How To Pick

The Perfect Affiliate Product

Welcome to the third lesson of this course. 

This lesson will revovle around our #1 tool for earning money online. 

The affiliate program and products that we're going to get our links from. 

Let's get into it!

What are affiliate programs and networks?

Affiliate programs are the projects companies use to promote their products with the help of affiliates in exchange for a commission.

An affiliate network, on the other hand, is a marketplace for affiliate programs. Affiliate networks sometimes house thousands of affiliate programs from other companies.

They let the network run their affiliate program or use it as a gateway to their affiliate program.

A few of the most popular examples of affiliate networks are

• Clickbank
• Awin
• Digistore24
• JVzoo
• WarriorPlus
• etc.

The Pros of affiliate networks

A benefit is that you have a lot of products at your disposal

The Cons of affiliate networks

Communication might be done through the affiliate network that functions as a third party.

This isn’t always as efficient as it could be.

What is a “Private Affiliate Program”?

aside from affiliate networks you also have private affiliate programs. These are affiliate programs that are run by the company that created them. 

Unlike affiliate networks, they don’t house affiliate products from other companies

but solely focus on the products they created themselves and the services they offer.

The Pros of private affiliate programs

It’s easier to create a relationship with the affiliate program manager. 

The Cons of private affiliate programs

Most likely Fewer affiliate products are available

Merchant websites their affiliate programs

These are private affiliate programs but I like to single them out because they don’t have the con that most Private affiliate programs have. 

Merchant websites often have thousands of products you can earn a commission with

but the program is still run by the company that created it.

A few examples of merchant websites are:

• Amazon 
• Target
• Walmart
• eBay

I often advise beginners to start promoting products from merchant websites

because most people already use these websites to purchase products.

There’s already trust established which eliminates the thought of the website you refer people to being shady or anything like that.

How to find affiliate programs?

1. Use Search Operators

A search operator is a character or string of characters used in a search engine queries to narrow the focus of the search. 

There are all kinds of characters you can use to specify your searches but for today we’re using this one. 

“niche + Affiliate Program”

Google will look for all the websites mentioning affiliate programs in your niche.

Here’s an example I’d use for the cold-water fishing niche.

You can go through all of them and see if you can find an affiliate program that you’d like to join.

2. Spy on your competition

Thanks to the previous lesson, you should already have an idea of who your main competitors are.

Most likely, your main competitors are also taking advantage of affiliate programs.

Take a look at what kind of products they’re reviewing in their content.

In most cases, they’ll have an entire category on their website dedicated to reviews but in some cases, it might take some more digging.

Look for pages with titles such as: 

• Top 10 [Products] for [activity]
• [Niche product] Review
•  [Product] vs. [Product]

These will most likely contain affiliate products that they refer to. 

3. Google reviews of products your niche uses

You could also just google a common product that is used by your niche and put a review behind it.

A lot of websites will appear that are likely your competitors promoting products by reviewing them.

Here’s an example of me, using the words fishing rod review and you’ll get a lot of examples of website reviewing products. 

When you’re on the webpage with the review try to find the link that you can use to purchase the fishing rod and see to which website it goes. 

In most cases, this is going to be the company whose affiliate program you can join. 

Characteristics of good affiliate programs

1. Commission structure

The terms of how and what you’re getting paid should be one of the first things you look into before joining an affiliate program. Does it align with what you’re trying to achieve?

Some affiliate programs offer a 1-time commission per sale while others offer a monthly or yearly recurring commission. 

The 1-time commission structure tends to payout more but you might be looking for something a bit more stable. 

2. Support

What are the people behind the affiliate program doing to support you in referring people to their website? 

This isn’t just banners and links but also the capability to get in contact with them, coupons, discounts, guides, and other methods.

I personally, like to see if they have the option to create deep affiliate links.

These are links that can link to any page on the company's website. 

This way you don’t have to send them to a sales page immediately but you can send them to a pricing page or a feature for example, where they can learn even more about the product.

3. Conversion rate

Not every affiliate program has these numbers available to the public but they say a lot about your chances of succeeding with the program. 

As an affiliate marketer, you’re simply referring people to a website but what happens after?

 
That’s something you have no control over. The conversion rate tells you a lot about how effective their sales team is. 

The better the sales team, the more money you can earn. 

As I said, not every affiliate program shares these numbers so on some occasions you might have to talk to the affiliate manager to get an idea of what their conversion rate is.

4. Payout Threshold 

I think it’s extremely important to look at the payout threshold. 

I’ve had experience with affiliate programs in which it was required to get multiple sales to reach the payout threshold. 

I got the first sale relatively quickly but it took me 4 months to get the second sale that was needed to get paid.

I’m never making that mistake again. 

Nowadays I usually go for programs for which the minimum payout is $50 at its highest.

How to get your affiliate links?

The affiliate programs you’ll find with the help of the methods I showed you earlier will direct you to the affiliate page of the website. 

If they don’t take a look at the footer at the bottom of the website of which affiliate program you want to join. 

Most of the time, there’ll be links placed there with the anchor text affiliate, affiliate program, referral program work, or something similar to these words. These will lead you to the affiliate page. 

After reaching the page, you can sign-up by filling out an opt-in form after which you can log in to a dashboard. 

These dashboards will have tools to see your stats and resources, and will also contain your personal affiliate link.

This is a pretty broad explanation but most affiliate programs use the same type of tools and dashboards to support their affiliates.

Tasks for Today

Task 1: Find affiliate products

Use the methods I have shown in this lesson to find at least 3 affiliate products that you’d be willing to promote. 

Evaluate the program, through the characteristics that I’ve shared with you to determine if they’re worth your time to invest in the affiliate program.

Task 2: Select an affiliate product 

After evaluating the program, pick 1 affiliate program you want to promote.

This product is going to be your flagship product. 

It is possible to promote other affiliate products but for now, this affiliate product should get 80% of your attention.

That's all for today. 

Next lesson we're going to start with building our first website. 

I hope you're excited!

See you at the next lesson.