Arguably, the most potent part of affiliate marketing strategy for newbies is to have a solid affiliate product selection. When referring to ClickBank specifically, anyone (including you) can be overwhelmed by the amounts of products shelving on the marketplace itself. You cannot afford to wrongly pick a product to promote because a poor product won’t solve people’s problem (remember the principle why we want to be an affiliate; to help people, not to scrape money all the way) and just because a product is so popular on ClickBank, doesn’t mean that the product is fit for a newbie to promote.
After miles of article and forum readings be it online and offline, I recognized that there are general criteria set by experts and advanced affiliate marketers that ensure the products they promote will bang in their market audience regardless of their niche positioned. The criteria also somewhat correspond to what my internet marketing guru taught me in many classes held.
Below would be me my personal criteria when picking up a product that I want to promote. Kindly note that the criteria mentioned are solely of my humble knowledge and through hours of comprehensive reading. I’d welcome positive comments if you have any, so it may serve as a guideline to me and newbies out there:
1) Kick off your campaign promoting a niche of your interest or expertise yet can be monetized while at the same closely converging it to the big three niche; wealth, health and relationship. The three niches mentioned are widely accepted as the evergreen of affiliate marketing but are jam packed with skilled and more experience marketers. Furthermore wealth niche in particular would require you to have considerable amount of proof attributed to your affiliate success, so don’t ever sell lies to your potential customer in the first place (by clipping some doctored ClickBank income or fake cars). Don’t go however for a niche that may have astounding searches on Google but little people are keen to actually spend on it. Once you have developed your maturity and authority in your newbies niche then you can start digging into the big three. These three niches have the biggest pool to monetize, so don’t waste your time drifting into a niche so detail that actually has little to no money making potential. Forget about level of competition momentarily because every niche has competitors lurking anyway. Example: if you are an avid violin player, why not start your affiliate business in violin e-course or selling violin music sheets for starters. This way, not only you know what to say about you are also building your authority faster. Plus buyer will trust you better. The key here is to start with something you are well versed with and knowledgeable about.
2) Take time when finding and assessing any product offered on ClickBank. Select and weigh products of similar niche then filter into more detailed criteria. We want a quality product that solves problems with the fastest and the most effective result. You can’t beat the nature of being human itself; we want a fast yet simple solution. Furthermore, you want to avoid after sales issues (refund especially) as a result from promoting poor product. To identify, a good product always comes with good review. Check out the product review on Google; type product name + review to get overall perception of the product. If the search engine results page (SERP) returns with product advertisements, better but try to avoid it as it may be too competitive for beginners. You may want to scout merchant’s sales page too. If merchant’s sales page able to negate every doubt prior to purchasing, that’s the winner. Don’t go for a sloppy furnished site that has little proof, testimonials and/ or no guarantee.
3) Look for a reputable vendor/ merchant. A vendor/ merchant is the product owner of the product you are promoting. A good vendor would likely support its affiliates better, usually with marketing tools (solo ads, article review transcripts, etc.) that would be very helpful for newbies. Reputable vendor also means that you are going to ensure your product you are promoting is going to run on a long term rapport because we want to have the product running on auto- pilot mode later on. See if a vendor is contactable through email and observe vendor’s promptness, transparency and readiness. If the merchant happens to have seasonal newsletter, subscribe to it so the vendor can assist you in marketing strategies or useful tips. If vendor responds poorly, you can likely tell vendor after- sales response and friendliness. Better yet, browse through vendor’s profile on Google to get clearer insight of the vendor.
4) Not many internet marketers would tell you this but this tip is fairly important as for me. Avoid sales page with opt-in subscription, pop- up, free trial and/ or merchant contact. These kind of promotional tools will steal away your potential buyer from your browser cookie if the merchant ever solicit your potential purchaser using their own newsletter or discount pop- ups. You want your buyer to be intrigued of what you are promoting and such leaks actually distract your buyer’s attention too. To tackle this tip is very easy, just thoroughly filter and avoid sales page with these criteria. If you are feeling lucky, you can contact (by contacting merchant, you are also doing the above tip) merchant and ask for secondary sales page provided if they have it.
5) Always check product’s gravity before promoting. While the gravity determinant differs among affiliates and always opens for debate, it is best said that the fair line for newbies should not run lower than 30 and not more than 100. (30 < product < 100). This is how ClickBank define gravity:
“Grav: Short for Gravity performance statistic, this number represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 12 weeks. Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are “hot” at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product.”
While it is enlighten to read the definition, even many experts vary their opinion on this. As a newbie, safe to get the idea that if a product’s gravity equals to zero (0), it means no affiliates have carded sales in the last 12 weeks. A product with gravity say, 250 signifies that the product has been sold by affiliates for the past 12 weeks. Single digit product gravity tells that the product is relatively low in terms of sales. From my observation, zero (0) gravity products tend to be stuff that has not enough sales for affiliates to promote and push traffic to the site but experts from various forums agree that beyond 100 product gravity means that the product has intense competition, and the product is widely available through mostly advanced affiliates which newbies should avoid. In order to get into the range, just click the drop-down button and sift through the product that meet the range (30 < product < 100). Tips: if possible don’t even sit close to 100 because the higher the gravity number, the stiffer the competition. A note of advice though, a low demand niche should be composed of a tighter gravity range. In summary, product’s gravity doesn’t tell you anything about conversions or how much money a product is making, etc.
6) Go for high earnings per sale. Not wanting you to be greedy but ClickBank houses mainly digital products where no physical storage required and no expiry date for products offered. I guess it is not too much to ask. A point of advice though: search for products that carry initial average percentage of sale between 50% to 75% of commission and avoid product that pays you less than $10 per sale. It is just not worth it. You will be indulging later on with all of the hard work for keyword and product searches, long list of article writings and possible outsourced tasks for site search engine optimization and advertisements. Come on, $10 per sale is measly peanuts for your efforts! Zoom in for a better bargain as there are plenty of products that will meet the criteria. Just set the filter attributes for Avg %/Sale to 50% to 75% but don’t forget that priority has to be put to product’s gravity.
There you go, a compilation affiliate marketing strategy for newbies- product selection. I hope this would serve as your preferred guide whenever you’re taking a dip on ClickBank. If you are new to affiliate marketing, feel free to dig up more information from my website http://www.affiliate-for-newbies.com. Plenty of insights, advice and tips that will help you comprehend affiliate marketing better and ultimately get the taste of your first affiliate marketing success!
