The Traps To Avoid In Finding A Hot Product
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How do you find a hot product? Clickbank is the natural choice for affiliates looking to promote a product and make money and it’s a great starting point.
Just like searching for keywords, finding products can present a real problem for people especially inexperienced marketers and the truth is, it gets back to keeping things simple. Clickbank aside, there are plenty of other opportunities to promote affiliate products.
Seasonal promotions has been covered before in these newsletters and is often overlooked. If you have no experience promoting seasonal offers don’t worry, there’s really not much to it. Resources such as http://www.cj.com/ are good places to go and look for products and product vendors. Halloween for example, signing up as an affiliate for buycostumes.com will never have you running short of products to promote. Buy.com is another great avenue at any time of the year.
Here’s something you should keep in mind. Just as you would compare keywords or products you should also compare product vendors. There are a couple of important aspects of choosing a product vendor you want to become an affiliate for.
One of them is to check there buying process. This is very important. Always give preference to a vendor who makes the buyer jump through the least number of hoops. For example, a buyer comes to a product page, finds what they are looking for, likes the price, clicks through to what they think is a payment page and is suddenly confronted with a huge form to complete and in many cases, some type of question and answer session.
Now if this looks hard work to you it’s going to be hard work for the buyer and the fact is, many will simply switch off and go elsewhere. a vendor who gives the buyer the least number of actions before they click the buy button is very much preferred in our books. A buyer is hot and ready to spend money. They want to get the formalities over and done with as quickly as possible. They don’t want to be spending the next twenty minutes filling out unnecessary forms just for the privilege of buying.
This is an important point to keep in mind when looking at CPA offers. CPA offers are a terrific way to earn money for what seems to be trivial involvement from the buyer. The same process applies here. Check out the vendor’s process and if a visitor has to take more than two actions then you should consider looking at something else which pays the same but doesn’t have the visitor jumping through too many hoops.
This is all part of the initial intel work on selecting a product to promote. It should also be one of the main sticking points when promoting products on Clickbank. A potential buyer spends 20-30 minutes divulging the contents of a sales page and is excited and ready to buy at the end of it.
Then they click through and are confronted with another mass of content. For me, that doesn’t make sense and I’ll look for an offer that gives the visitor the shortest way possible to the payment page. Another aspect to keep in mind when analyzing a sales page is to give preference to those which call for an action in the first 100-200 words of the sales page.
What else do you look for in affiliate products?
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Very informative article. Nice read.
Good point on making it easy to buy something. I remember using oscommerce as a shopping cart. Way to many hoops to jump through. You had to go through the trouble of signing up for an account first, thankfully somebody created a mod. All that is really needed upon checkout is the payment information, nothing more. I like to collect the info after the sale. Something like “if you would like to be updated as to the status of your order” and there is where you collect information.
It’s hard finding a good product in a long list from these websites. All you have to do is narrow yourself down to electronics, food or something. Then search for it.
That is a good idea, I will often browse through Affiliate programs on PJ or CJ, and get ideas then do the Kw research. Also Micro Niche Finder is a great tool for this purpose.
I’m not in the Affiliate Marketing craze yet but I do have some insight in it and this article just makes me smarter
I should try clickbank.com anyway good tips.
I am big fan with affiliate marketing , may be i need to include my website with clickbank links , Thank for good post
Great thoughts! There are definitely many places you can go to find products to sell. I think it is hard to sell products using clickBank because they do seem to have a bad reputation as of lately.
I have no problems selling clickbank products… personally i think it comes down to the marketing.
Ahhh John!
Another fantastic post!
matt
I agree about having the call to action within the first 100-200 words, but most clickbank products I’ve looked at seem to make you scroll down through many paragraphs of copy.
Also, if you can take some constructive criticism, I would like to see you use “their” instead of “there” where proper. For example, “check their buying process” is correct.
I’ve read through a bunch of your stuff and LOVE it except this one grammatical error keeps bothering me.
I want you to continue to look professional!! And no, I’m not a teacher… lol
Yeah I agree that the number of hoops the customer has to jump through makes it more difficult to get a sale from them. It’s hard enough to get people to spend money these days.. give them a break and make it so easy to make the purchase… a cave man could do it=)
Clickbank is certainly the most popular affiliate network among internet marketers.
Since promoting Clickbank products is taught by so many marketers, it’s becoming more difficult to compete.
But, I still make more sales via Clickbank than CJ, Amazon or any of the other networks.
One of my goals for next year is to work more with other networks where there is a greater variety of products, including physical products.
Mike
Great Post. Tell, you Know something afilliate program to people outside from US?
I have had great luck with Clickbank ever since I got John Cow’s free ebook.
You give just a little info about choosing a product in CB, but it was enough to spark my thought processes and I have started 3 sites since that are targeted to CB revenue. Now I just need to get more traffic to them.
Great post Jason,
AL
Thanks AL!
Great post – also a good idea to check out the niche and subniches using Google Trends. (1 of about 50 million things one can do when researching affiliate programs!)
~ Rob
I thought there was only 49.5 million things ?
When checking clickbank products to promote., I always check the gravity of the product. the higher the number means more affiliates are promoting it. and has a higher chance that the product converts with traffic. But on the flip side, it means there is more competition.
Ultimately it’s not that important if you go for a hot seller or not.
It’s the way your market something, and if you are in a hungry niche.
Offer what people want. You ain’t have to sell it, only recommend and offer it (not the same).
Off course the quality of the product, the sales page from the merchant and YOUR sales copy have to match well, if yes then you will make sales.
In smaller niches with less competition it’s even easier to get traffic and make money if you know how.
That leads me to EDUCATION. Do you know how to market Online ? Ever invested into the asset KNOWLEDGE in respect to Internet Marketing?
Without this my friend you only PLAY the MMO game, same as winning in the lottery. No HOT product will be able to level missing knowledge.
And I’m NOT talking about buying the latest hype, push button solution offer from the gurus. Those are mostly not profitable for you as a Newbie (if you are a newbie).
I’m talking about a SOLID BASIC KNOWLEDGE which makes you understand why you DIDN’T made sales till now. Some which put’s the puzzle together.
Learn the basics over any resource out there. I’m a Wealthy Affiliate member and found this to be the cheapest and best resource for a step by step intro into IM.
Check out a Squidoo Lens of mine here for more
Wealthyaffiliate.com Review
LEARN how to walk first and IM is not diffiucult.
G.
Thanks for your interesting take on this.
I think there is so much information on the internet and from people trying to sell you secrets of Niche finding or affiliate marketing.
At some point you have to stop reading and just learn by experience.
What are your thoughts on the current economic crisis? Is it affecting affiliate marketers yet?
Yes and no… it depends on how you market them. You need to put yourself in the buyers shoes… figure out what would make them buy and then sell it to them. If you can find the products people are passionate about then it works.
Is it affecting affiliate marketers… of course. But the good ones are figuring out what to shift thier focus on… there are lots of great niches that actually boom in these times.
totaly agree with John.
A other point most never manage is
FOCUS and Take Action
Buying and reading one book after another won’t get you anywhere.
Pick ONE strategy, make a plan, work this out to the point where you will see that the niche is profitable or not.
That’s the reason why you should choose a niche you know something about, because then you can really go deep and deliver great content over a longer period of time.
Just my 0.2 cts.
I agree. One of the beauties of online retail is that it’s so much quicker than standing in line at a store, and that’s why our shoppers choose products from out sites. Thinking about the vendor process is as key as choosing the product itself, cuz we all love hassle free
. That in and of itself helps with the sale of an item. It’s just good customer service!
Wow, what sensible advice. Now this is something which I am certain I would never have considered when looking for an affiliate to promote. Thanks once again,for such grounded advice.
Best info. John. You have pointed out very good to find right niche affiliate products.