Why You Should Promote Free Products

Newbie affiliates are desperate to see real results as soon as possible. Let’s face it. When you are just starting in this business, you want to figure out if going full-time with your affiliate business is feasible. So it’s normal for beginners to only promote products that pay well and give them a good chance at a big fat commission check. The trouble is, promoting free products could end up paying more over the long run. But you would not know that unless you test them out.

So why should you promote free products? It depends. You don’t want to promote products that offer no up-sell opportunity. If your affiliate partner has a large selection of free and paid products (and offers hop-links), you can get people to your partner’s site more easily by pushing those free products. Take Amazon for instance. Pushing to $1 items may not look smart on the paper. However, Amazon does pay affiliate commissions on every other item your leads purchase. We all know how tempting Amazon’s online store can be.

I am not suggesting that affiliates should forget about the amount of money they can potentially earn from their efforts. But testing different strategies is a must if you want to improve your earnings. If you happen to be working with an affiliate partner that pays you handsomely for your leads, there is no reason to use those free (or close to free) products to your advantage to get more leads to your partner’s door.