Affiliate marketing is tough in any economy, whether you are using PPC or good old fashioned SEO to get your traffic, your success depends on how well the affiliate product page converts. Here are seven things to check before promoting any Clickbank product.

1) Is the seller really committed to selling the product? You’d be surprised how often the affiliate landing pages have links to other product or (worse yet) Google Adsense links on them. Make sure the page you are sending your hard earned traffic to is committed to selling the product you’re promoting. Links to products that don’t earn you commissions don’t belong on the page.

2) Are they trying to cheat you out of commissions? Some Clickbank products will have two “buy” links on their page – one that goes through the normal Clickbank system and one that links directly to Paypal. Make sure that all payment links lead to the Clickbank shopping cart. News Flash: If your visitor buys through a direct to Paypal link, you’re not getting any commission on that sale!

3) Is the gravity falling up? Clickbank, offers a lot of information that most affiliate programs don’t. One of the most import pieces of information is the “gravity” number. Gravity is a calculation that Clickbank provides to give you an indication as to how well affiliates are selling the product. Exactly how they come up with this number is not published, but the higher the number the better the product is selling right now. Bottom line - when comparing products within a specific niche, the highest gravity numbers are the probably your best candidates.

4) Make sure you’re making enough per sale to cover your costs. This is especially true if you’re using PPC for your traffic but even SEO has costs associated with it. Rule of thumb, $25 to $30 per sale is about the minimum for a PPC campaign, $15 - $20 is about the minimum for an SEO based campaign. Remember, the best campaigns will only yield one sale per 40 clicks or so (most campaigns are closer to 1/100). Make sure you’re making enough to at least break even, then once you’re going, tweak your profit with different landing pages, keyphrases etc...

5) Is there enough competition for your product? It would be great if you could enter a niche today and be the only affiliate promoting the product. The reality is, virtually every market is over-saturated. If you do find something that has little or no competition, the odds are it’s because the product isn’t selling.

6) Is there too much competition for your product? The flip side to number five is how saturated is the market you’re entering. If you’re just starting out, trying to enter the “Make money from home” market is probably beyond your reach. Make sure you’re entering a market that has some competition but not too much.

7) Don’t fall in love with your market, niche or product. This is a business, it doesn’t matter how much faith you have in your niche, or how much you would love to dominate it. This isn’t about ego, it’s about making money. Take a cold clinical view of every campaign you start and only stick with the ones that are making you money. Dump the bad ones as soon as they prove to be money pits.

That’s all seven tips – I hope this list helps you make some nice affiliate cash! Good Luck!