Affiliate Programs have been around for quite a long time. Usually they were a natural offshoot when someone was thinking about making a product. Today affiliate programs are extremely popular and there are an almost endless number of products in virtually every category of market that you can join somebody else’s and earn commissions on.
How to find The correct affiliate program
Firstly before you settle on a particular product you need to do some research. There are several ways of doing this.
• Look at what is currently selling well, for your size of market. A quick way of doing this is to go to Clickbank or Commission Junction for an idea as to what is selling well. Look for a unique product that isn’t being sold by many affiliates, a very good example of this would be one where the affiliate is only getting a commission of say $15 per sale. This will help you see if selling a product about cars is a good option.
• Do A Google Search on a specific niche. For instance if you are promoting dieting products you could key the phrase “dieting diet” into Google and it will return thousands and thousands of products relating to the word “dieting”.
• Visit forums and see if there are any adverts on by looking for one of your chosen keywords and forum post you. You are more likely to receive a target audience if you post in forums than if you just do a Google search.
• If you use the zero cost (free to join) smaller forums that are targeted to your target market. If you are promoting a golf program, specialist wealthy affiliates wants your help there.
• Ask direct questions on a related topic. For example you can check out the competition by typing in golf club poor sales according to Google. This is a great way of asking questions and getting answers as to why a product could be or why it could have been chosen by another affiliate marketer and how you should be approaching the potential customers. Trust me, it is worth testing the products against their promises as you will be using them as an affiliate.
• Do a search on Google for the keywords or market niche you plan on promoting your product in. If the top listed sites did not use an affiliate programme. There could be a good reason for this. These typically include information products that have a very low commission payout and often cannot sell worth a darn.
• Check out ClickBank in the Clickbank Marketplace. ClickBank is an extensive directory of affiliate programs. They have more than 12,000 of them from which to choose.
Where to start?
One of the first things you need to do when choosing a program is to search and see how well they convert their visitors to sales. The easiest way to test this is to use Google AdWords as you can set up an AdWords campaign and send traffic to the product using the keywords you are using.
Once you have established that your potential customers have actually bought the product or they have closed the deal. You need to go check out their conversion rates on their websites. There is the choice of going for a “one off” commission (which pays per sale) or a recurring commission (per subscription).
If you purchase a membership subscription model from a membership site, the first option usually pays out monthly in most cases.
In some cases membership sites will offer you the choice of a commission rate per sale or a recurring commission of a percentage of the membership fee paid.
As a rule of thumb per 100 click accounts for 0.5% per sale commission rate means you should be happy with $100 commission for each model.
Its a simple tip: If a product converts well and they pay you once per sale at a reasonable commission and provide you with tools “to the bone” for your promotion. Spend your time researching and choosing a highly converting affiliate program with an affiliate payout payout rate, which offers you a high level of affiliate stickiness and sales.
