Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Class!: This class is model
three of the AMF series. By now, you should have
selected a niche for your online business and
built your online presence. Your brand and website
are ready and you selected the social media
platforms that you will manage. Now you are ready to
start searching for products and creating
a product list. You will learn how to create
the best list of products for your business using
networks and programs. The course is divided into
multiple parts and tutorials. If you finish them,
you will be able to define the criteria for high quality products
and use it to research and select the products that
suit you and your business. Evaluate product types
and determine whether digital products or
physical products are best for you
and your business. Use networks and
programs to research your niche and find
high quality products to include in your list. Determine the number of products
to include in your list, as well as submitting
applications and tracking your application process
and receiving approvals. Of course, everything
will be covered in the tutorial video with product examples to help you stay on track of your
application process. This is an action
based, You will find different assignments
included under the projects and
resources section. I encourage you to take
the time to finish each assignment as you move
on through the course. You can also submit a project
to get feedback and share your work with me
and other members of the skill share community. If you have questions
related to the course, do not hesitate to reach out using the discussion
section below. And I will be more than
happy to help you. That's it for the
model introduction and let's go ahead and
move to the first part.
2. How do you make the right decisions when it comes to creating your product list?: How do you make the
right decisions when it comes to creating your
list of products? The reality of it
is that much of your success may rely
on trial and error. The more you know your audience, the easier it gets to detect their problems and what
products seem to attract them. And the right way to
create promotional content that catches their attention
and serves their needs. Your ultimate goal here
should be to provide your audience with the best
products and suggestions. And to have their best
interests at heart, which will definitely
reward you with brand success, sales
and commissions. Now, in some cases, and
if you have selected a niche that only has a
few high quality products, then selecting the best products
to include in your list might be easy because you do
not have so many options, but most niches have hundreds of high quality products
to select from. It will require you to
research and evaluate many products before you come up with a list that you
can concentrate on.
3. The List Of Criteria For High-Quality Products: Hi, and welcome to part one of this model on criteria
for profitable products. It's important to
start with this part because the list of criteria
that I will show you here helps you evaluate
each product you will come across and determine whether they're worth pursuing or not. The first and the most
important criteria is quality. As you're aiming to build
a long lasting business and your products
should not be any less. This excludes any bad quality
products from your list. They don't just
damage your sales, but also your reputation
for the future. Always have the question,
would I buy this in mind? If the answer is
an absolute yes, then the product is good to go. Promoting only quality products is what will help your business grow and allow you to gain the trust and authority and the brand awareness
that you want. The second one is relevance, which is as important
as quality. It doesn't really
matter if you find the most amazing product with the highest conversion
rate and commissions, and it doesn't really have
a lot of competition. Do not put it in front of your audience if it's
not relevant to them. Now, if a product ticks both boxes above as
quality and relevance, make sure it has high
demand to make sure that there's going to be
a large group of people that will be
interested in purchasing it. Because limiting yourself to a very small group
of people will reduce your chances
of generating a large number of sales. The fourth criteria
is guarantee. Seeing the sentence 30 days
money back guarantee on a product description has helped so many buyers make up their
minds about purchasing it. This safety gives assurance
that the product owners, so the companies that created this product, know
what they have. They trust their
product well enough to know that it will
satisfy the buyers. Try to look for such products to promote because
that will help you sell more and give
you confidence in what you're offering
to your audience. Now the next criteria we
have, online reviews. It's most likely that you
will not be able to sell a product that has received
poor customer reviews. Therefore, make sure to check online reviews for the
products that you're evaluating and select the ones that receive good and
positive reviews. Only choosing a product that has good customer support team is a great advantage to
you and your audience. As you do not want to worry about your customers not finding the help they need while using the products that
you have promoted to them. The companies that
you're an affiliate for, better have a team dedicated to helping their own customers. Now for the next one,
we have compensation. It's all right to start right now with promoting
products that do not pay that high compared to the other opportunities
available in the market. But when you have an established business and loyal customers, you should consider adding
more high ticket products that generate you more income and pay off your
marketing efforts. This isn't really an
essential criteria because maybe cheap products mean that you will sell more. It's really up to you to
determine whether you're well compensated or whether
you have to do some shifts in the products
that you're promoting. As for the final criteria, we have affiliate support. Many companies with
affiliate programs offer their affiliate marketers some
useful marketing material. The material could
be anything from pre written product
descriptions to promotional e mails,
banners, or infographics. Not only saving you the time
you would spend on studying the product and creating
descriptional content yourself, but it's also the
ultimate source of product description to use. As after all, they know
their product better than anyone else and they know how to best describe
it and market it.
4. Digital Vs. Physical Products (Pros & Cons).: Welcome to part two of this module on digital
versus physical products. One of the considerations to take into account
is whether you're focusing on digital or
physical products for your affiliate business or
whether you can do both. I cannot give you a firm answer to this question
and neither can do the search engines because both opportunities have
their pros and cons. The key to selecting
the right one is to evaluate them based on
your own business scale. The closest you can get
to also what seems to be working in real life is maybe reviewing others in your niche who have had their
business running for a while and see what they are promoting and what they
seem to be focusing on. As for now, let's compare both digital and
physical products. You're aware of some of
the basic differences. Now, digital products like
online courses, ebooks, tools, or softwares, travel
guides, or dissimilar, are often much more profitable to promote than
physical products. Simply because there are
lower production costs associated with
digital products. There are no shipping
costs applied either. And your customers can
get immediate access to the products they're purchasing using your affiliate link. The kind of concentrating on digital products is
that some of the buyers will find it easy to request a refund if they're a little
unhappy with the product, and they might do so after they've downloaded
it and used it, simply because they want
to get their money back. Now if you choose to concentrate on physical products
like clothing, fitness equipment, cosmetics,
kitchen equipment, and the like, you earn
lower commissions. But it's less likely
that people will request refunds as there will be a hassle and shipping
costs involved. Physical products are
also easier to sell in larger amounts because people often tend to like
purchasing tangible things. If you build your online presence and you
continue to grow your business to qualify yourself to promote well
known, high quality brands, you've already established
a trust in the products that you're promoting with
your potential customers, which will make it much easier for you to sell these products. But that, of course, comes with time and effort to
grow your brand and business so
you can qualify to become an affiliate
for such brands. With that being said,
you most likely won't earn as high
commissions promoting physical products as
you would promoting digital products unless you
promote expensive items. It's also worth mentioning
that you do not have to stick to one type and
completely avoid the other. Because in some
cases, like starting an affiliate business
and selecting health and fitness as
your primary niche, you can promote both types, like, for example,
online yoga courses as digital products and yoga mats from Amazon as
physical products. But keep this comparison
in mind when we move on to the product research step
to make sure that you select the type of product that suits your affiliate
business the most.
5. How To Find Products?: Welcome to the third part of this module on
affiliate networks. Affiliate networks
can be defined as platforms that
enable companies and affiliate marketers to connect very much like a
marketplace that is established to connect two different groups or parties that can do
business together. On affiliate networks, you can find countless products from different niches to promote and become an affiliate for them
through the network itself. Instead of connecting
directly with the companies that
created these products, these networks exist to ease up the process of affiliate
marketing from start to end. As on the network itself, you can apply for affiliate programs and you
can also generate affiliate links and download affiliate resources
if available. You can also track sales and commissions and request
payments and so on. You've already been
introduced to Click Bank and Model one of these scores
during the niche research part. There's also Amazon Associates. There is share a sale and also CG affiliates which used to be known as
Commission Junction. Those are some of the most
popular networks with an established
infrastructure and thousands of products from
different categories. There are of course,
other networks like Pay Partnership network and GV Zoo, and also market health. More and more networks are
showing up every year, especially those ones with
a very specific niche. It's really a good
idea for you to do a quick affiliate
network research and check out what's
available for you and explore some hidden
opportunities in your niche. It's usually free to
join these networks as an affiliate and you can sign up to as many
of them as you want. As long as you keep the list of products you will be
promoting managed. It's also important to mention
that some companies with affiliate programs choose not to list their products on
an affiliate network. Instead, they create their
own affiliate program directly on their own website. Because even though most of the affiliate networks
are for free to join, they do of course, take a percentage from
each sale generated. Also, some affiliate networks
might have some terms and conditions that a certain
company does not agree on. Those companies go
ahead and create their own affiliate programs
with an affiliate dashboard. And they require
affiliate marketers to get in touch
with them directly. This way, those
companies are able to evaluate each affiliate
marketer on their own and stay in touch with their external
marketers directly. Instead of relying on
affiliate networks to do so, it's usually a better idea to join an affiliate
program through the company's website if they do have the
option available. This way you can sign up to their affiliate newsletters
and stay updated with their news and
product updates and also things that help you with your promotional
content creation. Besides that, it's
also possible to find the same product on
the company's website and also on affiliate network. Personally, I would rather
go with the company directly because of what
I have just mentioned. But it's really up to you to decide which way suits you best.
6. Creating Your List Of Products.: Welcome to part four of this
model on your product list. So far, we have
covered criteria for profitable products and compared between digital and
physical products, and also listed some options
for affiliate networks. Now it's time to find and
evaluate and eventually select the products that
you will include in your list of products to
promote as an affiliate. Let's start with answering
a very common question. How many products should
you add to your list? There's no one definitive
answer when it comes to how many products
should you add to your list? 13 or ten products
successfully is really up to you and how much time and effort you're going to put
into your promotional content. If you're building your
affiliate business as a side hustle and you're sparing a couple of hours
a day to work on it, it might be a good idea to start promoting a
product or two, only because you will be able to apply enough
effort on getting to know the product well and
comparing them and coming up with unique ways to promote them
to your audience. But if you're able to spend more hours on growing
your business, then focusing on multiple
products at once can be better. As you can start exploring
their potential early on. And you can determine in
the first few weeks if they have potential for success or should you look
for something. By now, you should be able to tell whether you're focusing on digital products or
physical products or both. Based on that answer, you can start researching
products online. You can either use
affiliate networks to research the products, or you can use Google itself to search for products
in your niche. Let's say, for
example, that you're building a fitness
based business. You can simply type
some keywords in the search bar and check out what appears in the
search results. Now let's talk a little bit about how you're going
to use the information from earlier parts in this model to create
your product list. First of all, if
you have some ideas for products that you know
and you want to research, it would make sense for you to write their names down right now and start searching for similar products on
different affilete networks. Once you're done collecting all your options in one place, you can apply what's called
the filtering approach. Meaning you can start by adding all the high quality
products that are relevant to your niche and
suit your business well. Then you can use the
list of criteria for profitable products to
evaluate each product and its affilete program exclude
the ones that do not tick all the boxes until eventually you will end up with the best
products available. If you've gone through this process and you
still end up with many products and not sure
how to select the best ones. Here's an you can
filter the best of the best for every
product that you add. On the final list,
you should be able to write down at least ten ideas
on how to promote them. Whether on your social
media channels, or on your blog, or
editorial video, or anything else
that you prefer. You can also try to
view their sales pages, the web page that your
potential customers will land on if they click on your affiliate link and learn more about each
product and its value. You can see if it's
a product you're comfortable promoting
in the first place, and you can see yourself getting creative when you're
talking about it. If you can easily think
about ten different topics or headlines on how to
promote each product, then you have the right
products on your list.
7. Submitting Applications.: Hi there and welcome back. Right now we are in part five of this model and we're
going to go ahead and get started on submitting some applications to
join affiliate programs. By now, you should
have your list of products ready so you can go ahead and apply
for these products and become an
affiliate for them. But for this tutorial, I'm
just going to go ahead and use some random
products available online. And I'm going to start
with Click Bank. Becoming an affiliate
marketer for a product inside Click
Bank is very easy. I have showed you previously during the niche
research section, how to create an account
inside Click Bank and how to find this Affiliate
Marketplace section. Once you find the product
that you want to promote, all you have to do is to click on this Promote
button right here. As you can see here. It
says, creating a Plink. Uplinks are affiliate links, but they're called uplinks on
Click Bank for some reason, but they're the very same thing as for the nickname account. It's important to add the nickname that
you have created for yourself when you created your
account inside Click Bank. Let's go back a little bit
here. This is my own account. As you can see here, I
have an affiliate nickname that I created for myself when I created my account inside Click Bank to create
a similar one. All you have to
do is just create here and create a nickname. And you have to decide
the account type. In your case, it
should be affiliate, which is the one that you can
promote products through. For example, if you
were to be a seller, then this is the one
that you should go for. The second thing to do is to create a nickname right here. This is up to you
to decide the name, but just make sure that
the name that you add here is the same one that
you will be adding here. I'm going to go
ahead and add to A. As for the tracking ID, this is optional and
it's really up to you to decide if you want to
do any tracking ID's. This is useful in
case you want to promote this product
on different places. Let's say that you
want to create a promotional
campaign on Facebook, for example, you can create a tracking ID with
the word Facebook. Then every time you generate
a sale from that platform, you will be able to track
it through the link itself. This is helpful in
case you also want to promote the product
on Youtube as well. And you want to compare
on which platform is generating you more
sales and more commissions. Once you're done, all you
have to do is click here on Create Uplink, and there you go. This is the affiliate
link that I have generated from Click Bank. And all I have to do is just to copy this one and include
it in my content. Every time somebody
clicks on this link, they will be directed to this product that I want to promote. Let's just try to copy this one. And go ahead and check if
it's working. There you go. Let's say that this is
a product that I have researched and I
found to be very suitable to my niche and my
audience and my business. I just want to make
sure that the page that my customers and
audience will land on, if they want to check out
the product is looking well, then it's always a good
idea to go ahead and type your affiliate link in the
search bar and see the result. That's it for applying
through click bank. And right now I want to show
you a different example. This time I'm going to go ahead and search for a product myself. What I have in mind
is a product that I have mentioned before
during this course, and it's Elementor,
Page Builder. I've used Elementor during the web design tutorial
and I have also talked about it during the example of the web designer who wants
to promote products. All you have to do to
find a product online. And the affiliate program for this product is to
search it on Google. In this example,
I'm going to type Elementor Page Builder
affiliate Program. As you can see, the
first search result right here is to join
elementary affiliate program. I'm just going to go
ahead and allow cookies, since this product is included in my list of
products to promote, Then by now I should
be able to tell a little bit more about
the affiliate program. Because I have researched it and determined whether it's
a high quality product, it fits the criteria for
profitable products. All I have to do is just to click here on become
an affiliate, then add information right here. I'm going to go ahead and skip this information because
they're sensitive. But in your case, if you are applying for a
similar product, then just go ahead
and add all the information that
they are requiring, especially the ones with
this red star right here, because it means that
they're important. And click on, I'm not a robot. And then you can go
ahead and register. By now my job is done
and all I can do is wait because Elementor has just
received my application. And it can take up to 48
hours for them to get back and tell me whether
they consider me as an affiliate
for them or not, that they will give me access
to an affiliate dashboard. And from there I can go ahead and start promoting the product. Sometimes companies that
want you to sign up to their affiliate program through their website have some
different questions. For example, I have a
different example in mind. It's called Ocean Wordpress, which is a theme to create
websites on Wordpress itself. I have also mentioned
this product during the web design tutorial, But in this example, I just want to apply for their
affiliate program. A program. This one, if I remember correctly, they do have some
questions related to the affiliates that
they want to join. Let's say that we want to become affiliates for this
Wordpress theme and we want to promote
it to web designers. So they can design
Wordpress websites and they want to use this theme. I can earn money from promoting it after adding my name
and e mail and so on. There's a question
right here which is, how are you planning to
promote Ocean Wordpress? Some companies will ask you
these questions whether you want to create
some tutorials on Youtube or whether you
have an email list. They simply want to get to know their affiliates and they
want to know whether the way that you want to promote the product is suitable
for them or not. This is my way of
showing you that sometimes the questions
between one company to the other is different
as you can see element or just wanted to know a little bit
more about you. They didn't care about how you want to promote their product. Meanwhile, Ocean Wordpress
had some questions that you want to answer before you submit the application. In the case of Click Bank, there were no
questions whatsoever. So all you had to do is just add the nickname
that you created on your account and a tracking ID and then the link is
already generated. That's it for submitting
applications. Now let's move on to part
number six and start tracking those applications
and making sure that we receive the
answers on time.
8. Tracking Progress Using Google Sheets.: Hi there, and welcome
to part six on tracking applications
and receiving approvals. It might happen that you submit an application to join a
certain affiliate program, but you do not hear
from them for a while. In rare cases might
have not approved you as an affiliate and they just simply ignored your application. But this is almost unheard
of because it's safe to say that you will
get approved if you submit the
application correctly, but delays and responses
from companies do happen. What you want to do
in this case is to detect which application
is taken too long, so you can get in
touch with the company again and remind them
of your application. To do that, you can use
a sheet like this one. I have created this
cool sheet and I will include the link for you
in the assignment section. That is in case you want
to use the exact same one. But it's also really easy
to create your own in case you want to have some different
sections inside of it. As you can see here, I started with adding the name
of the product, the application date,
expected response date, the source status, product cost, commission, payment terms, affiliate link or
marketing materials. It's up to you to
fill these forms based on what information
you have available. But let's say as an
example that I was for real applying for
the products that I have just applied
to previously. I did already
generate this link, so I'm going to go
ahead and copy it and maybe just add it here or
maybe create a new one. Product three. I'm just going to add
the date of today. I think it's the 28th because I've got the
response already. It's Click Bank approved. The product cost is all right. One bottle is $59 I'm
going to add this cost. The Commission is 139.74 It means that people are able to promote more than one
bottle at a time. But I just added the cost
for one bottle right here. I know that the
payment term inside the click bank is every
one week or two weeks. One to two weeks. And the affiliate link, I'm just going to copy it right here. I'm not sure here about
the marketing materials yet because this is just
a hypothetical example. This one. This
product right here. I did already get my answers. I'm just going to name this one the name of the product instead
of product number three. But in this case,
let's say element. I'm still waiting for
them to respond to me. This is how this sheet is going
to help me stay on track. I do have the same date because
I applied for it today. I'm going to go ahead
and add the same date. Let's say that element
or wrote me that they will respond in 24 hours. I'm just going to go
ahead and write that down and the sources website. So I'm just going to go
ahead and change that to waiting and then just continue until I add
all the information. What you can do right here is to detect which one
is taken too long. For example, I waited 24 hours. I have submitted the
application on this date, I have not got a
response from elementor. Then I can go ahead and
get in touch with them and tell them I have applied to
become an affiliate for you, but I have not heard a thing. It happened to me
before that I did not get a response from
a certain company. When I got in touch with the customer support team telling them that I have
not got a response, they apologized,
saying that it went to their spam and they approved
me as an affiliate. And they provided me with
my own affiliate link. Keeping track of
your applications. Using a sheet like this one
is going to be a good idea to detect if a similar situation
will happen to you. It's also a good idea to collect all these information about the products that you're
promoting in one place. You have your affiliate links. You're not going to
lose them if you have them copied right here. You know if there's marketing materials by adding
them right here, and maybe adding links to the sources of these
marketing materials, you can, let's say for example, you forgot how much you get
paid on a certain product. You can look at the prices
right here and so on. I'm going to add
the link for you, as I said in the
assignment below, if you did not like this one, feel free to create
your own and adding the fields that you want to
add some information about. And with that, the
tracking applications and receiving approval
step is done, and I really hope that
you found it easy. And if you have any
questions about this sheet, then please feel free to
get in touch with me.
Thiea A., Online Instructor
