I have received this question from many of my students who have gone through the first module of my "Pay Per Click Ecademy" course on market research. Once you’ve found a profitable product or niche to promote, the next step is to source and find companies who are willing to offer affiliate programs for your products/niche. Here’s a few ways to do this:
1. Joining Affiliate Networks
International
There are many affiliate networks available, but here are some of the top reputable affiliate networks around today:
- ClickBank – The ClickBank Marketplace has thousands of products, with the majority of them being digital products. It is a good place to find information type of products, and they have a good reputation with regards to paying their affiliates.
- Commission Junction – Comission Junction is similar to ClickBank and is quite a reputable company for affiliates.
- ShareASale – ShareASale has more physical products than digital ones. Give them a try if you are searching for physical items to sell.
For Australians
There are two fairly big affiliate networks for Australians, the first one is Commission Monster and the second one is ClixGalore, both are quite big and operate for Australians.
2. Searching Affiliate Directories
There are some webmasters who have created online directories that provide search facilities for affiliate programs. AffiliateScout is one of them. All you need to do is go to AffiliateScout and either browse through the directories, or do a search for your particular keywords to find matching affiliate programs.
3. Joining CPA Networks
CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action, and is a payment model where advertisers pay publishers on a per lead basis. Large companies understand that there is a marketing cost to acquire a lead, so what they do is they pay their affiliates a certain amount per qualified lead that the affiliate brings to them. This has huge potential to you as the affiliate/publisher, because you don’t have to sell anything in order to get paid. All you need to do is to convince targeted people to fill in a form as an expression of interest, and as soon as the form is filled, you get paid for the lead. Below are some great reputable CPA networks:
- AzoogleAds – AzoogleAds is a very popular CPA network amongst internet marketers. However, getting accepted requires you to go through a lot of paperwork, but is very rewarding once you get in.
- Market Leverage – Market Leverage has more financial offers so is good for anyone wanting to enter this market. They have a lot of other offers as well, so they are good to check out regardless. The other cool thing about Market Leverage is that if you are a super affiliate, and make more than $1,000 in weekly commissions, you can choose to be paid weekly, instead of monthly like most other affiliate networks.
- NeverBlueAds – NeverBlueAds has a lot of ringtone offers. It’s good for people who are trying to make money from giving away free ringtones.
There are a lot more CPA networks out there but I have not had time to go through and review them all. For your own interest, I have them listed below:
There is no such thing as a best affiliate/CPA network, it really depends on what you are after, whether it’s support, or the amount of offers available etc. Each CPA network has its own unique competitive advantage, and each has hundreds to thousands of different offers. Go through this list and sign up for a few to see what you can find.
4. Searching on Search Engines
You can go to Google, or any other search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, or Bing etc. and do a search for your main keyword + affiliate program. For example, if you want to promote golf offers, you can search for golf + "affiliate program" (with the plus sign and quotation marks), and if there are any affiliate programs related to your keyword available, the search engines will give you a list for you to check out.
Final Words On Affiliate Programs
Remember to check out the advertisers' sales pages and history before signing up to their affiliate programs. Some landing pages and offers are really bad, they do not convert highly, or at all. Also, always remember to collect email addresses and a database, so you can sell back end related offers to them. This is where the majority of the profits come from - the back end sales. If you keep the offers related to each other e.g. a person buying a product on how to play golf may want to buy some golf shoes and golf clubs etc. then the customer will thank you for it. However, if you promote all different types of products, you will come across as someone who is just trying to make money out of them, rather than someone trying to be helpful.
So go and join some of these affiliate networks and see if there are offers related to your niche. This is Binh Down Under and I wish you all the best with your online business success.
Binh Down Under