Do to the over-saturation of the market and the ever-rising competition, joining the best affiliate program is vital now more than ever. It still is very possible to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing, but if you’re not smart about choosing the right affiliate program to join, your chances at success drop with each passing day.
Four Key Factors to Picking an Affiliate Program
We’ve put together the four most important things to look for in an affiliate program to make sure it’s right for you before you join. Nobody has time for trial and error nowadays—not when money is on the line.
1. The Product
The first thing you always want to do is pick a product that you can get behind and that you won’t get sick and tired of. You have to feel some level of interest in the product otherwise you’re not going to do your best selling it. The best affiliate programs will have a bunch of products that you can feel passionate about—after all, you’re going to spend a lot of time talking about it and pushing it, so you’d better be able to stomach it.
But it’s not only your interest in the product that counts—it’s other people’s as well. Who cares if you love the product because it reminds you of your Aunt Mae’s pies if your Aunt Mae’s pies are horrible? If no one is going to buy it—or at least show some interest in it if you’re that confident in your ability to sell it—then it’s a bust no matter how much you love it.
Do some keyword research and estimate the amount of search volume and traffic the product would get each month. A red warning light should go off on any product with high competition and low search volume—take a pass. On the other hand, if the search volume is high and the competition is low, you have something you can work with.
2. The Website
When you’ve narrowed your affiliate programs down to a few choices based on the product, take a look at the merchant’s websites. They should be the type of sites that you would find yourself on—easy to navigate and understand. In a nutshell, they should be user-friendly and entice you to want to buy.
Remember, you’re only going to be sending people to the site—if they can’t close your leads, you’re probably not getting paid (unless you’re working on leads, not conversions). The site has to be tight with clear info, good CTAs and zero leaks. Leaks are links that lead away from the site that distract the leads you generate, resulting in no profit for you. Be certain that the page you are sending the leads to is the one that will be doing the closing—and that it’s capable of doing so.
3. The Conversion Rate
When you’re selecting an affiliate program, you always want a great conversion rate from the merchant. They could have all of the right stuff, but miss that one intangible that creates sales. If they don’t have it, chances are you’re not going to bring it in all by yourself.
Calculate the number of leads that have completed the call to action out of a hundred visitors. This is your conversion rate. You really want a conversion rate that makes you money, so you’ll have to look at your commission and the product’s price point as well. For example, if you’re making 10% commission on a $100 product that has a 1% conversion rate, you’re making $10 for every 100 leads you send. If a site is paying out the same on the same price point, but has a 5% conversion rate, you’re making $50 for sending the same amount of traffic over.
4. The Tools
Finally, take a look at the tools the affiliate program is using. Merchants should be offering high quality tools and creative implementations for you to take advantage of, be they text links, widgets, videos, coupons, banners, data feeds, etc. What you want to make sure of is that you are gaining some extra type of value by joining that affiliate program right off the bat.
The best affiliate programs will always provide their affiliate partners with value and tools to help make their jobs easier. After all, it behooves them to help you drive in traffic for them. Never join any type of program that doesn’t offer you value, or worse—tries to charge you for it.
When it’s all said and done, choosing affiliate programs is half feel and half numbers. Knowing when it feels right and adds up right isn’t that hard—you just have to pay attention.