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Choosing Affiliate Products: Wading through a sea of Snake Oil

by mekdroid
4 replies
Hello folks,

I have been trying to choose products to sell from the best-known networks (we all know who they are) and it is basically the electronic equivalent of putting your hands inside a very, very large vat of snake oil and then sifting through looking for diamonds ...

Just an example: the best-known network has 300+ products in the Computers and Internet section. Most of them start with something like:

"How I Made $$$,$$$ in 5 Months Using the Secrets I Expose in this NEW Guide AND How You Can Do It Too!"

"Top IT Consultant spills the beans and reveals his secret techniques..."

"Finally! A Quick, Easy and Painless Way For YOU To ..." etc.

"Finally Revealed!!!!!! The Secret of "(fill your own brand of slime here).

Gaaaaah! Seriously, does anybody ever fall for this garbage? Besides, once you actually do take a critical look at the products they are almost invariably simple-minded, low quality stuff (I am a software developer, I know what I am looking at).

OK. This is the methodology that I am following:

1) I started with the 300+ entries in the Computers & Internet section.

2) I eliminated every vendor that does not have a Spotlight. The reason for this rule is that the spotlight gives you the number of subscribers, and I want to know that. A vendor without a Spotlight is a vendor that does not want you to see the number of subscribers they have.

3) I divided the list into services (i.e., something that you do by going to a website) and downloadable products, because my Gravity criteria will not be the same for both. In total we have 15 possible services and 46 downloadable products.

4) For services: Selected 15 of them, mean Gravity is 54 (but with a Standard Deviation of 92!!!). Excluding the top two outliers (Gravity over 200+) we get a more sensible mean Gravity of 21 with a Standard Deviation of 26, and 13 services left.

5) Products: 46 products that did not stink too much, mean Gravity is 8 with a Standard Deviation of 12, which is reasonable. Stink factor is low to moderate. About 5-6 of them actually do something useful (mean Gravity for the useful ones 0.8 :p).

Critiques, please?
#affiliate #choosing #choosing products #oil #products #sea #snake #wading
  • Profile picture of the author Maggie143
    I have found that most anything to do with Facebook and making money with Facebook especially work really well. I have also found that the zoo has better products most of the time then the CB if that is the one you are referring to...I love affiliate marketing and I do mostly sell the use tools and platforms that people need to do affiliate and network marketing,

    I personally have made more selling what people need to operate a business online then any of the zoo or CB products. Mainly for the exact reason you stated is that do people really fall for that...and sadly the answer is yes allot they do.

    Hope that helped.
    Maggie
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    • Profile picture of the author mekdroid
      Hi Maggie!

      Thanks, I created an account at the zoo and I'm in the process of doing the same kind of homework for their products ... and yes, it does look a little better (but then my expectations are rather low at this point :confused
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  • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
    You eliminated 80% of the entries because they haven't got a spotlight?

    Well that's your first mistake. If 80% don't have one, it tells you there are probably all sorts of reasons they don't, rather than the reason you assume is the case.

    And if othe 20% left are hype, maybe having a spotlight actually correlates to being hype-filled? (I have no idea whether it does or not, but it doesn't seem impossible that people who hype their affiliate program might also create hype-y products).

    In any case, Computers & Internet is too broad a category to be useful. Why don't you begin by looking at the vendor descriptions for the precise sort of products you want, then see whether you like their numbers and/or sales materials.
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    • Profile picture of the author mekdroid
      Hi Sunil,

      Thanks! Actually, I did exactly that, I sifted through all 300+ entries, looked at their marketing materials (with my intended market in mind, of course) and very quickly found that the vendors with a spotlight have much better quality products and generally (but not always) a considerably lower stink factor.

      Still, I might go back and review the ones without a spotlight again ... the objective here is to distill the list down to less than 50 products altogether (I can't cram more than that in the content I have right now), with a gravity in the 10's to 20's for products, no more than 50 top for services, and all of them products or services that are reasonably relevant to my intended market.
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