How to Find The Right Affiliate Offers to Promote for Your Audience
August 8, 2015 by
Cipriano
With
relative ease, affiliate programs can be found on almost every corner
of the Internet. But not every affiliate program has been created
equally. As an ethical and responsible marketer, you need to be able to
source out affiliate offers that are beneficial to both you and your
audience.
In this post, we’re going to cover some ways to find and evaluate
affiliate offers that not only match your audience but create a win-win
scenario for both you and your visitors.
The Importance of Picking a Good Affiliate Offer
Finding good affiliate programs that serve both your readers and your
business can present a few challenges. There are a lot of different
options to pick from and no affiliate program is ever
guaranteed. However, there are a few things you can watch out for and steps you can take to be sure you’re making the right choice.
Affiliate marketing – at least the good kind – is built upon your
ability to establish a trusting relationship with your visitors. If you
pick an affiliate program that is profitable for you,
while short-changing your audience, then the trust you worked so hard to
develop will be quickly destroyed.
Balancing your needs with those of your audience makes the process of
sourcing high-quality affiliate offers more important than ever.
So how exactly can you go about finding the best affiliate programs, and what separates the good from the bad?
How to Pick an Affiliate Offer
While there are many sources of potential affiliate offers, one of
the best things you can do to avoid running into problems is to stick
with the larger, well-established affiliate programs.
Some of these may be run in-house by the companies themselves (like
Amazon), while some may be offered through a third party affiliate
network (like CJ Affiliate). When assessing affiliate offers take the
following into consideration:
- Does the company or affiliate network appear to be stable?
- Does the company or affiliate network have a history of affiliate payouts?
- Will you be able to comply with their terms and conditions?
If all the items on this list appear to fit the bill, you’re set.
Just remember that you should never place all your eggs in one basket.
No affiliate offer is guaranteed to last forever and sometimes finding
more than one affiliate program for the same type of product or service
is a good idea (although not always possible).
Moreover, 11% of hobbyists and crafters purchase their supplies online and that number will almost certainly increase.
Affiliate Networks vs Flying Solo
Most (if not all) of the major brands typically use a large affiliate
network. This includes retailers like Zulily and manufacturers like
Adidas. A few of the more popular affiliate networks include:
Typically, getting set up with an affiliate network involves an
application process and sometimes a phone call with an account rep. As
affiliate networks act as third parties, they provide advantages to both
affiliates and advertisers alike. These advantages include:
- Access to a large number of affiliate offers. For example, at the
time of writing this article, ShareASale showed 3995 affiliate programs
in their database.
- An easy way to consolidate payouts and track a large number of affiliate programs.
- A way for advertisers to maintain brand integrity. If you break the
rules, you can find yourself banned from the entire affiliate network.
Affiliate networks can also make it easier to find appropriate offers
for your audience. You’ll discover that with the larger networks, you
can
search for offers based on categories, keywords, seasons, and more.
Even with the advantages of using an affiliate network, some
companies decide to run their own affiliate program. While it’s
certainly not common, you should always perform some extra due-diligence
when dealing with small or independent affiliate programs. After all,
your welfare and reputation are depending on it.
Here are the basic considerations when it comes to picking an ideal affiliate program:
- Rate the overall quality of each advertiser that you promote. Would
you personally buy from them? Have you? How would you rate your
experience with either the retailer or the product they are selling?
- If their product or service is something you’d like to recommend,
will they compensate you enough to do so? Don’t just look at the
commission rate. You need to look at the big picture including earnings
per click (EPC), average order value, average commission, and the
tracking gap (the longer your cookie lasts, the better).
- Consider their order reversal rate. How often do customers
cancel their orders? This can also be a great indicator of customer
satisfaction.
- Are there banner ads or display ads (these are also called
creatives) available that match the overall look and feel of your
website?
How to Know What You Visitors Want to Buy
Actually discovering what your visitors want to buy should, in
theory, be an easy process. I’m going to make the assumption that you
are actively involved with your website.
Before we jump into finding the actual affiliate offers, let’s think
about how to decide which products or services you should be promoting.
Start With Your Home Base
Since you’re actively involved with your site, it usually means that
you also have a personal interest in the topic you are promoting. Use
that personal interest to your advantage by promoting the products and
services you rely on every day.
Also, if you’ve developed an active community either through blog
commenting, Facebook, or a forum, listen to what your community
is talking about. By discovering the common problems and challenges
people are facing, you’ll have an opportunity to create solutions.
Instead of just finding a solution to promote, do some research. Talk
to people, gather opinions, test products or services, and try out the
competition. That’s how you can provide real value to your audience and
earn their trust.
Performing Product Research
Sometimes, finding products and affiliate offers worth promoting
comes down to research. That means you’ll need to roll-up your sleeves
and do some good old fashioned hard work.
Amazon
For physical products, one of the best places you can start your search is Amazon.com. With just under
$90 billion
in 2014 sales, Amazon represents as good a source as any when it comes
to researching consumer trends. As if you weren’t already aware, Amazon
also runs what is probably the biggest independent affiliate network.
With relative ease, you can visit Amazon and within seconds begin
searching for products that are appropriate to your audience. If you see
Amazon as one of your better choices in terms of affiliate programs,
you might also consider third party software called
Terapeak.
Terapeak provides a more user-friendly interface and better insight
into trends within your target market. It also makes the process of
scouring through Amazon much easier.
Google
You can also turn to Google in your search for appropriate affiliate
offers. A quick search for “affiliate programs pet insurance” turned up
an entire page of results. Same scenario with “affiliate programs
BBQ supplies”. With just a little effort, you’ll be able to source a
variety of offers for almost any niche.
Company Websites
If your audience relies on your expertise, you probably have several
standby products or services that you rely on day in and day out. These
companies are a great place to start when you begin your search. Most of
the time, you’ll find a simple link in the footer that says something
like “affiliates,” “promote XYZ,” or “join us”.
Conclusion
Uncovering the ideal affiliate offers for your target audience will
require a little bit of detective work. Most of the time it’s easier to
start with the company websites you are familiar with and slowly
progress up the food chain until you are searching through the databases
of large affiliate networks.
Any time you find an affiliate offer that you think is appropriate,
try to find 1-3 others that you can use as a comparison. Line the offers
up against one another and figure out
which one will work the best for you and your audience.
Remember, the most important thing you can do is to remain true and
loyal to your audience. Without them, you’ve got nothing to sell.
I used to cloak my links the old-fashioned way, using simple HTML redirects.
