As an affiliate marketer you have a huge number of products and programs you could promote. In fact, you probably have too many choices. To help you decide, consider the issues below.

When someone asks you to promote their new product, consider the timing. Are they letting you know enough ahead to give you time to put together a proper promotion?

Is the timing going to conflict with another exciting promotion coming up? Of course promoting your own products will take precedence over someone else’s unless you don’t mind moving your date back. But what about that thing you were already going to promote? Your email slots are valuable real estate. You don’t want to hammer your subscribers with a bunch of promo emails one week and then not email them again for three weeks. As you can see, timing is important. It’s a good idea to have a promo calendar laid out so you can showcase each on different days or different weeks to your list.

Another thing to consider before promoting is what kind of cookies the product owner uses. If they use first or forever cookies it means when someone first clicks on an affiliate link, they are cookied by that affiliate. So no matter how hard you push at converting sales, you won’t get the commission when they buy if they’re already cookied by another affiliate. This a bummer for you if your hard promotional work is giving someone else the commissions. Last cookies mean if a customer clicks on your affiliate link last and they buy, you get the sale.

There are pros and cons to first and last cookies. It makes the most difference to you depending on whether the product you want to promote is brand new and you get to be one of the first to tell others about it, or if it has been around for a while and other marketers have already been advertising it. Always make sure you know which type of cookie you’re dealing with.

And importantly, take a look at the product itself. You should have a list of criteria it needs to meet before you endorse it. The first one can cut out a lot of them from the start – is it a good fit for your list? You know your subscribers, will it really help them? Do they need it to fill a void, fix a problem? It doesn’t have to be an exact match; maybe you’re in a non-IM niche but you found a tool or software that they’d benefit from having, even in that non-IM niche.

While looking at the product, look at the creator too. Their reputation for putting out quality goods is mandatory, but they also need to have stellar customer service and back it all with a good guarantee.

Start by considering these three things when looking at products to promote as an affiliate. It’s crucial for it to be of high quality, but the timing of the promotion and the type of cookies will matter to you too.