How To Select the Best Affiliate Product for Your Blog
To be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to pick, and promote, the right
product on your blog.
76% of newbie affiliate marketers fail to earn any money from affiliate marketing
because they never pick the right product to promote.
Having success in affiliate marketing is not easy, but it's also not that hard. You
need to be persistent, consistent, and have a proper marketing plan. If you do
these three things, you will be successful in affiliate marketing.
Some of the factors that define whether you succeed or fail are:
What affiliate products you are promoting?
What medium you are using to promote them?
How good is your sales funnel?
Are you targeting the right audience?
Do you have a plan or are you working on a ‘hit or miss’ strategy?
The reason why I’ve earned millions from affiliate marketing is because I
only promote products that I have personally tested and used. There was a time
when I promoted things without testing them. These products were not good and
after many bad reviews, my brand suffered. I was lucky that this happened at
the initial stage, but I had to learn this lesson the hard way.
As I mentioned earlier, I use the “education method” in order to make my living
online. It’s time consuming, but at the same it’s safe & the rewards are more
consistent and stay consistent for longer periods.
Writing how-to guides & tutorials definitely helps in promotion. It doesn’t matter
if you are the creator or curator, as long as you are ensuring that your target
audience uses your affiliate links to purchase a product.
Soon, I will share the tricks that I personally follow to choose only the best
products to promote.30
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
Before we move ahead, let’s recap some things we have learned in earlier
post:
Affiliate marketplace: This is a marketplace where companies list their
product(s) & as an affiliate, you can select which products you want to
promote. Here you will see all the stats like overall conversion rate of a
product, how much the payout is, and other data-based details that help
you pick the best products to promote.
Native/In-house Affiliate program: Many products have a native
affiliate program. Recall the example of TubeBuddy
that TubeBuddy program is an example of a native affiliate
program.
Usually, it’s beneficial to join an affiliate program via an affiliate
marketplace, as their tracking mechanisms are pretty strong. You can also
easily reach the minimum payout by promoting multiple products from the same
marketplace.
By using a quality marketplace, you lower down the chances of being
cheated.
Start with an Affiliate Marketplace:
Also, the best place to start hunting for affiliate products is in a
marketplace (like ShareASale or Commission Junction). Depending on your
niche, you can find really good affiliate products to promote.
Most of these affiliate marketplaces have sections which show their most popular
affiliate products.
On the next page you can see a screenshot from the ShareASale affiliate
marketplace, which shows the top 100 hottest selling products
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
Remember, every marketplace has a different set of features and layout
structure. Soon I will be launching a membership site where you can get your
hands on videos for every popular affiliate marketplace. For now,
ShareASale is one affiliate marketplace that you should definitely join ASAP!
The Benefits of Affiliate Marketplaces:
Affiliate Marketplaces have many benefits. Here’s a quick overview.
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
All the niches in one place:
One of the major problems we face as an affiliate is finding an affiliate program
that aligns with our niche. In any affiliate marketplace, you can find many
affiliate programs in various categories & niches.
Easy to reach minimum payout:
When you sign-up for an affiliate program directly (in-house affiliate program), the
biggest challenge is to reach the minimum payout. In an affiliate marketplace, your
minimum payout is the sum of all the affiliate programs that you are promoting.
For a beginner, it's much easier to reach the minimum payout in a marketplace.
Less chances of affiliate sale frauds:
In the past, when I joined the affiliate program of a popular online company
(HostGator) with their in-house affiliate software, it was a disaster. I had no choice
but to blog about it.
I wrote a blog post & also made a video on YouTube.
HostGator’s people didn’t like me making this information public, but eventually they
understood the problem & moved their program to ImpactRadius, which offers better
tracking.
At times, direct affiliate programs cannot track sales due to improper configurations of
their affiliate software, a new affiliate manager, or maybe some of them just don't
want to pay you.
With an affiliate marketplace, you don't have to worry about this problem. Their
tracking mechanisms are excellent & you will be paid for your hard (& not so hard)
work.
Examples of Affiliate Marketplace: ShareaSale, Amazon, Commision Junction etc.
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
If a product is not listed in the affiliate marketplace, you can directly
search for that particular affiliate program. Let me explain you how:
Join affiliate programs individually:
Most online products have their own in-house affiliate programs. One such
example is the DreamHost affiliate program.
All you need to do is find the hottest selling products in your niche and find the
opportunity to market these products.
For example, if you run a blog about dogs, you can try to find an affiliate program
related to dog food or dog care.
To find these companies, you can simply use Google search with the following
query:
“site:domain.com affiliate” or “(product name) + affiliate program +
Country”.
Examples:
WordPress (Product name) + Affiliate Program
Fashion (Niche) + Affiliate Program
Fashion (Niche) + Affiliate Program + Country
Site:dreamhost.com (Domain.com) + Affiliate
You can see an example of one such Google search on the next page:
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
These are manual searches, of course, but this works in most cases, especially
when you are in a niche where it is difficult to find an affiliate product on a
marketplace.35
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
What is a “niche affiliate” product?
You must have noticed that I have used the phrase “niche product” multiple times
in this post so far.
Let’s dive deep into this:
A niche affiliate product means a product based on your blog’s topics and
your blog’s readers. Suppose you run a blog about health (i.e. ‘the health niche’),
you should be promoting a product related to health on your blog.
My advice for you is to select the best selling products in your niche and
start writing about them. It will help you drive traffic and boost your
conversion rates.
The difference between successful and failed affiliate campaigns are determined
by conversion rates.
If you are getting 100 or so clicks on your affiliate campaign but a 0% or 1%
conversion rate, you need to re-think your strategy.
One big mistake:
The most common mistake a newbie affiliate marketer makes is spending
hours of time promoting a low quality product. With this approach, a marketer
fails before even getting started.
Pro Tip: Don’t make this classic mistake!
What you can do instead is spend quality time learning about the product.
Test it out yourself or read reviews by experts or authority bloggers.
Review the previous products launched by the company.
Take time in finding the right product to promote.
Don’t fall into the trap of marketers who will promise tons of money and
ultimately don’t pay anything.
Pro Tip: Sign up for a free-trial of the product if it's available, or ask the
product owner to give you a review/sample piece. The latter technique is
popular among fashion & gadget bloggers.
In a worst-case scenario, you can buy and use the product to come up with an
educated review.36
Affiliate Marketing Handbook
Note: 60% of my affiliate sales come from reviews & tutorials related
to the product.
When you are signing up for any affiliate program, here are the features that
you should pay attention to:
◉ Available banners
◉ Promotional materials
◉ Affiliate control panel
◉ Minimum payout
◉ Payment method
◉ Tax form requirements
Things to keep in mind:
◉ Don’t limit yourself to a specific network or program
◉ Some products may not have an affiliate program today, but it doesn’t
mean they will not have one later. Last year I used a growth hack method
to earn $1,200 in one month from affiliate marketing. This trick is
perfect for anyone with an existing blog. You can read about it & watch the
video here.
These things will help you to decide if you are ready to promote this product.
Suppose you select a seasonal product, and its minimum payout is $1000. Are
you sure you are going to get that many conversions in an off-season?
Bonus Tip: Associating with famous brands will be an added advantage to your
affiliate marketing campaign.
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