High commission offers may lose money.

Why it may be smart to go with offers that offer lower commissions.

[gabby]

Why go for the affiliate programs that pay the highest commissions? Vendors that offer average, or even low commission rates may offer the best payouts.

When you choose a partner based on the commission rate you may be jumping into the same boat with thousands of other affiliate marketers. You are, in effect just increasing the competition pool.

PPC campaigns cost more, and your web site traffic diminishes thanks to a dilution of the marketplace.

I believe that it would be more profitable to concentrate your efforts on an offer that pays low commissions, and therefore produces less competition in search engines, PPC, and other marketing tools.

[TrustNo1]

Why believe when you can know? I'm sure affiliates that work the higher commissions, at least the good ones, are making money at it. You can make make a profit with programs that pay high or low commissions. Your idea that merchants that pay low commissions have less competition doesn't hold up. Take Amazon for example. Low commission, 1 day cookie, lots of people pushing them for all sorts of things. If you want a little less competition try finding something niche to push and some of those niches pay high commissions. I've found more than a few of those, high commissions, hardly any competition. Try different programs out, experiment and find out what works for you. A 5 cent PPC click that gives you 6 cents in return is the same profit wise as a $1 click that gets you $1.20 back.

"High commission offers may lose money."

For some, for others they can make lots of money. People sometimes think their experience with a merchant is everybody else's. I can just about throw any name out and you'll find affiliates hating the program, losing money and with the same program other affiliates making a killing.

[MovingOnUp]

I just looked at my top 5 and bottom 5 merchants in terms of commission rates, and here's what I found:

Top #1: Good earner. Near the best, but not the top in terms of total earnings.
Top #2: Poor earner. High prices and poor conversion ratio.
Top #3: Poor earner. High prices, poor conversion ratio, and lots of parasites.
Top #4: Poor earning. High prices and poor conversion ratio.
Top #5: Decent earner. Moderate prices and fair conversion ratio.

Bottom #1: Decent earner. Moderate prices, very popular, and good conversion ratio.
Bottom #2: Decent earner. Very low prices and good conversion ratio.
Bottom #3: Poor earner. High prices and moderate conversion ratio.
Bottom #4: Decent earner. Very low prices, popular products, and good conversion ratio.
Bottom #5: Great earner. Very low prices, popular products, and good conversion ratio.

The bottom line for me: The commission rate is important, but conversion ratio, pricing, popularity of the products, and reputation of the merchant are all bigger factors.