High ticket vs low ticket affiliate marketing, which is best? While many more people will be able to afford low ticket products, a high ticket item is worth much more than a low value one. In terms of commissions for affiliates then, selling a high ticket affiliate products will generally earn an affiliate at least $500. While selling a low value item will generally earn an affiliate less than $10. In this scenario, you would need to sell 50 times as many of the low value item to make the same amount; given a $10 commission versus a $500 commission.
So the question is, is it going to be 50 times more difficult to sell the high value product compared to the low value one? The answer is of course no! In fact, once you know how to target your particular market audience as an affiliate, it should take no more effort to sell a high value item than a low one.
In addition, low value products often pay affiliates very low levels of commission too! Amazon’s affiliate commissions vary from around 3% to 10%. A 3% commission on a $100 product will only earn you $3 as an affiliate! To make a $3 commission worthwhile, you’re going to need to sell in huge volume. But with a high ticket product, you only need a few sales a month to make a great profit, depending on your marketing methods of course.
High Ticket Vs Low Ticket Affiliate Marketing – Promotion Methods
With low ticket affiliate marketing products, it can very very difficult to use paid marketing methods and still turn a profit. Your margin for profit is incredibly low with a low value physical item, for example. Try and run a paid marketing campaign with a $3 commission product and you’re going to struggle. But if you had a high ticket item worth just $2000, and you have a 10% commission, for example, you would earn $200 per sale.
This gives you much more margin for a profit with paid ads. If you also factor in digital products, and larger value products, you can increase your level of commission dramatically. Digital products tend to pay much more than physical ones too – typically 30-40% compared to 5-10% for physical.
If you’re promoting low value physical products, this severely limits your ability to grow your business quickly. You may need to use content marketing for your marketing strategy, which can take much longer than using paid advertising methods. See PPC vs Organic marketing.
High Ticket Vs Low Ticket Affiliate Marketing
Here’s an example of a high ticket affiliate product, The Helicycle:
This product is available on the site Hammacher Schlemmer and affiliates get paid 8% of the sale value. This means on selling one of these bad boys you would earn $31,600!
Let’s compare this with a standard product you might find on the Amazon website:
This product (a gaming headset) will fall into the category of digital software which pays 6% commission. See Amazon affiliate marketing commission.
Or it may even fall into the home entertainment category which pays even less – only 3%. But even at 6% commission on a sale of the gaming headset you would only earn around $1 on the sale – a tiny amount. So you would need to sell around 32000 items to make the same amount as a single sale of The Helicycle mentioned above.
Your Marketing Strategy
Of course you may think that people won’t be able to afford the Helicycle and it would be pointless marketing such a ridiculously expensive item? But remember that affiliate marketing has a global reach and people can and do purchase such items.
Your marketing strategy of course plays a part in whether you should use high or low value items in your product range. If you already have a popular blog which attracts an audience in the subject of golfing, for example, it’s hardly worth putting a Helicycle for sale on your golf website! People who are looking to buy a Helicycle, aren’t necessarily looking for information on golfing! Golf enthusiasts are going to be more interested in purchasing golf related merchandise from your blog, so that’s a more obvious choice of affiliate product to use for such as site.
See also how to know your target market and customer avatar worksheet pdf for more details on knowing your audience and customer avatar.
Your marketing strategy will have a bearing on your choice of product and vice versa. With a low value product, you will be more limited in your marketing strategy. But if you’re using a high ticket product range, for example, you can more easily use paid marketing as your strategy and turn a profit. See also best products to sell as an affiliate.
Access a free video series here to learn more about the different affiliate products you can promote.