How Can You Find Digital Products For Affiliate Marketing That Customers Actually Want To Buy & Love. And...They Convert Well?

Are you finding that your chosen digital products for affiliate marketing are not selling well? You tick off the boxes when you chose the product:

• high chart ranking product
• good commissions
• flashy webpage/ sales page
• "plenty of buzz" online

You even done the usual marketing efforts:

• PPC
• SEO
• articles
• product review pages
• maybe a Youtube video

So why aren't you making the commissions that should be coming to you?

First thing. You are not doing anything technically wrong. Those marketing ideas should be working.

And you are not alone.

According to research done in 2013 and then in 2023 that showed what affiliates earned:

• The annual income for a $10k/month affiliate revenue is $120k/year right? So first, how many affiliates earn that figure?

2%

• How many earn between $10-25k/year (1-2k/month)?

13.1%

• $5-10k/year?

11.8%

• So how about the majority of affiliate sellers? $500k? No…no…must be much much more….$1 billion/ year…yeah that sounds right.

Well…

39.2% of all affiliate sellers rake in, per year $0-5k

The vast majority earn either nothing or very little even thought they might have put in a lot of time and effort.

We are going to talk mainly about finding the best converting digital products for affiliate marketing. But the ideas and strategies can be used for all affiliate selling.

So where is everyone going wrong? Why aren't those chosen digital products for affiliate marketing making any money?

Well some people don't take affiliate marketing seriously. In fact affiliate marketing is actually product selling. Selling a product can be a full time business for thousands of people who sell products on behalf of other people.

Other online sellers throw whatever to the Internet and sees what sticks

Then you have what I believe is the real reason:

The product itself.

Ewen Chia (a veteran affiliate marketer who has made millions selling affiliate products) once said "product picking is everything".

If you can't pick the appropriate product then it doesnt matter what you do, it will not sell as well as it should. Regardless of what marketing method is new or how much you spend.

Your affiliate potential will be drastically limited.

So how do you pick the perfect affiliate product that will sell and make you a legion of fans?

First, we could go by what online people suggest. These are not made up:

• pick the best product everyone is selling
• subscription all the way
  
• it has to be a high price point to make it worth selling

Sound familiar?

These points sound OK but each one has a very big problem that causes poor sales. Lets go through each one:

1- Best product. If everyone is selling the best product then you are up against much more people fighting for sales. PPC prices increase, it becomes harder to rank high for low ranking keywords...and you get lost in all the commotion. A best product is a good indication of what people like. To offer it is a good idea but sometimes shouldn't be your first offer. The iPhone is a great product. Should you offer it? Yes, but also you offer other items that could be related to the iPhone- side products which would be a complete natural match. If everyone therefore is selling the iPhone then not that many people will be selling the periphery products. This is where side businesses get built and flourish.

2- Subscription. Subscription is a great idea- constant cash monthly. The main issue is that you have to create a flow of traffic constantly into the subscription funnel because you get a lot of drop off in subscription use and it is only a few percent that keep with payments. You also have to make sure that the content offered is also of good quality and is generated regularly. If content quality drops off or the content gets used up quickly then subscribers flee quicker.

3- High price point. higher price means better hour rate. In other words- its worthy of your time. If you are spending 5 hours a day promoting something through all the channels then you want something to be worth all that effort. However, when you think about it, Amazon made most of its money on the smaller cheaper items, and many of them rather than the larger more expensive items. So if you sell a high priced course and got $30 commission that would be awesome. However, what would happen if you sold 10 lots of a small ebook for $12 and 50% commission- $60.

What you will notice about these points is that your audience is actually dictating what you do and how you do it.

It isn't about SEO or keywords. It never has been.

Affiliate sales and affiliate selling is not necessarily about SEO and content marketing. What you will find is that they will work initially. You get the blip of traffic then it goes away.

The most underrated and forgotten aspect of any affiliate campaign is the actual product that you choose to sell.

Your product is everything. Your product dictates user need, e.g:

• who is going to buy your product
• how they are going to buy this product
• in what format they are going to buy this product
• how much you can charge for this product
• what other products they will buy from you

That is what pure product picking is all about.

If you are really good at marketing and sell a bad product: you get refunds, lack of trust and then your follow up products will never get the sales. This where most affiliate marketing goes wrong.

Forget the Adwords, Gravity, the daily article marketing:

Online, we tend to play around at “business”. We trust the affiliate directory sites for the information about the products that we want to promote. We pick the best products by picking the ones with the greatest Gravity, or even the ones that have the most green blocks right?

Jump onto Youtube and read many marketers websites and you will find that these are the most common factors that you should look for…it’s a make or break situation. Go on check them out. Youtube is full of videos that explain Gravity and other Clickbank stats which they believe is “essential” to finding the best product.

Then you have the common “10 points to find before you buy a product”. Some have been linked to and are deemed “reliable” and because they are written by anonymous sources they get praised for being an amazing resource. They list price, the amount of affiliates that the product has and the amount of product that is actually selling as being major “selection factors”.

I found this in one forum on how to find a product to sell:

1. Find a product that you want to review
2. Find a few websites that has already reviewed it
3. Take something from each website, add your content, some of your opinions and that's it

So basically just BS all your website copy because that is what I have taken from point 3. And how about if all the websites state that it is a fabulous product because they are affiliates trying to sell it?

How about this one: “Go to any category, and choose anything on the first page, those are all the best sellers.”

Wrong.

Others state “choose a hot product!”

A publishing house hired a consultant to advise them how to make more money. The consultant stated that the publisher should choose more best sellers. Ermm…right. ‘Tis not the point. You can not choose a hot product unless you know the product industry. And general rule of thumb, if you choose a hot product, it is already hot and shouldn’t be touched because you will get burnt.

Here is another completely true example from a well known book/ author. None of the bullet points have been edited:

• “The products you choose must be excellent”
• “10-15 programs is a good balance”
• “Focus on a smaller amount of products”

Also the amount of programs is either a lot or too few. It depends, it really does. If you are a “shop front” then you probably are going to have more than 10 products. Content websites can diversify from 1-10 products or they can stick to 1 product and really go full in.

But do you know what?

By picking a random product to sell you are going to get random results.

Its about systems and making those systems fit for you.
There are 5 systems that actively make finding highly converting digital products for affiliate marketing so much easier

Finding the best digital products for affiliate marketing: System 1.

Affiliate selling System 1 is your target audience.

This is role playing and probably one of the most vital parts in picking a product. This is your chance to visualize the people who you would like to target. Sometimes it is good to target people you know. In one campaign I targeted my patients age group, I knew them. I knew what they liked (because I asked them). In another campaign I targeted myself and people of my age. I targeted my parents and figured out what they did and how they interacted. It made my life much easier because products just sprung up whenever I hung around where they were.

• Who are they
• Male/ female/ X?
• How old are they
• What do they do for a living
• What are their likes, dislikes
• What websites or media would they view
• Do they have a family?
• How much do they bring in a year- is it disposable income?
• Are they media savvy?
• Do they read? Do they play sports, what do they do for hobbies?

What is the point? The best way to think of this is. This will lay down your plan to guarantee an easy selling product and to easily sell it to them.

So for broadband users: 28% access or download digital content, 26% participate in eBay and other online auctions, 52% watch video sites including YouTube and its derivatives, and 35% play games online.

If this is the case then direct selling an online book might not be helpful. But what could be helpful is that you would create a video which then directs people to your product.

Take for instance if a person is male and in a larger income bracket. Research has found the following:

They are increasing their online spending

They are well aware of new technology and have higher education

They participate in online auctions

They block many traditional advertisement methods

For women in the same high income bracket?

They use the Internet for more professional education and enrichment, more than men

They purchase with time limits

If they review online and participate in online auctions, they spend more.

One thing that is known between men and women online in a high income bracket is that they utilize an online deferred payment account and that is what influences spending more than anything.

So if you wanted to sell to affiliate super stars do you think that they will find your affiliate product through your link by searching Google? Nope, more than likely they have heard of it, or don’t need it. You tend to find the higher you go up the tree of responsibility and success the more interactions you need to get a helping hand up.

If you wanted to sell to the 70+ generation, do you think an ebook is going to be a viable eProduct to promote?

If you want to sell an affiliate product to new mothers, do you think that they will find you through Google? No, they don’t. They go onto social interaction forums and websites.

Never guess “I think they would like that”

They either want it, or don’t want it. Never think or assume you will waste so much time going down that road.

Social data

Social data is hugely sought after because they tell of peoples movements, what they enjoy to do and how they interact. They can show how much money they are willing to spend and who actually spends it. A great study found that African American consumers spent up to $1.5 trillion from 2015 and that figure is growing. African Americans have huge spending power that many companies fail to realize. The study even stated that African Americans use up to double the amount of cell phone voice minutes than White Americans. That is an amazing stat. Oddly enough, the amount of budget marketers spend on this demographic is actually reducing?!

Another one is that generally Chinese web surfers love flashy, tech websites (opposite to what many marketers tell us). They generally do not like basic simplistic websites. At the time of publication, Chinese web surfers topped 538 million…not a demographic to shy away from. It should be shouting opportunity! But this has been studied. Many cultural differences are not being accommodated online and many large cultural populations are being undeserved.

So when you think of promoting a product and you want to promote to executives would you choose an ebook?

No, you shouldn’t. Our System 1 would have told us that.

Ebooks are generally perceived as low quality in this audience. Unless you can change that perception.

Executives in general are seen as ‘go getters” and people that want to be ahead and stay ahead. They need the information given to them from authority and they are willing to pay for it. Proof?

One Chiropractor decided to set up a marketing business for other Chiropractors. He charges $1200/ month for up-to-date marketing information, seminars, web videos (no Youtube), Q&A and promotional materials. In 4 weeks he was generating $60,000 a month. If he tried to sell a $47 ebook there would be no credibility, no profit and simply no way to generate the sales that he knew that he could get.

So what if your target audience was technologically advanced and they were looking for the best products before anyone else?

Our System 1 would define one of these users. Through research we would have found:

Youtube wouldn’t cut it and sometimes the tech websites are just too slow.

Also, knowing your audience makes you talk properly. For instance if I wanted to target executives I would have to talk like them. I would have to know what their sphere of influence was. My grammar and presentation would probably have to be increased. The perception of knowing would have to be ever present.

I have written this book in a conversation style, but hopefully I use terms that people already “in the know” should be used to.

The voice that you use is a very important cog which should never be removed. People say talk/ write like a young child, but that might exclude your audience. Knowing who you are going to talk to and interact with can make selling a whole lot easier because then everyone is on a level playing field- you know what they are talking about, and they know what you are talking about.

The BS detectors reduce.

Finding the best digital products for affiliate marketing. System 2.

Now that you have your ideal audience, try to figure out where they would go. Would they hang around on forums? Youtube? Off-line even?

Sometimes you might need to go offline to get the best results. One person who was promoting a Bingo website went to his local Bingo hall and promoted the affiliate link there. He got many a commission. He just went round to all the bingo halls when he found that the idea worked and put his home made advert on all the bulletin boards.

Many marketers gave the Blizzard Game Diablo 2 as an example. An old online game where you can buy items to improve your game. They advised you to create articles and go through “search” to attract the Diablo members. But many Diablo players do not use Google search, they went to Blizzard forum. There are forums specific websites which they hang out in. Google is hardly used, but most affiliates will spend their time shifting through data which is completely irrelevant, looking to try and find an already discovered eProduct and how to adapt it to the Google data. That is a terrible waste of time.

The system will be built to cover:

1. What products people want,
2. What they could want
3. Is the marketplace still viable for a product that has been around for ages, can it be reintroduced?
4. System 2 takes into consideration your likes.
5. It takes into consideration your dislikes (I hate eProducts that I can not test myself or I haven’t got the software for, for example World Of Warcraft. I refused to pay $15/ month for a game. I can’t test the eProduct, so I won’t promote it, so I don’t look into them). This is important. If you do not like something then list it here.
6. You can promote anything…just pick something you like to think about and not what is selling. It is hard to do especially if you have been rummaging around Clickbank.
7. Forex, diet, six pack abs and quit smoking are not hard to break, but are done to death. Also the cost to enter might be too high for the rewards gained. You can actually get subsets of those topics. But if you have no idea what they are, stay away. Let other people waste their Adwords cash on those. Also who says that your target audience is looking for those things, more than likely they are not (remember Forex traders will not want an ebook about Forex. Home based new traders might, but being part of their culture will get you better commissions. You will need to research that audience).
8. Have a look around, have a heap of topics that your target audience might like.
9. Look into forums that your target audience likes.
10. Find magazines that they would buy. Go to the store and read a few.
11. Look at Google Insights and the breakout keywords. However what I have found is that the values that it gives can be misleading. A 1000% breakout can actually be a very small number. So don’t rely upon that.

Don’t rely upon Google for search results. People search Google, but they also go to their favourite websites direct. Also I have promoted products which Google states are really low in their search and got better results. Also to note. If you rely on Google for traffic and terms then you will be Google linked- your traffic will rise and fall with search engine algorithms and you will only get what people have searched for, usually not what they really want. In reality most search traffic is free traffic or “nosey traffic”. It deals with size of numbers rather than relevant targeted prospects. This is specifically directed at Adsense. The more traffic you have the better the CTR. No-one goes to a website just to click on an Ad unless it is really relevant or the text on the website is poor and there is no way out!

Finding the best digital products for affiliate marketing system 3.

Affiliate selling System 3 looks at how you are going to build a website. Theres so much choice.

• Do you need a website
• Do you need a forum
• Do you need a blog
• Do you need video?

How is that medium going to look? Colors, pictures, length of text (if any), pictures (your own or stock?), is it going to demonstrate or sell, are you going to be available for questions, how are you going to host it, free templates, additional ads.

See many people think that just setting up a website is all you need and many marketers promote that idea. But they are wrong. Your targeted audience will tell you what they want from you.

If you choose a 50 year old man who spends their day on the factory floor, who has kids (now grown up) who shops weekly and who has a caring wife. They go out weekly to working club and interact with like minded individuals…and you want to sell them a physical product that reduces back ache…how are you going to promote it? Or have you chosen the wrong product?

Most marketers will state that you need to build a website full of content and then get as many backlinks as possible, then rate as high as you can in the search engine charts. They will spew out thoughts of forum participation and Youtube videos.

You get no sales.

But let’s look at the customer.

In reality the guy might get something from the store (or more than likely the wife would) and 80% of the cases this occurs. They will probably test out friend recommendations. If it is bad they might go to the Doctor or Chiropractor if they have benefits.

Is the product still bad for Internet promotion?

No, not really..

Social media use among younger generations has largely stayed flat since 2012, but the share of boomers and their elders who use social media has increased by 10 percentage points. Also over 50+ make up a lot of commerce spending online. Social seems to play apart because of connections and brand power of the network site. Showing ads? It seems that over 50s show an above 28% negativity towards them.

Now if that can be linked into evidence that your products are cheaper than the local store then that man might buy from you- if you can target where he goes (even the use of magazine which have online versions). It will save him time looking for something that he could get online (but you have to be really convincing answering the Elephant in the room- why buy from a website when in 10 minutes they can buy from a store?). But, he might not trust your referring site…so trust in your website needs to be improved (with pictures of the product, you showing the item, your views and even additional testimonials) then the affiliate link is just a done deal. If it is cheap enough, then $20-30 isn’t going to be a deal breaker.

But color, your text, your font, your title, your webpage/ blog are all cogs. Just because you buy a website from a broker doesn’t mean that it is a converting website unless they can actually prove that it generates sales over a certain time period- then why are they selling a proven system?

• Did you know that blue uniforms sell better in certain circumstances than other colors?
• Did you also know that 81% of people earning $100k+ use coupons. Coupons are huge that through all income range, the percentage using coupons never falls below 81%

Sometimes people do not understand blogs…they want to see the information there and then, they don’t want to shift around through text after text. They don’t care about news, they want their product.

Some people want to ask questions so a 2 way communication system would need to be introduced (Comment Luv is pretty good because it is “in your face” whereas the original Wordpress comment box is not really inviting enough). See those corner “Hi, How Can I Help You” text blocks on many websites? They work, they offer professionalism and there is a belief that someone is going to help- the consumer is just not “walking around” online.

Did you know that the length of the sales text works well with some products and not with others? We all know that longer text sells, but not in all cases. The more niche the topic the more information is required to sell that item. If the niche item is a big ticket item it needs more information to sell it. However, if it is a brand item then longer sales pages are not required. The only way that we know this is because it has been tested.

Oh, never use the sales text from the sales page, none of it. If you give your audience a sales page and then they click onto the vendors sales page with exactly the same text, they will click away.

Amazon tests everything in sight. If you go onto Amazon a lot you will find things disappear and reappear and changing. They are testing and a 1% increase in conversions just by changing the positioning of a box will generate millions to their bottom line. At the present time, the top left hand corner of a website is the best place for anything (almost never used by website owners). But also, you are not Amazon. With tiny traffic a 1% difference is not going to be a big deal. So initially don't worry about tiny details.

What some people do is to draw their website in basic form onto a bit of paper. They then tear up the main segments of the website on the paper and then rearrange one bit at a time. They test. If it does something good, it stays, if it goes bad, they just revert to the original setting.

But what does your target audience like? Do they want news, do they like video, are they a fan of static webpages, do they like everything in one spot like the old Squidoo (which I have a love hate relationship with)? You just don’t know unless you test and research the audience that you are targeting.

Going back to Diablo. When I was searching for things to buy for the game (weapons, armour etc), I looked at Youtube. But no vendors were there, just fan video of the stuff that I wanted.

I went to Youtube because I wanted to see the stuff in action. It is an action game with action weapons and items- they aren’t static. I wanted to see people’s comments from the vendors past sales (selling game digital goods needs more evidence of credibility), I wanted to see what the vendor had. Instead I found a website through a friend…all without Google. My age, my interests, my bookmarks all point towards Youtube as my “go to” place.

Once you have tested each segment and found the best website/ blog etc for your product. Keep a note of what works. That will be the system that you will use per product of that type/ with the customer of that type.

Finding the best digital products for affiliate marketing system 4.

Affiliate selling system 4 is about how are you going to promote the sales tool?

Adwords

Articles

SEO

Newsletter ads

Email

Backlinks from blogs?

Adwords is great for testing. It is quick and easy. You run it for 1 week and see what occurs. You change and tweak, and run it again. Once you have your desired effect (a sale, a newsletter sign up etc) then you can start your promotional building using efforts that you enjoy.

This was my failure. I hate SEO and promotion. Build a website, bookmark, article build…I was nearly sick after the 36th website I built. And do you know what I didn’t figure out?

If my site actually converted in the first place!

Kinda backward I know, but that is what marketers state. Build a website and then backlink like crazy.

But that is not the case.

It should actually be:

Make sure the message that you are promoting is through a medium that is suitable for the audience that you want to target and then make sure that you get a healthy CTR (click through rate) from the links you provide.

If my audience does not use Google Search, then why am I trying to break my fingers to get links back to my website to get me higher in the search rankings?

If I am targeting executives, they will not go through search anyway. They will need a specific targeted snail mail direct response/ 2 step response advertisement at the least. Ultimately the only way executives will hire you is if you have already shown that you know your stuff. Free seminars, even call-ins are going to be worthwhile. And then you might have to show your credibility and get on the talking circuit and then be referred through word-of-mouth. Then you can sell affiliate products for an upsell from the product you have now created (your speaking seminars).

Why do people pay $1k upwards to see “back in the day superstars” like Jeff Johnson speak…because he had proven that he had actually done it. He now gets paid to speak and he can charge a lot of cash.

Some people say that you need 7-15 shows of a promotional message before they buy.

Actually you don’t. You need one.

If they want it, they will buy it. Preselling actually warms up the kinda converted anyway. You are just pushing them over the edge by clicking on a button. I can see all the ads in the world that affiliates send me. But I will not buy unless I actually want something to buy. If you buy Adwords and have a great description, they are clicking through because of what they read, not because of anything else. They have shown the first step…you asked a question and now they want the answers. Your site should be a done deal.

So once your site does convert at the best possible CTR then you can start to organically link from sources that are laser targeted to your audience (blogs, guest posts, forums etc). Then your traffic is going to be more targeted and your sites are going to be more targeted to them and your affiliate product is going to be targeted to everything…

But remember that figuring out the best SEO tactic is only going to come down to System 1. Who is your audience? Forget rampant backlinking, there is just no need.

I have a specific medical book that is in circulation. I use Wordpress to host the blog which has communication splattered everywhere- there is even a dedicated page that states “ask a question”. I have included a bio about myself and my experience in this field because that is what my audience looks for. I found what my audience was worried about certain medical issues and wrote pages solely on that. All the pages are linked from the main page and each page has links to the other pages. There is no Adsense and the book is no-where to be found. It doesn’t look like a selling website at all.

However, on every single page I ask if they want to stop bad issues from happening. Most do (I know that because of the research I did about my audience). So what I have done is to create an Aweber account and set up a newsletter offering advice and one-on-one interaction. I know that they wouldn’t buy straight away- my System 1 told me that.

I have an 83% open rate on each and every email…and still I haven’t sold them anything.

The selling will come later. I believe the messages have been set up to deliver the “sales page” within 32 days for a product that they already want.

So why didn’t I use an ebook from Clickbank? Because the ones that I found didn’t go with System 5: Price.

To find out more about finding the best digital products for affiliate marketing check out here

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