With hundreds and hundreds of affiliate products to choose from, how do you choose the best affiliate products to promote that are a good fit for your business and your audience?
Keep in mind, it’s your reputation at stake. If you promote a useless product, your audience will lose their trust in you and it will be more difficult to promote and sell other affiliate products to them in the future.
To be successful with affiliate marketing, you’ve got to choose the right products to promote. You don’t want to waste your time and money (if you run ads) marketing products that pay a low commission and your target market doesn’t really want to buy.
Do Your Homework
The first thing to do when choosing affiliate products to promote is to do some homework. Have a look at what others with related websites or blogs are focusing on. Go to forums to see what readers are chatting about, what their preferred products are in that group, and what they grumble about most.
Promote Appropriate Products for Your Niche
Does the affiliate product you looking to promote match properly with your website and niche? Naturally, if you have a website about photography you don’t want to start promoting baking products. If you are an expert at taking photos of landscapes, then your website visitors may want to use the same camera that you are using.
Use Trustworthy Affiliate Companies
As an affiliate, you associate yourself with the product vendor. So you want to make certain that you’re associating yourself with a trustworthy affiliate company. Keep in mind, that you’re promoting their products for them and they will only pay you when you make a sale. So they should really provide support with marketing resources to help you sell their products.
Commission Percentage
There are a lot of companies with affiliate programs. But they don’t all pay the same levels of commission. Before you start promoting a product, look at how much commission they will pay you per sale. Be on the lookout for recurring income. Each time your customer pays for another month, you’ll get an additional commission. Provided that they don’t cancel, you will keep getting paid.
There are different methods of payment that you can get as an affiliate. For instance, you can get paid at a flat rate or you can be given a percentage of the total product cost. There is also the prospect to receive recurring commissions assuming that a customer carries on paying for a monthly service.
Are There Upsells?
An upsell is when the product owner offers follow-up products to your referral customer. If there are upsells, back-end products or one-time offers, it means you can break even on your advertising and marketing costs for the original offer, because you’ll maximize your commissions on the other products. Just make sure that you will receive a commission on any upsells.
The Quality of the Product
You can identify this in several ways. The first is to get a free copy or to purchase it. The next is to check the sales letter page that your customer will see. If the page is unappealing or very basic, odds are it might not convert as well as a more eye-catching one.
When browsing the product, ensure that it is current and worth the money your prospective customers are going to spend. You don’t want to drive lots of traffic (and perhaps even spend money on ads), only to end up with lots of chargebacks because customers want a refund.
How Much Demand There Is for The Product?
There is a ranking called gravity, most typically seen on ClickBank, one of the top affiliate marketing companies for digital products. The gravity number shows the level of popularity of the product. The gravity ranking should be a minimum of 10 or more. If it’s more than 100, it means that there is a great deal of competition for selling this product and you might struggle to get noticed.
Supporting Materials for Affiliates
The top affiliate marketing companies will usually give high-quality graphics, advertising banners, free content like email messages and content articles (which you ought to rewrite to change into your own unique content), and more. Find out if they have an area or support page for affiliates and take full advantage of what you find there.
Conversion Rates
When searching for products and services to promote as an affiliate, check out the conversion rates. The conversion rate means how many potential consumers actually turn into buyers. If a product has products with a high conversion rate, then the product may be worth looking at more closely.
Try The Product for Yourself
If you are a specialist in your niche and have a group of followers that know, like and trust you, you can review products for them to consider buying. If you’re genuine and respected and have established a good relationship with your audience, then it’s likely that if you recommend something that you have used or tried, then your visitors will be more prepared to also use or buy that item.
Companies are happy to pay commissions to people just like you, in return for selling their products and services. You have the potential to make a great income when you choose the right niche, stay committed, and understand your audience. For a no-nonsense, kick-start guide to getting started, download my free Affiliate Marketing for Beginners checklist.
