7 Steps To Knowing Exactly What To Promote

One of the big decisions in internet marketing is also one of most obvious. What product to market or what company to join?

Perhaps you are thinking about buying into a "data entry" system. This would be a great decision, especially if you are just starting out, as they will walk you through the entire process, and give you a valuable database of things to market and where to market them, but you will still have to make the final choice yourself.

Perhaps you are already a step ahead of "data entry" and are ready to join an MLM or affiliate company, but you will still have to choose what to promote from their inventory. For instance, Strong Future International, the fastest growing marketing firm on the web, has over 600 products. You will have to focus on one or two of them in order to be successful.

Here are some things to think about when choosing a product or company.

1. What are you interested in?

If you are interested in something, chances are other people are too. You will probably already know a lot about it, which will make it much easier and more interesting to sell. See if you can come up with a list of five or six things you would enjoy marketing.

2. Look at the demand.

How many people are interested in the product? Will you have to look long and hard to find a customer, or will there be hoards of people just begging you to sell it to them?

One way to find this out is through Yahoo's keyword tool. You can find this at: inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. It will tell you how many people searched for a certain item or service last month. The more people have done a search for something, the easier it is going to be to sell.

Another great source of information is ads in magazines. It costs a lot to advertise in a popular magazine, so the companies who do so have usually spent a fortune researching demand for the product and expect a positive return on their advertising investment. You can benefit from their research by simply noticing what they have chosen to advertise and where. If you can't find an ad for green fuzzy fillibidgets, it's probably because there is very little demand for them.

3. Look at the competition

Once you have some ideas, you need to find out how much competition you will have. Do a simple Google search on the product. How many web pages are already out there? Look at the top ten or so. Are thy promoting the same thing you would be? How well have they done? Could you do better? Try narrowing down your list of possibilities by tossing out the ones with the most challenging demand/competition ratio.

4. Look at the available products

If you have developed a product of your own to sell, you can skip this step, but the rest of us will have to find something to promote. This can be done quite easily by typing in a word for the product, and "+affiliate" in Google. You can also look for products to promote on Clickbank, and other sites that generate affiliate links.

Buy the product if possible, or study the sales page carefully if not. Is this a high quality product with enough integrity and value for you to be proud to promote? Remember, people will identify your name with this product. Is it good enough to maintain your solid reputation?

5. Look at the commissions

What percent of the sales price are they offering to pay you when you generate a sale? A good rule of thumb is to expect 50% to 75% for downloadable digital products like e-books, memberships or software, and 15% to 20% for physical products that will have to be shipped. If you are considering a larger company with multiple products, you will need to figure in any volume bonuses or incentives for introducing other marketers to the firm.

If the commission is too small, then it will not be worth your cost to generate a paying customer, and you will have a hard time maintaining a profit.

6. Look at the sales resources.

Do they offer to give you a web page to promote? Do they provide marketing tools like pre-written emails, banners, CDs, fliers, or business cards? Is there any training or other marketing information included?

7. Look for complaints or recommendations.

This is the last thing to look for, but it is probably the most important. It doesn't take much to make an offer look good but many of them aren't entirely honest. Doing a Google search on the company name will often bring up both complaints and success stories. Verify that they are generated by private individuals, and take them into account when making your final decision.

If a product, service or company has passed all of the above tests to your satisfaction, you can be fairly confident that you have found a sure way to make money.

Here's to your outstanding success in your new venture!