Choosing The Right Product To Market

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Updated 3 years ago

One of the more important steps in building a profitable affiliate marketing business is choosing the right product or service to market.

So I thought I would share with you the steps I go through when doing product research.

1) Do Not Choose A Product Based On Price Alone

Just because a product has a big price tag does not mean the commission will always generate big profits. The product has to sell, so that means it has to be a good product.

So do your homework about the product. Get out there and get more information - look for reviews, go to forums and social media.

I don't care how much the product sells for and the commission offered. If it doesn't sell the price and the commission mean nothing!

Remember first time and repeat sales all depends on the quality of the products you sell and quality is not always determined by price.

NOTE: If you sell crap products don’t expect to make a living as an affiliate.

2) Ideally You Want To Pick Evergreen Products

An evergreen product is a product that is relevant today, yesterday and into the future. So markets like Weight Loss, Relationships, Technology, Self Help and Financial are considered evergreen.

So why is this important?

If you’re using long term sales strategies such as content marketing evergreen products will sell now and in the future.

Also if you have a mailing list with an auto responder series with a set number of messages, with evergreen products there is no need to constantly update these messages.

If you’re NOT selling an evergreen product and you’re using long term sales strategies like the examples I mentioned above, your marketing efforts can fade away as the product (in most cases) becomes out of date.

3) Find The Highest Commissions Possible

Sounds obvious – right?

Take Amazon.

Amazons commissions are 1% for Amazon Fresh, Physical Video Games & Video Game Consoles, Grocery, Health & Personal Care.

And then 10% if you're selling Luxury Beauty, Amazon Coins. But everything else on Amazon will net you a 5% or less commission.

Personality that's crazy low. And there’s no way I would settle for an average commission of 5%. Why would I want to make pennies when I can make dollars?

Now sure the the argument can be made Amazon is such a highly repeatable seller. And even though the commission structure is low you can make that up in volume.

Sure, that's possible. But you're going to have a ton of traffic coming to your website and ton of sales at Amazon.

Personally the products I'm associated with, the commissions range from 50% to as high as 95%.

NOTE: Make sure to find out about the conversion and refund rates of the affiliate program you’re thinking about joining. That has a huge impact on your income.

4) Recurring Commissions

When every possible you want products or services that offer Residual Commissions.

Why?

With residual commissions, which are services people have to pay monthly for.

You get paid over and over again as long as that person keeps making the monthly payment.

And by having residual commissions you can create and build up a nice passive monthly income.

Hmmmm, the WA affiliate program comes to mind.

5) Find A Hungry Niche

There’s no point being an affiliate inside a niche where no one is buying.

You don’t want get sucked into the promise of big commissions and not make any money. You need to be in a niche where people are already buying and are hungry to buy.

Again you’ll find these to be in the evergreen markets. Such as Weight Loss, Relationships, Technology, Self Help and Financial.

6) Promote Products That You Would Use Yourself

The best rule of thumb is only recommend products that you would recommend to your mom or best friend.

Remember your goal as an affiliate is to help people, do not focus on the money.

By focusing on just making money and not helping solve peoples problems you’re sacrificing building a long term profitable business just for a quick buck.

If you focus on helping people - the money will come and keep coming!!

The easiest way to promote any product is to be a user of that product.

By being a user of the product(s) you can talk about the product with ease as well as relate to your customers in a way that an affiliate who does not use the product could never do.

Plus by using the product you're credibility and trust factor is much higher than an affiliate who does not use the product.

NOTE: Every product I recommend I personally use.

7) Use Trusted Affiliate Tracking Systems

You work hard for your commissions and you want to get paid for each and every one of them.

If you’re 100% sure that the vendor of the affiliate program you're thinking of working with is honest and in doing your due diligence other people have not have reported problems then sure join the program.

But if not or things just don't feel right, then stick to reputable affiliate programs from places like the Wealthy Affiliate, Clickbank, Amazon, Shareasale, Commission Junction just to name a few.

With these companies you know your sales are being tracked and you will be paid on time and on all your sales.

8) Check For Sales Leaks

What?

You need to check the vendor’s sales page for sales leaks. For example a sales leak would be a clickbank vendor who has place an additional buy button on the sales page other than the clickbank buy button.

This is a sales leak – if anyone clicks on that other buy button you would loose the commission for that sale as it is not registered through clickbank.

Even vendors that encourage people to call could be stealing sales from you. I’m not saying all vendors are like this but you need to be aware of what things can happen.

Some other ways that a sales leak can happen on a vendor’s sales page are:

Up-sells that override the affiliates cookie thus the affiliate loses the commission.
Google adsence on the sales page.
Links to other products.
Mailing list redirects – this is where the prospect is put on a mailing list and then it re-directs them to a sales page that does not give you affiliate credit.

9) Watch Out For Bad Vendors

I have to say the majority of vendors out there are great but there is always a bunch of pinheads that just outright steal from you.

From faking refunds so your account shows you’re not owned any money to using faulty tracking software. These people are flat-out thieves.

The bright side is they usually don’t last long but you sure don’t want to help line their pockets.

So make sure you’re always dealing with reputable vendors – use your gut. If it does not feel right – or while doing your research you get a lot of red flags – move on.

Check email addresses, search for their name, go to forums and ask around, Google the product. If you find a pattern of complaints about the product or about customer service – forget them and move on.

There are tons of great vendors – so do not get caught up in the big commission that are promising huge profits to cloud your common sense and good judgement.

Affiliate Products – Where To Find Them

There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs/products to choose from. One way to find the product you want to market is simply do a search in Google.

To do this just type in affiliate programs + your niche

Or if you know the product name type that in after the “+” sign.

So if you’re niche is remote control planes your search term would be:

affiliate programs + remote control planes

Be Careful

I know I mentioned this earlier, but it's so important. If you join an independent affiliate program make sure you do your due diligence.

There are a lot of doggy independent affiliate programs out there and you want to make sure you don’t get ripped off.

Affiliate Networks

So what is an affiliate network?

An affiliate network is a third party that puts Publishers (that’s you) together with Advertisers (that’s the merchant)

So what’s the advantage of affiliate networks?

The advantage is any merchant participating in an affiliate network includes tracking technology, reporting tools, payment processing, and access to a large base of advertisers (merchants).

For the publisher (you) the benefit is it simplifies the process of registering for one or more merchant affiliate programs in one place, reporting tools, and payment aggregation. As well as knowing you’re affiliated with a reputable affiliate program.

The list of networks is huge and depending on what niche you end up in can determine which network you use. You can join as many as you like but you’ll find that just a handful will provide you with most of what you need.

Here are some of the networks I have used

Affiliate networks are free to join, many have a simple sign up process and others will call you to have a short interview.

Don’t worry about the interview mostly they just want to make sure you are a real person and ask you how you plan on doing your marketing.

CJ: Commission Junction is one of the biggest affiliate networks. You’ll find products from many major brand names inside CJ. From Anthony Robbins to Weight Watchers.

Share A Sale: Share a sale has been around since 2000 and is a popular affiliate network.

Again you’ll find all kinds of products in Shareasale. Only thing that I would call a disappointment they don’t provide the amount of search options other services supply.

Market Health: They have over a 100 of the world’s leading health and beauty products, some of which are sold on TV. Great commissions too.

Max Bounty - This is one of the top CPA (cost per action) affiliate networks available.

Ok, that's it - I hope you found this helpful

I believe in you
Leo