What To Promote When You Are An Affiliate?

Cheow, April 8th, 2008 · No Comments

One of the many questions that I get from my newsletter subscribers is what to promote when you are an affiliate… which is why i think i should address this issue in today’s blog post for the benefits of everyone.

Personally, when i do affiliate marketing, i don’t promote physical product; I think non-physical products such as e-books, softwares, membership programs, web hosting subscription, etc are more worthwhile to promote. The reason why I love non-physical products so much is because there is no hassle on delivery and the profit margin is way much higher. For e-books products, commission can go as high as 75% for each book you sell.

Many affiliates who just started out tend to go for Amazon affiliate program, promoting physical books. When it comes to physical products, the seller will usually give a lower commission percentage and thus you will not be able to earn a nice substantial commission from each sale.

Comparing physical and non-physical products, it is definitely more worthwhile for you to promote a information product and earn a higher percentage rather than promoting a physical product with very lower percentage… as the marketing effort for both types of products are the same.

In the past, web hosting program is considered the best product for affiliates to promote. Because, for every new website to be launched, the webmaster will surely need a web hosting program first. And every year, there are thousands and thousands of new websites, so it is a never ending promotion for us affiliates. However, the web hosting affiliate business is getting more and more competitive now and it is very hard for new affiliates to earn a substantial affiliate income from it.

So if you are starting out in the affiliate marketing business now, i strongly recommend you to visit Clickbank and PayDotCom. These 2 places have tons of great information products for you to promote and most of them give at least a 50% commission for each sale you make. Commission Junction is also another great place to find products to promote, especially for web hosting services.

Before you choose a particular product to promote, it will be good if you can do some research on it first. Make sure that the product that you are going to promote can sell (which means there is a demand in the market). Also choose something that you have interest in to get things started. By promoting a product that you have interest in (for example, if you are a golf player, promoting a golf e-book will be ideal), you will be able to express more knowledge and passion for the product during marketing, which can help increase your affiliate sales volume.

Do not worry so much about setting up a website and promote an affiliate product when you are first starting out. There are lots of great ways to promote affiliate products without a website. You should also test out the product in the market first, using Squidoo as landing pages to promote it. Once you see it starts to convert which proves to you that it can sell, you can now move one level up by setting up squeeze page for the product and collect names and email addresses of the people who show interests in the product.

If you repeat the process of Research, Promote, Test, Build List, you will be able to build up a very strong affiliate marketing business in the next few years.

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