Top

Affiliate Marketing – Tips for Finding Products for Recommendation

September 24, 2008

Last week we talked about why I sing the praises of affiliate marketing as an income source for your online business. Now that you see how easy it can be to add it to your business, let’s talk about finding the right products to promote.

First and foremost, I want to stress that you shouldn’t jump on board every single affiliate program you come across that fits your niche. Not only is it not wise to promote nilly-willy, but it also can damage your credibility as an expert if you send out an email to your list every week with a new product recommendation. They will begin to wonder just how much you really care about their needs versus just wanting to make a buck.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are 5 Tips to Help You Choose Affiliate Products for Your Business.

1. Look for products that will help those in your target market.
Let’s say your website targets parents of toddlers. You’ve created an autoresponder list where moms and dads of toddler aged children can sign up to receive tips to help them potty train their boys and girls. Therefore look for products that deal with potty training.

2. Find products that take your readers by the hand or better yet, do the work for them.
People don’t like guesswork and in fact, they don’t usually like work at all. Whatever you can do to make it easy for your readers to achieve a goal or accomplish a task will go a long way.

3. When choosing a product, do your homework.
Find out as much about the product as you can. This may seem obvious, but the more you know regarding the product or service you are recommending, the easier it is to sell it and the better your chances of making a sale. It also helps ensure you send your readers to reputable products sold by reputable companies.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for a sample product or review copy – or just buy the product.
Many product owners are happy to let you take a look at their material in exchange for a testimonial or review of the product. However, consider that buying the product yourself gives you a more complete picture of the customer experience – from order fulfillment, customer service and follow-up. If you get it free, you don’t see those aspects.

5. Check out the affiliate program.
This is a whole other post in it’s own, but if you find a product you’d like to promote, sign up for the affiliate program and find that you get no help what-so-ever when it comes to promotional tools, it’s probably not a good sign. Examine the program. If a product owner is serious about making money on his or her product, it will show in how they present their program. Also, do Google searches to see if there are any complaints by affiliates regarding non-payment or other potential issues.

Last 5 posts by Alice Seba

Written by Alice Seba · Filed Under Alice Seba 

Comments

Got something to say?





Bottom