Now that you have the tools, where do you find the best affiliate programs for products to promote? Well, there are multiple places that you can start looking. Generally, there are two kinds of products to promote, one the physical goods, meaning goods that are delivered via a shipping company or postal mail. Another kind is downloadable products in digital format such as ebooks and software.
ClickBank is one of the best places to find affiliate programs for downloadable information products. Many affiliates would agree that promoting downloadable products from ClickBank is the easiest and most profitable for several reasons:
1. People love instant gratification. To be able to pay and instantly download the product dramatically increases conversion rate, ie more visitors convert to buyers more readily. Buyers hate waiting for slow delivery.
2. Digital information products do not require inventories. This means that the commissions can be as high as 60 to 70% per sale.3. There are 1,000s of products in various categories. Affiliates have many choices to pick their niches.
4. ClickBank pays their affiliates promptly after the 15thand last day of the month and handles all the transactions and refunds.
There are also other directories of affiliate programs that could be useful to you.
• AffiliatePrograms • Commission Junction
•Link Share • ClixGalore
• Share-A-Sale
• MaxBounty
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As a ClickBank affiliate, you want to select a product that sells well and has low competition ie not many competitors to share the profit pie with you. You have to be familiar with some numbers associated with each product. Once you have decided on the product category, say Business to Business, here are the 3 secret steps to pick a winner. Get these right and you have a top seller!
Step 1: Look Out For Healthy ClickBank Statistics
This is a screen shot of ClickBank Marketplace. See the numbers next to the blue arrow.• $/sale - Average net amount earned per affiliate per sale. Note that this is the net earned per actual sale, and so it is affected by refunds, chargebacks and so on
Always go for a minimum of $20 per sale. Anything lower is barely profitable especially if you are using pay-per-click (PPC) to advertise. If the product costs $50, and the commission is set at 50%, by right, you should be getting around $23 – 25 per sale. However, if $/sale shows that it is only $16 or lesser than the set commission, it is a signal that there are many refunds, hence the low figure.
• %/sale - Average percentage commission earned per affiliate per saleSign Up For My Secrets Of Affiliate Marketing Newsletter Free!
• %refd - Fraction of product owner’s total sales that are referred by affiliates
Target a product with at least 50% for %/sale & 70 – 90% for % refd. The numbers suggest that there are affiliates promoting and the commission is generous enough.
• grav – “Gravity” is a measure of how many affiliates are currently promoting the product. Not the exact number of affiliates thoughA product with 50 – 100 for “grav” indicates that there are a handful of affiliates promoting the product but not competitive enough. This is a positive sign that the product is in demand and it will be profitable for you. However, for certain niches like music, even a high grav of 200 can still be profitable since the demand is huge but most niches do not behave in this way.
Step 2: Professional Sales PageA professional sales page is crucial and determines whether you will make one or two sales only or make many sales. Visit the sales page and read it. Does it motivate you to buy? Some products are great. I have come across such products but the sales page look like a cheap $5 cookie cutter website.
Step 3: Complete Affiliate Marketing ToolsAffiliate marketing tools are critical to your marketing efforts. Most affiliates gloss over this but if you take it seriously, your income level will shoot to the roof. There should be a wide array of tools available for affiliates to use such as PPC keywords and ad copy, email ad copy, banners and so on.
Go to the product website and check out the affiliates section. Browse through and see if they provide a comprehensive set of tools and if there is any support forthcoming.
Tip: CBEngine makes it really easy for you to check out the statistics and details of each product.Sign Up For My Secrets Of Affiliate Marketing Newsletter Free!