Mistake: sending broad traffic to a niche tool

Mistake: sending broad traffic to a niche tool
Everyone optimizes for click volume. Cheap, broad traffic converts to trials and then churns at double the rate of qualified traffic — and the program may flag the cohort and reverse the lot for "low quality."

The failure:
— You buy generic intent, signups spike, dashboard looks great.
— Month two retention craters because these people never needed the tool.
— Program quietly cuts your rate or holds payouts citing churn.

Fix: match audience intent to the tool's actual job-to-be-done. Narrower traffic with high fit beats cheap volume on net commission every time. Track retention by source — kill any channel whose 90-day survival is below your portfolio average, no matter how good the front-end ROAS looks.

Verdict: bad-fit traffic doesn't churn. It refunds, reverses, and gets you throttled.