What would you go for – a high-paying affiliate program (paying you let’s say $500 commissions per sale) or would you settle for lower commissions.

Now, promoting products with different level of commissions, high or low, essentially requires similar type of approach.  You would still promote the programs or services through a website, produce content for the website and in both instances, you still need to drive traffic to get visitors.

With that, I’m guessing most would rather go for a product that offers a higher commission rather than that which offers a lower one – for the same amount of effort put in.

Is promoting a higher-commissioned product better than marketing one with lower commissions? W0uld the former really bring faster success for the affiliate marketer than the latter … OR is there more to this issue that we, marketers need to look at before we start sieving what to promote ?

High-ticket & Low-ticket Items – Difference in Consumers’ Buying Process

Bare with me as I relate what I observe recently. Few days ago, I spoke to a neighbor, Jane (not her real name, of course), who told me that she wanted to get a higher-capacity washer than what she already has. (Note that she said she ‘wanted’. The new washer wasn’t something she ‘needed’ to buy because her old one was still working fine, only that it had a lower capacity).

You guessed it – she bought the higher-capacity washer, at more than $1000 in the end. But it wasn’t after vehemently justifying her purchase to her husband because the spouse could not fathom why she wanted to pay that much for a washer. 

As marketers, what can we learn from here? To me, it’s the part on how she communicated with her husband – how she convinced him that it was a purchase that made sense despite the product’s relatively high price. What exactly did she do?

Well, she …

1. Overcome objections from her husband – she changed the ‘want’ to a ‘need’ – I can’t vouch for the exact words that she used in her communication with her husband but I believe it centered around the fact that their their kids are grown, there’re more clothes to wash, at the same time they need to save water and electricity, etc.
2. Explain that the new washer is more superior to the older one, with its fuzzy logic and other various functions not offered by the old washer.
3. Appeal to emotion – how instead of washing twice a day, she needs to do washing only once daily, leaving her more time to engage in other more meaningful activities like whipping up her husband’s favorite dessert (okay, that was just my imagination).

Although the above is Jane’s approach to convincing her husband to let her buy the washer, it is not unique to her in the sense that we can take that same approach when trying to sell an expensive product.

HIGHLIGHT :

Three points to note on what we can learn when selling high-ticket affiliate program : overcome emotions/negativity about the product, highlight ways in which the product is more superior than others and appeal to emotion (justify the purchase in that it will provide mutilple benefits, particularly in the long term).

Think about it – we would naturally spend more time researching a $1000 product over a $10 item before we make a purchase, right? We would want to know more about the product, who had bought it, how the buyer felt about it, any benefits that we can potentially get out of the product.

So the deliberation period of “To buy or not to buy” would be longer than when purchasing a cheaper product. It is the marketer’s job to fill this time with more information that the buyer is looking for, such as other consumers’ reviews, possibilities of testing the product.

The point is high-ticket buyers need more guidance and assurance, which they would try to find from someone they can trust.

As trust is one of the major factors, I personally feel it is harder to sell a high ticket product/services (although needless to say, it is a more lucrative deal). This is especially so if you are new to affiliate marketing.

Should We Ditch Low-Paying Affiliate Programs?

Up till this point, I have not defined what is high-paying or what qualifies as low-paying because this issue can be highly subjective.

Nevertheless, I would say that it would be more challenging to try selling high-ticket products in the Internet Marketing niche, particularly if you are starting out. Touching on the topic of trust, you need to give solid reasons why any buyer would want to listen to you and trust you enough to buy from you, if they were to part with say $1000.

In my opinion, it could be easier to promote a lower-priced product which you have tried and tested, so that you could give your take on it to potential buyers.

Final Note

As I see it, the market of potential buyers for high paying affiliate programs is smaller. While the commissions are good, it it is harder to convince those buyers to make a purchase. This might be particularly true in the case of Internet Marketing niche as people are more wary of scams.

However, when it comes to selling physical products for instance, from Amazon, if you focus on the targeted audience, your efforts might lead to some positive results. The reason is with targeted audience, they already have something in mind that they want to buy. They know they are getting from Amazon and they know they can return the products if they don’t see it fits. In any case, these potential buyers just need that little nudge to send them to the ‘buying mode’.

To make the best out of selling lower-commissioned products, look to promote those with recurring commissions like membership programs. That way you would optimize your efforts in the longer term.

I wrote about this topic after coming across some marketers’ claim that it is better to get into promoting high-ticket items because then you ‘sell less but earn more’. Honestly, there are many angles that provide varying perspectives. I’m sure you have your take as well. 

Why not share your opinion or experience below – Who knows, someone, somewhere can benefit from what you have to say.