That’s what people ask me all the time. If you have been involved in the affiliate industry with some success, you probably have a gauge on what works and what doesn’t at this point. But a lot of newbie marketers have trouble choosing the right affiliate product to promote.

It’s true that you should try to find products that provide the best value to your leads. But in reality, you should keep an eye on the amount of money you can make per sale as well. You should always try to figure out how you are going to promote a product and how much it may cost you. By testing out different products, you can find out which ones convert the best, and which ones actually help you earn some money.

Most affiliates use pay per click marketing to promote products. If you choose a product that pays you only $5 per sale, and you spend $50 to get your first sale, that probably wouldn’t be a good product to promote.

You should also be careful about the price of the product that you are planning to promote. If you decide to promote high end products, you may have to put more effort towards getting conversions. A $497 product is certainly much tougher to sell than a $5 product, wouldn’t you say?

At the end of the day, you should always test offers to find out which ones work for your business the best. Internet marketing is not about having it easy. Those who work hard and approach the game as a science stand a better chance of succeeding online. It’s as simple as that!

If you have been promoting affiliate products for a while, you have probably seen them — products that allow you to earn 100% commission per sale. But 100% products do not have that great of a reputation in the affiliate marketing industry. In fact, a lot of folks try to stay away from these products, having assumed that they would not be worth the effort.

The perception here is that if the product creator is giving away all her profits to her affiliates, then the product may not be of high quality. But in reality, there are more ways to get some value from a product than just cash. A lot of folks create these products full of their own affiliate links, and they give it for free or close to that. But giving away a product for free may not be the best way to go. Why not use the efforts of others to push your supposedly free product?

Just because a product maker is giving away 100% commission on a product doesn’t mean that product is not of high quality. You should always try to push high quality products to your leads, whether you are getting 10% or 100% commission (as long as the money makes sense). The product maker may be looking for other things than cash (e.g. exposure, branding, traffic, …). Don’t ever assume what a product offers before actually trying it!

Affiliate marketing is a game of numbers. Newbie affiliates often forget that, and that’s why many go running back to their daily 9-5 jobs. If you are not making enough money to pay your expenses and make a good living in general, you are better off focusing on finding a better job. The best way to figure out the magic number if by figuring out how much it will cost to maintain your lifestyle.

Let’s say that you will need $5,000 profit a month before tax to maintain your lifestyle. You can get tax benefits by buying health insurance but that will obviously cost you. But for the sake of this example, let’s just go with $5,000. How many ways can you get to $5,000 in a month? Three ways really. You can focus on quantity, price, or both.

If you have a site with lots of traffic, you may be able to pull of 1000 in sales with $5 profit per sale. That’s one way to do it, but most newbie affiliates won’t be able to pull that kind of number right from the start. Another way to approach this problem is by going for a program that pays you $50 profit per sale. That way you only need 100 conversions to make it. You can also use a hybrid system where you promote both low commission and high commission products.

The problem with high commission products is that you will need to work very hard to get the conversions. You will probably have to offer extra bonuses or put more effort into converting folks. With low commission offers, there is a better chance that you convert 10 times better, but of course the commission will be 10 times lower. At the end of the day, no approach is right. It really depends which one works for you. The first approach has served me well throughout the years, but the second approach is definitely something you should consider if you want to hit 6 figures with affiliate marketing.

Your take: Which approach has worked for you so far?