How about promoting some hot-selling products and earning money each time someone buys them?
Well, the online business competition is becoming fiercer with each passing day. With this being said, affiliate marketing is becoming heavily popular among marketers to make money without worrying about product creation, warehouse, logistics, or the initial investment. All you need is to promote affiliate products, generate sales, and earn a commission on each sale.
By the way, if you have little idea about affiliate marketing and how to start it, then let me brief you that it is a process of you earning a commission by promoting someone else’s product or service! Cool, isn’t it?
There are millions of products and services in the market that are for sale online, and most of them have an affiliate program. You can join these affiliate programs as per your choice/niche and start promoting their products. For each sale, you earn a commission which varies from product to product.
Forget a catchy name, forget a stunning theme, and forget your social media following, if you are able to choose the right product, it will ultimately impact the other business decisions you make.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Troubled by all the fancy words used in the above paragraph? Let me make it simple for you.
The process of earning a commission by marketing another company’s products is referred to as Affiliate Marketing. The person involved here can simply search for a product they like and then promote it. This helps an affiliate earn a piece of the profit from every sale they make. Meaning you are an affiliate, you can earn money by promoting someone else’s product. Indeed an easy peasy way to earn profit, eh?
Finding Products to Promote Online
Regardless of the industry you are looking to cater to; there are generally two types of product – commoditized and niche products.
Commoditized products make up the majority of online sales, whereas niche products are goods and services that serve a specific customer base. In most cases, these products are one of a kind, making them some of the most popular items on the internet. They are often made in small batches or on-demand. It completely depends on the demand for a certain product. So whichever product you are choosing to promote, make sure it has a teeny bit of a fan base!
Read along to know the seven steps involved in finding a great product to promote.
Steps to Finding a Great Product to Promote
1. Identify Product that Solves a Problem
What can you do when you feel doubtful about something? Well, you can rack your mind and make sure to find the best solution!
A problematic situation helps a person figure out the best solution; yes, you heard me. The level of difficulty and the time you take to brainstorm are directly proportional.
Keeping this in mind, generate ideas for a product or service to kickstart a reliable business.
If you try turning into your daily tasks, the small annoyances that you face can turn out to be a brilliant idea. Pinpoint a problem and solve it conveniently.
Your service or product doesn’t need to be a huge endeavor; rather, it can be as small as a sewing needle. It just has to be effective!
2. Find Products You & Other People are Passionate About
Starting your venture takes time, and you will even have to glide through rocky terrain. If you are passionate about something, then the sacrifices you are making won’t be that big of a deal. Finding products that people are passionate about will help you build a meaningful engagement between the customers and the product.
For example, if you are passionate about cameras and love clicking pictures, you can easily figure out what other buyers must be looking for. It will help you generate significant content that can encourage people to buy the stuff they want.
3. Consider Products with Branding Potential
If you are stepping into this competitive e-commerce industry, then finding products with a branding potential is essential.
You need to put time to research and understand your target audience. After that, you craft products and services that speak to potential customers. The product’s image must resonate with the audience and compel them to come back and buy it. Based on the audience’s identity, you need to build brand loyalty.
Before starting, ask yourself these questions:
- How does your audience like to be addressed?
- How can you position your product?
- How can you design your website to communicate with potential customers? It includes layout, color scheme, and call to action.
Now what I am actually trying to say is, if your blog’s target audience comprises of men, you sure can’t promote stuff like lipstick and mascara.
4. Be Mindful of the Ongoing Trends
Carving out a place to promote new and trending products can be easy. It is important to stay up-to-date on the recent and trending products and promote them before they hit the peak of popularity. However, many trends don’t last for longer; therefore, make sure your business doesn’t take a slippery slope. On the other hand, the upside to promote new products, allow you to keep an upper leg on the SEO and emerge as a leader within the specific niche.
Now you wouldn’t want to promote a product that was popular among the masses a decade ago!
Another way to find products that are more in demand is to check the reviews. Products having a number of reviews are generally considered great products and will sell more. So, if you see a product having 50 or more reviews, consider it a good product. Only a foolish will promote a product that has zero or bad reviews, so please don’t promote such products and wonder where is your commission!
Also, other than checking the number of reviews, focus on the review date as well. You could get an idea of a product’s sale frequency rate and check whether it is still trending or not.
Make sure you also head to your competitor’s site and get an idea of the products they are promoting. For instance, you have a make-up blog, check out the other popular make-up affiliate sites to have a look at the type of content they are producing along with the products. This will help you gain an insight into the type of products that you can promote on your website.
5. Products that Fulfill Guilty Pleasures
Catering to your audience’s passion or vice could help you with the promotion of different products. The buyers are willing to spend more on their guilty pleasures, so if you are ready to understand their obsession, you can find great products to promote.
You can also try to customize and promote different products together so that the audience knows what else they can buy. For example, you are promoting a phone; it wouldn’t hurt to slide a few accessories that go with it!
6. Evergreen Products
Some of the products generate much buzz initially, and then the fizzle ends gradually. On the other hand, some commodities are evergreen and sell well for several years. They do not depend on the latest trends. It may be better to identify a few evergreen products in your niche and then promote them. These posts could easily continue earning commissions for you, even if you have written it a few years. Yes, believe me, some people earn commissions for products that were promoted ages ago!
7. Pull Targeted Traffic
Keywords are a lifesaver! They act as an anchor when your content is going down.
The majority of the traffic on your website comes from the users who search for products, descriptions, and reviews. The keywords used for the searches can be any of the following:
Long-tail keywords – mobile phones under so-and-so dollars with face unlock
Generic keywords – best mobiles to buy
The traffic from the keywords mentioned above is targeted since the users are searching to buy. These users look for information about products so that they can make an informed purchasing decision.
While writing posts, make sure to focus on long-tail keywords since the generic keywords are likely to have a great deal of competition. The major challenge of this could be a higher ranking. When you focus more on the long-tail keywords, you get to have a better chance to pull in targeted traffic – the people who are likely to make a purchase.
For instance, instead of writing about the perks of fitness equipment, you could write on different topics that target people of groups like fitness equipment for trainers, fitness equipment for users with joint pains, and so on.
Another thing to keep in mind when you seek long-tail keywords to include in your content is using “for” suffix. It is an easy way to find long-tail keywords in your niche.
It gives you an idea to use the other keywords that can help you fetch potential customers to your content. It can be highly challenging to rank generic keywords; therefore, by creating a specific post on long-tail keywords, you will be able to pull in targeted traffic and promote niche products.
Conclusion
As someone who is a newbie in affiliate marketing, you have access to millions of products. However, your earning and success are directly linked to the products you are promoting. With the help of these tips, you can create a site and choose products that appeal to your target audience. The more you can sell, the more you will be able to boost your commission.
