Finding Affiliate Products
If you already have a website or blog on a particular niche topic, you’re probably using Adsense or something similar to monetize it. If you haven’t also considered affiliate marketing, you may be missing out on a lot of income!
Relevancy
The first thing you need to consider when choosing an affiliate product to monetize your site is relevancy. The product should be something of interest to the people attracted to your website or blog. For example, if you have a blog about dealing with pets’ problems, you wouldn’t want to waste your space promoting an affiliate product that teaches some aspect of Internet marketing. However, an eBook on how to get cats to stop urinating outside their litter box might be a big seller.
Also, you want to choose products that positively impact your brand. Continuing with the example above, if that eBook on cat urination is a badly-written, 15-page report that sells for $25; people who buy it from your site might transfer their negative impression of the book to your blog! You don’t want that, so be sure the quality of the products you choose won’t come back and hurt your relationships with your readers in the end.
Where to Find Good Affiliate Products for Your Site
The first thing to do is scour the affiliate networks. The benefits to using a network (or several) are that they will consolidate your results and often your payments. You’ll be able to get all your source advertising and your statistics in one place. Here are some to get you started:
Clickbank
Commission Junction
ShareASale
PayDotCom
The second thing to do is go to your favorite search engine. Search for the topic of your site + the words “affiliate program.” So if you have a site about coping with diabetes, you’d search for something like, “diabetes + affiliate program.” Then visit each site and look for information on the products and how to join their affiliate program.
If you’re using Google or another search site that has Pay Per Click advertising on the side, check some of these ads out, too. Look at all the Adsense ads at any of the pages you land on during your search, as well. Sometimes these lead to good affiliate products that you can promote, as well. A word of warning, though – never, ever click the Adsense ads on your own site. That’s enough for Adsense to banish you forever!
A third excellent source of information on good affiliate products is your competitors! If you’ve had your site for a while, you’re probably already aware of who competes with you most directly. If not, now is a good time to find out. It’s always a good idea to keep track of your competitions’ actions. Now, use them to find out what affiliate products they are promoting. See what’s on their sites, and if you can, see what they pay to advertise, especially PPC. If they spend money on PPC for a while, you know they’re making some money with it.
Finally, don’t overlook online stores for products you can promote. Many stores like Amazon have great affiliate programs. Commissions are generally much lower for physical products from stores or networks, but they often have massive ranges of products and can be a good place to start while you’re building traffic and finding more monetization methods.
Try Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing isn’t difficult, and it really gives a boost to your website’s income, no matter what your niche. Add it to your existing sites or build it into your new sites – just use it!
