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Take a look at this article before you join any affiliate program, do any promotion or create mini ebooks.
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:
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 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!
The results are derived from Overture, Overture UK, Lycos and Teoma. It also has functions to determine ANY website’s link popularity and Alexa ranking. Another nifty feature is the kpad, which allows you to save keywords for future reference!
- Word Tracker http://www.wordtracker.com
Another great keyword research tool.
To use, click on the “Keyword Report” icon towards on the left column on the site. It’s not free but a free trial is available. 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
http://www.marketing-make-money.com/keyword.html
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 http://www.ClickBank.com
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 http://www.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 http://www.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 http://www.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 : http://www.yahoo.com/r/sh
Doing a search for say ‘digital camera’ returned the following :
| Search Results for digital camera found 1412 stores with 53806 products |
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.
Our next article we will cover…
“The quality of the affiliate product”
Until then take care,
Ken Mathie
