Affiliate Marketing Tips – Picking A Product

Posted by Steven Wagenheim on September 09, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, General, Marketing Articles

In the first installment of this series on affiliate marketing, I went over some of the biggest mistakes that affiliate marketers make. In this installment, we’re going to start covering the actual process of affiliate marketing beginning with the actual product selection. This is where many affiliate marketers will drop the ball.

There are a number of myths regarding product selection. I’m going to cover the most common and dangerous ones here. Trust me, these only scratch the surface but are important to know in order to avoid potential disaster.

First off, contrary to popular belief, Clickbank is not the only affiliate marketplace in the world. Yes, it has its advantages, one of them being that you don’t have to hope that the vendor pays you the commissions that you’re owed. Clickbank takes care of that part of the process. However, there are OTHER marketplaces…good ones too. So investigate them. You just might find some products worth promoting that pay very well.

My two favorites are:

Commission Junction
Shareasale

Yes, they’re a little harder to get approved for than others, but there is a reason for that. In many cases, the products are superior. Clickbank, sad as it is to say, has become a bit of a home for trash. Yes, there are good products there, but you really have to dig to find them.

Another big myth that need to be dispelled is product popularity, gravity, whatever it’s called at that particular marketplace. Let’s use Clickbank as our example because that’s the marketplace most people are familiar with.

Your typical affiliate marketer will head to the Clickbank marketplace and search out the product with the highest gravity. Their thinking behind this is simple. If a lot of affiliates are making sales with this product then it must be selling well and therefore easy to sell.

This sort of thinking has lead to worse disasters than the Titanic and Custer’s Last Stand added together. I could go into a long explanation why, but I’ll keep it simple.

Number 1, when you have that many affiliates promoting a product, the competition, for the average affiliate, is so fierce that he’s lucky if he makes more than a couple of sales a month…if that.

Number 2, and this is the part that many affiliates are unaware of, gravity can be artificially manipulated. I’m going to do an article in just this topic in the near future because it’s important you understand this. So keep an eye out for it.

Bottom line is this. You are better off searching for a quality product with less competition, one that has proven to sell, thus giving you a better chance of making a significant number of sales.

Another myth that needs to be shot out of existence is that you don’t need to actually get the product that you’re promoting. If it sells, that’s all that matters.

A lot of products in the history of affiliate marketing have sold. They have also trashed the reputations of the affiliates who sold them, not to mention the vendors who created them. I won’t mention any by name but you know what they are.

That kind of news spreads fast.

So when you pick a product you DO want to get a copy of it and review it. If you find the product to be substandard, you can still promote it if you want. But you’d be best off if you gave your negative review and then let the prospect make up his mind.

Oddly, you will get quite a few sales like this.

In the next installment on product selection, I’m going to primarily focus on Clickbank and what I look for.

See you then.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.