Finding A Good Product To Promote
There are two ways to find products to market as an affiliate marketer.
Firstly, you can pick a subject that you know about and then find a
product in that niche.
Secondly, you could find a high paying, good converting product and
then promote that.
Which way you do it is up to you – it depends upon your skill, knowledge and what you want to achieve.
Some of the best sources for affiliate programs are :
- Clickbank
- Paydotcom
- Linkshare
- Commission Junction
The other alternative is for you to go to your favorite search engine and type in a keyword relating to your niche and the word affiliate or affiliate program. This
will bring up a lot of products that aren’t on the major affiliate programs detailed above. This is worth doing as you can often find some good programs this way.
Though be aware a lot of these may well be privately run and you need to do a bit more research to ensure it is a legitimate and reliable affiliate program.
You can also type “affiliate directory” into a search engine and you will find hundreds of sites that list people’s affiliate programs. You can find lots more ideas here for finding products to promote.
When you are looking for an affiliate program there are a few things you need to think about before picking a program to promote.
Regular Payment
There is nothing worse than waiting for months to get your affiliate commissions. You’ve worked for them and deserve your payment! With the advent of scripts such as Rapid Action Profits you can now get your affiliate commissions instantly into your Paypal account.
There are some affiliate programs that wait up to 90 days to pay you because they want to insulate themselves against the possibility of refunds, but luckily now these are fewer and far between because people refuse to promote them because of the delay in payment.
Clickbank is a good place to promote affiliate products from because you can amalgamate your commissions from many different programs into one pay check and avoid the issue of not meeting minimum payout thresholds.
Good Commission
You want to work for a decent wage, don’t you? If you don’t get a good commission then why both promoting the product? The $7 script business model took the Internet Marketing world by storm and these low cost reports are still a very lucrative front end (if don’t properly) but many affiliates, particularly the good ones won’t get out of bed for a measly $7!
The higher the commission the better it is for you when you make a sale, but don’t get tied up in finding really expensive products to sell. You can often make
more money selling lower priced items.
If you really want a good income, look at promoting sites with recurring commissions. This means that instead of promoting a product for a one off $20 payment you work to get a $20 a month payment … which is much much better for you!
No Joining Fees
No affiliate program should charge you a joining fee. If they do then the program needs some serious evaluation to make sure that it is legitimate.
Some affiliate programs are only open to people who purchase the product. This isn’t the same as charging a fee to join the program. It is something product
owners do to ensure that the people who promote the program know about it and to retain the value of the program. These people, by the way, often specially invite super affiliates to promote their program because they know it will make them money.
Low Payment Threshold
If an affiliate program has a payment threshold that is too high it may take you some time to meet their requirements to get paid. If it takes you months to meet that threshold, you won’t get paid for months.
The lower the payment threshold, the better for you as you will get your money quicker. However, if the payment is by check then be careful of setting it too
low as the fees for cashing the check (particularly a US dollar check outside of the US may make the affiliate commission worthless).
This is why Rapid Action Profits is such a popular script is because there is no payment threshold, the money is instantly paid into your account. Clickbank is
also popular because it allows you to amalgamate your payments from a number of different payments and bypass the payment threshold issue.
Any Payment On Backend Offers / OTO
This was very popular during the interest in the $7 script in order to boost affiliate commissions and get people more interested in promoting the program.
If you get paid commission on one time offers or the backend offers then that is going to increase your income and may make a lower priced affiliate program an attractive proposition to promote.
Reliable Program
It is important to pick a reliable program. You won’t know if a program is reliable unless you do some research. This is one reason why a lot of people promote products that are on Clickbank or powered by Rapid Action Profits. There is no chance of not getting your payment.
Training Resources
If the affiliate program provides training resources for you then that is going to be better for you if you are a new affiliate marketer. The resources may well help you to improve your skills marketing affiliate programs and make more money. This isn’t a must have, but is a nice to have feature.
Promotional Tools
Make sure the affiliate program offers your tools to help you promote the product and make money. Look for articles, Adwords ads, banners and more.
These will make promoting the program much easier.
If you are planning on promoting the product by writing your own articles then you may not be so worried about the promotion tools. If you are going to put
adverts on your web pages then you may well want to use these sorts of resources.
Promotional tools are much more important if you are a new affiliate marketer as they will help you to make sales.
Sales Page Conversion Rate
Not all product owners publish their sales page conversion rates, but you can work it out yourself, which you need to do.
If you are promoting an affiliate program then it needs to be making you sales.
If it doesn’t then you need to move on to another program as if you are sending traffic to a site and it isn’t earning you money then there is no point in you
sending traffic to the website.
You need to keep track of the conversion rate you are getting from the programs that you are promoting. If the conversion rate isn’t good enough then you need to either get the product owner to improve their sales letter or move on to a new program!
Lifetime or Long Term Cookies
A cookie is a small file that is dropped on to your computer by a website holding some information. In the case of affiliate marketing it holds your affiliate id.
This means that if the person comes back to the website you were promoting the next day (or week) without using your affiliate link you will still get paid the
commission.
The longer the cookies remain on the computer the more chance you have of making the sale if they return to the website. Do be aware though that if they click on someone else’s affiliate link before they buy the cookie with your affiliate link will be overwritten.
Contact With The Product Owner
This isn’t an essential but is a nice to have. It is useful to be able to “talk” to the product owner to be able to ask questions about the product / promotion.
Some product owners will run teleseminars and the like for their affiliates, which can be very helpful.
You also need to be aware of a few things when you are looking for an affiliate program to promote. These are some of the main points to look out for when
picking an affiliate program. Consider these red flags that mean you must do more research into the program.
Long Wait For Payment
Avoid any affiliate program that is going to make you wait more than 30 days for your payment. In many cases, 30 days is far too long. Good affiliate programs
pay instantly or within a week at the most. Waiting too long makes it difficult for you to manage your cash flow.
Low Commissions
Make sure you are getting paid a decent for your work. You would have a minimum amount you are prepared to accept being paid for a job, so don’t promote a product unless it is going to pay you a decent commission. Don’t get tied up with finding really high paying products as they are less common.
Adsense On The Sales Page
If you find a product that has Adsense on the sales page then avoid it.
Thankfully, this is very rare now as people realise that it damages the prospects of making sales. If there are other adverts on the sales page then you are running the risk of the visitors you send clicking on those ads instead of buying the product, which means you don’t get paid!
More Than One Payment Link
Some sales pages have multiple payment links for different payment processors.
For example, you will find a Paypal button and a 2Checkout button or you may see a Clickbank payment button, a PayDotCom payment button and a direct
Paypal payment button.
If the visitor doesn’t click on the button that relates to how you are promoting the product then you aren’t going to get paid. If you are using Clickbank hoplinks and the visitor clicks on the PayDotCom button – you have just lost your commission.
Always check out the sales page and make sure that there is only one payment button.
High Payout Threshold
Any program that has a high payout threshold may make it hard for you to get your commissions out. Make sure you are happy that you can easily meet the
payment threshold and get your payment as quick as possible. This is one reason why instant commissions are so popular.
Out Of Date Program
Some people will leave webpages on the Internet for years and never update them or even pay any attention to them. Websites go out of business all the time.
Check the website and affiliate program is current. You don’t want to promote a program and then find out that it is no longer in business and you can’t get your payment. If you are in any doubt about whether a program is still active, contact the product owner. If they don’t reply, the chances are they aren’t active any more!
There are affiliate programs for almost every niche and with a little bit of research you can very easily find the program that you want. The information in the next section will help you to evaluate the affiliate programs you find and find one that is good for you to promote.
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