GETTING PRODUCTS TO SELL

@ProBlogger Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger * Home * Blog * Forum * Workbooks * Book * Jobs * Make Money * Archives * Written on 7/8/2009 at 12:20 am by Darren Rowse How to Find Profitable Affiliate Products to Promote Filed Under: Affiliate Programs “How do I find affiliate products to promote on my blog?” Last week I spoke with a small group of bloggers here in Melbourne over a coffee. One of the topics that a number of them were interested in talking about was affiliate marketing. They were struggling with the advertising as a model to make money from their blogs and wanted to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog. However wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing it are two different things. There are a number of challenges to overcome first. One of these challenges is finding the right product to promoted. Choosing the right products to promote in affiliate promotions is crucial for a number of reasons – the two main ones being: 1. Relevant Products are Key – if your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic you’re unlikely to be able to sell products that have no relevancy to your blog’s topic. 2. The Quality of Products can Impact Your Long Term Brand – promote low quality products and you could be hurting your brand. Readers remember who they heard about products from and their trust of you and your blog will be increased or decreased by what you recommend to them. So – choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. It not only impacts conversions and profitability but it impacts your brand and relationships with readers. How to Find the Right Affiliate Product to Promote A few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate programs to promote come to mind: 1. Google It – this one isn’t rocket science but it does work. If you have a Beauty Product blog google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into that search and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche. 2. Look at Your Competition – what products are other people promoting in your niche. Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to see what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could promote to (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote). 3. Check out AdSense Ads – many of the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on other blogs and even on your own blog are likely to be products with affiliate programs attached. Don’t click the ads on your own blog but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true with other types of advertising. For example I was recently surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant for my blog – on clicking it I found a new product with an affiliate program that I’d not heard of before. 4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners – this one might not work if you’re a new blog with small traffic but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the makers of a product or service to see if they’d start some kind of affiliate program for you. I’ve done this a couple of times over the last year and it has been great. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you’re likely to be the only person promoting it. 5. Search Affiliate networks – lastly there are quite a few affiliate networks around that list many affiliate programs. Most of these have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out MarketLeverage, Clickbank, Commission Junction, PepperJam Network (disclaimer, MarketLeverage sponsors ProBlogger) and many more. 6. Search Online Stores for Products – many online stores like Amazon have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not massive (for example Amazon’s range from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) – I guess they have narrower profit margins) – but stores like this have a massive range of products and can be a good place to start while you build traffic and find other programs. How do you find affiliate products to promote on your blogs? PS: this post builds upon yesterdays post – What is Affiliate Marketing? About Darren Rowse Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter at , Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. What Next? * Digg This Post * Save To Delicious * Subscribe to Problogger * Stumble This Post Related Posts # What is Affiliate Marketing? # How to Make More Money From Your Blog in the New Year : Best of ProBlogger # Affiliate Programs – Commission Junction # The Secret of Product Blogs That Sell # AdSense Retire their Referrals Program and Launch the Google Affiliate Network Problogger.net runs on the Genesis Framework Genesis Framework The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Genesis provides the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go. Check out the incredible features and the selection of designs. It's that simple - start using Genesis now! Comments 1. 2Lincolns.com says: 7/23/2009 at 6:26 am Outside of Adsense, I really just use Amazon’s affiliate program now. I tried commission junction, but it required a little too much maintenance for my liking. Amazon is nice because everybody is familiar with it, they sell just about everything, and you can link directly to pages and products very easily with the Amazon Associates toolbar. The downside of Amazon these days is that they reduced the expiration of their cookies to 1 day from the previous 30. Can we get a middle ground of 15 please? Jeff 2Lincolns.com 2. extenders says: 7/26/2009 at 3:08 am The downside of Amazon these days is that they reduced the expiration of their cookies to 1 day from the previous 30. Actually I disliked the fact that they reduce it from 30 to 1 day. It does not make sense because it takes time to convince people to buy. They should perhap reduce to at least one to two weeks. This is more acceptable. 3. thigiru says: 7/30/2009 at 6:31 pm yep, amazon is well known to many 4. new affiliate programs says: 8/9/2009 at 2:50 pm Yes, it is always advisable to sell the products related to your blog. The other tips explained by you in making the right selection are excellent. I would just like to follow them. Thanks 5. Top Devices says: 8/27/2009 at 5:31 am Agree totally that one should sell the products related to the blog. Relevance is so much importance nowadays. 6. Toshiba A505 says: 8/28/2009 at 4:59 pm Thanks for this great post, since now, I know how to earn more with my websites. 7. Travis says: 8/30/2009 at 11:39 pm I’ve been running adsense for some time, and albeit having moderate success with that, I think that affiliate marketing will provide the push I REALLY need to get my blog moving. Thanks for the tips. I too agree that Amazon’s commission is a bit low, but the plus side is that it’s such a trusted and respected brand that many customers have no problems at all going to such a website. 8. Enhancement Pills says: 8/31/2009 at 5:54 am Thanks for this great post. Now I have a better understanding of how I can monetize my site more effectively. 9. Joshua says: 9/1/2009 at 5:04 pm Yes you can also sign up with Commision junction or click2sell for alot great products. But make sure it is not a scam ebook! you can tell if the front page is a guy on a boat or in a benz. Make sure it is not over sold meaning dont go out and say hey i am going to sell a twitter tool that everybody knows about. Look for -Quality -Exposer meaning is it a diamond in the ruff! -Scam! make sure no scams because that will make your readers made and leave you. -% you make 50/50 usualy good anything above that is great. on my blog i stoped doing affiliates untill i have reached the 6 month mark. http://dailycashsaver.blogspot.com/ 10. Art says: 9/4/2009 at 5:42 am I found some by Googling related topics, which led me to Commission Junction through the affiliate website. Once there I looked for similar affiliates. 11. Top Devices says: 9/10/2009 at 7:29 pm The problem as an affiliate is that we have so many choices to choose from. To find a niche affiliate program will require lots of research and trial and errors. It is not easy as one thought. 12. MarketingSolutionz says: 9/11/2009 at 1:32 pm Very well put….however there are a multitude of ways to find affliate programs depending on your specific niche alot of times they are outside the big box setups such as Commission Junction,Clickbank,LinkShare etc…..Homework is key and if by all means you use a “automated what’s hot setup” please do homework…..couple you may find handy are….MaxBounty and Plimus 13. thigiru says: 9/11/2009 at 9:52 pm you know what? using this strategies, i have been able to make good fortune this month! 14. thigiru says: 9/15/2009 at 7:47 pm some things are really worth trial. growth exercise. http://www.igrowtall.com 15. Top Devices says: 9/16/2009 at 11:37 pm Yeah agreed. The article is very useful especially for beginner. Well done! Guys! 16. Cemil says: 9/17/2009 at 4:46 pm Agree, great post. Is there a follow-up on this one? Is would be great if any future post contains some more ‘tips and tricks’ for use newbies. Thanks Darren. 17. freisprecheinrichtung bluetooth says: 9/17/2009 at 9:43 pm I’m a big believer in promoting things that you would buy yourself or things you would use yourself. I’ve been working online gambling for several years even though i’m not a gambler i still love how sports and betting. I’ve also looked at several normal CPA offers and everything i go through the offers i fell like diet crap or credit cars no way i won’t even bother. But i have found some good ones like gamefly video game rental or netflix rentals. So all that to say that whatver you promote make sure your happy with it. Good luck. 18. Gary Homestown says: 9/22/2009 at 11:35 pm You can also get a good affiliate program at http://www.myshopping.com.au which offers a comparison tool for a 1000s of electronics and what have you. 19. thigiru says: 9/23/2009 at 8:54 pm Gary is right. That is also a source of affiliating products. « Older Comments Subscribe to the Newsletter: Subscribe to Problogger RSSSubscribe to Problogger FacebookFollow Problogger on Twitter Join Over 321000 Readers Advertise on Problogger ProBlogger Blog Tips Categories * 31 Days to Building a Better Blog * Blogging for Dollars * Featured Posts * Pro Blogger Interviews * Search Engine Optimization * Adsense * Blog Design * Blogging Tools and Services * General * Pro Blogging News * Advertising * Blog Networks * Business Blogging * Miscellaneous Blog Tips * ProBlogger Site News * Video Posts * Affiliate Programs * Blog News * Case Studies * Other Income Streams * Reader Questions * Writing Content * Birthday Prize Giveaway * Blog Promotion * Chitika eMiniMalls * Podcasting * RSS * Yahoo Publishing Network Who is Behind Problogger? About Darren RowseMy name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips. 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