To be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to choose and promote the right products on your blog. 76% of new affiliate marketers fail to earn money from affiliate marketing simply because they do not choose the right product to promote.
Here at ShoutMeLoud, I have always focused on teaching my readers about affiliate marketing. In a previous post when I shared how I make money with ShoutMeLoud, I mentioned that a big chunk of that money comes from affiliate marketing.
Finding success in affiliate marketing is not easy, but it is not as complicated as you might think. You do need to be persistent, consistent and have a proper marketing plan to be successful in affiliate marketing.
For example, which affiliate products you choose to market and what medium you use to promote the products will make a significant difference in terms of what you gain from this type of marketing. I always select a product that I use for my day-to-day blogging, and I write tutorials and guides for the use of the product. This helps to promote the product I’m pitching, and gives the prospective buyer the information he needs about the product.
We have previously discussed how to start with an affiliate marketing program and affiliate marketing vs. AdSense. In this guide, I will share some tips I follow to choose the right affiliate product to promote.
Start with affiliate marketplace:
The best place to start hunting for affiliate products is in marketplaces like ClickBank, ShareASale and Commission Junction. Depending on your niche, you can find the best affiliate products to promote. For niche marketers, Commission Junction and ClickBank are highly recommended.
Here is a screenshot of ShareASale, where I can see their top 100 affiliate programs, and join them:
If you are using WordPress, you can use a plugin like ThirstyAffiliates to mask your links. For the web hosting niche, I would recommend that you read our previously published guide on getting started with web hosting affiliates.
Join affiliate programs individually:
Most of the online products have their own in-house affiliate programs. All you need to do is find the hottest selling products in your niche and take the opportunity to market these products. For example, if you run a blog about dogs, you can try to find an affiliate program related to dog food or dog care. Find the companies that are selling such products online, and on their website you will find the links to the affiliate programs. Alternatively, you can simply Google “site:domain.com affiliate” or “(product name) + affiliate program”. These are manual searches, of course, but this works in most cases, especially when you are in a niche where it is difficult to find an affiliate product. (An example of this might be something like tattoo designs.)
What is a niche affiliate product?
A niche affiliate product refers to any product that is related to your blog topics and would thus interest your readers. If, for example, you write a blog on topics within the health niche, you would want to promote a product related to the niche of your blog, that being the health niche.
My advice for you is to select the hottest selling products in your niche, and start writing about them. This will help you to boost your conversion rate. The difference between successful affiliate campaigns and those that fail are the conversion rates involved. If you’re getting 100 clicks on your affiliate campaign, for instance, but you have a low conversion rate, you need to redesign your strategy.
Be sure to try a product before recommending it! Not doing so is one of the most common mistakes made by bloggers. I have often seen bloggers recommending high-end products without even using them. Personally, I recommend that you do not do this. Your credibility as a reviewer would be adversely affected by this practice. Giving an honest review on a product you have actually tried and used will increase your credibility and your reliability. You can either sign up for a free-trial of the product if one is available, or ask the product owner to give you a review piece. Worst case scenario, you can buy and use the product in order to come up with an excellent review either pro or con.
Note: 60% of my affiliate sales comes from reviews and tutorials related to products I have used.
When you sign up for any affiliate program, here are some factors which you should consider:
- Available banners
- Promotional matters
- Affiliate control panel
- Minimum payout
- Payment method
- Tax form required or not
These factors will help you to decide if you are ready to promote this particular product. Suppose, for example, that you select a seasonal product, and its minimum payout is $1000. Are you sure you will be able to achieve that much in terms of conversions in that particular season?
Bonus tip: Associating with famous brands will be an added advantage to your affiliate marketing campaign.
Are you into affiliate marketing? How do you decide which products are right for your blog and which are not? Let us know using the comments section below.
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Hello, Harsh!
Nicely written post.
I am new to this course and feels this post covers important points of affiliate program to succeed.
Thanks.
Hello,
Awesome post.. I have decided to use Commission Junction and ClickBank for my blog.
Thanks for sharing..
Great info. I’m looking for best affiliate program too. Thank for sharing !!
Affiliate marketing sales is base on technique if you want to grow your sales and success just build backlinks and go with social network to bring your blog traffic run as well !
Need your kind suggestion to become successful in affiliate mkting..
Mr Harsh thanks so much for all the information that daily shared with me and world.i am so glad to connect with you at shoutmeloud, i have being looking forward to make my blog better.I Will Never say there is No way,there must be a way to Go.
Thanks Harsh very great info.I have recently started blogging and its really useful to me
Hi
Can i start through facebook page as I don’t have blog or website ?
yes, you can.
Nice Read.
I own a blog on cars. Is there any affiliate for this niche. Or affiliate marketing is limited to online products only.
Hi Saurabh, yes there are many affiliate programs in the Cars niche, you can promote car rental, car spare parts (specific brands), etc… however cars is a very generic niche, I recommend going for a more focused niche inside cars, search in Google for :
Cars + Affiliate Programs and you will find several options
Hey man, you could try becoming an affiliate for Amazon or ebay and then find car parts on their and just link to them
Hi Harsh,
I hope you are doing great!!!
I am from India.
I am great fan of you blog, and I also purchased your affiliate e-book. I want to know one thing please if you can assist. Can I sale amazon and other programs products in Australia? Simply I will select some products and target them to sale in Australia.
Thanks!!!
@Ajeet
Glad that you purchased our eBook & hope you are enjoying reading it.
Yes, you can. However, you need to promote stuff from Amazon Australia affiliate program. https://www.amazon.com.au/
Hi Harsh, Thanks for the information and I love your all articles.
I purchased your affiliate marketing e-book. Where you didn’t written any info related to amazon afffiliate mrketing. And I’m unable to choose a right product to promote. Would you suggest me please what kind of product I supposed to choose?
Thanks.
@Mohan
Are you building a niche site or you planning to add amazon links/products on an existing site? Let me know more.
Great Article..How Do I Know The Product’s Quality. And Is Product Quality Considered While Choosing Any Affiliate Product To Promote.
Hello Harsh Sir, It was great to know to select which is right affiliate progarm for our blog. Thanks for this awesome article because m a newbie in this field it would help me alot in next upcoming days and its very clear.
Hi Harsh
Thanks for the post. is really helpful for them who are trying to make some revenue from affiliate products and campaigns. cost per acquisition is a great way to make money from popup and flash ads but google adsense can not be used later on if someone uses this popups and this kind of traffic.
So, your tips are very worthy and helpful in case of making money with cost per sales products.
thanks again
Hey Harsh!
I want to learn affiliate marketing and want to start with Amazon. Would you please guide me as what should I do as I am completely new to this. Is there any step by step guide which should I follow because I read a lot of thing and its information overload. I also want to know if I could start with my own website rather than any free blog what would you recommend?
Thanks for this detailed piece of information! Now I will look into some of the affiliate programs related to my niche.
Can Books convert well for an affiliate program?
I am asking this because when someone searches for a Book, in most cases Amazon will be displayed in SERP & most people will click on Amazon.
Secondly, should I create a Niche blog or I can have a same blog for it…?
Thanks 🙂
@Vineet
Books convert really well & we all look for recommendation from someone we trust. May be in the form of book reviews, or top inspirational book to read or anything which is in the context of the article.
Usually a reader click on the book link (Affiliate link in this case) mentioned in the article & it works. You can have links on the same site as long as it’s relevant to your blog niche & audience. You can also create a niche site for let’s say “Inspirationalbooks” “Bestsellerbooks” & so on, which might require a bit of work, but pay off really well.
Got it Harsh.
Thanks again for sharing this, will work around.
I have question eg I choose topic inspiration books and under inspirational books section there are say 50 books. So I am supposed to write review for all of those 50 books? can someone help me with it as in How to start and what content it should be?
Hey Harsh,
Can u give me some solution??? Actually i have a free blog from blogger.com. So now I m planning to buy a domain. So when i will start to give a ads on my niche blog. Is dis the right time to plan for affiliate marketing? If not? When i should start to go for affiliate marketing.
Thanks
Thanks for the post.
Am yet to monetize my website that mainly talks about 3D, solar energy and battery technologies. And to a lesser extent, on the mobile gadgets such as smartphones and tablets.
I have been working towards getting Google adsense approval and was wondering if the affiliate marketing is the best way to go.
What would you recommend?
@Amos
For certain websites like yours which covers wider topic, Adsense will work better. For a niche website which is cater to single topic, Affiliate marketing is the best route. You should read this earlier post : https://www.shoutmeloud.com/affiliate-marketing-vs-adsense.html
Hey harsh I have a question.Does hostgator affiliate program really pay ?…I’ve heard it from a lot of people that it is a scam !
Hey Harshit
For me it works like a charm. I have successfully generated up to 1200$ in a month with Hostgator affiliate.
Hi Harsh! For a month I was blogging on free wordpressDOTcom now 4 days back I have purchased a domain and hosting. My question is When should I go for these affiliate marketing. ? What will be the right time. Can I join them now or have to wait for few months.
For google adsense I will wait atleast a month
Waiting for some suggestion.
Thanks, stay blessed
hey tell about some sites which pay for affiliate
Bro, Nice Tip Bro… can u give access to Thesis Cpanel.. I will give honest Review..
Hey Chethan
I would love to, but for this I need to give you access to my wp-admin, I will try to arrange Thesis on one of my dummy blog and give you the access. though no promises. 🙂
Getting the right affiliate and promoting it properly is the key.Also depends on the interests of blog readers . Bit of trial and error thing.Still learning from the process.
Getting the Right affiliate depending on the niche is very important , thanks for your insight and comment Sourish.
I’ve been pretty happy with my affiliate relationships. It definitely took me a bit of trial and error but I’m settled into what I think is the best for my site currently. I primarily use Commission Junction for most of my ads.
Gabe some how I dont had much luck with CJ, because the product which I promote , I can get affiliate sign up directly which I find much better… So in my case Its mostly direct affiliates…
Affiliate marketing is tough task. if you want to make money from this you should have a really big blog.
Dinesh its not true, many blogs with handful of readers and subscriber are making good money with affiliate marketing and another fact is you don’t really need to have a blog for affiliate marketing. 🙂
Hi Harsh, I am a big fan of you blog and all you posts encourages me a lot to keep working on my blog. I am learning Affiliate Marketing from your posts. Just wondering why you are saying “you don’t really need to have a blog for affiliate marketing.”? Can you share your thoughts about this? Or is there any post that I can refer to? Thank you.
@Joyce
What I meant is you can promote products on Social media like facebook, Twitter, G+ and so on. However, having a blog is important for getting approval on a network. These days many affiliate network do accept YouTube channel as well.
Great post.
Although i’m learning the ropes wiith affiliate marketing, i think choosing a popular product that sells is the main thing that decides your success or failure.
Popular product with proper marketing is the thumb rule.. 🙂