Just wondering...how do you research an affiliate program? What tools do you use to find out what to sell, when, and from which seller?
start with typing in a few keywords into google and seeing what the advertised ads show and click on them all to see how they do it. One of the keys I think though is to find something that has little competition and no one is selling. But then you don't have any to compare to so you need to try everything out yourself and you'll probably end up losing a stack of money before you find that one product that makes you thousands. and of course, read heaps of forums and see what everyone else is doing
I am taking the easy way out, lol. I respect those that do a lot of research to try to find what is hot, but I would rather sell what I am interested in. For example, I wouldn't give a hoot about selling snow boards, no matter how popular they are. However, I am interested in some collectibles, so I am trying to narrow down which ones to sell.
Small thing that ship easy with high demand. Go to eBay and see what selling the hottest. Apply to affiliate program with in CJ. Build a BANS site around that item and then use Popshops to add content to the bans site. Add content slowly over a few months. Remember seasonality. This lawn and garden right now. Do social bookmarking, press releases and articles. Read Triangle Marketing it explains a lot of this stuff and it's free.
I try to find products related to my niche. I try them one after the other to see which one works best.
thanks a lot for all those quick replies guys. much appreciated. oh...i ll try that. so mind letting us know which one is converting better now? And how do you promote them? adwords? youtube? or do you have a website? unfortunately i cant afford to burn too much money right now. so i guess i cant afford to do what you do... that seasonality thing is a nice one, depotgang. thanks for that. but say i hav zeroed in on a product. now, how do i go about choosing the right seller for that product? do u just experiment with different sellers and then settle down with the best one? true...but im afraid of making losses man. cant afford to lose money now. thats why im trying to find some tried and tested affiliate program with which i cud make some money to atleast start off with. lol! yeah..thats what im doing now. reading heaps of stuff!! lol! and that losing money thing...thats what scares me.. i dont mind losing time though...im in no hurry whatsoever!!!
I pick things that look interesting... then I test the campaigns while using software to track conversions. I keep the good campaigns and drop the rest. With this method it is pretty easy to consistently make more and more money over time with little work. Also, if you are doing PPC, CLOAK YOUR KEYWORDS! Don't think that people will not steal a profitable campaign. I'm willing to teach how to do this if you'll sign up under my affilaite ID so I can get a referral bonus.
If you're redirecting from search engines, without a landing page in between, the advertiser can tell where your traffic is coming from. Anyway, many affiliate programs are managed separately, or from a different company, than search marketing efforts. I work with multiple advertisers on CJ, and we've NEVER considered stealing keywords from affiliates. We do our normal keyword research & expansion techniques for search, and let our affiliates work on their own techniques as well - we don't want to cannibalize our programs.