Why Bother With Physical Products When Commissions are So Low?

In the previous post, we looked at the pro’s and con’s of selling digitally downloadable products.

So what’s different with physical goods?

To start with you have an enormous choice of products to promote, it can be a little more difficult getting accepted in some of the affiliate programs, or networks, but it’s easier once you get a website up and start making sales.

You’re not limited to only 5-6 products on a small review site either, you can add hundreds of products to one web site if you want, you can still  just use regular links. Using data feeds can be tricky to start with, but they’re getting easier all the time, and quite often it’s pretty much just cut and paste now, and not a lot more.

As you’ll know, commissions are usually a lot lower than the downloadable products, anything from about 4-20% is pretty average, so why bother?

The thing is that they often have a higher conversion rate, maybe 5-10%, or in some cases even higher, but you will have to search around to find the good ones.

This means you don’t need as much traffic, to get some decent results, which is certainly not a bad thing.

Here’s a quick example, let’s say your eBook promotion’s not going great, it sells for $37 and you get 60%, but you’re only getting one sale for every 200 visitors you send?

That’s a 0.5% conversion, or about $11 commission for every 100 visitors.

Let’s say you set up another site that promotes a physical product that sells for the same price, $37. This time you only get 10% commission, but you get a 5% conversion rate.

That’s 5 sales for every 100 visitors, or about $18 commission.

That’s a pay rise of 63%!

Now it doesn’t always work like that, it can be a lot better, or sometimes not so good. Both types of products are great to promote, and there are a lot of variables which can effect the results you get.

Keep a look out for affiliate programs that offer recurring commissions as well. Even better still, there are some that will match a customers details to your affiliate account, but not like a 30 day expiring cookie.

What this means is that when that customer purchases again in the future, even without using your affiliate link again, you still get commission for that sale. This can build into good recurring income over time.

So it’s good to promote both digital and physical products, you just have to find what works best for you, your websites, and visitors.

Definitely food for thought though!

If you’re struggling for success with eBooks and the like, don’t forget to have a go with some physical products as well, that might even be what you first thought about?

Don’t forget you can get access to more great information, tips and training, by creating your free account.

Just register on the homepage, and good luck with your promotions.