Things to Consider When Looking at Affiliate Offers

Of all of the ways you can make money on your blog or site, one of the most profitable and popular ways is through affiliate marketing, which is essentially promoting other people’s products for a portion of the sale price.

While on the surface affiliate marketing seems like it should be pretty easy, it’s something that takes a very long time to learn and master.  In order to get it right you have to pick the right products, have a big enough audience, be able to write persuasive copy that gets people to buy… the list goes on and on.

That being said, becoming a successful affiliate marketer isn’t impossible to do either.  After all, there are thousands of people out there making a living simply promoting other people’s products.  If they can do it, you can do it!

In today’s post I’m going to focus on product selection, which might be the most important piece of affiliate marketing.  You can have all the traffic in the world and write incredible copy, but if you pick the wrong product you’re going to be dead in the water.

Here are some important questions to ask yourself when selecting which products  you want to promote.

Do you believe in this product?

I know it sounds cliche, but why in the world would you promote a product and tell people to buy it if it’s something you wouldn’t purchase yourself?

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I like making money more than I like breathing, but I’m not willing to ruin my reputation by promoting a terrible product just so I can make a buck.

Besides, if you wouldn’t buy the product, how are you expecting yourself to be able to sell other people on the idea of buying the product?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Will your audience be interested?

If you run an internet marketing and business site (something like this) are your readers really going to benefit from you writing a post promoting a weight loss informational product you found on Clickbank?  Okay, some of them may, but the vast majority won’t be interested and will simply tune you out.

The reason being is they (your readers) come to you to get information on things related to internet marketing and business, not the latest diet fad.  Now, if you were to promote some list building software, or some “learn Clickbank” product, that would probably be much more in line with your audience’s interests.

Long story short, don’t promote products that aren’t explicitly relevant to your target audience.

One time vs. recurring payment

Here’s one of my favorite topics – getting paid!

Now that you’ve picked a few relevant products that you’d feel good getting behind, it’s time to look at how maximize your profits.

Personally, if I had to choose between two similar products that I’m pretty sure I could sell, with one being a single sale item and the other being a recurring payment item, I would choose the recurring payment item every single time.

The way I figure, I’m going to have to work hard to make the sale regardless, so do I want to get paid one time, or would I rather get a recurring payment?  It’s kind of a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, when most affiliate marketers start out all they want to do is focus on the big ticket, one-time items.  While it’s nice to get a sale or two out of these, you’re going to make your living promoting lower priced items that bring in passive, residual income.

Hopefully this was a good and quick tutorial on what it takes to pick out the right product for you.  Obviously there are a lot more than three factors when it comes to determining a product to promote, but I feel that the three I just covered are the most important.

What do you think?  Leave you thoughts in the comment section below.