In terms of Internet Marketing, there is typically one means to an end; select a niche, pick a buy ace killer og strain online, promote it, and profit. Unfortunately, things are not that simple… as much as I, and many others, would wish. In the course of promoting a product, there are any number of things that could go wrong, some disastrously so. But, it is my firm belief that there is one step of being an affiliate marketer that is much more important than any other, and that is picking your product correctly. Once you select your niche, it is vital that you spend a good amount of time making sure that the product you are planning on promoting is both marketable and, perhaps more importantly, profitable to you.
To that end, I failed miserably when I first started doing affiliate marketing. I mean, I went down in flames. I picked a product that I thought would sell pretty well to my intended market, but nothing ever came of it. I spent lots of time and personal energy promoting the product through various methods and did not make a penny. Fortunately, I’m a bit of an analytical person and quickly went to work figuring out why exactly my promotions were not converting. I knew that it was not my methods as I was following a pretty well proven method of affiliate marketing… so, obviously, there had to be a problem with the product I was attempting to promote. But what was it?
Fortunately, if you are running into the same problem I was, I did the groundwork for you to answer the question. Alternatively, if you are picking a product to promote for the first time, you should probably pay extra close attention to what I’m about to say to make sure you avoid the same headaches that I did and, what I assume, millions of others did too.
For terms of conformity, my knowledge and expertise only extends to ClickBank. It is the largest online product marketplace in the world and houses, for the most part, all “big ticket” items in each and every niche that you can possibly think of. Additionally, it provides just a bit of information about each product (number wise) and I use one of them (albeit lightly) to make my decisions on which products to promote. What follows is what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive checklist that you can use to select a “winning” ClickBank product to promote. While I can certainly not guarantee your success with the product you pick, I can promise that you will become better at picking product that give you a better chance of making a profit off of your promotions.
- The product must have a gravity lower than 100. The gravity of a product on ClickBank indicates the amount of affiliates that have made sales promoting the product. Generally, I allow a higher gravity than other syndication experts. Why? Because I truly do not believe that gravity is worth anything – like, at all. I believe it to be a useless statistic. It is to easily manipulated to be worth much of an opinion,. That being said, I do like to see a gravity below 100 as it makes me believe that the product is not over promoted – which could be a huge drawback to your syndication plan.
- The product must have no leaks. By leaks, I mean the ability for a visitor to go to the sales page and opt-in to a “free report” before even being shown the price of the product, or the benefits of the product. It is a lose-lost situation for you as a person meddling in article syndication. Why should you spend the time and effort to help a person build their list when you get nothing out of it? Avoid leaks at all cost. The product must have an attractive sales page. First and foremost, I know this is a highly subjective point… but, for the most part, we can all certainly agree when a sales page is attractive and when one is not. Use your best judgement. It may seem a bit “immature” but, trust me, when it comes to a visitor, they generally give their trust to a site that is “prettier to the eye.” Sad but true.
- Lastly, the product must have a creator that responds to customer service requests. I absolutely refuse to promote a product that has been abandoned by its creator. Not only will that upset the customers I refer to the product, but it also makes me look bad in the minds of my list members. So, in order to make sure there is an active creator behind the product, I will send a quick e-mail to the person asking them for a review copy of their product. Even if they respond back with a “no” to your review copy, you will at least know that they respond to messages and, more than likely, will be attentive to their customers. I know it may be in “bad taste,” but upon receiving a negative response to a review copy, I will typically purchase the product through my own affiliate link. In the end, it works out as I send thousands of dollars worth of sales to the product. I make sure karma I never disturbed.
That is my short checklist that I go through each and every time I am attempting to find a new product to promote. Like I said, it is not much… I know other article syndication experts have much more exhaustive list. However, I bring in a full-time income with the products I promote so I feel that my checklist must be “good enough” and that no more restrictive additions are required.
However, do not be afraid to add more substantial checks to your search. Depending on the niche you enter, you may need to be more rigorous in your product decision – which, then, would require a more strenuous list. Adapt as needed.
