When you do affiliate marketing in one time-bite at a time, some products are better than others.
Overall, you should aim for products you can get to know thoroughly in a couple of hours at the most. When you know the product, you can be honest about it and promote it better. Over time, this will create trust and you will get more sales.
It is therefore important to pick your affiliate promotions wisely.
You do that by considering several issues:
You need to take all three of the above issues into consideration, so let us get started.
Among all the types of products you can promote, it is important to pick the right ones.
Otherwise, you will be wasting your precious time and perhaps money as well.
Among the common affiliate products, you will find:
You can promote simple and inexpensive physical objects with bite-sized affiliate marketing.
Imagine you have the choice between two objects to promote:
Which one do you think you would need to spend the most time on to promote? Yes, that is obvious, right? If you choose to promote physical objects, make sure to pick ones that are easy to understand and in the cheaper end of the price scale.
Info products make great offers.
They come in all sizes, though. Some video courses contain hours of videos or maybe even live events. Some are cohorts where you need to spend an hour a day for three months.
Skip those and go for shorter ones.
Software is also a good option and there are a lot to choose from. You can promote plugins to WordPress, phone apps or programs for computers.
Unless you are already familiar with the software you choose, make sure to pick the simplest ones that does not have a steep learning curve.
Recurring software subscriptions are perfect choices in this category.
They will allow you to spend time once and keep getting paid.
Some products will have their own affiliate programs.
Others will be on shared platforms. And others again, will run their own program but on a shared platform. Let me explain.
There are shared platforms where you can find lots of products to promote.
Three of the better known are Gumroad, ClickBank and Amazon. Once you are approved as an affiliate, you can pick any product and promote it.
Other platforms, like Impact, ShareASale and PartnerStack, will allow companies to run their individual programs there. This means that you will have to request and get approved by each vendor here.
Gumroad is a little different in this aspect.
You will learn more about that and how you can make huge profits with Gumroad, even as a new affiliate, in a moment.
To find products to promote, you can browse through Gumroad, ClickBank and Amazon to see what you like. Or you can choose your audience first, think of what will help them and then search Gumroad, ClickBank and Amazon. The latter is a better approach because you have your audience in mind first.
And if you are unsuccessful with your search, you can go broader and use your favorite search engine to look for [product name] + affiliate.
Now, let me share something truly awesome with you.
Gumroad is an affiliate platform where you can find a multitude of different products.
There are physical and digital products. Info products and software. Even services.
What is particularly awesome about Gumroad is that you can create an account for free.
With that account, you can become an affiliate and promote products on the marketplace without further approval. This will earn you a ten percent commission for each sale. But you can take it one step further.
You can ask the vendor if you can become an affiliate and make a higher commission.
This makes Gumroad a very flexible portal for both new and established affiliate marketers.
The only downside is that you will not get paid instantly.
Gumroad processes weekly payouts from the previous week’s commissions.
ClickBank is an old platform that offers both physical and digital products.
When you are approved, you can pick any product in their marketplace to promote and earn the commission they offer.
It can be harder to get approved by ClickBank itself, though. You must request and fill out a form.
You will also need to make a minimum amount of money from different sources before they can pay you. And you cannot get paid through PayPal. You need either a Payoneer (your affiliate link) account or a bank account or accept checks.
Amazon – probably the oldest affiliate platform of them all.
Here you can choose mostly physical products but there are a few digital ones like Kindle eBooks.
Amazon offers low commission rates. However, if somebody purchases through your link and also buys something else, you will make a commission for whatever he buys for 24 hours.
Most customers trust Amazon, which makes the sale easier for you.
Once you get approved to promote on Amazon, you need to make sales within the first three months.
Amazon will pay you directly to your bank, by check or to a virtual bank account like Wise (your link) or Payoneer (your link). You will have to be patient, though. Amazon pays out with a delay of at least two months.
What you have earned in January, for example, you will receive by the end of March.
Now you know where you can find products to promote.
You know the pros and cons of each place. Now it is time to start planning your steps.
Do you already have an audience in mind?
Great. Find out where you can get products suitable for that audience. Then sign up for the affiliate programs and get your links.
Your following step is to send traffic either directly to your affiliate product or – better – to an opt-in form so you can stay in contact with your audience.
Remember to never overwhelm yourself.
Do this is bite-sized time-chunks and keep it fun.