ITM Marketing Blog

Choosing the Right Affiliate Products for Your Website or Blog

affiliate marketing infoNot every online marketing strategy is the same and not every marketer is going to choose the same products or service to market on his or her blog or website. This is actually a good thing since if everyone was marketing the same thing, then there wouldn’t be any point to marketing at all.

For affiliate marketers though, marketing the wrong products or services on their websites or blogs can be harmful rather than helpful. One of the main reasons why some marketers are not making money on their affiliate sites is because the products or services are all wrong; some in fact do not make any sense at all. For example, if you run a blog about gardening and you place affiliate ads that relate to computer software, what are the chances of one of those ads being clicked by people who came to the site looking for gardening info?If the wrong products or services are chosen by the affiliate marketer, then there are two main things that will happen:

No Money

The obvious problem is that the affiliate marketer will not make any money from the ads that they place on their site(s). As previously mentioned, when ads or links are not relevant to the site that they are placed on, then the interest of people who visit the website will not be the same as the ads. This will generate a low number of clicks and an even lower number of purchases in most instances.

Credibility

Affiliate marketers often take on the stigma of being seen as spammy or fraudulent because there are those out there who take advantage of this type of work and have less than stellar ethical standards. This is something that affiliates have to overcome right from the get go, so don’t make it any worse than it has to be. Placing irrelevant ads or links that go to products and services that are yards outside of your niche is going to take away credibility.

No one wants to lose money and no one wants their website to not be trusted or taken as a legitimate site that has real value. But what should you do in order to make sure that you are choosing the right affiliate products for your website or blog?

Stay Within Your Niche or Close to it

If your website is about computer products, then stick with computer related affiliate ads and links; if it’s about healthy cooking, then stick with diet, food and cooking related products and services…you get the idea. However, you are not required to stick with only  a few select products or services. You can go a little bit outside of your niche as long as it makes sense. Using the gardening example again, it would make sense to put affiliate ads relating to cooking or canning on your site because those niches are close enough related that your readers may still be interested in them.

Keep Affiliate Links Outside of Your Niche in Posts; Not on the Main Site or Blog

If there is a product or service that you really feel the need to market, then put it in a blog post or on a separate page so that it does not mess up the flow of your whole website. For example, if you have a website about car repair and you want to market a product about health foods, then you could integrate a blog if you do not already have one and make a post about how being healthy can help mechanics (more energy, be in better shape etc). You could also elect to build a micro niche website for the product or service as well.

Pick Products You Stand Behind

Whenever possible, only market products or services that you have either tried out if it’s a physical product or used if it is a service. By trying out the products or using the services first, you can more accurately describe them and sound more confident on your website when you are writing or blogging about them. If you are an affiliate for poor quality products then that could reflect on you and your reputation.

Investigate

Make sure to do your homework on the affiliate product or service before you start to market it on your own website. You should find out how long the product or service has been on the market, the results other people have seen (if possible), find information about the creator or company and check out what options you have when it comes to actually marketing it. For example, are you given banners or ads to place, html code for text links or both?

Don’t Choose Products Based on Which Ones Make More Money

When you are deciding which affiliate products or services are right for you to market, do not only factor in how much money other people have made from the product or service. Remember, each marketer has different website traffic, different tactics, strategies and followers. Not every marketer or website is going to experience the same results from the same products. Due to this, pick products that will work for you and your website rather than picking products that you feel will make you the most money.

You are the only person who can decide which affiliate products are right for you to market in the end but it is helpful to know a few of the different issues that can arise if you happen to pick the wrong products and what you can do to set you back on the right track.

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Posted on January 16th, 2011 by in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, General, Internet Marketing, marketing tips / Tagged , , , / 32 Comments

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