Affiliate Marketing – Where to Find the Best Merchants

We all know that affiliate marketing is becoming increasingly popular, and more and more people are jumping into the fray. With all this new competition, the need to seek out the best merchants with the hottest selling products has never been greater. The right mix of products can make your affiliate profits soar, while placing your weight behind a bunch of worthless products will simply be a waste of your valuable time.

From the merchant’s perspective, the most valuable part of affiliate marketing is that no payment is made to the affiliate unless results are seen. Of course from the affiliates point of view this means that finding the right merchant, and the right products to promote, is vital to the survival of their business.

The largest and most successful ecommerce sites, such as Amazon.com, run their own affiliate programs, but other lesser known internet merchants use third party sources. There are a number of these third party resources which allow affiliates and merchants to find each other. Some of the most popular include cj.com, linkshare.com and clixgalore.com.

For the budding affiliate, it is important to understand how affiliated programs work from the merchant’s side of the equation. Merchants who are thinking about implementing an affiliate strategy for their online sales will often first look at the technological innovations which are available to them. Some of these recent technological innovations include special affiliate software, hosted services, third party affiliate networks and shopping cart services with affiliate features built in.

Affiliate programs got somewhat of a black eye during the early days of the internet, when over anxious affiliates used spam email methods to promote their affiliated merchants. These days, however, the most successful affiliates prohibit the use of spam and instead use opt in lists of subscribers to market the products they find.

When looking for a product for which to act as an affiliate, it is best to start with a product you know well. For instance, if you are an avid fisherman, why not start with products you already use. Begin by approaching the online merchants of some of your favorite fishing products.

Taking this approach has several important advantages. First of all, you are an expert in the area where you will be acting as an affiliate. Potential customers react strongly to the availability of expert advice, and your conversion rates are likely to rise if you can provide real world, practical advice to those who are just learning about a subject you already know well.

Secondly, focusing on a product you know well will make learning the affiliate procedure a lot easier. After you have learned how the system works with familiar products, you will better be able to branch off into products you know less about.

Of course, you should not limit your affiliate relationships to products you already know. The best way to seek out products in the all important niche markets is to use an affiliate network like linkshare.com, cj.com or clixgalore.com. These affiliate networks are excellent resources for both the beginning and experienced affiliate marketer.

Article written by Cody Moya.