Tag: affiliate marketing tips

Promoting affiliate products: This is the second of two RocketResponder blog posts addressing the subject of affiliate marketing.

Last time we looked at one way of choosing affiliate products to promote while today we will discuss numbers.

This post actually comes from the following question which was recently asked to me: “How many affiliate products should I promote?”

This is another very sensible question and one that almost every new affiliate marketer must wrestle with when they first start online.

There is no easy answer like 7, 12 or 42 and even the best answer will have rather a large element of “well it depends” when discussing the issue.

The factors on which it could depend might include:

• the time you have to devote for affiliate marketing
• your budget (promoting multiple products may being in more money but will have higher costs such as marketing for example) and
• the availability of suitable products in your chosen niche

However the golden rule should be that you should never, ever, spread yourself too thinly by promoting too many products.

This will dilute your overall effort which could result in you getting average or bad results across multiple products rather than getting good to great results in a small number of products.

Also if you promote “x” on Monday, “y” on Tuesday, “z” on Wednesday and jump back to ‘a” on Thursday then your subscribers will think you are just chasing the money and could not care less about what you promote as long as you get paid.

I cannot emphasize enough how off putting this really is.

Therefore it would be far better to start by promoting only ONE product, preferably something you actually use yourself (an obvious example would be an autoresponder like RocketResponder) and become an expert in it.

Share your expert knowledge of the product with your list, hold online advice classes, encourage your potential customers to come to YOU with their questions rather than the product owner and the commissions will follow.

Only then should you move on and promote a second product – use some of the money you have built up from promoting the first product to begin to promote the second and then move onto a third when the time is right.

It can very often be far better to become a master of a very limited number of products than try to juggle the promotion of several at once – especially if the products are spread over multiple niches or specialist areas.

Become an expert in one small niche and dominate…this is one area where it can really pay to be the big fish in the small pond.

 

I had a couple of questions about affiliate marketing recently so I have chosen to address them in two RocketResponder blog posts.

The first question I got was: “How do I know what affiliate products to promote?”

This is a great question because there must be hundreds of thousands of potential products out there from which you could potentially earn good affiliate commissions.

It is really tempting to think along the following terms – well if I choose products which have relatively high price tags and large affiliate payouts then this is the quickest way for me to make a lot of money.

I think there are many people who think exactly like this but I am not sure it is producing particularly good results.

The problem is that this approach looks at things from the wrong perspective…you are looking at the problem from your own perspective and not thinking at all about the point of view of your customer.

Instead focus on the product or service you are thinking of promoting and fully investigate what it has to offer a buyer.

Here are some questions I would ask myself when looking for affiliate products to promote:

• what does the product actually do?
• does it deliver what it says it will deliver?
• would I use it myself?
• would I be happy recommending this product to a close family member or friend?
• is it good value for money?
• do I feel good about myself promoting it?
• can I get excited about this product?
• does the company or person behind it have any proven track record?
• what do existing customers say about the person or company behind this product?
• is this product likely to be here for the long term?

These are just some of the questions that I came up with off the top of my head but they are all important questions which need to be addressed.

Notice that the entire focus is on the product or service…ie what benefits it could have to the end user, because this is what you are selling.

Satisfy yourself that the product is good, then learn how to use it and you will be best placed to sell it to your customers.

The commission structure…well that should be the last thing on your mind.