What affiliates look for when they choose a product to promote

0: are people buying in this niche?
1: are others promoting this product?
2: has great sales page?
3: product is good? not a junk one?
4: payout one time/recurring?
5:ready made affiliate tools?

This is my checklist

Good check list Adam. I will add Payout to the list. If your cost to send 100 people to the site is $25, the pay out should be $40-$50, assuming 1% conversion

My list is a bit different:

1. Are people buying your product? What's the conversion rate?
2. How much I get paid? What is my commission?
3. How much work I need to do to promote your product to maximize my revenue?

In other words, they care about conversion rate of your product (and proof of it) and how much they get when they make a sale. PLUS, and this one is I think the most important part for growing your affiliate force, you need to give them ton of value and help in terms of promotional tools, educational material, motivational emails, etc.

Treat your affiliates the same as your prospects / customers. Sell them your affiliate program. That's the key. Because even though you might have a high converting product, there's certainly at least 3 other products with the same conversion rate. What can set you apart is your affiliate center, all the stuff you do to help your affiliates succeed.

If you have a great product and don't know how to quickly get massive increase in revenue, spend your time on building a great affiliate resource center for your affiliates.

I'd honestly go that far to hire people that would do everything instead of affiliates. Write them personalized copy, create personalized review copies, etc. I'd be absolutely happy if I could do all the work for my affiliates. All they need to do is give me access to their list or to their traffic, that's it.

Take care,

~Davor

I always look for good commission...Presuming I already have my niche. I also look at the stats the affiliate is providing, are people buying it...Then i look for other people who are promoting. I very rarely sign up for an affiliate program if absolutely nobody else is plugging it, just looks suspicious to me. And sometimes I have a quick look around the forums to see if there are any bad reports.

I basically look at the commission and whether or not they have a good sales page. Then I decide whether or not it actually is a good product by buying it or asking for a review copy. I also am attracted to products that provide their own affiliate materials like banners since I mainly do affiliate marketing through niche blogs.

Conversions.

Whether product is good, conversions and whether they pay on time.

Someone who is selling their own product. I get so fed up of finding affiliate programs for products where the owner doesn't believe in it enough to sell it himself.

After that as much material as I can get my hands on to make my life easier such as emails to send, free reports to use, keyword lists etc.

I try and find products that offer recurring payment and then go from there. If you can find products that you know are going to bring in a regular set income it makes your business planning projections a lot easier.
If you know what income is guaranteed each month it gives you freedom to test products, and if they if don't work they won't break you.

For me it's all about eCPC. How much (on average) do I get paid per visitor I send to their website?

It also depends on how the affiliate marketing fits into my overall strategy. If I'm promoting something on one of my niche sites, I'll choose it depending on how closely it fits the content, but if I'm promoting something on the backend of one of my products, I might just do it to get to know the product owner...

Sean