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Before you do a major product launch, you must do testing first to see how the conversion is. I'll tell you why and show you how to do this yourself, in this article.

Why Test?

All my products have an affiliate program and if I were to do a full launch with a sales page that didn't convert or a product that had a massive refund rate then my affiliates would be seriously angry and my reputation would suffer immediately and might even never recover.

This is why you must test your product before you announce your affiliate program to the world.

How To Test

The easiest way is to simply use PayPal as a payment processor and generate some quick traffic. The quickest way is with PPC e.g. AdWords. Your PPC campaign does not need to be profitable in itself (you may lack the skills and experience to pay a cheap price for your clicks) but what is important is that you see how well your sales page converts.

Ideally, you should run a split test which will allow you to analyze two or three variants of your sales page at once and then pick a winner.

After Testing

When testing is complete, you should have a conversion rate of at least 1%. Any less and you need to go back to the drawing board.

Now you can set up your affiliate program either via PayPal and some third party affiliate management software like e-junkie. Or simply do what I do and register at Clickbank where there are already a ton of hungry affiliates on the lookout for new products.