5 Tips for Marketing Physical Products as an Affiliate
A lot of affiliates immediately feel drawn to the “make money online” niche, or they like to go after the big offers on CPA networks. The whole time, though, there are thousands of affiliates quietly making money on physical products with a lot less competition and a lot less volatility.
Physical products can definitely make for an easier time as an affiliate, but there it’s just like every other kind of affiliate marketing in that it comes with its own set of rules and quirks. Before you get started with marketing physical products, consider these tips:
- You need to be very specific. If you’re promoting grills, you can’t just bid on the keyword “grill” and except big things to happen. Even “Weber grills” is probably not specific enough. You want people who are very close to knowing exactly what they want, as they are the most likely ones to convert to sales.
- Modifiers can mean big money. Often, merchants advertise their goods with brand names and colors and model numbers. A lot of them, however, forget that consumers also search things like “cute recycling bins” or “stylish blue flats”. These less common modifiers can be easier to rank for and much more profitable for the average affiliate.
- Not all products work for paid advertising. If you’re promoting a $5 product with a 10% commission, your take on each sale is going to be $.50. If you’re paying .25 cents/click, that’s not a margin you can support for long. It’s better to focus on products with a minimum of $10/sale for the average transaction.
- SEO is your friend. When margins are tight on PPC, you can dramatically improve your overall profits with the SEO traffic that continues to come even after campaigns have failed through paid traffic methods. With a properly optimized site, no paid traffic test is ever completely wasted.
- Finding ways to keep your visitors can be the difference between a super affiliate and a struggling affiliate. You put a lot of time into getting people to your sites, so it makes sense that you should also spend time building a newsletter or otherwise bringing your traffic back again and again. It’s not about single commissions anymore.
One of the best resources on learning to market physical products is Rosalind Gardner’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook. Check it out and see what you’re missing.
