Choosing The Right Affiliate Products

When you consider all the products and programs that are capable of generating affiliate income, it can be mighty difficult choosing which ones have the most potential.

In most instances, you won’t know for certain until you actually start promoting any given product. But there are key factors that can help diminish the risk of choosing products that have little or no potential.

1. Find Out If There Is A Demand. First and foremost, you need to find out if there is a viable demand for a product. Even if people want the product, you have to find out who would be interested in that product and if you can easily reach that target audience.

2. Make Sure The Sales Page Sells. Take a hard look the sales page.  If you don’t think it can convert visitors into buyers, you will need to decide how much work it will take on your part to resolve that particular shortcoming. After that decide if it’s worth the extra effort for you to invest the time and energy to make it happen.

Overall, you have to decide whether the sales page will help or hinder your ability to make sales. Go with your instincts. If you don’t feel comfortable with the look, the sales copy, or the order process, chances are the average viewer won’t either.

3. Check For Profit. A big question to ask yourself is, “Can I make enough profit by promoting this product?” Some owners reward their affiliates by giving them generous commissions while others merely offer a very small percentage. For the most part, those differences are associated with two very specific categories… digital and physical products.

For example, you can usually make at least 50% commission selling eBooks and software products. With physical items such as vitamins, print books, and pet products, an affiliate commission can be relatively low (on average, somewhere between 5% and 10%).

Although the percentage is important, it also depends on the price of the product. If you’re selling an exercise machine that retails for $1800, even a minimal 10% commission will gain you $180 for each sale that you make.
 
If you’re an affiliate for Amazon for example, you’ll be dealing with items that most often carry a very low sales price. In order to gain any substantial level of income, you’ll need to move an incredibly large volume of products. Or make sure you promote high ticket items, let say over $600. This will certainly bump up your commissions.

4. Determine the Product’s Quality. The quality of the product is extremely important. If you don’t feel confident about how good it is or how well it performs, it will be difficult for you to launch a successful promotional campaign, much less maintain it over an extended period of time.

Often Affiliate Marketers test the product first. This allows you to do two things: 1) Write a review of the product based on your own experience. 2) Provides you with real life experience about the product allowing you to sell the product with confidence.

5. Measure Everything. You need to have the ability to track and monitor everything related to your affiliate activities. That includes things like the number of visitors you send to each sales page, how many of them actually made a purchase, and running sales and refund statistics.

Make certain that you can do that, either through the program or using your own independent tracking device. This will keep you abreast of each product’s performance, allowing you to determine which campaigns need to be tweaked, increased, or dropped altogether.

One way Affiliates do this is to set-up their own landing and thank you page. You need to remember that you will not get the buyer’s email address if you don’t do this. It goes to the owner of the product. Always remember that the money is in the list, and if you don’t have one then it is going to be difficult making any sales. If you don’t know how to do this let me know below and I will give you a simple way to capture emails.
 
But How Do I Go About Finding Affiliate Programs?

I’m glad you asked this question. There are three basic ways for locating good affiliate programs:

1. Conduct searches based on a particular niche market.
2. Sign up to use the services of an affiliate marketing network.
3. Search through the categories of affiliate program directories.

The first way requires a considerable amount of time, but you will also reap the reward. Assuming, of course, you have done your homework about the product first. This will give you a much better chance for a positive outcome. Your homework would include things like determining your exact target audience, choosing specific and highly relevant keywords, and establishing what criteria would constitute a fair and equitable affiliate program.

Conduct the search in two stages…

The first way involves the keywords. First select a list of search phrases that are highly relevant to the product. Then you conduct searches using each of those keywords. This will lead you to niche markets and their products.

You can use a keyword search using Keywordtool.io. You can search for keywords using this site to give you ideas and if you want to go beyond and find out more there is a fee associated with the program.

The second way would involve any given keyword plus the word affiliate. For example, ‘cat training affiliate’ or ‘affiliate cat training’. What this will generally turn up is either an affiliate program for products that are associated with that particular keyword or a content site that is already an affiliate. Either way, it allows for further action with regard to becoming an affiliate for a specific keyword or product niche.

With the second option, you simply open a main account with the affiliate network which in turn entitles you to promote any of the products that are included within their listings.

Although these affiliate networks might not always be as capable of giving you exact matches to what you’re looking for, they can be incredible time savers.

Affiliate marketing websites like Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com ) and Click Bank ( http://www.clickbank.com ) make it extremely easy to locate good affiliate programs. And generally, for products and services that are highly compatible with the niche or target audience you’ll be reaching.

If you choose Commission Junction it will offer all ranges of products, services, and programs - both digital and tangible.

If you choose ClickBank you will find it only sells digital products such as eBooks and software programs. If it can’t be downloaded or delivered electronically, you won’t find it in the ClickBank Marketplace (http://marketplace.clickbank.net ).

The third way allows you to search for affiliate programs by category, just like you can with networks such as Commission Junction and ClickBank. In this case you will sign up for programs you choose independently for instance, through the product owner‘s affiliate process. In essence you will Google the topic, for instance, ‘health affiliates’, and you will get a listing of those who offer health affiliations. Alternatively you can Google ‘affiliate program directory’, and you will get a listing of those offering affiliate programs. The listing only delivers a convenient method for locating affiliate programs. The rest is up to you.

Thank you for reading as always take care, stay safe and become the best version of yourself.
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Richard.
 
 
 

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