Finding the right product to sell is the key to affiliate marketing success.  There are millions of internet-marketing products out there, but only a few can make you money.  Some products are horrible and don’t work right at all.  Another product might be great, but its landing page is bad so nobody is buying it.  To make money with affiliate marketing, you need to find a product that’s proven to make money for its affiliates.  Why promote something that nobody is buying?

To find that right product to promote, we’re going to use the Clickbank affiliate network.  Although there are several excellent affiliate networks out there, Clickbank is one of the best for those starting out.  They have a large selection of affiliate marketing products to sell, they always pay out on time, and it is easy to get accepted into the network.  Unlike other affiliate networks that require you to apply to promote specific offers, Clickbank lets you promote all offers on their network immediately.

The first thing to do when choosing a product to promote, is to think about a niche.  The best way to do this is to brainstorm and write down five or ten niches you think you would enjoy finding more about.  When creating your site around a product, you will be doing a lot of research and writing about it, so make sure the topics you write down aren’t something that will bore you to death.

Once you have your topics, visit the Marketplace section in your Clickbank account.  Clickbank has its products separated into categories, so pick an appropriate category and perform a search for each of the topics you have written down earlier.  In the results, you will see a list of affiliate products that best match your search term.  Below each product description, you will see a list of different metrics.  

The most important thing to look at, is the gravity.  Gravity is a Clickbank formula that tells you how many recent sales affiliates have been making with this product. If a lot of people are making sales with this product then you should have no problems promoting this product as well.  As a rule of thumb, try and pick a product with a gravity score over 35.  The other thing to look at is the dollars per sale.  If you are going to use pay per click marketing to drive traffic to your product, then pick a payout greater than $25 per sale.  This allows you to cover your advertising expenses and still make a decent profit.

Using the two metrics mentioned above, note down a list of products that satisfy these criteria.  Now pick the product that you would be most interested in learning about and selling.  You already know that other affiliates are doing well with these products, so the key here is picking the product that will keep your interest so you can promote it successfully.  This is the first step to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.  The next step is to join a membership site like PPC Kahuna and learn from some affiliate marketing gurus on how to setup your sites and promote them effectively.