Secrets To The Right Affiliate Program

The internet opportunities abound…and the questions that often come up is…which one is appropriate. Why? Because, there’re thousand of affiliate programs promising you everything on earth but delivers little or nothing. Hey, are you troubled with this? You don’t have to as I’ll show you some of the things you may have to consider before sign up to any affiliate programs.

The first step would be to determine what affiliate products AND which program to promote. This will affect how much money you make as an affiliate at the end of the day!

This step though pretty obvious is important and choosing the wrong programs should and can be avoided. It leads to loss of time, resources and more, so get it right!

Select your affiliate programs carefully. Here are some criteria you must take into consideration:

Your targeted markets

The quality of the affiliate product

The conversion of the product’s sales page

The availability of instant marketing tools

The incentives you’re paid

We’ll now look at each criterion individually. You’ll understand why there’re very important in your selection of the right affiliate programs…

Your targeted markets

Before even deciding to promote affiliate products, decide on the market you want to target at.
It’s best to decide on a market you want to stick with for the major time, as this will enable you to build a business around as you continue offering products and building your list.

As an illustration, there’s not much sense in selling an affiliate product for hair loss to a group of young teenagers!

Or how about choosing to sell watch batteries, you’re gonna cry at the tiny profits (if any) you earn: (

In other words, choose a market based on its relevancy to your business.

Choose a market based on its size and profitability.

It would also help if the target market you chose is aligned with your interest or knowledge; it makes everything all the more enjoyable and motivating.

A good way to select your target market is based on two necessary factors:

1. Demand And Profitability

Here are the basic tools Internet marketers are using for finding profitable markets:

- Good Keywords

goodkeywords.com

Good Keywords is a terrific free software that shows the searches for any keywords (markets) you type in. For example, ‘weight loss’ was searched 400,864 times in a given month. This is a huge market!

- Word Tracker

Another great keyword research tool is wordtracker.com
This will be adequate if you know exactly what you’re targeting at.

Registering for their service also entitles you to a report listing the top 300 most frequently searched words in the last 24 hours, plus the top 200 most frequently searched words for the last 60 days!

So for example if the term ‘auto’ was searched for 200,000+ times in the last 60 days, won’t you want to target this huge demand?

- Keyword Sleuth

marketing-make-money.com

An amazing tool that will list up to 5,000 (yes!) popular search phrases on the topic you want. It’s not free but a demo is provided. This really digs into the keywords and keyword phrases, more so than the above two.

- ClickBank Marketplace

Clickbank is the Internet’s biggest marketplace (more than 10,000 products currently) for digital products such as ebooks, software, digital audio recordings, etc.

Clicking on ‘Shop The Marketplace’, which is the first link from the bottom, takes you into their marketplace. This area provides a good idea as to what’s selling well in terms of digital products. There’re various categories ranging from Business, Entertainment to Sports.

Let me explain, ClickBank ranks the listed products based on their popularity (largely determined by the sales volume done and the number of active affiliates promoting it).

Checking the types of products constantly on the first two pages in a category gives an indication that it’s ‘hot selling’ status. There must be a good demand for them thus!


- Overture.com

Again, you can further research market demand at Overture.com.
It is currently the biggest pay-per-click search engine on the internet.

The simple method of checking the bids for any keyword will give you an idea of just how popular the demand is!

A general guideline would be the higher the bids placed on certain keywords, the greater the demand for them.


- eBay.com

You can also check out eBay for research. This is the world’s busiest and biggest online auction site with millions of sellers – a massive marketplace no doubt.

Looking at the “featured items” listings on the homepage and individual categories provide a general indication of what’s selling.

Sellers are paying $99.95 for these premium listings and short of having excessive spending money; it’s safe to assume their products
to be converting at a high rate and receiving good bids in the first place.

As a warning, huge demand does not always automatically equate to huge profitability.

It does depend on WHO you’re marketing to, and how much money they have to spend.

A very simple illustration would be that working professionals will
have more money than young kids, thus being a more profitable
target group!


2. Market Supply

The lower the market supply for the demand, the more profitable it’d be.

This may seem very obvious, but you’ll be surprise how many people ignore this basic economic principle.

- Search Engines

The easiest way to check the availability of products targeted to your market is through the search engines.

For example, a search for ‘weight loss’ at google.com showed an average of 2.83 MILLION competitors out there!

However, if you just narrow down your market for example, ‘weight loss tip’ has just 300,000+ competitors. This is a huge difference which will play to your advantage.
The bottom line’s to focus on specific, niche markets instead of the overall general industry. You’ll see more sales and money coming in this way.

- Yahoo! Shopping

Another simple trick to check the supply of a given product or market is through the net’s biggest shopping network – Yahoo! Shopping :

Doing a search for say ‘digital camera’ returned the following :

Wow! 1,412 competitors marketing 53,806 products, now that’s an idea of over supply.

You’ve got to balance the demand and supply to decide if the market you want to go after is profitable. This will help you in determining affiliate products to promote.

The quality of the affiliate product

It has often been advocated that one should know and use the products they endorse, and I couldn’t agree more. This is especially critical if you’re planning to run a serious business online.

Recommending a bad product hurts your credibility and destroys trust almost immediately. Only promote products that you feel comfortable with, knowing they’re of good value.

I’ve seen countless ezine publishers, even the famous ones promoting affiliate products that either just plain suck, or does not even seem relevant to their market. What do you think happened next? I hit the unsubscribe button.

Don’t chase after the quick buck – aim long term.

The conversion of the product’s sales page

Before promoting a product, check out the sales page. Does it have
a killer web copy that converts visitors to customers well?

Does it make you want to buy? Does it load fast? Are there many payment options (this may hijack your commission) etc. etc…
You get the point.

It’s NOT your job to sell the products, that’s the affiliate owner’s role. Your responsibility as an effective affiliate would be to send qualified traffic to the main sales page by PRESELLING to your prospects.

This is again why knowing and using the products you promote is essential, it’s only when you’ve experience it that you’ll be able to presell well.

Promoting an affiliate product that just doesn’t sell itself is a major mistake many affiliates are making…don’t fall into this trap!

The availability of marketing tools

Good affiliate programs tend to provide affiliates with a range of marketing tools for their promotion campaigns. These may include cut-and-paste solo ads, classified ads, banners, articles, samples, rebrandible ebooks, ecourses, etc.

It would be advisable to join only those programs that do offer such tools. First of all, creating these tools show a certain sincerity and seriousness of the affiliate program owner. Secondly and ultimately, they save you time and headaches. More importantly, you’ll be able to use them to compile your ebooks.

All affiliate owners should make it EASY for their partners to promote their products.

The incentives you’re paid

Make sure you’ll be paid! That’s the entire point of promoting affiliate programs, or doing anything with effort anyway.

Check the credibility of the owner, the domain name (how long it’s registered for) and other signs that indicate it’s a genuine business. If it smells fishy, you may end up losing all your commissions (trust me, there’re such people around).

Coming back now, look at the overall incentive package, rather than just on the direct commission you receive.

Questions to ponder include…

Does the affiliate program offers extra incentives, contests or benefits to motivate YOU to promote it? Do you get additional rewards upon achieving certain sales volume?


As in offline sales, companies who value their sales person often dangle ‘carrots’ in the form of higher commissions, lump sum bonuses or free holidays simply as motivations to achieve sales targets. It’ll be much more exciting and fulfilling if the online affiliate programs have such incentives too.

In terms of commission, you’ll want at least a 50% cut to make it worth your time and effort. A program that pays out more means higher profits in your pocket! This has to be balanced with the selling price of the product. Promoting a higher end product will be more rewarding than one that sells for just $27.

In an example of these two components of commission rate
and selling price, a program which pays out 70% is high,
but if the product sells at just $10, you’ll only receive $7.00
for all your efforts! On the other hand, promoting a $200
product which pays out 50% means more profit for you, to
the tune of $100 for the same amount of effort you put in!

Another important factor to consider : is this a two (or more) tier affiliate program? Essentially a deeper tiered program rewards you with extra earnings from your personally recruited sub-affiliates. You make money from their sales too. This converts to greater leverage with the same amount of effort!

I would encourage promoting a residual income opportunity.
This can be in the form of service-oriented programs such as web hosting, membership sites. Such programs allow you to continue earning recurring or lifetime commission, which is much more logical and profitable in the long term.