Before you throw yourself headlong into the marketing activities that will dominate most of your time as an affiliate, it’s critical that you select a good market in which to exercise your marketing skill. Not all products with affiliate programs are profitable and even the best marketing efforts can wasted if the program isn’t attractive to visitors, or doesn’t pay out a good commission.
While you could find a profitable market first and then locate affiliate programs within that market, it’s actually a lot faster to do it the other way around. In this lesson we'll cover Researching Affiliate Programs.
ClickBank contains many excellent affiliate programs for digital download products.
Generally speaking, there are three things that distinguish a profitable program from a waste of your valuable time.
Over the years, we’ve reached the conclusion that it isn’t worth the time and effort to promote a product unless your commission is at least 60%. As the majority of products in ClickBank retail at $30-$70, abiding by this rule means that you earn a minimum of $18 per sale. There are dozens of products in ClickBank that pay out 60% or more - the very best often pay out 75%.
However, there are a couple of exceptions:
a) Very high sale price: If the product sells for $155, then a 50% commission isn’t all that bad and will still be worth your time. Even so, we don’t suggest going below a 50% commission.
b) Recurring billing: Subscription-based ClickBank products often enable you to continue earning a commission every time the customer pays their subscription. In this case, you can lower your base to 40%.
The ClickBank gravity rating is based on the number of different affiliates that have made a sale during the week. A high gravity rating means that lots of affiliates are making sales and, in general, you can take this to mean that the product is in hot demand and has a good chance of being profitable for you.
There is one exception to this rule: Internet marketing products.
Internet marketing products are frequently purchased by affiliates through their own affiliate link. By doing this they get a big discount on a product; unfortunately it also radically skews the gravity, so when viewing the gravity of internet marketing products, don’t take the gravity of these kinds of products at face value. The category most likely to be affected by this type of activity is Marketing & Ads.
Of course, low gravity is not necessarily unprofitable - after all, every new product has to start somewhere! However, if a product does have low gravity, then you need to dig a bit further to work out whether it will convert well.
The best way to make learn more is to click through to the sales page and:
This program has it all: a great gravity, a 75% commission and a high sale price.
In contrast, this product has a very low gravity, low commission and low sale price; if you were to view the sales page you'd also see it’s fairly short and not that convincing.
Cost per acquisition programs pay a commission for each action, rather than each sale. For example, some CPA programs pay a commission on each email address captured, others for a zip code, and others still, for filing out an application form.
Popular cost per acquisition sites include NeverBlue, PeerFly, and affiliate.com
There’s only one rule for choosing a good physical product to promote and that’s:
Make sure you are earning at least $40 per sale.
Physical products have a low markup compared to digital products such as offered by ClickBank, so, instead of applying the "60+% commission" rule, look for at least $40 per sale. This means that for a TV retailing at $2500, you would want to be earning a 2% commission ($50) on each sale.
Now that you’ve found some likely looking affiliate programs, it’s time to find out what the market's like.
As the saying goes: there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition.
Ideally, an Internet search on the primary search term for your market should reveal heavy competition from affiliates in the form of lots of PPC ads. You can take this as a sign that there is money to be made in the market.
For example, a search on "dog training" – a market we know to be highly profitable - reveals dozens of PPC ads, and many are clearly affiliates.
On the other hand, a search on "face painting" brings up only five ads – and only one of these appears to be an affiliate. This suggests that the face painting market is either undiscovered, or unprofitable - almost definitely the latter!
Competition on primary terms is good, but there still needs to be room to make a profit.
Using the free WordTracker (or similar tool), your next step is to check up on the number of niche search terms for the market.
A good market has plenty of niche search terms with relatively little competition - for example, the game ‘World of Warcraft’ is very popular over the globe. It’s a market with a lot of affiliates, but there are also literally hundreds of niche search terms:
Similarly, competition is intense in the dog training market for that keyword phrase, yet there are plenty of niche terms with low competition such as:
‘stop pitbull aggression’
It’s not all about PPC ads either - for example, although the niche term "stop fox terrier digging" has a number of competing PPC ads, there seems to be plenty of opportunity for an SEO site for this search term.
While not strictly necessary, it can be handy if there are several quality affiliate programs within the market that you can promote, especially if you wish to build a list.
In a market with multiple affiliate programs, such as the dating market, you could promote "How to Attract the Opposite Sex" for two weeks, and then switch to "How to Gain Self Confidence". A few weeks later and you could offer ‘How to Start Conversations’; you’re offering great value to your list and also continuing to earn money through repeat buys.
In this lesson we looked at choosing a suitable affiliate program and some of the pitfalls to watch for; we also looked at assessing the affiliate market:
Some of the things to watch out when choosing a program include:
ClickBank
CPA Programs
Physical Products
Look for commissions over $40
The second step is assessing the market
Questions & Comments + Add a comment
What is the gravity? If it's closer to 0 it just means that it hasn't been proven to convert well yet. If it's in the lower 20's it should be ok. Basically...
High gravity = High levels of success but also high levels of competition
Low gravity = Less proven success but lower competition
So it's kind of a toss up. Both have positives and negatives. The best thing in my opinion is to find the best product for the specific audience of your website (think of customer first, what are they already looking for? Easier to sell this than to convince them they need something they hadn't thought of yet) - and then just find the highest gravity of that type of product that you can.
As for "I have found some products which seem great with commission and re-sale..." Remember as well that a higher commission doesn't = more money if you make less sales. Better to have a lower commission that converts more times over than a higher commission that comes in on occasion.
Ultimately it's up to you, but I hope this information helps you to make an informed decision. :)
Let me know if you have any other questions,
- Gina
Bearing in mind the great advice you gave, I started looking at other products with higher gravity. The other holistic products (various niches) that I have an interest in working with, range from 20 to 123! If I focus on my research, especially key word research, could a first timer (like me) really do it?
A range of gravity from 20-123 is good! And you can always try products, and if they aren't converting well, you can changing to others. Nothing wrong with a little trial and error.
Basically? You can definitely do it. :) Yes, you will need to find long-tail keywords. Do you use the research here? - http://www.affilorama.com/market-research/doing-keyword-research
More competition does mean that PPC and SEO might be a little more tricky, but not impossible, and there are a lot of other ways to generate interest in your affiliate website.
One of the most important pieces of advice I could give you is to really think about your target audience when you plan your websites content. I actually talked about it in this weeks blog post: http://www.affilorama.com/blog/a-challenge-to-the-status-quo-of-content-strategy
When you get really specific about who your website (and the products you promote on it) are for, and you sculpt your content and offers around the specifics of what they need, the more your site will stand out to those people.
Try choosing the product from that gravity range that resonates most with the core concept of your website.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions. :)
- Gina
I have checked the CPA links and I have to report that are not working or redirecting to different ones like
- Epic Direct Network - http://ryanisabella.com/ - wrong site
- NeverBlue - http://globalwidemedia.com/ - wrong site
- HydraGroup - http://www.hydragroup.com/ - blank page
- Clickbooth - https://www.clickbooth.com/ - working and considered scam and spam by WOT
- ClixGalore - http://www.clixgalore.com/ - OK
Will add this to my list of updates to make and sort it as soon as I get a mo.
can you give more info on CPA and how to start
Do you mean the links to Affiliate.com, Peerfly, and Neverblue?
As for CPA resources: If you're curious, you can always reach out to our other affiliates and our support team on the forum to learn more:
http://www.affilorama.com/forum/
it says that we should pick about 50 prodicts to promote on our site? But I have one product that I chose and it is very strict and there are no other simmilar products out there at Clickbank... should I go with that one or find some niche where I can promote several products?
Thanks
If you prefer to stick with the niche you're in, you can simply look for products on a different affiliate network -- ShareASale or Commission Junction, for example. Even Amazon. Otherwise, you might look for a different niche that has more products.
It's your choice -- we generally recommend that our affiliates have a passion for the niche, because it's easier to maintain your momentum and motivation. So if you're really committed to the niche and product, I would see what the other networks have available. =)
The AffiloJetpack system lets you choose five niches and gives you all the content and resources you need for each one. That way you can pursue multiple niches using the same tools and same proven system.
If you have questions about the products, reach out to our support team! =)
https://www.affilorama.com/support
I just mentioned it in my recent post found here because of the GREAT INFO: https://justpaste.it/affiliate-marketing