How to choose a profitable merchant/product.

**yeikow** · 11-06-2007, 10:40 AM

Hello all,

I'm new to Affiliate Marketing and I'm reading everything I can get my hands on.

Earners Forum is part of it

One thing I want to get right (or as close to it as possible) from the start, is the logic by which you choose to market a product, or a handful of products from a merchant: what makes it worth marketing?

As I see it right now, I'm going to build a website that will show about 5 different types of products (menu) in a niche and review about 3-5 products in each of the types. When the user clicks on one of the products I'm reviewing and recommending he is led to the merchant's website. If he buys something, I get my commission.

So far so good?

Now, correct me if I'm mistaken, but in order to find profitable products to market I should look at:

a) Demand for the product:
Do keyword search with overture or keyword tracker and find our if there's a lot of people looking for it.

How many searches makes it worth pursuing? is 1000 (combining diferent keywords) ok?

b) Offer of the product:
How many people is already serving those customers. There is an R/S ratio that divides number of searches by number of websites with the keyword in its header, this seems bogus to me, is it reliable?
If there's already many advertisers (say like 7with adwords)offering this service, it means there is demand but also offer. Is it worth pursuing?

c) Merchants:

I have an account at CJ and some of the statistics shown are:

3month EPC (earnings per 100 clicks):
7day EPC:
% commission:
Conversion Rate:
Average order size: (with this and CR you can calculate general EPC I think)
Network Earnings:how the advertiser rates with other advertisers in the network based on the volume of commissions paid.
Creatives: banners,links.
Referal period:
Locking Period - Standard -> What is this??

What are the indications I have to base my decisition on when choosing a merchant/product?

---
I think I'm going to go more the CPC way than SERP because I don't like how Google can change his algorythm and have your earnings go ashtray in a hardbeat. Also, it doesn't require you to write hundreds of articles but a just a few high quality reviews.

I'm approaching this very seriously(it's fun though! :sailor

, I want to be a super affiliate, not a dabler.

Any help you can share is very appreciated!

**handsome rob** · 11-08-2007, 12:56 PM

Low demand or low traffic doesn't necessarily mean you won't be profitable. Kris Jones from Pepperjam used to promote every offer he could get his hands on as long as they made $50/mo each. He promoted so many, though, that he was doing 6-figures monthly.

**yeikow** · 11-08-2007, 05:15 PM

Interesting...

I pressume that would require to have a ready-made template that could be easly adapted to any offer.

I've yet to create my Affiliate Marketing website, I'm studying about landing pages and such. Can't wait to get my hands dirty (figuratively speaking

).

I think I asked too many questions in my previous post.

If you know one answer, go ahead and share it pleeease!

Thanks

**andresh99** · 11-13-2007, 08:59 PM

I'm on the other side. We have just started up a website that offers different kinds of services and products. We are trying to make it as best as possible for our affiliates and clients.

A good landing page is key IMO. One of our strategies is to create an excellent landing page for the products with the most potential/best deals. Sometimes you get caught up with the overall design and functionality, but you really can't forget about making it designed for conversion.