Are You Selling Too Many Affiliate Products?

So you’ve discovered the potential of affiliate marketing. You’ve browsed Clickbank, Linskhare, or another affiliate directory site, and discovered the thousands of great products that you can sell. No inventory, no shipping, no refunds… just earning commissions by placing links on a website. So the more products you can promote, the better, right?

Not necessarily. A common mistake that new affiliate marketers make is to sign up for too many affiliate programs, and to try to market all of the programs’ products. Usually, these marketers just end up frustrated, and give up before they ever see a profit.

Why? Well, marketing affiliate products takes just as much work as marketing your own products. You have to know your affiliate products well. You have to understand the benefits that the products can provide to buyers, and why your visitors would need or want your products. Then, you have to tap into those needs and wants through your marketing content, so you can build a high volume of sales.

When you sell too many products, it is very difficult to fully understand the needs and wants that would drive visitors to buy each product. You end up taking a shopping mall approach, just placing random links on a website, without taking the time to evaluate whether the website’s content really complements the affiliate products.

Also, you should have a dedicated website for each product or for small groups of products. This is necessary to build sufficient interest to make your marketing efforts profitable. It is very difficult to do this when you are promoting dozens of products – imagine trying to maintain and update 2 or 3 dozen websites each week, just to keep your affiliate business running!

So how many affiliate products should you sell? Well, the answer to this question depends on how much time and how many resources you have available to promote and manage your business. If you have the hours and the money available to market multiple products, then you should market as many products as you are able to fully research and understand.

Also, if you have decided to make affiliate marketing your full time business, then you will clearly need to promote more products than if you are simply looking to supplement your income from your full time job.

For most marketers, it is not feasible to market more than a dozen affiliate products. Selling more than a dozen products makes it very difficult to spend the time you really need to develop comprehensive, effective marketing strategies for each product. It also makes tracking your sales and making sure that your commissions are calculated correctly a cumbersome task.

So if you want to get the most out of your affiliate marketing efforts, it is a good idea to limit the number of products that you will promote. Although it can be tempting to sign up for dozens of affiliate programs, selling only a few products can be far more profitable in the long run, and can help you build a better business with less effort.

Courtesy of Anthony Vicenza, Marketing Wisdom for Web Entrepreneurs.