Cracking the Social Code
August 28th, 2008 | 
Author: Posted by: Bob King, CEO
A couple of weeks ago I attended the Affiliate Summit East in Boston. I was on a panel discussing the State of Ad Networks, but that is not what I’m going to write about today. While reviewing the agenda for Affiliate Summit, I noticed a breakout session related to affiliate marketing and social networking. I attended the session with great anticipation that I’d learn something to help me “crack the code” on how ClickBank could participate in social networks and drive our business to even greater heights.
I was sorely disappointed, not because the speaker didn’t do a good job, but because he presented a lot of really good tactical ideas for individual affiliates to tap into social networks, but nothing to spark my awareness for ClickBank’s opportunity. (Maybe that’s my problem.)
Now I’m not totally ignorant of how social networking works, even though I’m the oldest guy in the company. I realize we probably aren’t going to be successful with a full frontal attack of advertising or calling the CEO of a social networking site and trying to cut a deal. I realize we have to participate for awhile and build our credibility with users. I know that blatant commercialization is a big no-no.
So here’s my dilemma. I’ve got to run a grassroots effort to spread the word about the virtues of ClickBank, but we run a pretty lean operation here. I can ask our employees to do their part, but there aren’t many of us. However, there are thousands of you out there; can you help spread the word about the benefits of ClickBank? I’m not asking people to spam the social networking sites, I just know that ClickBank can be a great help to the kinds of people who participate in social networks, just like it’s helped you and many others.
If you have any other ideas on how we could “crack the social code,” leave a comment and let me know. I’m always looking for great ideas on how to spread the word about ClickBank, and who knows better than people like you, who are out there being successful online on a daily basis? I look forward to hearing your ideas.
Posted in General | 
Tags: affiliate summit, affiliates, clickbank, social marketing, social networking
Hi Bob,
I think Clickbank would do itself a huge favour if it implemented a real referal program for referred publishers AND affiliates. The current model you have only pays out for publishers that are referred, not affiliates, and even then the payout is quite small and hardly competitive.
Take a look at most of the affiliate marketing blogs and websites out there, most of them promote affiliate networks purely based on how well they pay through their rewards program. Some of these networks pay as much as 5% of all earnings made by the person referred. That’s VERY attractive to any blogger/webmaster in the affiliate marketing niche, particularly considering how the content they publish on their sites are aimed at involving and advancing their readers in the affiliate business.
Quite simply: look at your competitors referral programs, make your own, publish a press release, and watch as affiliate industry people start to link to the Clickbank site with their affiliate links. Until then, don’t expect to find many people linking to Clickbank without getting some nice referral cash in return
Hello Bob,
One idea is that you start doing some short simple videos. Unlike this blog post, videos tend to spread around online without much effort; people can easily place them on their blogs and sites. They also tend to link to them often on forums, or in emails, etc. YouTube is the perfect social networking site you could be using right now.
Short videos could be profiles of successful vendors and affiliates, they could be snippets from events (London or Affiliate Summit), or they could show us around the office or even a simple computer screen recording of how to use the Marketplace or some simple ClickBank Tips. Even a short simple 3 minute video is enough to create interest and get someone to go visit ClickBank.com and possibly sign up.
You could easily set up a channel on YouTube where all the videos could be found, watched, spread, and even responded to. In addition you could still post them on the blog here.
That’s my idea.
Bob -
I think you will find that what speaks most to affiliates is, well, money. I think the affiliates and publishers would do a much greater job of trumpeting what a fantastic concept ClickBank is if they could potentially reap a little bit of the rewards.
Perhaps you could set up a system where an affiliate would earn say $50 whenever a NEW publisher signs up (I think you charge a little more than that these days so you’d still make a tiny profit) and some other figure when an affiliate signs up and makes his first 3 sales. Obviously you’ll need to set it up in a way that doesnt invite abuse.
I think you have some sort of program set up but the last time I looked at it the payout was miniscule and not worth anyone’s effort.
- Michael Webb
Founder, TheRomantic.com
Create a clear presence on established social networks. For example, I logged in to my Facebook account and did a search for ClickBank. There were some groups and some Facebook Pages, but none that appeared to officially represent ClickBank. It’s easy and free to create a Facebook Page that officially represents ClickBank. Then, encourage people to become Fans of the page, which automatically links back to them (to their benefit if they know how to work the system). Also, create an account on Twitter and “tweet” at least once a day (a term for this is microblogging), then encourage people to “follow” you on Twitter, which also automatically links back to them. (Unfortunately, somebody already signed up for an account called “clickbank” on Twitter — not sure how that could be resolved or worked around.) These are just two examples, of course, but it’s a way to go where people are already interacting. No, you don’t want to have “crass commercialization” but some commercial intent is OK.
Thanks for the great ideas, guys. This is exactly what I was hoping for. Please keep the ideas coming, and we’ll get to work on getting involved in the social networking arena. We really appreciate the input.
If every one of your employees has an account at a social site like Social Marketing Central or Facebook or even direct matches or bizpreneur and each one of them makes a commitment to posting once a day and to building a network of friends. Your visibility will improve tremendously. I do agree with the comments above about rewarding your affiliates more generously too. Some folks really like a contest. I don’t but that is a convenient way to reach a lot of people in a short period of time. my 2 cents.
Clickbank used to be one of a kind, ahead of its time. However, the Net’s moved on now and other affiliate networks are offering some nifty tools for their publishers.
Yes, money counts… a LOT! A referral fee for other publishers would be good. It’s not the amount that’s important, it’s the fact that there’s something in it for publishers.
But beyond that, you can think about:
– producing some widgets that people can just plug into their website and leave. Perhaps it could advertise the top sellers in a filtered list (filtering options are important). Most widgets now are also tailored to fit all the main social networking sites – the easier you make it to do, the more people will bother/be able.
– some “shop” style tools.
Look around at what some of your competitors are doing. They’re producing all sorts of online gadgetry that we can drop into our websites and forget.
Hi Bob,
Most of the people in the world listen to WIIFM.
[what's in it for me]
If you don’t offer an incentive, why would anyone even try, some may even think he may hurt them with more competition even tho I know that is not the issue.
Also, I never see you on the net. Do you not promote yourselves? And why is it “lean”. It always seemed to me you have very little competition.
Do you even have a marketing plan and goals set?
I say all these things for good because I love your company and want it to do well.
I provide marketing services for online affiliate marketers. I find that “hop-links” seem to be not working on occasion, like this past weekend. Some assurance that affiliate links stay in place would be helpful also. I do use a cloaker, so when the affiliate=none shows up on my campaign it is beyond irritating.
Put up a ClickBank profile on FaceBook, twitter and some of the hotspots-I am sure you will develop a bigger following!
It’s nice to see Clickbank opening up a bit…
I remember when I started out, I found it very confusing what I should actually be doing (the features are clearly explained, but it feels dry and intimidating)
More affiliate training would definitely help a lot. Why not stack odds of success on your new signups’ side by providing a more comprehensive set of guidelines and even blueprints…
Also, this blog is great for established publishers or affiliates, but it does little for the new guys, which are those you seem to be after with this “campaign”.
Clickbank has the position to be a thought leader in this industry, yet it barely communicates with its signups and it’s public face is sorely lacking in comparison with what could be accomplished if Clickbank really set out to tell people who they are and what they do (always stressing the benefits).
What about some case studies, interviews and general involvement in the industry? Not really expensive and CB is in the perfect position to gain a tremendous amount from such activities…
Hi Bob:
Its nice Clickbank is strarting to open up a little but is stil far from generating the kind of leads and a nice referal program to atract even better participants, on another note; I see very few if none Spanish Language Ads or Products.
What a waste of such a great business site, not knowing that there is a vely large, nearly untapped market out there that many affiliates are missing because of lack of information or products at Clickbank.
For your consideration, I’m one of those affiliates and consumer customer that would love to atract some spanish market if only Clickbank would do its research and find out what they are missing on.
Do not waste any moke time and get on board snd watch your site get a grand bust in sales and affiliate response.
Hi Bob,
I’ll tell you exactly how to break into social networking, as you are where we were last year.
Start by building a simple Clickbank Facebook app, and make it beneficial to the Facebook user to use it. Start with one social platform and go from there (Facebook is really the only one that matter right no, but that could change)
I would be happy to help you with this. We were, after all, the first to develop a database driven Clickbank mall years ago, and that is what we built our FB app to run on.
Happy to share the technology, it benefits us all.
Oh, you just have to fly me out there; I hate travelling on my own dime, but the consulting won’t cost a nickel. You guys helped me retire to affiliate marketing, so its the least we can do. :>)
Cheers,
The “Ronster”
Ron Davies CD, MBA
1499988 Ontario Ltd
Bob:
Your company is already well into “social networking” – establishing an affiliate program as significant and formidable as Clickbank’s is no small feat. Maintaining a community of committed individuals and businesses is considered by many social networking experts as a check mark in the success column.
My advice – recognize there is no “code” to crack – there’s no special trick or formula. Rather, like search engine marketing and generating greater findability for your company, there are many approaches and details that contribute to overall success.
The recommendation (in this thread) to build specific social network applications (such as FaceBook) is a good one – but make sure you add Google Gadgets and OpenSocial compliant application support. But I think it makes sense to formulate a strategic approach to social networking. In a much broader sense, I’ve suggested (below) four ideas and one trend that could prepare ClickBank for social media success –
1 – IDEA: Social Media Newsroom; this is a new evolution of an old idea.
Like most businesses, your staff and executives are making social connections across many online social networking systems; Linkedin, Naymz, Twitter, and other social systems relevant to your business, are attracting your employees as they seek out new ways to sell, support, and represent your business. You may even have a social forum of your own, a blogsite, or marketing partners that allow you to participate with high-value con-tent about your products and business.
A social media newsroom provides a unified representation of all your businesses’ social and news media content. The objective of this is to make it easy for your website and blog visitors to find and make connections quickly and efficiently with your conversational content and people that can respond to customers, journalists, and prospects.
In my view, the expanse and distribution of social media for just one company is so great that creating a single page to accommodate such information is impractical. This leads me to believe that a social media newsroom must include a custom social media search application that is specifically designed to aggregate content from flow applications that contain content about ClickBank. This transforms all that is “social” about your business into a single, highly leveragable, asset. Here’s a simple example – http://media.expansionplus.com.
2 – IDEA: All businesses should solidify their social “footprint” by aggressively securing brand-name based identities in popular social media platforms.
I was surprised that “ClickBank” was available in Twitter and to be sure it was available, I registered it. I also did the same on Identi.ca, and Ping.fm. Your marketing/brand management group should not allow this to happen so easily. Everywhere social media is emerging, the ClickBank identity should be secured. (Note – I’ll sign my “ClickBank” account identities over to you upon request – just send me the email address they should resolve to)
Once you have your identities in place, you should use them to broadcast the voice of the company – frequent updates into Twitter, Identi.ca, etc will cause people to take note and follow you; this is an ideal pub-sub model for customers that depend on the latest advise, commentary and ideas. You can also use flow applications to generate feedback on new ideas and solicit the social horizon for advice. If you need help identifying the right places to secure, feel free to contact me.
3 – IDEA: Establish a ClickBank account with GetSatisfaction.com.
This is an ideal way (with little cost and some effort) to embrace social media and transparent customer support. Build your GetSatisfaction presence with plenty of participation from your staff and integrate other social content into this new space.
4 – IDEA: Establish a social media monitoring practice in your company.
It’s a good idea to become aware of what’s being said about your company on the social content plane. There are many ways to do this, but a bit too involved to try to elucidate the implementation details here. Give me a shout if you want some guidance on this.
5 – TREND: Conversations Moving Toward Flow Applications.
Blogging 1.0 was great; commenting… not so useful. Flow applications; a natural extension of commenting that enhances the conversation and will dramatically impact the emergence of Blogging 2.0. It was only a matter of time before the idea of “Blogging 2.0” made its appearance. Conversations are moving away from blogs (specifically business blogs) as content consumers attempt to participate [more] in the conversational aspects of the blogosphere. I don’t believe this shift is intentional; rather, it’s simply the market of content consumers (and providers) voting for better interaction and conversational services. If anything, it underscores why Twitter has grown so quickly and why other services such as Ping.FM have emerged. Understanding and capitalizing on this trend is highly recommended. More – http://blogsite.com/public/blog/210687
Best of luck with your social media strategy…
Cheers! –bf