Choosing the Right Affiliate Program/Product...

[MrCat]

Just some thoughts I wanted to share.

When you research on what affiliate programs to go for, always take into consideration the market you are targeting - as they are the ones who will make the conversion on your site. Also, always try to pick one that you you have knowledge on. Providing more than the product itself is a big plus - useful info, good advice and post sale customer support will give you more customers via referrals.

After that, it would also depend on how you market your product to the right market. This is also a factor to be greatly considered in determining your success. IMO, when you want to earn big, you should be ready to spend for it as well.

I always opt for PayPerClick to reach my target audience. Knowing how this system works would work to your advantage. Research (keywords), Selection(keywords and PPC provider), Implementation (bidding and start-up) and Analysis (which keywords worked best and cost vs. revenue).

How do you choose yours? And how do you market them? Share in guys and gals

[Joff]

I've considered buying into an affiliate program too but I can't get over the feeling that it's all snake oil.

Affiliate programs that promise to increase your wealth all exist just to sell the same promise to others. That is, you pay £20 and get a PDF. The PDF says "To make money, just sell this PDF". And so begins the endless spiral of no-one actually selling a tangible product, just this worthless document.

I've got experience (I'd like to think valuable ) in a few fields so would like to put it to good use, but where to start?!

[Brian Turner]

In running a finance portal, I thought I'd test out some affiliate programs via Tradedoubler.

What I've found is that targeting for conversion is the key, and that means qualifying your audience. So simply displaying affiliate ads leads to high views but low clicks and therefore low conversion - whereas a dedicated page about the topic has worked nicely.

Only earned a few hundred from doing so, though the pages I targeted where reasonably generic. Now commissioned a content writer to write up keyword articles around each product, will publish those, and see if it helps.

Another thing I'm looking at - I run a HDTV news site - I noticed the ads are mainly selling Plasma/LCD sets. So I'm going to test setting up a "recommended shop" section at the foot of TV set reviews. Some good companies on there, and will test out the targeting for UK-only viewers if possible. If proves a hassle, I'll just move my Adsense into the body article for everyone, then hope the bottom recommendations work.

I figure both of the above offer potential for running a PPC campaign targeting each page as well, to help drive in the targeted traffic. Will have to learn my way through PPC properly for that, though.

Either way, I have no big presence in affiliate marketing, but I'm testing and the overwhelming concern is matching prospect to producer, to ensure it's properly targeted.

2c.

[Joff]

Brian, what's your main strategy for driving traffic to these sites? Press releases that are then picked up by other news networks?

[Brian Turner]

Everything I do is just SEO at present. No press releases for these sites, though I'm going to put some through a test run.

[Joff]

I've got something in mind but I don't think SEO will be the right route for it as searching will be competing against a lot of other sites in the marketplace, even though the project is a different take on things.

I'm hoping with the right effort, content can be of interest and that backlinks will see me good.