Tips for Selling Physical Products with Amazon and Commission Junction

When you are first starting with affiliate marketing, I think it is best to promote digital products.  The commission rates for networks like Clickbank are much higher, making it easier to make more money while you are learning.

However, you will find that unfortunately there is a lot of junk available on Clickbank.  There are definitely some good courses and software available for all kinds of niches, but there is also a lot of junk that is overpriced and doesn’t deliver any value.  It can be difficult to convince someone to buy something that doesn’t have any value.

One alternative is to promote physical products.  If you promote name brand products or stores, people will automatically trust the name brands.  Amazon.com is probably the largest online store and has every kind of physical product imaginable.  Commission Junction and Linkshare are networks that work with well known stores and let you be affiliates for them (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc).

With physical products it is often easier to convert, because the customer doesn’t have to question if the site is legit.  Instead they will know that Amazon or the other well known stores are a good option.  This is a great option, but there are still some downsides.  Here are some tips to help you promote physical products.

Keyword Research- With digital products people always do keyword research, but for some reason many people think this doesn’t apply to physical products.  But it does.  Make sure that you do research and target keywords that are either niche related or product specific.  Make a list of keywords that get traffic that you could also possibly rank well for.

Websites/SEO- Since you will have lots of different keywords, you could make a small separate site or landing page for each keyword.  Or if you have a lot of keywords for a specific niche, you could try making an “authority site” that has many pages that each target a different keyword.  This way instead of splitting your attention between different sites, you are focusing on increasing the PR of one site and all the subpages will bring in niche-specific traffic.  Make sure to use basic SEO principles and target all your keywords.

Commission Rates- Digital products have high commission rates.  Clickbank has commissions of up to 75% which is very nice.  But Amazon and stores with physical products usually have pretty low commission rates.  I believe Amazon only has a 4% commission rate, and most advertisers with CJ.com are under 10%.  So in order to make your commissions worth it, you should try to focus on items with high price tags.  4% of a $10 toy won’t be nearly as exciting as 4% of a top-notch digital camera.

Competition- Unlike many of the digital product niches, there are tons of physical products to sell.  But you still need to check the markets and see how much competition there is.  Find keywords that don’t have too much competition and try to rank well.  Focus on long term success.

I hope this advice helps some of you.  I make most of my money promoting digital products, but I do also have some sites where I sell physical products too.  If anyone has anything else to add, feel free to post a comment and I’ll try to add it to the tips here.

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