Mistake: promoting tools with great signup, terrible activation

Mistake: promoting tools with great signup, terrible activation
Everyone says "send traffic, they'll convert." They convert into a trial. Then 70% never reach the moment the product is useful, churn in month one, and your commission reverses.

The trap: products with a heavy setup tax — data imports, integrations, team onboarding — look fine on a trial-to-paid screenshot and bleed out on month-two retention.

Fix: before you promote anything, ask the program for their day-30 and day-90 retention by acquisition channel. If they dodge, that IS the answer. Favor tools with a fast "first value" moment — the user gets a usable result in one session, not after a two-week implementation.

Verdict: a low activation rate is the program's problem until you get paid on it. Then it's yours.