If you are reading this, you are probably not new to making money online. With thousands of affiliate programs out there, the opportunities are endless. Granted that you what type of niche you are in, most programs are fairly easy to apply. However, finding a good affiliate program is another matter altogether.
In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the important steps that I used to search for a good affiliate product.
Tip #1 – Recommendation
Let’s begin with the product itself. This step is no rocket science, but it is easily overlooked. People generally buy things that other people recommend because it gives them a sense of reassurance.
A product that people often talk good about speaks volume about the customer’s satisfaction so you should really check out if there is an affiliate program associated with it.
Tip #2 – Online Popularity
The next step is to find out what are people buying online. and you can do this using Google Trend or Google Search. In Google Search for example, you will see a list of organic results and some paid results (advertisements) on the top and right-side column.
These results are usually a mixture of the merchant site, review/affiliate sites and sometimes, news/media sites.
In fact, these are the ‘buzz’ that you want to see because it shows that the products aren’t new in the market and are already gaining popularity among the online audience.
# Bonus tips – While you are on the result page, do check out the competitor’s product as well. Who knows if they might also have an affiliate program that you can be part of?
Now, let’s do some reverse engineering and see how many people are searching for this particular product online. To find out, we need more detailed information and this can usually be derived from doing keyword research. I use a keyword tool called Jaaxy and it gives very reliable metrics on the demand and the competition of a product, very much like a market research, if you will.
Ideally, you should obtain this information using elaborated words (also known as long tail keywords) as these phrases are the best representation of online users’ queries. Phrases that yield the most demand with the least competition are the terms that you want to be using when promoting an affiliate product.
Tip #3 – Merchant Site
Nothing is more validating than to check out the product at the merchant site itself. This is very important because your affiliate links will eventually lead people there and if the official site has poor navigation and doesn’t provide good quality content, viewers will leave very quickly.
On the other hand, imagine yourself as a visitor to that site. Ask yourself these questions;
- Do the products look appealing to you?
- Do you feel like buying it or at least give it a try?
- Does the merchant offer good customer service?
These are the kind of information that you can actually get from online reviews (see tip 2). So, if you like the product, other people might feel the same way too. Therefore, a merchant that invests on a well-developed site is more likely to compliment your effort as an affiliate marketer.
Tip #4 – Affiliate Support
After learning about the product, the next step is obviously to check out the affiliate program itself.
Being an affiliate marketer is like working with a business partner. You want good communication, both ways and most importantly, you want to achieve the same business goals together. Here are some of the things to consider when becoming an affiliate;
For marketing purposes;
- Do they offer various affiliate resources to help you with your promotion?
- Are they always coming up with new features to enhance your marketing effort?
- Do they take the time to educate you about the value of their products?
For troubleshooting purposes;
- Should you encounter any technical problems, do they offer a proper channel for support?
- How fast do they respond to your concerns?
- Are they helpful in providing a solution?
Getting a strong support from your merchant can make you love or hate affiliate marketing. So be sure to test out their supporting system whenever you can.
Tip #5 – Commission Structure
You are probably wondering why this tip isn’t in the top on the list. Well, that’s simply because a high commission (obviously that’s what everyone wants) without encompassing the aforementioned factors will not guarantee you a good affiliate program.
Affiliate commission could range from as low as 1% to 60% and whether you are in a hot niche or not, it still takes a fair bit of marketing effort to earn the money. However, if you wish to make this commission your long term online income, you should at least choose a commission structure of 10% or more.
Therefore, learn to avoid these common affiliate marketing mistakes whenever you are thinking of joining a program.
Tip #6 – Merchant Statistics
Some merchants will display statistics like EPC, reversal rate and average sales on their affiliate program. These values basically reflect the program’s productivity and will give you a rough idea on what to expect in terms of conversion and sales.
Not all merchants will disclose these values readily, but when they do, you should take them into consideration before participating as an affiliate.
The Best Affiliate Program…
Should offer a product that you can trust and pays you reasonably well for your marketing efforts. It should be so reliable that you are willing to go all out to promote it as an affiliate.
I hope this article has shed some light on how you can go about finding an affiliate program that is right for your business. If you wish to learn more, feel free to check out my recommended training site for affiliate marketers at Wealthy Affiliate or leave me a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
Cathy,
Thanks for this great look at affiliate marketing. I really appreciate your logical step by step format including checking on the competition and the all important keywords. Wonderful breakdown. I chuckled when I saw where you listed the $$ making and your explanation. I was always guilty of presuming that a High Commission = A Great Affiliate Program.
I found out in time just how wrong those thoughts were. You truly can not judge a book by its cover so do your research.
Hi Gary,
I am guilty of that too in the beginning. There was a program that I really like in the past that offers 30% payout and I dived straight into it. However, the product information wasn’t as thorough as I have hoped and the resources provided were just some hyperlinks and lots of banners.
Honestly, I am not a big fan of banners and without a good product information, I couldn’t really come up with a good review for it. Although the product is totally legitimate, it’s quite challenging to earn that kind of commission actually. Nowadays, I test out the product as a consumer first before promoting on my affiliate blog.
Absolutely James.
Some people call it a win-win situation and I think it’s all about having that mutual understanding. Poor communication between business partners (I like to think that we, as affiliate marketers are regarded like that) will only cause nothing but trouble to the business settings and our customers.
Hi there Thomas,
I was like that too at the beginning. Than, I came across the training at Wealthy Affiliate and learned to use my affiliate links sparingly instead of bombing them all over the pages. By doing so, you’ll find that the article sounds more informative rather than salesy. And as a reward, your pages seem to rank higher on Google too.
Great tips Cathy!
As I am looking to ramp up my business, I am always looking at other products to promote.
However I don’t just want to promote any old thing, so your tips are a good guide for me to use when I am assessing new products. Thanks!
Hi there John,
Keeping the diversity of your website with old and new products is definitely a great way to attract more online visitors. I am glad you benefited from this article. Cheers!
Hi Cathy,
These are great tips for anyone getting started online and want to find an affiliate program to compliment their chosen niche.
I fully endorse your recommendation to use Jaaxy to check for demand and competition for the product, since you can always get ideas for writing a great post on the chosen product.
Thanks for visiting my blog, Vanessa.
Jaaxy is great in a way that it is able to come up with a variety of long tail keywords that you can use for one single product. When you write a product review based on this, your article tend to rank higher on Google and thus increasing your conversion. So, it’s really a powerful keyword tool that every affiliate bloggers should check out.
I choose the affiliate programs which have a free membership just to see what you can get. Secondly, I search for reviews. If there are few negative reviews and more positive reviews, then I would consider joining the program.
Yup, I agree with you on that Anastasia.
I think a free trial/membership will help to support the positive customer reviews that you read online. It’s a great way to check out the affiliate support, pay-out system and communication with the merchants to see if it is something that you want to work with for the long term.
Hi Cathy! There’s some great advice here. I particularly liked the commission structure section. I recently signed up with a few affiliate programs whose commission was only 1%. I wasn’t even thinking!
But the income I may get from those sites is not going to be enough to let me quit my day job. Do you think it’s okay to use a few small commission affiliates, if your primary affiliate has a larger commission?
Hey Stephanie,
I am still new to affiliate marketing so I might not be able to give you a good answer for this, but I’ll try.
As far as I understand, affiliate links are URLs that take people away from your site. The more affiliate links (various merchants) you place in your articles, the more people are going to go away from your site. It’s great if they convert (and you make a sale) but we know that not all clicks will convert.
Hence, it’s best to funnel them through one or two products first, boost your page ranking, get more traffic and then add more miscellaneous (smaller commission) affiliate links as you go.
I hope this simple explanation helps 🙂
Hi Cathy.
Finding a good affiliate program can be quite a chore as there are so many out there. I love your tips, especially about affiliate support. You might find an affiliate program that looks great, but if they don’t have good customer support and communication, they are probably going to be more trouble than they are worth.
To me, this is probably one of the most important factor in my search for a good affiliate program.
You are absolutely right, Michelle.
Most of the time, people only know how to use affiliate links but don’t really know how to track their sales. Such support should come from the merchants (or at least from the affiliate networks) and providing some training on this would go a long way in helping people understand where their marketing effort is going.
Focusing on the commission is one of the most common mistakes affiliate marketers make and if they don’t learn what it takes to convert, no affiliate program will ever be good for them.
ShareASale has a ton of programs. I searched for chocolate and got over 1000 merchants. I was immediately overwhelmed. So they’re a good place to start if you’re new and don’t want to go through the hassle of tromping around the internet looking for an affiliate program – especially if you’re a newbie.
Great to hear from you again Kinya.
More than 1000 merchants for chocolates?!?! Wow, that should keep you very busy 🙂 I love using ShareASale too. Many of them are auto-approval once you have set-up your affiliate website, but some can make you wait forever if you don’t realize that they are no longer an active merchant. So if I don’t hear from the merchant after 2 weeks or so, I cancel my application and move onto the next.
Hi Cathy – some great tips here – thanks for sharing. It’s so easy to sign up for lots of affiliate accounts when you start out, so your advice is really useful.
Hey Jill,
It’s good to sign up for various affiliate programs to see what they have to offer. But you also need to have a good funneling system within your web content to make sure that conversion works. So, do go easy with the affiliate links. Using them excessively at the beginning stage can cause more harm to your site 🙂