Selecting An Affiliate Offer

Reviewing vs Not Reviewing

The first thing I look at for an offer is whether or not it’s selling elsewhere. Then, I’ll take a hard look at the sales page? Is it professional? Does it put me in the mood to buy?

If it passes this test, I’ll grab a banner for a prime location on my site. This method is for sites you have that get sufficient traffic for you to see whether visitors have any interest in the product before you spend the time reviewing it.

I’m Not Just Being Contrary

You hear every big name blogger telling you in order to sell anything you have to use it and review it.  I don’t believe that.  I do believe you should get a review copy of the product or purchase it yourself to try it out before you take any action.  But if it passes minimal criteria you should put up a banner in a prime location and see if it generates any interest. If it does THEN consider really test driving and reviewing the product in depth.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put banner up for popular products on a site that gets a good amount of traffic that does nothing.  If I go ahead and write the review anyway, it usually is a flop too.

What’s A Good Benchmark?

Is the product banner getting clicked on at all?  If so, how many times?  The thing you need to see is how long it will take you to get a decent sample or your first sale, whichever comes first.  I like 200 clicks before I’m deciding whether to keep it or not.  Your threshold may be higher or lower depending on your site’s traffic.  No fewer than 100 in any case.

When To Dump An Offer

Very simply, a banner for a popular product that gets no clicks or sales in the first two weeks of placement, gets edited for length or content a few times before the end of the month for split testing purposes. If you produced your own banner then make sure to change graphics and content length at least.  If you’re using the merchant’s bannner just try another one.  If it still generates no sales dump it.

Let Me Hear From You

Let me know if you use a similar method or if you just review every offer you’re considering on your site and move on.  I will admit that some offers can do poorly as an ad only and do great once reviewed but that’s rare for me.  Of course, if your site gets 50,000 uniques/month or more this method will be irrelevant to you.  Probably 80% of the offers you review make sales.  I’m targeting specifically sites that get uniques in the 1,000-10,000 range.