You want to promote top earning affiliate programs because you hate wasting time, feeling like you have accomplished nothing and with no idea how to succeed.
In fact, take a short cut, download the 25 characteristics of high-converting affiliate programs now.
When will the commissions arrive?
You’re not alone.
You invest hours of your precious time writing one single post littered with links that promote this “great” affiliate product you found or heard about.
Yet not all you hear are crickets.
Not much happens, or at least nothing much to speak about.
Any of these happen to you?
And the one sale you finally do make earns you a small commission.
In the end the worst feeling is that you’re not even sure what went wrong or where to begin to look for the problem.
Yes, any blogger can make money regardless of traffic level or size of email list.
Go ahead and download your copy of the 25 characteristics of high-converting affiliate programs.
So how will you avoid the problems that brought you to this post looking for answers?
You will start selecting better affiliate products and programs.
And I will provide you a thorough, in-depth list to reference for choosing your top earning affiliate programs and products.
After you start referencing this list you will begin to eliminate some affiliate products that you’d normally have chosen in the past.
In other words, if your main purpose of creating your own blog is to make money, specifically with affiliate marketing, then you should first find top earning affiliate programs and products.
Then only after you find them should you begin promoting them in blog posts, emails to lists, PPC ads, etc.
If the product in question doesn’t meet the criteria, then eliminate it- period.
♦ Learn how to choose the high-converting affiliate programs.
♦ Increase clicks to sales by 300%+
♦ Starting earning affiliate commissions within 2-6 weeks.
You won’t make many sales or you’ll make small commissions.
Your choice of affiliate marketing products and programs directly affect sales, commissions and conversions.
The products or the affiliate program’s marketing efforts determine most of your success.
Your goal is to get your visitors to click the link which lands on the affiliates’ high quality sales pages or videos. These pages MUST target your audience and solve their specific problem.
Save yourself from wasting time.
So I can’t stress it enough.
Choose top earning affiliate programs and products first.
Click here to download the checklist of traits of top earning affiliate programs .
Then promote them.
No matter how good the product is or how much you like it and no matter how much you’ve read about “pre-selling” and warming your visitor up to purchase you will not make ANY or HARDLY ANY SALES if the landing page you send them to sucks!
The packaging of the product matters a whole lot.
AND it won’t even matter much if you run an authority site with one central focus on a specific problem.
If the affiliate program’s marketing sucks so will the sales.
I run an authority blog with one central focus on a very traumatic emotional experience that personally happened to me. On the site I promote affiliate products related to this problem. Yes, I make sales every month, BUT a while ago I tested something out.
Out of a hunch I created one review post of a product that only somewhat had something to do with my main central blog’s focus and guess what?
That one post outsells the other products combined about 5 to 1.
Most of that has to do with the marketing of the higher selling product and reputation of its creator.
My current techniques to make affiliate sales focuses on SEO. I carefully choose keywords and keyword phrases using my favorite keyword research tool.
So this list pertains more to bloggers who also focus on SEO and/or have an email list of subscribers.
And again, you don’t need loads of traffic to your blog to start making passive money online.
If you start to implement a new mindset and system to find top earning affiliate programs and products you will make you money within the first few months (or even first month) through high conversions of clicks to sales.
If you’ve come here wondering HOW to find these top earning affiliate programs and products then that is for a later post.
One lesson at a time.
I will also add a feature to my list that you normally don’t see on other list posts: I rate each point on a scale of one to ten with 1 meaning the feature is “Good, but only an added bonus”.
Ten means that feature is an “absolute, non-negotiable must”.
(1 -10 Scale: [1] Good, but Only an Added Bonus – [10] an Absolute, Non-Negotiable Must)
Top earning affiliate programs tend to use landing pages with well-written sales copy aimed at touching sensitive feelings. And even better are high quality video landing pages which touch sensitive emotions.
Check this emotion-evoking landing page video in the dating and relationship niche.
The one exception is links to specific affiliate product pages placed on your blog post, email or free opt-in lead magnet in which you highly recommend out of your own enjoyment of using it. You’d best use specific examples with screen shots proving the effectiveness of the product to solve your visitor’s specific problem.
[Score] High Quality Landing Page: 10
If your visitor must wait to play with or use the product then probability decreases that they will buy it without delaying the purchase in that moment.
That’s one of the reasons I recommend promoting digital affiliate products that offer instant downloads or instant access to a membership site or even both.
[Score] Instant Gratification: 10
Sure a high priced item above $100 will eventually land you a sale. Eventually.
And one day when you run your own internet marketing authority site you could create your own blog course. You could charge several hundred dollars for instant access and you will get it.
I designed this post to get the newer bloggers who haven’t made consistent sales to start earning affiliate marketing sales fast in the next 3 months preferably.
Reasonable, right?
Digital affiliate products with instant downloads priced $27, $37, $47 or $67 sell far more often with much less evaluating and thinking on your visitor’s part then the ones above $100.
Solopreneurs and companies who sell these digital products at these prices have invested thousands, if not millions, of dollars testing and researching these prices.
They sell.
Don’t let anyone fool you about this point.
The “7” makes it look less expensive, like a deal, rather than $40, $50 or $70.
It’s human psychology.
[Score] Under $100 Price for One-time Purchase: 9
The same mentality goes here as the previous top earning affiliate programs product features. Anything priced higher than this seems high and will typically mean making sales less often.
[Score] Under $40 Monthly Membership Site: 9
Digital products cost next to nothing to create. The creator produces them one time and makes money on autopilot. Just like you will. They can afford 50% commissions or higher.
Don’t waste your time with anything less.
[Score] Commission Rate: 9
Your visitor pays every month and you get paid every month. Expect to see these for top earning affiliate programs of membership sites found in internet marketing services like hosting, landing page creators, email marketing, keyword research tools, etc.
These types of affiliate products are not as numerous. Don’t drive yourself crazy looking for them.
Search Clickbank for Top Earning Affiliate Programs by Recurring Commissions and Training Tools.
[Score] Recurring Commission: 7
The average attention span when people listen to you is 7 seconds. I think it’s less on the internet.
Your affiliate product’s landing page better express their understanding of your target audience’s specific problem and distinctly spell out the specific solution they propose in the first 5 seconds.
If not, they will click away. Then you’d better hope that landing page has an interesting exit pop-up window with enticing offer to keep them there.
[Score] Identifies Problem: 10
I purchased a book that instantly set my blogging career in the right direction. The authors pointed out the need to zero-in-on the deepest human emotional needs.
They referenced a resource that they themselves came across regarding core human drives. (Core Human Drives: book.personalmba.com/core-human-drives)
On page 31 of “How to Build a Blog” by Sean Platt and Danny Iny they went into detail of how to write content that touches the human soul. I am adapting that to your search for high quality affiliate products and programs. Target affiliate products that touch these emotions.
Too bad the book is no longer published, but I referenced the list above from my copy.
[Score] Personal Trauma Problem: 10
NO, you don’t have to love the product or have a passion for it (but that’d be ideal). Especially for authority niche affiliate marketing sites.
Instead at least search for top earning affiliate programs and products which you feel competent and confident that you could explain in a post, video, email or PDF.
The want to choose your first 3-5 affiliate products that you fit your strengths.
Personally I struggle to explain affiliate products related to health and nutrition, but I do promote them. I constantly seek top earning affiliate programs that convert sales. So I test out different niches.
Again, if you run an authority niche site then you must stick with affiliate products which suit your audience as best you can.
Many of the other features of these products meet the standards of this list. But I find myself dozing off while writing the reviews or supportive blog posts of products that don’t fit my strengths.
Start with your strengths.
By the way, don’t concern yourself with only promoting products you have a passion for. They may not convert.
Your goal is to make money, right?
Until you test out several high quality affiliate products and landing pages you do NOT know what the people will buy.
It’s a business fact.
Your visitors spend the money and choose what they want to purchase, not you.
[Score] Product that You Understand How to Explain: 7
Visitors have clicked through my review posts to the affiliate program’s landing page for one product and instead bought a more expensive one. Plus ideally you want an affiliate program to keep adding new high quality digital affiliate products.
[Score] Cross-Selling of Other Products: 7
Your visitor clicks through from your site, doesn’t buy in that moment, but comes back within 30, 60, 90 or 120 days and then purchases. You still get credit for the sale.
The longer this duration, the better.
In some cases, your visitor buys the first time. Comes back later and buys a more expensive cross-sell product. You get credit for both sales provided it happened within that affiliate program’s cookie duration.
However, understand that most sales will occur the first time they land on the affiliate program’s landing page. Once they leave without buying they will talk themselves out of the purchase or just forget.
[Score] Long Cookie Time Duration: 8
Here the affiliate program you promote provides a newsletter for your visitor to opt-in to. Sometimes they opt-in and purchase at the same time.
Here’s a scenario that happens.
Your visitor clicks through from your site, usually from your affiliate review product post. They read your affiliate product’s high quality landing page, but instead of purchasing right away they opt-in to their newsletter.
The newsletter offers them a deal and they purchase. Sometimes they purchase after receiving a few follow-up emails. Provided the purchase occurs within the affiliate program’s cookie duration you still receive credit.
The beauty here is the high quality marketing job done by the affiliate program. They do all the work of selling for you. You just provide them the lead one time.
To know how effective a top earning affiliate programs newsletter works simply opt-in yourself to experience their funnel system first hand.
[Score] High Converting Affiliate Newsletter (for your visitors): 10
My best selling eBook comes from a well-known known dating coach. That coach actively involves himself in his blog, emails, podcasts and videos. Likewise other experts and media channels interview him.
He receives many positive reviews on his site and detailed testimonials from his clients stating how the products solved their specific problem.
All of his blog posts receive numerous comments.
Simply put.
He has a massive following. Which means people are actively searching online for detailed reviews of his products right before deciding to buy.
They already trust him before finding my detailed review posts.
It doesn’t take much to convince them to click through to his high quality sales pages and videos.
Naturally my conversions are high.
And honestly I don’t receive loads of traffic to it.
Partly because it doesn’t specifically relate to my authority blog so I don’t have much content promoting it.
And also partly because for some reason despite his popular reputation I found many low competition keywords with my favorite keyword research tool.
And get this. Despite this product not relating directly with my authority blog’s niche I currently (as of writing this material) rank number 1 in Google- ABOVE THE DATING COACH’S SITE who created the book!
But this top earning affiliate programs feature only pertains to fans of popular bloggers with high social proof or well-known products.
It’s not a must.
A product which solves a specific problem is more important.
Focus on the people with an urgency to solve their problem right now. They buy products they never previously heard of.
[Score] Positive Opinion of Product, Author or Company: 8
A quick marketing tip.
People tend to purchase when at the end of the buying cycle.
After they have identified their problem then looked for a solution they finally seek the specific product to solve that problem.
Right before they “pull the trigger” and spend their hard-earned money, they look for reviews or information one more time on that product they’re considering to purchase.
Research keywords and long tail keyword phrases which include the name of the author, product creator the name of the product or a combination of all or two of them.
Here are some examples:
With the help of a user-friendly, simple, inexpensive keyword research tool and a little searching, you can find low competitive keywords and long tail keyword phrases to catapult you to the top of Google.
I promise to create a future post listing the white hat methods to achieve high ranking, but low competitive keywords. For now this site is new and I wish to get as much high quality content up a fast as possible.
The features on this list of the affiliate products and program themselves might check out, but you must find low competition keywords before you begin.
If not consider holding out for a product that does.
That goes for the next two points on this list.
[Score] Low Competitive Keywords on Name of Product Name, Author or Company: 10
If you can’t find low competitive keywords with the author or creator name, company name or product name then look for keyword phrases that state the specific problem your visitor faces.
Examples of specific problem keywords (just examples to provide guidance):
They all state a problem the visitor wants to solve. The ideal keyword phrases contain time frames or urgencies like the examples with the Florida real estate exam and the online speeding course.
The student wants to pass the first time, that’s very specific rather than just passing. The speeding ticket course carries a time frame usually 30 days after the police issue you the infraction.
[Score] Low Competitive Keywords on Specific Problem or Crisis Situations: 9
Clickbank.com is an affiliate marketer network for many digital products and membership sites.
They offer a unique feature for reviewing top earning affiliate programs for affiliate marketers such as yourself to choose from. You can search for affiliate programs by niche and by a statistic which measures the sales success of a particular affiliate product.
“Gravity” shows you how many affiliate marketers made AT LEAST ONE SALE within a specific time frame. The higher the gravity, the better.
I’d prefer gravity above 50. Anything above 100 is super high.
Do not let competition scare you off.
When a product sells that indicates high quality marketing. It means that affiliate program must have high quality landing pages or videos which convert well. That’s why so many affiliate marketers flock to it to promote.
As you improve your SEO skills you will soon find out that large lists of effective keywords exist for you to take advantage of. Just get your slice of the big pie.
WARNING: Don’t rely on gravity. Check out many top earning affiliate programs landing pages.
If the product solves your visitors’ specific problem and many other features of the affiliate program check out on this list then promote it anyway to test out for yourself.
You never know how your competing affiliate marketers made those sales. They could have advertised or built a gigantic email list. In your case you will focus on SEO.
Furthermore, many products just haven’t been discovered yet.
Then you won’t have much competition, which obviously can work in your favor too.
Remember that dating coach eBook I mentioned earlier that I promote?
The gravity was low.
[Score] Clickbank.com Gravity Score: 7
I do not shy away from top earning affiliate programs when I find multiple other affiliate marketers reviewing the same product.
When I Google “(name of eBook/product) + review” and three pages or more pop up full of affiliate reviews that proves people are paying good money to buy it.
Affiliate marketers hate wasting hours writing review posts which don’t end up in sales.
Many review posts = money-making product.
Keep improving your SEO skills and you will get your piece of the juicy affiliate sales pie.
To prove a point I promoted a highly competitive affiliate eBook on a new blog with less than 10 total pages/posts.
Just one review post.
Within less than 3 weeks I made my first sale.
No email list.
Just SEO.
And just 9 views to the post. One of which was Google crawling the site.
One of those weeks it wasn’t even indexed in Google until I requested they speed up the process using Google Search Console.
Three clicks to the sales landing video produced my first sale of that product.
[Score] Multiple Reviews of Same Product: 8
Too few products in a niche could indicate lack of demand.
That does not guarantee a product will not sell. Perhaps the product itself is in high demand, but there are currently not many affiliate programs to market its distribution. Instead the makers of those products primarily sell it through other distribution methods (magazine ads, late-night infomercials, mall or Sam’s Club kiosks, only sold in retail stores, etc.)
I’d prefer to see at least two pages or more of certain affiliate products in Google when I search “(name of product) affiliate program”.
That tells me multiple companies already identified a product gold mine that flies off the virtual shelves.
These programs spend thousands to millions of dollars marketing their products because they know it provides them a return on investment.
On the contrary, if you search for affiliate programs in a certain niche, but don’t find many then this could indicate low demand for the product.
Keep in mind I am referring to the niche as a whole, not a specific product name.
If the niche made money then you’d find more top earning affiliate programs marketing it.
[Score] Numerous Affiliate Products in Particular Niche: 10
Without actually reviewing a copy or taking the product for a test run. I don’t see how you could write an effective review post.
Visitors can read through fake reviews.
Most affiliate managers will send you a free copy to review when you email them.
On rare occasion they don’t. Usually because the product sells so well and many of the affiliate marketers who promote it have big email lists.
In the case of affiliate website services you promote you want access to use the site to judge its quality.
You want to see what it looks like and how it works through the eyes of a customer.
If an affiliate program will not grant you free access to their site then perhaps they offer a free trial to all visitors.
I came across this for a drivers education online course.
If you write product reviews then you should save a copy of a product review template within your blog’s dashboard or in Word.
With a short trial period you want to be ready to dissect the membership site quickly. The template will help you take notes faster.
However, in some cases the affiliate product or site is so hot you should consider just paying for it.
From one book you could create multiple review posts by comparing them to other products (this eBook vs that eBook). All eBooks contain multiple problems and solutions. Create one overall review post and several supporting posts dissecting one specific problem per post.
That will also provide you many different ways to rank in Google using your ever-improving SEO skills.
In fact try out my favorite keyword research tool which allows you 30 free searches to do a test run of it before becoming a member.
[Score] Free Review Copy or Free Access to Site: 9
If the affiliate manager or team do not respond quickly to your emails or even at all then that indicates problems.
You certainly will not receive a free copy of the product.
In the future you may wish to create future joint venture products with them or customized links just for you. You need their help.
You might not receive payment in the usual time frame or you may have questions how to promote something better.
[Score] Quality Affiliate Manager or Team Support: 10
I love the statistics that InfusionSoft dashboards provide. A few of my top earning affiliate programs I promote use them.
I do not care for Clickbank’s dashboard. It’s limited, hard to read and slow.
You want to review your clicks and sales stats regularly to determine if you need to adjust your marketing techniques for better sales results.
[Score] Detailed Statistics Dashboard: 8
Some of the top earning affiliate programs provide their affiliate marketers with free downloadable PDFs that you instantly convert all its links inside to your own affiliate trackable links.
The PDF saves you time because you don’t have to create your own.
And of course the main benefit is you provide a valuable, professionally created lead magnet for your visitors to opt-in to for you newsletter.
Then as an added bonus if your new list subscriber clicks a link inside the PDF (and buys) you’d receive credit for the sale.
[Score] Free Customizable, Branding PDF Downloads: 7
I prefer to access webpages that provide me training tools and advice how to better sell a specific affiliate product.
The best affiliate marketing programs offer great training tools and a dashboard to access at any time.
They’ve spent thousands of dollars or more researching what works best including keyword lists in some cases.
This also indicates to me how serious they take the promotion of their product through affiliate marketers such as yourself.
Usually that means they make money on their products through high quality landing pages and upsell funnel systems.
That leads smoothly into the next section.
This feature helps, but honestly, you can do a lot of research on your own.
[Score] Affiliate Training Tools: 7
Make one sale and it could turn into multiple sales.
You do the same amount of work to entice your visitor to click the link, but you earn double. Or better yet on a membership site you could also earn sales from upgrades and recurring commissions.
Clickbank shows you which top earning affiliate programs have funnel system, affiliate training tools and rebilling (same as recurring commissions).
The first sale is the most important, though.
Top earning affiliate programs convert their main products well.
[Score] Quality Upsell Funnel Sales System: 9
Apply to high quality affiliate programs if they solve your audience’s specific problems, but sometimes you have to wait for approval.
Some affiliate programs get too picky in my opinion and miss the point on affiliate marketing and deny your application.
Don’t fret.
You’ll find plenty of top earning affiliate programs with automatic approval.
Later as you gain more success you can return to the ones who denied you and prove your worth with statistics.
[Score] Automatic Approval Application Process: 8
Download the PDF Checklist here
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