Affiliate marketing is one of the best business models there is.
Except for the unpredictable commission rates.
Amazon is one of the worst offenders there.
They keep moving the goalpost on commission payouts – usually downward.
That stuff makes it pretty much impossible to predict your income..and also makes people angry.
Some marketers even encouraged their fans to remove all Amazon links from their sites after the changes in April 2020.
Like a strike.
I’m sure Jeff Bezos lost a ton of sleep.
So, instead of whining…why not just find other affiliate offers to promote?
Let me show you how.
How to Find Non-Amazon Affiliate Programs
Let’s assume that Amazon remains as unpredictable as it has been, so far.
That makes it a good idea for affiliates to diversify their income sources.
So let’s look at how you can find profitable non-Amazon affiliate programs.
But more importantly, how to filter out the ones that aren’t worth your time.
Because the harsh reality is that most affiliate programs are rubbish.
The likelihood of you making money with them is almost zero.
Evaluating Affiliate Programs
I expect two things from an affiliate program:
- It makes me enough money to be worth the time and effort
- It doesn’t destroy my reputation i.e. people are happy with their purchase
A surprising number of affiliates don’t care about the second point – they’re happy to promote any product as long as they get paid.
But if you’re reading this I’m going to assume that you do care.
This is smart – it’s very difficult to build a long-term business when you’re constantly ripping off your visitors.
How to Find Affiliate Programs in Your Niche
So let’s walk through the process I use for selecting affiliate programs for our sites.
1Pick a Product That’s Good Value for Money
I look for a product that is competitive.
But it doesn’t have to be the best product in its market.
What I’m looking for is something that offers a good price-to-value ratio.
Basically, a product or service that offers good value for money.
Why is this so important?
Because the crappier products in a given market tend to offer higher commissions.
This is done to offset the fact that they’re crap, but to also lure in the affiliates who only chase big payouts.
Advertisers know certain affiliates are willing to promote literally anything once they’re paid enough commission.
Let’s take a perfect example of this.
When you Google “how to start a blog” you’ll find literally hundreds of sites all sharing the same basic advice.
But something else they almost all have in common is that they list Bluehost as their “recommended” hosting service for a new blog.
Here’s an example from page one of Google:
Anyone who’s serious about hosting and ranking though knows that Bluehost is not where you start.
Is that because Bluehost is terrible?
No, but they’re definitely not the “best” option for new bloggers – not by any measurement.
So why do so many affiliates have a hard-on for Bluehost?
Because their payouts start at $105 per sale.
Recommending crappy products will put money in the bank.
But it will also destroy your relationship with your visitors.
It won’t take long before your audience is calling you a sellout.
Then people will stop following you, and you’ll never be able to create that snowball effect of growing an audience.
That’s why we recommend you pick an offer that:
- Has a good value-to-price ratio
- Is actually worth the money
I’d personally prefer to make less money today if that means earning the trust of my audience.
Because that means they’ll know my next recommendations are legit.
So I’ll eventually make more money in total…and all because I didn’t try to scam them.
2Calculate Earnings Potential
The next thing I look for in an affiliate offer is the ratio of sales content vs. payout.
Allow me to explain.
I know most people are focused on the payout but don’t really care about what the sales page looks like, what the checkout experience is like, etc.
But these are just as important.
So, although you have tunnel vision on sales commission rates, they’re only half the story.
Because the actual money you make as an affiliate is the payout multiplied by the conversion rate.
I’ve lost count of the number of affiliate offers with very high payouts that convert at 0%.
Long story short, you put a lot of effort in and make little or no money in return.
This is despite the fact you were lured to the offer with big, juicy payout numbers when you signed up as an affiliate.
Or, basically 95% of what you’ll find on ClickBank.
So let’s illustrate “sales content vs. payout ratio” with a quick example.
Product A
- $10 per sale
- Converts at 8% because of its great sales page
Product B
- $50 per sale
- Converts at 1% because its sale page isn’t so great
Hand drawn math doodle here?
Now let’s send 1,000 warm visitors to each offer.
Product A
- Converts 80 visitors to sales
- Total revenue $800
Product B
- Converts 10 visitors into sales
- Total revenue $500
So despite the fact Product A has a payout that’s 5x lower it will make you 60% more money when you promote it.
That’s an extra $300 in your pocket for zero additional effort.
Obviously, this isn’t an exact science.
Things like the intent of your traffic (window shopper vs. buyer) can impact conversion rates.
And, it’s also entirely possible that the lower performer will fix this sales page and their conversion rate will shoot up.
You can’t, however, build a job replacement income on “maybes”, so stick with what works.
I know from talking to affiliates that they default to the highest paying offers.
And I totally understand why.
But I’d recommend testing offers that pay a little less, but that have a higher conversion rate.
Some programs are happy to share their conversion rate with you upfront.
But you also need to be realistic about the fact that paper never refuses ink i.e. it’s easy to make a claim.
So as much as you might really want to take claimed conversion rates at face value, here’s some other stuff to think about:
- Do you trust this brand – would you buy from them?
- What do their actual customers think of them – the ones you find posting in forums?
- How good is their sales page – does it create an emotional reaction in you?
- Check out their shopping cart experience – do they make it easy or hard to complete a purchase?
Basically, it’s impossible to have high conversion rates if you sell a crappy product and then treat your customers like crap during and after the sale.
That’s just not how business works.
So, you will typically make way more money from high-converting offers than the ones that have the highest payout.
3Find Offers Your Competitors Promote
And the final check box on my list is, “Are my competitors actively promoting this offer?”
Because if they’re promoting it…it’s safe to assume that they’re making money from it.
How do you find out what offers your competitors are currently promoting?
Now we get to the clever stuff.
Analyze Tracking Links
One way to find who is promoting an affiliate offer is to take the tracking link from the affiliate program and network and run it through Ahrefs:
The best indicator that an affiliate offer is interesting is that my future competitors are happy to send traffic to it.
Especially if they’re willing to send that traffic over the long-term because that tells me that they’re probably making money.
So, there’s no need to wade through trash offers that don’t convert.
Just mimic what’s already working.
And this is a perfect transition for me to talk about other ways you can find offers outside of Amazon Associates.
Analyze Your Competitors
My next favorite tactic for finding offers is to run a competitor’s domain through Ahrefs.
Let’s use the ThriftyNomads.com site to demonstrate how this works.
First, run it through ‘Site Explorer’.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach – it will turn up lots of affiliate programs for your niche.
But you’ll still have to validate each affiliate program in turn.
Something your competition has already done for you.
Or you can go back to relying on guesswork.
Ask Reddit
Another really useful source for finding profitable affiliate offers is…yup…Reddit.
People there tend to have very honest conversations about what affiliate programs work…and which ones stink.