Should I find affiliates for my niche (sports nutrition) or are there better options?

Good evening BHW. I have been in the sports nutrition industry for almost 10 years. I have owned a few ecommerce sites that have done fairly well but 80% of my income has been supplying products to storefronts and individuals who resell my products/brands online. To be clear my products aren't bullshit diet pill trash that are 90% hype and 10% sawdust. I manufacture quality products (DHEA, diet pills, test boosters etc) for companies that sell world-wide with multiple distributors in countries across the world. I have always wanted to branch out on my own, so over the last year I have formulated two new product lines for myself (my latest line is being produced for the first time as I write this post!!) and instead of dealing with distributors/retailers with decent margins, I'd rather promote and grow my brands online myself and achieve margins that are simply not possible with my previous model. If my customers can move 15k+ units monthly then I can too, right?

I have had decent luck thus far through IG promotion, Facebook ads and good old fashioned SEO. I feel like there is something I'm missing to drive serious sales and after careful consideration I think finding established, trustworthy affiliate programs are the missing piece to the equation.

Am I completely off base or is it worth my time and energy to pursue?

Are there other avenues I'm over looking? I don't want to buy email lists as they'll be whored out and "targeted traffic" smells like bs everywhere I look.

Is it best to sign up with as many programs as possible or should I implement my own program into the back-end of my site and handle affiliates in-house?

Should I even use my site for this or is it best to design an entirely different platform or landing page?

My products produce the effects I advertise so I'm not worried about blow back from that side but I'm concerned about promoting trial offers with recurring payments and destroying my brand reputation. Is there a way to pull this off without jeopardizing my progress thus far?


The potential for this is HUGE if I can focus my energy in a direction that isn't a complete waste of time. I'm not looking for someone to baby me by any means, but a push in the right direction would leave me eternally grateful.

Affiliate programs definitely work. However finding good producing affiliates is the hard part, and getting them to switch from who they are currently promoting to you, an unknown, takes a lot of hard work. You can join various affiliate programs such as cj.com shareasale, etc. but you will still need to focus your time and effort on getting quality affiliates that are actually selling.

Bodybuilding.com would be a great outlet for you, but it's virtually impossible to get them to act. They want you to send them samples, then they say they will get back to you, but they never do.

I've dealt with bodybuilding.com in the past and they bastardize pricing to an extreme. You are correct in that my products are unknown but my branding and design is on point. It might be slightly naive but I feel like all I really need is a little exposure and this thing will seriously blow up. Only thing to do is keep grinding lol...

Thank you for the advice, I'll look into cj.com and sharesale. I'm also checking out nutracash atm

Hey man shoot me a PM with your email because I don't have enough posts.

Maybe I can help you out and you can help me out. I'm good on the own website/ecommerce side and you seem to be good at reaching out to storefronts and individuals to resell your products. Maybe we can both exchange a little info that can help the both of us.