How and Where To Find A Quality Affiliate Product

In a previous article, I talked about becoming your own web-writing client with affiliate marketing and I also showed you one giant mistake to look out for. I hope I convinced you that affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online.

Today, I’m going to explain how to find an affiliate product to market. Before you build a website, before you start driving traffic … you need a product to promote.

Choosing a Topic for Your Affiliate Website

The first thing you’ll want to do, before looking at potential products, is choose a topic you care about and have some knowledge about (or a topic you would enjoy learning about).

Another concern is the potential for profit, but we’ll cover the easiest way to determine that in a minute.

Right now, you just need to choose a few topics you’re interested in … Take a minute and write down the first few that come to mind …

Think about:

- What makes you smile when you think about it?

- What fascinates you and keeps your attention?

Keep in mind, if you aren’t passionate about or at least a big fan of your topic, it can make the process of affiliate marketing tedious. Don’t ever be afraid to focus on what you like, there are tons of people out there who share your interest in the same subject.

Don’t exclude a topic because you don’t know a lot about it. It isn’t necessary to be an authority on your topic at this point. Instead, you can learn along the way, which will make it more fun and rewarding.

Once you have a list of potential topics, you’re ready to move on to finding an affiliate product you can promote.

Let’s look at an example: I am a dog owner, and I love my dogs — or “furbabies” as I like to refer to them. But my dog, Jake, has “little-dog-syndrome.” He is just 5 pounds, but he will try to attack anything or anyone who even looks at me wrong. When we have company come over, Jake can be high-strung, excitable, and even a little ferocious.

So, my topic could be “caring for and dealing with small dogs.” My affiliate product could be a product that would help me keep him calm when we have guests over. And, be something that would help others who have the same problem with their small dogs.

Because I love dogs, this is definitely a topic I care about, but I’m far from an expert on dog behavior. This is a topic I can enjoy and learn about as I build my website and affiliate program.

Finding an Affiliate Product

One way to find affiliate products (or companies that have affiliate programs) is to do a Google search for products related to your topic. Then, contact each company individually and ask them if they have an affiliate program.

More often than not, this process is tedious, and because you won’t have any metrics on how well their affiliate program performs, it may be difficult to find a good program.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way: Use an affiliate directory.

Using an affiliate directory is the best bet for your first venture. Individual programs can be very lucrative, but it’s best to put time into those after you’re up and running and business is booming.

It’s not only easier to find good programs through directories, it’s also quicker and easier to get paid through an affiliate directory.

One of the easiest to use, and largest, directories is ClickBank.

A ClickBank account is free for marketers and you don’t have to be approved before you can sell products from the ClickBank Marketplace. ClickBank has digital products for nearly any niche you could come up with. And, the products on ClickBank even include all the marketing materials — like sales letters, videos, and emails — ready for you to use.

However, because you are a web writer, and because your affiliate site could be used as a sample, it’s probably best for you to write your own web copy, at least eventually.

ClickBank has lots of great products (some even have 75% commission rates), but there are also some lemons you should stay away from. Here’s how you can analyze them …

Once you have a topic in mind, go to ClickBank and sign up. Then, do a search for your topic. Go through the search results and look at products you can market. You can rank the search results by a number of factors including “amount earned per sale.”

ClickBank says, “Sort by: This menu allows you to order the results of your search based on the sales performance of the products. For example, you can order the results in terms of number of sales, products with the highest average commission rates, amount earned per sale, or more.”

A couple of questions to ask yourself before finalizing your decision are:

• If I were the target market, would I want to buy this for myself? Remember: You should be the target market if you picked a topic you’re passionate about.
• Is this product of good quality judging by the marketing materials?

Also, do some online research on the product. Read what others have to say. Were they happy with the product or are they complaining? Do people say it’s total junk and a waste of money? Or, are they saying it was a lifesaver?

Keep in mind, popular products will probably have some negative reviews online even if they’re great, but the majority of the comments should be good. Positive reviews will also help you because if one of your website visitors does their own search, they should see some good stuff to give them confidence in their purchase.

You’ll also notice the metrics next to the product’s name in ClickBank. Here’s what they mean:

Initial $/sale is the average amount affiliates are earning each time this product sells. Factors like sales, commission promotions, refunds, and sales tax can influence this number.

Avg Rebill Total means if the product is a recurring product — like a membership or subscription — this number will show the average amount you can make on recurring sales.

Avg $/sale is if the product is a one-time purchase, this number will be the same as the Initial $/sale, but if it’s a recurring product, this number is the average you can make over the life of each customer.

Avg %/sale is the average commission rate for all sales of a vendor’s products.

Avg %/rebill will only show if the product has recurring billing. It shows the average commission rate earned on the recurring payments.

“Grav (short for GRAVITY™ performance statistic) is a number that represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 12 weeks,” says ClickBank. “Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are ‘hot’ at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product.”

For help determining what to look for in the above metrics, I recommend this video: How To Find High Gravity ClickBank Products Fast!

Choosing a product can be quick and easy, or it can delay your progress for months. Don’t overthink it. Find something that meets your criteria and a product you’re excited about and move forward.

The next step is promoting it on your site, and we’ll cover how to do that in our next article.

So, what about you? Share in the comments what topic you plan to pursue and what products you’re considering.

Editor’s Note: If choosing a topic is difficult, or if you want more direction in this process, consider investing in Nick Usborne’s program, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites.

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