Bruce's Golden Goose marketing

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.

If you spend much time talking to other affiliates, you’re probably well aware of the changes with Facebook’s advertising system.  In essence, they have released a new set of advertising standards that all but eliminates affiliates running CPA offers.  It’s shocking for a lot of people who depend entirely upon Facebook for their affiliate income, but it’s also not surprising.  Facebook is just one of many sites trying to clean up their advertising.  Google, for example, has spent the last year or so banning thousands of affiliates for promoting deceptive products or questionable sites.

So what is an affiliate to do when it seems like the best traffic sources are drying up left and right?  My recommendation involves two things:

Diversify. Affiliates who made all their money from Facebook are hurting right now.  Those who had 4-5 steady traffic sources, however, are only mildly irritated at the changes.  Don’t ever put yourself in a position where you rely on a single company for all of your income.  If you wanted to do that, you could go to a day job   It’s true that most people will earn a little less by spreading things around instead of specializing, but for most of us, a more stable income is better than one that fluctuates wildly and has the potential to disappear overnight.

Go legit. The reason these offers are getting banned from networks is that they deceive, mislead, or otherwise attempt to swindle the customer into doing something they don’t fully understand.  Rebills don’t usually make it clear that customers will have to pay and pay and pay…credit report offers relied on the fact that customers didn’t always know about the truly free credit reports they could get from the government…dating sites often misrepresented their members…financial offers often sold customer data to anyone and everyone who would buy it…the list of shady practices goes on and on.

Given the state of things, a lot of affiliates are now returning to physical products.  Instead of promoting free trials and zip submits, they’re promoting dishes and clothing and electronics.  Because not everyone is letting go of the shady offers just yet, this point in time represents a great opportunity for affiliates to get a head start on promoting physical products before the CPA network affiliates fully migrate in that direction.

If you’re not sure where to begin, Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook is an excellent place to start.  Her guide is extremely long, but it’s also packed with a ton of good information about finding real, long-term success in affiliate marketing.  Check it out here.