To remain competitive, you must regularly study the market, test new offers, and explore untapped GEOs.

The 888STARZ Partners team recognizes the importance of keeping offers up-to-date. That’s why we consistently add fresh, high-converting offers and expand GEO availability for profitable traffic generation!

Mistake #7: Lack of engagement with the target audience

Failing to consider the needs and interests of your target audience leads to reduced engagement and ad campaign inefficiency due to irrelevant content. For example, if you’re targeting a Tier-1 GEO audience, avoid aggressive, flashy ads like “Earn millions in our casino” or “x100 bonus on your first deposit.” Audiences in Tier-1 countries tend to be wealthier and more interested in relaxation rather than quick money schemes.

An aggressive approach works better in lower-income Tier-3 countries, where people often seek quick riches or intense emotions.

If you drive traffic through social media, don’t forget to manage your profile and interact with potential clients. Engage with your audience by responding to comments, liking posts, and following other accounts. This makes your profile look “alive” and prevents users from seeing it as a purely promotional tool.

Another effective way to engage your audience is by sharing valuable content. Educational materials, interesting articles, and slot reviews resonate with potential clients and establish your expertise, directly boosting conversions.

As we’ve discovered, the most common affiliate marketing  mistakes beginners make often stem from a lack of understanding of affiliate marketing fundamentals — how to choose offers, manage budgets, make creatives, and analyze campaign performance. To minimize the risk of these mistakes, don’t dive into affiliate blindly. Spend time studying guides and mastering professional tools before launching your campaigns in this profitable, promising industry.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve outlined the most common affiliate marketing mistakes novice webmasters encounter, which you should keep in mind before launching your first campaign. With experience, you’ll learn to minimize errors, drive big volumes of traffic, and leverage the best-converting combinations. While mistakes can result in budget losses, it’s essential to see them as a natural part of the learning curve. They’ll teach you what not to do, and over time your ad campaigns could become exemplary affiliate success stories.

If you’re ready to start your affiliate career, we recommend reading the 888STARZ Partners blog. We regularly share valuable educational content about driving traffic to different GEOs, reviews of popular affiliate marketing tools, and many more. If you’re already an experienced webmaster with successful case studies, contact your personal partner manager — you have the chance to become our VIP partner with exclusive conditions for offer promotion!