How To Determine What Your Readers Want

In this lesson you'll learn how to determine what your readers want.

When looking for products to promote to your audience, don't just look to see who offers the highest commissions. Over time, even the smallest commissions can add up to a large amount of income when they appeal to your audience and are promoted correctly.

Be relevant

You need to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think deeply about what they may want. It is extremely important to spend time on this step, because if you don't know what they want, they may not click on your affiliate links.

It's really that simple!

Being relevant to your readers is extremely important when it comes to promoting affiliate offers.

Example: I run a personal finance website. If I started promoting something really off topic, such as Ferraris, that just wouldn't make much sense. Yes, it could be done, but you also don't want to be promoting anything and everything, as that has the potential to turn people away.

Plus, the chance of me selling a Ferrari through my website is very small, so it would also be a waste of time.

Instead, focus on what your readers want and what can actually sell. You can use your time better to improve your affiliate marketing strategies if you don’t have such a wide range of affiliate products.

It's all about quality, not quantity!

To expand on the quality issue, you always want to promote quality products, not things that will cause your audience to have a negative experience. If you promote something that you know is a low quality product, you may damage your brand and cause readers to no longer trust you.

That is definitely not something you want to do!

There are many ways to determine what your readers want:

Is there a common question your audience is asking? If you notice a recurring question or theme, you may want to find an affiliate product that is related to that.

On your website, what topics does your audience like to read about? You should look at your Google Analytics to see what topics bring the most visitors to your website. However, If you're having trouble deciding what your readers want, just ask them! You could even create a survey, using something like SurveyMonkey.com, with questions to see exactly what they are interested in.

What is relevant to your brand? If you run a website about animals, then talking about personal finance may not make much sense. You should always think about what your specific audience wants and needs.

What are online personalities, similar to you, promoting? While you shouldn't copy them directly, doing research to see what others are promoting can give you a good idea as to what will work, what will not work, and more.

What products do you like? I am a firm believer in promoting products that you are already enjoying. If you enjoy it, others probably will as well!

What type of direct advertisements are showing on your blog? If you are using a direct advertisement program, like Adsense or Media.net, you can look for possible products to promote by seeing what advertisements are already showing on your blog. This may show you advertisements for products related to your niche, so you have an idea of what may work.

What does Google say? If you are having trouble finding affiliate programs for your brand, then you may just want to head straight to Google and type in your niche + affiliate program. For example: for a personal finance blog I would search "personal finance affiliate programs."

What is available through affiliate networks? Affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, Flex Offers, and others have plenty of affiliate programs within their networks. You can search through their network to see what products or services appeal to you. You never know, the perfect thing may be something you had never thought of or realized before!

As you can see, there are many ways to determine what your followers may be interested in.

After you do your research, you may find that some affiliate products are very similar to others. If this happens, then I recommend you compare products to see which is the best option for your brand and business. You may want to compare the actual products more closely (which is better for your audience?), terms of the affiliate program, commission rates, and if there are available coupon codes and discounts for your followers.

With time and a little bit of work, you'll be able to find what your readers are interested in so that you can promote relevant affiliate products to them.

Use the worksheet "Brainstorm What Your Readers Want" to determine what you should promote to your audience.