Archive for July, 2008

Posted by: Bob Dunlap, Director of Marketing

Virtually all mature markets have at least two strong, if not dominant, competitors.  Right now, Internet search has only one, named Google.  While Google is clearly the 800lb gorilla, competitors like Yahoo and MSN are always working on their algorithms, tools, and partnerships in an effort to take some of Google’s market share.

Now, Google may have yet another competitor. Former employees of the Mountain View, CA firm have launched Cuil (pronounced “cool”), a new search portal. They say it delivers more relevant results than any other search engine (yeah, I know, we’ve heard that before…). Will it be as good as or better than Google? Will it deliver the results that surfers and affiliate marketers are looking for? It’s way too early to tell.

Putting a dent in Google’s search dominance has proven to be a very tall task. Is this finally the one to watch? We’ll all stay tuned to see if “cool” lives up to its name.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

Many of our product publishers and affiliates turn to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, such as Google Adwords, to help drive quality traffic to their sites. While there are many ways to improve the performance of PPC advertising, one of the most useful, but occasionally overlooked, methods is a technique called daypart bidding.

Daypart bidding, also known as Ad Scheduling in Google Adwords, is a tool that is offered by both Google and MSN’s AdCenter. It allows you to adjust your bids in a particular PPC advertising campaign, based both on the day of the week and the time of day. You can turn off campaigns completely, or boost your bid to double your normal bid or more. It’s quick and easy to use, and gives you a great deal of control over your advertising.

While this technique can be especially useful for businesses with specific operating hours, it can also be very advantageous for online-only businesses like ClickBank clients. Since ClickBank reports the time of day of every sale, it can be helpful to analyze what days and times deliver the most value for you, and then adjust your advertising bids accordingly. For some people, this may be during normal business hours, but depending on the product it could be late at night or on the weekend.

Once you’ve identified your “prime time,” you can adjust your bids to make sure your product or site is getting maximum exposure at that time. Likewise, if there’s a particular day or time that your site just can’t seem to convert, you can turn down your bids during those times to save your advertising budget for more effective periods.

One great thing about daypart bidding is that you can make use of it even if you don’t have any kind of Web site analytics installed. All you need are the PPC advertiser’s traffic reporting and ClickBank’s sales reporting to start improving your advertising efforts and getting the most return on your investment. To achieve the biggest improvements, though, you should combine ClickBank’s reporting with Web site analytics and testing to get a complete picture of your site’s traffic and sales.

If you haven’t already tried daypart bidding, give it a shot and see how much more you can get out of your budget!

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

Recurring Billing is a well-established practice in the brick and mortar business community and is growing in popularity at ClickBank. Why? Recurring Billing means regular, reliable commissions for affiliates and product publishers.

If you’re not familiar with Recurring Billing, it’s the practice of receiving automated payments for scheduled bills or product installments. Recurring Billing is proving popular because it means a steady income stream to augment one-off product sales. A great example of a publisher successfully using Recurring Billing is Andrew Fox, whose story you can read here.

This presents a great opportunity for affiliates to find recurring products that fit their niche and for product publishers that have a product that lends itself to weekly, monthly, quarterly or other regular installments.

For detailed instructions about implementing ClickBank Recurring Billing, visit the 2007-06-19 Release Summary and the 2007-11-13 Release Summary. These documents will help you start increasing your revenues through Recurring Billing.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager – Client Account Management

Bob Dylan’s classic 1964 song may have been a bit before my time, but when I look back on my years with ClickBank, his catchy hook always pops into my head.

I started with ClickBank on May 11, 2000, shortly after the owners moved the company from San Diego, CA, to Boise, ID. I was the fourth full-time employee hired. We rented a small office which had five rooms: offices for the owners and for our VP of Sales; a larger room for me, Jennifer, and Sommar, the other two customer service representatives at the time (both of whom are still with ClickBank today in other roles!); a small conference room, and a small lobby area which was decorated in kitschy furniture from the ‘70s that we borrowed from one of our board members. We had a single phone, which rarely rang, and twice a month we would all gather in the conference room to stamp our President’s signature on our clients’ checks and stuff them into envelopes. Clearly, it was an impressive, high-tech process!

There were no bells and whistles at that time (those of you who remember our original website can attest to that)! Instead, we focused on one simple concept, which we did better than anyone else: providing reliable commission tracking and on-time payments to our publishers and affiliates.

Fast forward 8 years, and I can proudly say that our commitment to serving our clients’ needs has never changed. Instead, like a fine wine, we’ve only gotten better with age! Our staff of 7 has grown to over 50, which includes a new Executive Team (as of 2005), a beefed up IT and Development staff, and many other key additions in our Customer Service, Security, Marketing, and Accounting departments. This has given us the resources to provide you with better communication, to seek out your feedback, and to fulfill many of your requests for new features and enhancements. The additional staff also means that we’ve long outgrown our little 5 room office.  Over time, we’ve expanded into two offices:  one still in Boise, Idaho, and another in Broomfield, Colorado.

Even my own career at ClickBank has gone through several changes. After spending the last 8 years in our Boise office doing everything from customer service to product approvals to managing people, I have recently moved to our Broomfield office and taken on the position of Manager – Client Account Management in our Business Development Department.

In my new position, my responsibility is to drive the success of our clients. My job is to act as the voice of our clients within the company, to manage and develop programs that foster the growth of our clients’ businesses, and to generate new business by reaching out to the greater Internet marketing world. On that note, if you have comments on any of our past changes or suggestions for future enhancements, please reply to this post. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Yes, “the times they are a-changin’” at ClickBank, but in my estimation it’s the best kind of change- we just keep getting better!

Posted by: Bob King, CEO

I have to laugh as I follow along with all the debate and controversy regarding the Long Tail Theory of marketing and retailing. For those of you unfamiliar with the Long Tail Theory, several years ago Chris Anderson from Wired magazine wrote a book advancing the theory that the Internet is going to fundamentally change consumer buying habits. His theory was that online commerce will allow larger, basically unlimited, assortments of product to be made available. This would be a big shift from the limitations of brick and mortar stores, where space constraints limit the number of products to just the top-selling items. Now the consumer is free to buy whatever niche product they want via Internet commerce, without being limited to only what is stocked in the store.

I have to admit, when I first saw this theory, I was new to ClickBank and the Internet business and I said, “Wow, this is great!” Every time I talked about ClickBank to my friends or anyone else, I somehow worked Long Tail into the conversation.

Now a Harvard Business Professor, Anita Elberse, has come along and said, “Hey, wait a minute, this Long Tail isn’t really that revolutionary.” Her argument is that even though more product assortment is available, we are creatures of habit and we still mostly just buy the most popular items. She uses movies and music examples to support her argument.

So maybe it’s time to drop the Long Tail from my conversations, so I don’t have to get into a senseless argument.

But when I think about ClickBank in the context of the Long Tail, we are the Ultimate Long Tail. Not many businesses could be as niche-oriented as ClickBank. If you have information or advice on virtually any subject that you can put in digital form, you can find out if anybody wants to buy it by using ClickBank.

Granted, we have a modest number of products that are our best sellers, just like any other business. But we have a vast amount of product out there on the “ClickBank Long Tail.” Because of that Long Tail, it can still be profitable to create and promote an e-book or software program that doesn’t sell millions, or even thousands, of copies.

All it takes to get started is a little work on your part to get it ready and $49.95 to list it. It exists in digital form, so there are no warehouses, no trucks, and no further expense until it sells. Then you just pay the commission to the affiliate that promoted it and a small transaction fee to ClickBank for processing the order.

So, the Long Tail, with the blockbusters and thousands of other products, is alive and working here at ClickBank. That’s good news for everyone.

Service provides more convenience for ClickBank users

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – July 16, 2008 – ClickBank, a privately held online retailer for buyers and sellers of digitally delivered products and services, today announced the addition of direct deposit (ACH & XACH) for qualified ClickBank users to receive commission and sales payments.

“Direct deposit is the latest in a series of improvements we’ve made to ClickBank during the past 16 months,” said Bob King, ClickBank CEO. “The feedback we are getting about direct deposit has been very enthusiastic as it’s very convenient for both our affiliates and product publishers.”

With direct deposit, available at no extra charge, ClickBank users will no longer need to wait to receive a check by mail. Payments will be received in one to five business days in the local currency – saving on unnecessary bank fees.

To be eligible for direct deposit, a ClickBank user must have first received three paper checks within any 90-day period. Also, only accounts in the following countries qualify at this time: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. The company is expecting to expand direct deposit to other countries in the future.

Posted by: Greg Lems, Director of Application Development

If you ran a brick-and-mortar store, would you leave it unlocked at night when nobody was around? Of course not! Unfortunately, some ClickBank publishers do just that by not protecting their download URLs.

The download URL (also called the “Thank You Page”) is how paying customers download their digital product from a ClickBank publisher. Publishers configure this URL in the “My Products” section of their ClickBank account. It is important to realize that when ClickBank accepts a payment and sends the customer to the publisher download URL, we also pass along important encrypted information that only the publisher can decipher. The deciphering of this information allows publishers to quickly determine whether the person attempting to download the product has actually paid or not.

If you’re a Web site owner with programming knowledge, or if you have access to a programmer for your site, details on how to implement this feature can be found here:

http://www.clickbank.com/publisher_tools.html#Publisher_Tools_7

If you’re not comfortable with performing programming tasks on your site, there are numerous commercial products available that provide protection for your downloadable digital goods. Some examples of these products for sale on ClickBank include DLGuard, easyClickGuard, and Lock-It-Now, although more can be found in the ClickBank Marketplace.

ClickBank is dedicated to protecting our publishers’ content and helping publishers achieve proper levels of security. Be sure to take advantage of available tools to avoid the undesirable realization that you left your store unlocked overnight!

Posted by: Laura M., Advertising Manager

For publishers who are just starting out or want to expose their product to thousands of affiliates, advertising in ClickBank’s Marketplace has always been a great option. With that in mind, ClickBank is proud to announce the expansion of its advertising program to include Marketplace sub-categories. Now affiliates will be able to more easily connect with publishers who fit their niche.

On July 1, we added 160 new advertising slots on our “Money & Employment” and “Computing & Internet” sub-category pages (8 ads per sub-category). Throughout the rest of the summer, we will continually open up more sub-categories until all of them are available! The next sub-categories we will open up for advertising are “Home & Family” and “Marketing & Ads” on July 15. Make sure to seize this opportunity to get your product in front of interested affiliates, as spots in the Marketplace fill up quickly!

For details and pricing information, please visit:
http://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re an affiliate who runs your own site and promotes it through Google Adwords, improving your Quality Score can be the difference between an advertising campaign that’s mediocre and one that’s extremely profitable. One tactic for improving Quality Score is to make sure that your Web site has a privacy policy, and that your landing page directly links to it. Many affiliates skip over creating a privacy policy on their site, especially if they have created many different Web sites to feature different products.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to become a legal expert, BBBOnline has created a privacy policy template that you can modify to fit your Web site. You’ll just need to plug in a few details about your site, and add or delete certain sections of the policy to reflect your site’s details and marketing policies. Then you’ll need to create a link to the page, preferably in the site footer so it will be linked to from every page within the site. For 10 minutes’ worth of work, it’s one of the easiest ways to improve your site and get better performance out of your advertising efforts.

Even if you don’t use Google Adwords, having a clearly worded privacy policy can make your site appear more trustworthy to visitors, leading to higher conversion rates. One of the biggest hurdles to making a sale online is convincing nervous visitors that their personal information is safe with you, and a privacy policy can go a long way to reassuring them that they can trust you. It’s unknown whether Google rewards sites with a privacy policy in natural search results, but for the small amount of effort required, it’s well worth adding a privacy policy just in case they do.

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

Technology advances and so does your business. A recent post talked about how people’s behavior and uses of search and small screens change on weekends.

Now, with the new $199 iPhone arriving this month and Google’s Android on the way, more pressure than ever will be placed on all cell phone and PDA makers to up their game. Odds are, more and more people will be using the portable device for finding and using information, especially as surfing the Net from these devices becomes faster.

This is going to build more demand for products and services, and not just technology widgets, which can be delivered on that platform. It’s a hot market that is waiting for ClickBank product publishers and affiliates to tap into its potential.