Step 2: Choose Products to Promote
The next step on our How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business Guide is choosing products to promote.
Later in step 6, you will learn that the core of affiliate marketing is producing quality contents. For now, I want you to know that there are two ways to attack this.
First is to write random articles with low-hanging keywords to boost your site’s search engine optimization score. The other way is to write content with intent. In other words, every article you will publish has a goal to promote or sell something.
If you don’t have a product in mind, then you will end up writing random articles that achieve nothing. This will lead to disappointment because you will keep publishing random blogs but you will see little or no return.
3 Truths About Product Promotion
There are at least 3 things you need to know when it comes to promoting a product.
- There are almost hundreds of billions of products in the market.
- Not every product sells.
- Bestselling products today might not be tomorrow.
That said, make sure to choose a product to promote that will give you the best return on investment.
So how do you choose a product? Here are some of the right questions you need to answer.
Questions to Ask When Choosing for the Best Affiliate Product
1. Have you used the product?
Promoting a product that you have used in the past will help you promote it better since you have experience with it.
Not a lot of affiliate marketers do this because most are just in for the profit. Truth be told, I am giving you these criteria because I want you to become an honest and ethical affiliate marketer. However, mark my words – honesty and ethos are traits that are hard to come by these days therefore these attract loyal audiences.
In case you don’t have money to buy products you wish to promote, here are the things you can do.
- Check if products have a trial version. This is usually the case especially if it is a digital product.
- Email the company and let them know if they can provide you a demo product for you to review.
- Read other reviews. If you really can’t get a hold of the product you wish to promote, at least read lots of reviews about it, decide if you will use it based on the reviews you’ve read, and give an honest opinion about it.
2. Are you comfortable selling it to your friends and families?
I tried MLM before and I will be honest with you. I am not confident in selling it to my friends and families because I don’t believe in the product. Sure. I will use the product myself, but that’s because I can tolerate a lot of things.
That said, you should also consider this question to be important because sometimes, you have no problem using sub-standard products but will not recommend it to your family and friends. Keeping this in mind, you should pick a product that you are assured of its quality and deliverability and confident that it will add value to your friends and families if given to them.
3. Can you give a good and honest review of the product?
Staying on the topic of honesty, be sure to only promote products that you can give an honest recommendation to your audience. Consistently providing honest recommendations to your audience will help you gain their trust which will help you build your reputation and authority in your niche.
Sure, you can lie about your reviews to make a sale, but your audience is smarter than you think and they can easily smell lies.
If the product is bad but you still want to promote it, then at least honestly tell your opinion to your audience. At the end of the day, what you think is bad may actually be a good thing for others. What is more important when promoting a product is to share your honest opinion.
4. Do the product and merchant have a good reputation?
There is a saying, “birds of the same feather, flock together”.
You might be asking how is this related to selecting your product?
The answer is brand image and reputation!
Before deciding to promote a product, research the product and its company. You should avoid products that are not on par with your standards and you shouldn’t deal with companies who have a bad reputation.
The reason is simple; you don’t want their bad reputation to tarnish yours.
5. Does the product fits your niche?
Selling products within your niche is important because you will have an easier time promoting a product that is related to your content.
I don’t know about you but I go to blogs, Youtube channels, and social media accounts that interest me. Usually, these content marketers will create a video and feature a product that they’ve used in their content. Naturally, since I am interested in the content I am consuming, I am most likely to buy the related product they are promoting.
Now, consider a Youtuber who creates videos about cars – modifying it, DIY tuning, etc. Then all of a sudden, he promotes protein shakes instead of car parts or car services. Do you think people who are interested in cars would likely buy the protein shake?