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Interested in entering the world of affiliate marketing, are you? It’s a great opportunity and can generate meaningful profits if deployed successfully.

Before you can start, you need to know what opportunities exist as an affiliate. Fortunately, there are plenty of options! I’ll give you a quick run-down of some of the more popular ones here. However, don’t let this list limit you, as there is an extensive number of opportunities out there!

1. ClickBank (aff) - ClickBank has become a very popular marketing program for publishers and affiliates alike. Because most of the products found on ClickBank are electronic (such as e-books), the commission rates are often as high as 50-75%! This is very exciting as an affiliate marketer, which truly drives the promotion and sales through this site.
2. Commission Junction - Commission Junction is another popular affiliate marketing opportunity. Unlike the electronic products and services offered by ClickBank, Commission Junction provides mostly physical products that customers receive through the mail.
3. LinkShare - LinkShare is home to many of today’s top merchants’ affiliate programs, including Wal-Mart, Target, American Express, and Orbitz.

Product selection is an important step, and I slipped up on it during my first attempt at affiliate marketing. Fortunately I now know better than to jump in head first without looking at the available data first. For the product selection process, I’m going to use ClickBank as an example since their data is relatively simple to pick up on. I encourage you to create a ClickBank (aff) account if you don’t already have one.

To find the products ClickBank offers for affiliate marketing, visit he ClickBank Marketplace. (There is a link on the top of their site.) While browsing through the marketplace, take note that there are various numbers below each product description. The our pieces of information provided include $/sale, %/sale, %refd, and grav. Below is a breakdown of what each of these terms means.

1. $/sale, which means $Earned Per Sale, represents the average net dollar figure earned by an affiliate for each referred sale. A relatively low number indicates that there is little to be earned and/or has a high refund or charge back rate.
2. %/sale, which means %Earned Per Sale, is the average percent commission per referred sale. This value will only change if a publisher increases or decreases the commission rate.
3. %refd, meaning %Referred, is a representation of the number of total product sales that are the result to affiliate marketing. Any remaining sales occur through the publisher.
4. grav, which means Gravity, is the number of affiliates who earned commission by referring a paying customer.

Many affiliates aim to promote products that offer no less than $20 per referral. This is important because, for many products, the CPC (cost per click) for advertising will be relatively similar despite the commission rate. However, it is also important to keep track of the gravity and percent referred numbers rather than solely selecting a product by the dollar commission rate. This will tell you if a product is popular and is actually resulting in conversions from ad campaigns run by other affiliates.

I hope you’ve found this information useful. In my next post, I plan to discuss the process of making a pre-sell.