Choosing your Affiliate Product (Cont.)

For your affiliate product, find one that is selling well (use the Alexa ranking from the sales page to make sure that it is getting enough traffic…http://alexa.com/**) and that it has a low return rate. Another way to tell if a product is successful (or if it has too much competition) is to type the title of the product into a Google search and see how many competing ads there are for both the AdWords ads and organic search pages.

You can also tell how much PPC competition there is for a product by going into your AdWords account and typing in the name of the product on the keywords search function. Check out the prices of that particular keyword to find out if the cost of PPC is prohibitive.

You will want to be sure that the affiliate program has a good sales letter and that you are paid more than $10 per sale. In addition, you should be sure to find out how often you will be getting paid.

Good programs have excellent support Web sites for affiliates and you should take advantage of all the information you will find there.

Most programs pay every two weeks, but some make you wait a month or more to get your check. Take a look at the listings at http://paydotcom.com/ for quick-paying programs. Be sure that your affiliate program has a statistics function that tracks your clicks and sales.

You can also check out http://clickbank.com/ and http://lifetimecommissions.com/ to get ideas. They generally list the best programs at the top of the listings for each affiliate program type. It is important to make sure that there is an email address, phone and or physical address for the owner of the program so that you can contact them in case of a problem. Good programs have excellent support Web sites for affiliates and you should take advantage of all the information you will find there.

When you find programs that you think are good, sign up for free and get your affiliate links. Put them in a folder in Wordpad or Word on your computer so you do not lose them. Then go to our link cloaker and generate new links using your Web site and domain name.

** Alexa.com is a great resource site to find out whether the affiliate program you are considering is doing well. The lower the Alexa rank of a site, the more traffic the site is attracting.