Affiliate products make up a large part of my income. They\’re one of the revenue streams that I use on my websites and I often recommend selected products to the people on my mailing list.
I use them for all sorts of reasons – and money is only one of them. Sure, an affiliate commission will always be worth more than an ad click but that\’s only the start of it.
I also like the fact that I have control with an affiliate product. When I put up an AdSense unit, I can test different locations, target the keywords on the page, and play around with colors and size. All of that helps me to improve my clickthrough rate. But I can\’t do what I know would be the most powerful way of generating clicks.
I can\’t say to my readers: \”Click those links. You\’ll love what\’s on the other side.\”
And rightly so. Advertisers don\’t want people who click their links because they like the publisher – not when they\’re paying for those clicks. They want people who click the links because they like the look of the advertiser.
But there\’s an even better reason why I can\’t tell my readers to click an AdSense link: I don\’t know whether or not they\’ll like it.
I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of ads that turn up on my sites but Google is free to change those links at any time. That\’s the idea. Google will always send me the ads that it thinks will deliver the highest revenue. It\’s then up to me to make the most of that opportunity.
So I can\’t recommend the products offered in my AdSense units. I can only make them visible and rely on Google\’s matching software to ensure that they are interesting to my readers.
The real benefit of affiliate products though is that I get to choose them. I get to try them before I offer them and I get to know the people who created them. If Armand Morin, for example, comes up with a new product then I know it\’s going to be good. I know Armand and I know how much he helps people. I\’m going to take a look at it and it\’s very likely that I\’ll use it and recommend it.
If someone I\’ve never met before comes up to me at a conference though and ask me to promote his product, I\’m going to look at my shoes. I don\’t know him and I don\’t know his product. I can\’t recommend something I don\’t know.
When you\’re looking for affiliate products to put on your site, it can be very tempting simply to choose the items that pay the highest commissions. That\’s short-sighted. Go for the products you know and trust. You\’ll get the sales and the thanks of your users.