Recently, I began promoting a Clickbank affiliate product that claimed to have a conversion rate of 1 in 16.  This product was owned by a reputable entrepreneur and showed documentation that “proved” the conversion rate that they claimed.

As an affiliate, it looked like a good deal.

Just send targeted visitors to the sales page and make one sale for every sixteen or so visitors you send them.

So, I started working on my affiliate marketing campaign for the product.  In this case, I decided to use pay per click(PPC) to promote it.  Here’s why I started with PPC:

1. With PPC you get results quickly.  In other words, when you use PPC you don’t have to wait a month to see if your marketing campaign is working or not.  Results for your campaign start coming in very quickly.
2. PPC allows me to make money more quickly than other types of affiliate marketing.
3. This product claimed to have a very high conversion rate, therefore making it idea for PPC.

Let me explain that last one a little.

Generally speaking, your conversion rate is a little lower when you use PPC than it is when you use other types of affiliate marketing.  You can’t presell the product as much with PPC as you can when you’re marketing to your own list, visitors, or customers.  There are ways to mitigate this, but PPC just isn’t conducive to relationship marketing.

So I started a PPC campaign for this affiliate product and started testing it.

Boy was I disappointed!

I sent 500 targeted PPC visitors to the affiliate product sales letter and didn’t make a single sale!

Even accounting for the affiliate marketing strategy that I chose for this product, the sales letter had a dismal conversion rate.

As I said before, a 1:16 conversion rate mean that 6% of all visitors to the sales letter bought the product.  If I had sold just one product out of the 500 visitors I sent to the sales page, I would have gotten a conversion rate of 0.2%.

That’s aweful!

And it also makes it really hard to make any money promoting the product as an affiliate.

So I started looking at the merchant claims of a lot of popular affiliate products on networks such as Clickbank where the conversion rates aren’t independently verified.

I would guess that 40%-50% of the merchants are claiming 6% or higher conversion rates… And I don’t believe it for one second.  That number becomes especially hard to swallow when you see some of the sales pages and take a look at Clickbank’s ranking system (gravity).

My point is that you need to beware that some merchants lie about their conversion rates.  After all, it doesn’t cost them anything if you promote their product, send them free links, and never make any money.  Most affiliates will assume that it’s something they are doing wrong, not the ineffectiveness of the sales page itself.

Something to keep in mind the next time you’re looking at prospective affiliate products.

I posted an article today called, “Why eBusiness Needs A Business Card Too” over at iMarketingWatch.com that talks about how I got started using business cards (My mother in law found out about my online business).  Well, that got me to thinking about people who only promote affiliate products and whether they need business cards too.

Frankly, I’m a little torn on the idea because I think that some affiliates could really benefit from using business cards while others would find it a complete waste of time.

For example, if you promote a lot of different affiliate products in a lot of different niches, it would be very difficult to put business cards to any use out in the “real” world.

On the other hand, affiliates that have a website, blog, or newsletter could find business cards useful for getting more people to their sites.

What do you think?  Are business cards useful for affiliate marketers?

Finding profitable Clickbank products to promote to your visitors, customers, and subscribers is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your affiliate marketing success.  After all, you want to make sure that any product you spend your time, effort, and money promoting will create revenue for you, right?

So I’ve broken down the process of finding profitable Clickbank product to promote into three easy steps.

1.  Check the analytics of Clickbank products.

When you’re getting ready to start a new affiliate marketing promotion, you want to make sure that the product you’re interested in selling is actually something that people will buy.  Your first stop is to check Clickbank to find out what their best selling products are.  You can do this simply by visiting the Clickbank Marketplace and performing a search for products that will appeal to your target audience.  Make sure that you set the search engine to list the products by popularity.  That way you’ll know which products are the most popular at Clickbank.

If you want to delve into the products a little more deeply, you can find out what the buying  trends are for most products by visiting the free websites below:

• http://www.cbtrends.com
• http://www.cb-analytics.com

These sites will give you a much better picture of how individual products are doing in the marketing place.

2.  Visit the sales page to make sure it will convert.

Once you find some products that you’re interested in, you need to visit each product’s sales page.  The idea is to make sure that the sales copy is professional, well-written, and will convert your traffic into sales.

3.  Make sure the products are relevant to your target audience.

Last, but definitely not least, you’ll want to make sure that the products you promote are relevant to your target audience. If you’re in the weight loss niche, then you shouldn’t be promoting internet marketing products.

It may sound silly, but I’ve seen people do it.

Your most profitable affiliate marketing campaigns will be built around products that your target audience is interested in buying, addresses their needs, and fits into their lifestyles.

As you can see, it really only takes doing a little bit of homework on the best products for your target audience to make it really easy finding profitable Clickbank products to promote.