What are the best products to sell as an affiliate? There’s millions of products to choose from, so how do affiliates pick their products?
As an affiliate you can sell almost anything online. From physical products that you’d find on eBay and Amazon, to digital products and software products which help online business owners build their businesses. But which are the best? To answer this properly, we also need to look at the methods of promotion you’re going to use as an affiliate.
If you’re yet to start out, you can choose almost anything. But if you’re attempting to be a blogger, for example, your niche is pretty important. Some topics are far more competitive than others. If you decide to promote something from a blog in a competitive niche, you could be at it for years before getting anywhere. On the other hand, if you’re interested in a very untapped niche, you can make headway much more quickly.
The same goes for if you’re building a YouTube channel. If you’re using paid marketing, it’s a different story. You’ll need a good product range to make it worthwhile and to more easily recoup your marketing budget; a high ticket business model, for example.
Best Products To Sell As An Affiliate – Digital Vs. Physical
Digital products tend to pay more than physical products; but can be harder to sell. The typical physical product you would find on Amazon pays from 3%-10% commission. On the other hand, digital products will pay from 20%-40% commission and sometimes more.
Physical products though as fairly easy to sell if you can attract an audience. There’s not much explanation needed to sell a camera, for example. To sell a training course though, can be a lot more difficult. It’s much more arbitrary, for starters, and conveying the value of a training course can be more arduous than showing a picture of a camera, for example!
Digital products do sell well though, particularly those which offer huge value, such as online business training courses. In addition, you can also earn recurring income from selling digital products, which you can’t with physical products. Recurring income affiliate programs offer the ability to build income streams from each and every sale, which builds up more quickly into a good income. With physical products, you need to continue selling multiple items to make the same amount of commission as with only a few recurring income products.
Certain business software products are good for affiliates to promote because they’re needed for businesses to run. So when a business becomes successful, the customer will more than likely maintain their membership for life! This means affiliate commissions for life, if you have referred that product.
Best Products To Sell As An Affiliate – High Ticket Products
High ticket products have a larger than average price and therefore offer a larger than average commission when you make a sale. This means you can sell far fewer of a high ticket item to make the same amount as selling thousands of a low value product.
High ticket items can be digital or physical products and are generally pretty expensive compared to the basic level product you would find on Amazon, for example.
Here’s an example of a high ticket physical product you can find on a site called Hammacher Schlemmer.
Your Niche & Product Choice
If you already have a website or blog, and it covers a specific topic, you would be wise to offer something for sale which suits your particular audience. Trying to sell kitchen furniture on a mobile phone information website, for example, won’t lead to many sales. Your audience won’t fit your product, in this scenario.
Likewise if you’re starting out as a blogger, it’s wise to choose a topic which you have an interest or passion in. Otherwise, you’ll quickly run out of enthusiasm and stop generating content. Many coaches say to choose a topic which you love. That way, you can continue writing and creating content in your niche for a good, long time. But you also need to choose a topic which can be monetised. Otherwise all your hard work will be for nothing!
Balancing these two things can be tricky, but it’s worth choosing a topic (and product) which you can really get behind. If you don’t believe in your topic, or product, it will come across in your marketing and this will reflect in your sales, or lack of them!
See also target audience for affiliate marketing.
There’s various ways to promote affiliate products and your marketing methods will likely reflect the products you choose to sell. See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
Ideally choose a product you would buy yourself. Promoting products you actually like yourself means you’re being very genuine and congruent in your marketing. Whereas if you promote products only because of the commissions they offer, your intentions can come across in your marketing; that you’re not actually bothered about the product at all!
Summary
You might think that the best affiliate products to sell pay you the most in commissions, or pay recurring commissions. Those kinds of products will certainly give you more for your efforts. But you also need to choose products which you believe in and within a niche in which you’re prepared to work in for some time.
Making your first sale online is much easier if you’ve chosen a topic in which you have a passion for. You will definitely be able to work for longer without the reassurance of having made the sale in such a niche.
Since 95% of affiliates quit, it’s worth thinking carefully about the products you choose and the marketing strategy you’re going to use.