Affiliate Hard Products

Often when we talk about affliiate products we’re talking about digital products that can be instantly downloaded. But there are also hard products that are delivered directly to the buyer’s doorstep. In this post, we’re going to take a quick look at the process of promoting hard products.

As with any affiliate marketing, the first step is determining your niche. It may be as general as electronic products or as specific as digital camcorders. Just keep in mind that you’ll be building a website around your niche. So a very specific niche may only have a single web page, while a more general niche may have hundreds of pages. You’ll also want to keep the competition in mind. Too much competition will make your promotional efforts more challenging.

Once you’ve selected a niche, you need to select affiliate products. There are thousands of affiliate programs out there. Most are managed via affiliate networks such as Affiliate Window, TradeDoubler, Commission Junction, Webgains, and so forth. The advantage of using these networks is that they aggregate programs, making it easier for you to search for and identify appropriate merchants for your niche.

They also provide performance data such as EPM (earnings per thousand clicks), EPC (earnings per hundred clicks) so that you can anticipate how well your traffic should convert. Rather than focusing on the commission rate, it’s generally wiser to focus on earnings.

Also keep in mind that major brands tend to offer lower commissions but will convert better than obscure brands. A page full of unknown brands isn’t likely to inspire confidence. Ideally go for a mixture of tried and tested merchants together with perhaps some newer, innovative offerings.

The Website

Whether you build your own website or have someone build it for you, you’ll want it to have a professional appearance. You’ll also want a structure similar to what you’ll find at eBay … from general categories to specific categories to specific products. This will help the search engines understand your site, spider it properly, and make it easy to navigate for your visitors.

For instance, if your niche is electronic gadgets, you might have broad categories on your home page navigation menu such as: Audio, Television, Home Theater, Video, Cell Phones, and Computers. If your visitors click on say, Television, they’ll be taken to a page with a navigational menu that lists: Plasma TVs, Flat Panel TVs, Projection TVs, etc. And from there, specific brand names. So as you can see there’s a hierarchy to the search process. Each specific product should have its own web page, with proper title and description tags.

Keep In Touch

Customers are just as valuable to an affiliate marketer as they are to a business owner. Therefore, you want to hold onto the customers that come to your site. You accomplish this by offering a free newsletter, a free e-mail course, a free ebook, something of value in exchange for your customer’s name and e-mail address.

This allows you stay in touch with your visitors. You can send out notices about special deals, suggest new products, refer them to review pages, etc. So instead of making a single sale, you have the opportunity to make multiple sales to the same customer over time.

Success Stories

While some people will succeed, others will inevitably fail in any industry. If you need some reassurance, there are plenty of Affiliate Marketing Success Stories on blogs and forums out there, some of which may be motivational and useful. Just don’t waste too much time worrying about what others are doing – after all you should be creating your own success story!