how did you pick your product or affiliate?

[juice]

I'm not asking for you all to reveal your money makers but I'm just curious how you decided to choose the one you did..

did you spend a lot of time reading forums/sites reading on others experiences? googling for affiliates in a particular market? dumb luck? personal interest?

[skibum]

Probably promote close to 300 different products/programs. Look for god site design, compelling offers, theings that are easy to buy online and decent payout percentags.

[jcoronella]

Ask your affiliate manager what their top program is, and what the top affiliate in that program is making. (they won't always tell you the latter). Most of my big winners came from a good relationship with my aff. manager and his/her recommendations.

[davewray]

Juice....I build my sites and then pick the appropriate affiliate programs/products to promote. A lot of affiliate networks will post ROI based on performance of all affiliates promoting a certain product/service. Those are usually the good products to start with.

A lot of it is just testing, testing, testing and keeping the affiliate links that make most per click and ditching the ones that don't perform. (You can always calculate how much you make per click whether you get paid per lead, click, or sale.).

Personally, I stick with the affiliate networks. Ones like CJ, CB, Aff. Fuel, AffiliateNetwork etc. Why? Because I'd rather get checks from just a handful of places than hundreds from different locations. However, if you are valuable to a certain company because you send them hundreds of leads or make hundreds of sales per month then you can usually get a bigger/better cut by dealing with them directly.

HTH.
Dave.

[ska_demon]

I chose something that would be a challenge. ie stupidly competetive. If I could make a profit in that field then I should be able to do even better in less competetive areas. Then apply to everything!

[mfishy]

<< A lot of affiliate networks will post ROI based on performance of all affiliates>>

Other than cj, which networks provide this information?

[HeyJim]

Probably promote close to 300 different products/programs.

Skibum: Approximately how many sites does that cover? Lots of mini-sites or just a few big ones?

Thanks.

[skibum]

It's around 300 different websites. Anything from chocolate to information services to software to clothing and shoes. Mostly CJ & LInkshare merchants but the bulk of revenue and profits come from programs not in those networks.

[gopi]

>> I'm just curious how you decided to choose the one you did

My only creteria is 'is there a demand for the widget? ' ...The usual keyword tools will assit me in this analysis ...

[dertyfern]

demand, intensity of competition, cost to promote, affiliate compensation--both amount and time to pay, and my knowledge of the product/service.

[rfung]

How do you select your merchants?

For instance - I have a search function on my website. I noticed that a lot of people were coming in and searching for this widget which i didn't have listed as a product on my site - but I save the search keywords for analysis. So I went and looked up on Google for that widget and it's hard to find it!...I eventually found a merchant, immediately joined their affiliate program yesterday, and today I already have 1 sale out of 33 clicks, for $5 fee. We'll see how this item will turn out and if it will dry up.

I feel almost embarassed to expose my method - crude as it is , but I'm just starting and it's hard to really get real cases of 'product selection strategies' from the pros :) Besides, it took me maybe an hour and a half of work to find and apply to the merchant and change my pages , hopefully this hour will pay itself over and over for a long time.

Not to say how I go about finding merchants is the most effective or that it even works, but let that be a 'real life' sample of how things happened :)

[davewray]

mfishy...I re-read that sentence and what I meant to say is that several affiliate networks post the average EPC network-wide for specific products.

Offersquest does this. And Affiliate Fuel offers such information in their "Tune-Up" section so that you can concentrate on higher EPC performing products/services.

Dave.

[mfishy]

Thanks dave, I haven't heard of those networks, but will check them out.

[wellzy]

I generally choose the type of products I want to sell, then find a merchant with good site design who has the type of products I am looking for. I usually find a few merchants who offer the products and as long as all is equal, I choose the one who pays the best. Sometimes to get good coverage on the products I will use a few different merchants for the same type products.

[matrix_neo]

Thanks dave, I haven't heard of those networks, but will check them out.

Mfishy you haven't heard of affiliate fuel? That really surprises me! You were kidding right? ;)