Last week I showed you how I use AI to spot what stops people from buying.
This week I want to show you what most people get wrong before they even start looking.
It’s not that most people don’t research.
It’s that they research the wrong questions.
And if you don’t do your research before you promote or create something, you’re going to end up making some costly mistakes.
The research mistake that costs the most time
When you’re new, you tend to ask things like:
“Is this product any good?”
“What do people think of it?”
“Does it have good reviews?”
These feel like research questions. They’re not.
They’re quality questions.
And quality doesn’t predict whether something will sell for you.
The questions that actually matter are:
“Who is buying this right now?”
“Are they buying from affiliates or going direct?”
“What nearly stopped them from purchasing?”
These are market questions.
And most beginners never ask them because they assume good products sell themselves.
They don’t.
A simple example that shows the difference
Let’s say you’re looking at two productivity tools.
Tool A:
- 4.8 star rating
- Hundreds of glowing reviews
- Clean interface
- Fair price
Tool B:
- 4.1 star rating
- Mixed reviews
- Clunky interface
- Slightly expensive
Most beginners would pick Tool A.
But if you check where people are actually buying…
Tool A: People buy direct from the company website. Affiliates get very few conversions.
Tool B: Most buyers come through affiliate recommendations and comparison content.
Tool A is better.
Tool B is more profitable to promote.
That’s the difference between researching quality and researching markets.
Where to look for market signals instead of quality signals
These resources show you buying behaviour rather than product ratings
Awin (formerly ShareASale) Top Sellers by Category
Shows which products affiliates are actually making money from, not which products are highest rated.
https://www.awin.com/us/publishers
Filter by your category, sort by EPC (Earnings Per Click). High EPC means affiliates are converting traffic successfully.
ClickBank Marketplace Gravity Score
Sort by Gravity (more than 30 signals consistent sales). Then read affiliate resource pages to see what objections affiliates address most.
https://www.clickbank.com/marketplace
Quora Spaces on buying decisions
Search “[your topic] worth it” or “should I buy [category]”
Sort answers by Most Upvoted. The detailed answers reveal exactly what makes people choose one option over another.
Product Hunt “Alternatives” pages
Search any tool, click through to its Product Hunt page, scroll to comments asking “vs [competitor]”
These comparison questions show you what people are actively weighing up before buying – that’s your affiliate angle.
Trustpilot filtered by “Switched from”
Search your product category, then use the search-within-reviews function for phrases like “switched from” or “moved from”
This shows you what people left behind and why, which is often more valuable than why they chose what they chose.
Facebook Ad Library – Long-Running Campaigns
Search competitor brands, filter to “Active” ads, sort by date
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library
If an affiliate or brand is running the same creative for more than 60 days, it’s converting. That’s proof of market, not just proof of product.
Use any three of these before committing to creating or promoting something that will take you a significant amount of time and effort. You can also check the WarriorPlus marketplace for how offers there are converting, if affiliates are promoting and for refund rates.
The mental shift that makes research faster
Stop looking for proof something is good.
Start looking for proof something is selling through affiliates specifically.
Those are different questions.
And once you start asking the right one, you waste far less time on products that would never have worked for you anyway.
A practical check you can run in 10 minutes
Pick any product you’re considering promoting.
Go to YouTube and search: “[product name] vs”
Read the first 20 comments on the top 3 videos.
If you see:
- Questions about pricing differences
- People asking “which one for [specific use case]”
- Debates about features or limitations
That’s a buying conversation. People are comparing before purchasing.
If you see:
- Generic praise
- “Great video thanks”
- Questions about how to use it
That’s not a buying conversation. People are learning, not deciding.
The difference tells you whether comparison content (which affiliates create) actually influences the sale.
Your TED talk this week is simply wonderful – it’s on choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce:
Later this week I’ll be releasing something that does all the research work for you and show you what people are actually buying – or not – but even without it, shifting from quality questions to market questions will save you days of wasted effort. I’ll make sure you’re the first to know when my new offer is live
