How To Find A Good Affiliate Program
Ever since announcing the niche site challenge, I’ve been itching to start. However, I haven’t officially started, because I said I would wait until May 1st. The anticipation is killing me.
I have been thinking about it though: There are a few things that have crossed my mind, (you’ll have to wait until Saturday to hear all of them.) One of the things that has crossed my mind is that if we want to make money from niche sites, we’re going to have to think pretty quickly about where the money is going to come from.
When I build authority-type sites (like this one, I suppose) I never worry in advance about how I’m going to make money. After all, there’s a pretty long process and the best bet is to create your own product in the long run.
However, part of the niche site challenge is that those options are out. It’d be implausible to create twenty-eight sites with different product lines in one year anyway.
So really, we’re down to affiliate programs.
Of course, you want to find good products and good affiliate programs (i.e. they actually pay out enough for it to be worth it.) If you want to earn $500 from your site, then if you get paid $0.50 per sale, you’re going to need one thousand sales a month to hit your goal. That’s a lot more traffic than a niche site is going to get.
Ideally, we need at least one of two things:
- A high-cost product.
- An affiliate program which pays out a high percentage of the cost of the product.
So, if you made 10% on an item that was worth $10, you’d make $1. That’s not a lot. 10% on a hundred dollars is a lot better, because that’s $10 an order.
Similarly, a 50% pay out on ten dollars is $5… that’s not bad, and certainly better than the $1 above.
Obviously, if you could get a 50% percentage and a $100 product, you’d be happier.
Affiliate Programs: First Things First. Amazon.
When it comes to affiliate programs, you want to start with Amazon. Now, anybody who has looked at Amazon’s terms probably thinks I’m crazy: They have a 6-10% pay out, which is low, and most of their items are low.
It’s a good place to start for one reason.
That reason is that there are a hell of a lot of companies who offer stupidly low commissions… or even points to spend in their store.
For instance, a few months back I was researching clothing outlets for a niche project. I looked at all the big online retailers in England… 1%, and if you sent them 1000 orders (1000!) they’d up your commission to 2%.
That’s insane. For a £50 product I’d be making less than £1. If I sent them 1000 orders, I’d make £500. That’s £50,000 in revenue for a company. Ridiculous.
With a lot of retailers, your commissions will be like that. That’s why Amazon is the place to start: They offer nearly every product under the Sun, and whilst your 10% revenue isn’t great, in contrast you’d earn ten times as much as with the retailer above.
Also, an added benefit of Amazon’s affiliate program is that people will look at your website, use your affiliate link and then not buy your product, but browse and buy other things. This still earns you a commission. This is great around Christmas where people will add loads of other items into the cart at once.
Use Google To Find Affiliate Programs
Google has various footprints which will help you out on various tihngs. For finding affiliate programs, you’ll want to use the “site:yoursite.com “affiliate”” footprint:
Of course, if you regularly read other internet marketing sites, you’ll probably know that already. Something you probably won’t have read anywhere else is a list of words that you can use other than “affiliate” or “affiliate program:
- Referral
- Commission
- Shareasale
- Clickbank
The list goes on. My point is that not every company calls it an affiliate program. If you find an item that’s worth £100 and it’s available on Amazon, then you should still have a look around and see if you can get a better deal. Some companies offer 20% or more. This doubles your income without doing any extra work, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to try and find an alternative.
What About Places That DON’T Say Anything?
If you can only get a product from one place, and they don’t have anything about an affiliate program of any sort on their site, it’s still worth emailing. This is especially true if you’re dealing with a) a company that clearly isn’t good with online stuff, or b) internet marketers who offer info/downloadable products and the like.
The first one is good because they’ll probably want to have someone implement this but they’re not sure how or not aware of the concept at all. The second one is good because most online business people can easily implement an affiliate program from their software.
Of course, with either of these ideas you might end up being the only affiliate for a product, which is a massive advantage.
A lot of the time there’ll be no answer or you’ll get a “no”. However, you’re just sending an email. It’s not like you’ve lost anything.
Final Thoughts
Finding a good affiliate program is key to niche site success. It comes down to two simple things:
- Can you find a product with an affiliate program that people actually want?
- Do the revenues add up so that it’s worth it?
Remember, Amazon is a great equaliser here: It shouldn’t be your first choice, but even if it’s the only place you can find, as long as you pick a reasonably highly priced product you’ll be fine.
If you want to make $500 a month, you’ll need to make about $16 a day. With 5% revenue, you’ll need to send $320 a day in sales to earn that. That’s a lot. It’s
However, if you earn 10% – you only need to send $160 in sales. That’s the price of a single high ticket item in some cases, and less than two $100 sales.
Away from Amazon:
If you earn 20%, then you need to sell a single $80 item every day.
If you earn 50%, then your figure is really low… you need to sell one $32 item a day.
That’s a final math example to show you why a good affiliate program is important. There are also affiliate programs with recurring revenue (which is a lot better, but you’ll only find that in certain niches,) affiliate programs with higher ticket items and affiliate programs with those magical 50%+ revenues.
If you’re building a niche site, then doing an hour or two of research in this is well worth it because as you can see, going from 5% revenue to say, 20% means a massive jump in income.
P.S. James from Redpill Reviews has just posted an article saying that he’s going to do the niche site challenge as well. I recommend everyone who is interested in building websites (and earning mythical internet money) joins in. Like he says, there aren’t any rules – just a commitment to working on building niche sites every day.
If you read his article, you’ll see it’s going to be pretty interesting: he’s already talked a bit about his goals and strategy. I think that even if a handful of guys do this challenge and update semi-regularly, we’ll have a lot of different approaches and data between us to learn some really great stuff.
So join in!