Right Product Strategy: Volume or Commission?

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?