Choosing The Right Product To Market As An Affiliate

So you’ve researched and chosen your niche for your affiliate marketing business. Now it’s time to find quality affiliate products and/or services that align with your niche.

• But how to choose the right product?
• How to choose the right service?
• How do you go about finding a good affiliate program?

Don’t panic you’re not alone, we’ve all been there. These are questions every affiliate marketer has asked themselves. Myself included.

So, to help you find the right product or service I’ve put together 9 tips so you don’t end up wasting your time and efforts marketing the wrong affiliate product.

I’ve also included places where you can find great products too.

Alright, here we go…

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.

Products that are lower in price can quickly bring in new customers to your sales funnel. Also, once a customer has purchased from you their resistance barrier to purchase again from you has been lowered.

So, asking your past customers to make another or even larger purchase in the future is not as big of a challenge.

NOTE: Remember repeat sales all depends on the quality of the products you sell. If you sell crap products don’t expect to make much of a living as an affiliate marketer.

2) Include Evergreen Products In The Mix

An evergreen product is a product or service that is relevant today, yesterday and into the future.

So why is marketing evergreen products/services important to consider?

Because of continued relevancy and SEO. (search engine optimization)

If you’re using a long term sales strategy such as content marketing, your content will stand the test of time and continues to be relevant long past its publication date. That’s the relevancy part.

And in many cases, this type of content only needs to be sightly updated as time goes on allowing it to continually grow traffic over time. That’s the SEO part.

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If you’re not selling an evergreen product your profit can fade away because the product can become irrelevant or out of date.

For example, a product that helps people track their fitness goals is an evergreen product. Sure, people may try different weight loss methods but the tracking of those methods rarely changes.

However, if you’re marketing a book about SEO and how to rank in Google. This is not evergreen because the information and methods of ranking in Google changes all the time.

3) Find The Highest Commissions Possible

Sounds obvious – right? But there are exceptions.

For example, Amazons commissions average 3% which in the grand scheme of things is very low. There are even lower now that Amazon has updated their commissions for affiliates. Not cool Amazon.

However, because Amazon is such a highly repeatable seller and is very trusted. Even though the commission structure is low you can make that up in sales volume if you have lots of traffic coming to your website.

But if you’re getting that volume of traffic to your site where being an affiliate for Amazon. My question to you is. Why waste that traffic and earn small commissions from Amazon when you can make bigger commissions for other reputable companies?

Personally, I do not represent products that have commissions lower than 50% and I have some that are as high as 90%.

4) Find Recurring Commissions When Possible

Recurring commissions are the absolute best type of commission you can earn.

And the reason being is you can build a passive residual monthly income with recurring commissions. These are commission that are paid to you automatically each month for membership type programs.

And as long as your referral customer is paying the monthly fee for whatever product or service they’ve bought, you’ll keep getting paid your monthly commission. It’s a beautiful thing.

TIP: Make sure to find out about the conversion and refund rates of the affiliate program you’re thinking about joining.

5) Find A Hungry Niche

There’s no point being an affiliate in a niche (market) where no one is buying.

You don’t want to 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.

For example, you’ll find hungry buyers is such niches as:

• Weight Loss
• Relationships
• Self Help
• Financial

6) Promote Products That You Would Use Yourself

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

By focusing on just making money and not helping solve people’s 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!! And the best way in my opinion 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 ever do.

And more importantly – it also gives you much more credibility.

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

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 is honest and in doing your due diligence others have reported that they have not encountered problems then sure join the program.

But if not stick to reputable affiliate programs from places like Clickbank, Amazon, Shareasale, Commission Junction, just to name few.

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

8) Check For 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 placed 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 lose 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 assholes 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 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 don’t get caught up in big commissions and the promise of huge profits to cloud your common sense and good judgment.

Where To Find Affiliate Products?

There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs to choose from and new affiliate programs are being created every day.

Now, there are a few ways of finding affiliate products and services that will align with whatever niche you’re in.

Google Search

One way to find the product or services you want to market is simply do a search in Google. To do this just type in affiliate programs + your niche.

So, if you’re niche is remote control planes your search term would be: affiliate programs + remote control planes.

Or if you know the product name type that in after the “+” sign. But remember be careful. As I mentioned in step 8. If you join an independent affiliate program, make sure you do your due diligence.

Unfortunately 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

Affiliate networks are another place to find products and services. So, what’s an affiliate network?

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

What’s The Advantage Of Affiliate Networks?

The advantage of a 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.

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.

Here’s some of the networks I’ve used:

Commission Junction: Now known as CJ 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: Shareasale has been around since 2000 and is one of the more popular affiliate networks.

Again, you’ll find all kinds of products in Shareasale. Only thing that I would call a disappointment is 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.

ClickBank: This is where you’ll find digital products with very high commissions. But be careful not all products in clickbank are of the highest quality. So do your homework before you represent any product.

Putting It All Together

Finding the right product is just one of many steps to becoming a successful affiliate marketer. And it can be one of the steps that trips people up in the “how” part of affiliate marketing.

Now if you’re just starting out or still struggling to get your business of the ground, the first best step is to get the proper training and guidance that will give you the solid foundation for building a thriving affiliate marketing business.

And the best resource I recommend for learning the “how” part can be found at Wealthy Affiliate. They have the most up to date, state of the art, step-by-step training platform available online.

There’s no other place online where you’ll find all the support, tools, resources and of course training you’ll ever need to build and grow a thriving online affiliate marketing business.

And if you’re wondering, yes, I’m a member of wealthy affiliate and have been since 2012. And I will continue to be a member because this community has helped me consistently grow my business each and every year. So, I know what they have to offer.

And yes, I’m also an affiliate of their program. Remember I said any product or service I recommend I use, and wealthy affiliate is no different.

It’s also inside Wealthy Affiliate that I can provide you with personal one-on-one support while you’re building your business.

I hope you found this information helpful. If so, feel free to share it with your audience, and if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

And as always if you need a hand with anything you can email me anytime.

I believe in you!!
Leo