Let s say that a website sells a product for $50. That website can have an affiliate program and allow you and others to promote that product and receive a percentage of the product s price in commissions, every time you refer someone to that site who ends up buying that product.
Commissions can be as low as 5% for some hard goods but can go as high as 75% or more on instantly downloadable products like ebooks or software.
Here are some ideas on how to find affiliate products to promote:
A) Search on affiliate NETWORKS like http://www.Clickbank.com/marketplace
, http://www.cj.com and http://www.linkshare.com
B) Join the email lists of competitors in your niche and see what products they promote. Some of those products will be in affiliate networks like the ones mentioned above. Others will have an independent affiliate program
C) Something else you may want to look into is promoting products of what I call "network/company hybrids." These are big companies who have products in several different niches (mainly pills) and they have their act together. They typically pay 30-50% commissions plus 5-10% 2nd-tier commissions. Plus, they have good salesletters, content for affiliates, they pay on time etc...
This is great because once you promote one of their products and see that they pay on time, you have that much more assurance that you will get paid when you promote their other products.
You will also be getting one check or paypal payment for all the products of the same company you promote - this helps keep things focused.
You will also save time. Instead of searching for the next niche, just pick the
next program in the company's list to promote. These companies don't create products unless the demand is there. If you don't believe me, just do a search on Overture for the categories their products serve and you will see very healthy search volume and Cost per click
Every time you signup for one of these affiliate programs, you don't need to signup again in order to promote their other products. You just grab your links (maybe even create a tracking campaign) and you are good to go.
One of the companies you should at least look into is: http://www.joebucks.com
I haven t purchased the products they sell (mainly pills) but t hey always paid in time. I have used a company with similar products but they never paid up so I can t recommend those.
If I were you, I would find a few affiliate programs and stick to those for a little while. Don t promote just one product you need to diversify. But don t go crazy either jumping from product to product to product. You need to focus.
Pick 3-5 good affiliate programs and stick to them until you find something
really better.