Archive for May, 2009

If you’ve been in the affiliate marketing business for long, you probably already know that Affiliate Summit is the premier affiliate marketing event in the US, if not the world. It’s a fantastic way to meet other successful affiliates and vendors, learn new skills and techniques, and take your affiliate marketing game to the next level.

This year, Affiliate Summit East is taking place in New York City on August 9-11. It promises to be another great event, and ClickBank will be attending and exhibiting. To help more affiliates attend the show, we’re giving away 5 free Gold-level passes (valued at $279 each).

To enter, simply fill out the form below. The deadline to enter is 11:59 p.m. on June 8. One entry is allowed per person, and all passes will be processed through ClickBank, so please only register if you can actually attend. Passes are non-transferable. Travel and other expenses are not included. Winners will be contacted directly.

Good luck! We hope to see you at Affiliate Summit.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re a ClickBank client who owns an iPhone (lucky you!) there are a few nice apps that have recently been released that can help you keep track of your ClickBank sales and profits, wherever you are.

FlickBank- This free app shows your weekly ClickBank earnings. Unfortunately the free version only allows you to access one ClickBank account, but a forthcoming paid version of the app will allow you to track multiple accounts, with a combined earnings screen, and includes daily sales tracking, ClickBank sales alerts sent to your phone, and more.

CB Stats- This $4.99 app includes daily sales reporting and allows you to enable a PIN code that protects people from seeing your ClickBank sales reports if anyone gets a hold of your phone. The app was recently updated to allow for multiple accounts. They plan to release more features in future updates, such as more detailed sales reporting for different periods of time, and more.

Affiliate Marketing Calculator (link requires iTunes to view)- This is a completely different type of app. It allows you to perform several different types of calculations, such as a commission calculator to see how much you’ll earn on a sale, a refund rate calculator, a Max CPC calculator to show you the maximum you should bid on a keyword to still be profitable, and a Pay Per Click ROI calculator. This app was designed with ClickBank in mind, and at only $1.99, it may pay for itself very quickly!

If you’re aware of any other ClickBank-related apps for the iPhone or Google’s Android platform, please leave us a comment and let us know.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

ClickBank vendor Jeff Mulligan has created a very useful video showing how he increased sales for one of his ClickBank products over 22% by using a simple technique that only takes a few minutes to put in place. There are no tricks or gimmicks here: Jeff’s technique just increases customers’ willingness to buy by increasing their level of trust and making sure they know what to expect throughout the sales process.

This is especially important when you send customers to an order form that looks different from your main website. Although this video is specifically geared toward ClickBank vendors, there’s no reason affiliates who have their own website couldn’t try it too, by showing a screenshot of the landing page they’re sending customers to next. As Jeff states, you should always be testing. So if you’re an affiliate, give this technique a try and leave a comment to let us know if it helped your sales.

How to Boost ClickBank Sales Video

Global leader called on to address international affiliate marketing trends

Broomfield, Colo. - (May 19, 2009) – After recently being cited by Entrepreneur.com as one of the companies leading the pack in affiliate marketing, ClickBank says the company has joined a list of global industry giants that will share industry insight with nearly 1,500 attendees at Affilicon Israel, June 1-2 in Airport City, Israel.

Dush Ramachandran, ClickBank’s vice president of sales, marketing and business development, will take part in a panel discussion on international affiliate marketing and will be the featured speaker at another conference session entitled “Digital Product Marketing.”

Ramachandran said a variety of global topics and trends will be addressed. “All of which will focus on helping affiliate marketers move their businesses forward,” he said.

As part of the panel on international affiliate marketing, Ramachandran will discuss opportunities available to affiliates who want to take advantage of the growing global market in Internet commerce. During “Digital Product Marketing” he will explore in detail the benefits of marketing digital products versus physical products, drawing heavily upon his experience in working with some of the largest and most successful affiliates and vendors in the industry.

Affilicon, considered the source for affiliate marketing thought leadership and industry expertise, holds several annual conferences considered to be the premier must-attend events for marketing affiliates, exhibitors and online merchants. For more information on Affilicon Israel, visit the conference web site here.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re a ClickBank vendor but have no clue how to design your own Pitch Page for your product, this video from Gideon Shalwick of Become a Blogger will walk you through the steps of creating a Pitch Page using the popular free blogging software, Wordpress. It’s one of the best and easiest ways to quickly create a great-looking Pitch Page!

Posted by: Jeff Leget, Director of IT Operations

Some ClickBank clients have raised concerns that the traffic and clicks that they see in external analytics applications such as Google and Yahoo Analytics sometimes don’t match their ClickBank Hop analytics or sales numbers.

Affiliate-driven sales account for the vast majority of ClickBank’s sales, and we are completely committed to making Hop tracking as accurate as possible. ClickBank will soon release new functionality that will allow you to integrate Google and Yahoo Analytics into the ClickBank Hop and sales cycle. This will give our clients complete visibility into the ways in which affiliate promotions translate to Hops, order form visits, and eventually completed sales.

Since the Vendor Thank You page is the last destination for a ClickBank consumer following a purchase, it would seem as though comparing the number of completed sales to the number of visits to the Thank You page would be relatively straightforward. However, I’ll share with you a number of different ways by which traffic can reach this page, demonstrating why this comparison can sometimes be inaccurate.

1.       ClickBank Sales: The most obvious and rewarding way in which traffic lands on a Vendor Thank You page is via a successful ClickBank sale. As mentioned on our Vendor Tools page, ClickBank will always pass nine query string parameters to the Thank You page. These parameters indicate that the visitor has placed an authentic ClickBank order.

2.       Robots: Search engines spider websites to improve search capabilities. The Thank You page should never be scanned by search engines. The Vendor should always add the META tag described in our Vendor Tools to prevent robots from adding the Thank You page to a search engine list.

3.       Customer Bookmarks: A ClickBank customer can always bookmark the Thank You page. Once bookmarked, they can visit the Thank You page as many times as they like.

4.       GOTO link in the receipt email: When a customer makes a purchase, ClickBank sends them a receipt email that includes a GOTO link to the Thank You page. This GOTO link is only valid for 14 days after the sale is made. It contains an encrypted identifier that ClickBank verifies and ties back to the original Thank You page URL given to the customer at the time of sale. A customer is allowed to visit the Thank You page via this GOTO link as many times as they want within that 14-day window.

5.       ClickBank Customer Service: In some cases, ClickBank can provide a customer with the original Thank You page URL and parameters. This is done in cases where sending the customer the Thank You page URL will keep them from requesting a refund, such as if they were unable to download the product immediately after purchase. This is typically only done within the 60-day refund period.

So how can you, the vendor, better protect your Thank You page and get more accurate traffic statistics? ClickBank provides multiple ways to protect the Thank You page in our Vendor Tools. Here are a few highlights:

1.       A Thank You page should always be a script-based page, such as PHP, ASP, Perl, etc. A scripted page can read and evaluate the parameters that ClickBank passes. The Thank You page can easily be scripted to only permit visitors that have valid ClickBank parameters, like the ClickBank receipt.

2.       A Thank You page should always be protected by the ClickBank Link Security Script and a Secret Key. ClickBank provides code examples on the Vendor Tools page that show how a scripted page can verify the ClickBank Proof of Purchase (CBPOP) value. The Thank You page can then be scripted to only permit visitors that have a valid CBPOP value. It is worth mentioning that less than 2% of registered ClickBank vendors use a Secret Key. However, for sales on any given day, over 50% of the sites that make a sale use a Secret Key. The lesson here is that the most successful ClickBank vendors protect their product using the ClickBank Secret Key and CBPOP.

3.       Check the time. ClickBank passes the time of the original sale in computer epoch time (seconds since 1970). A scripted Thank You page can easily verify that the order occurred within a given number of days. The Thank You page can then be scripted to only permit visitors within a specific number of days since the original sale. This prevents people from accessing the Thank You page URL via bookmarking or sharing.

4.       Script and log the visitor data. Once your scripted Thank You page has filtered out robots and unverified visitors, you can now accurately track unique visitors by logging the receipt number. Obviously, some consumers will download a product twice if they have problems, but a scripted Thank You page will allow you to match unique visitors with unique sales.

I hope this helps demystify the occasional inconsistencies between ClickBank sales numbers and Thank You page visits. The new ClickBank integration with third-party analytics programs should help even more. Look for it in the near future.

MSNBC and Entrepreneur.com posted an article highlighting affiliate marketing as a great way to make money online, and ClickBank was mentioned as one of the best affiliate networks and digital marketplaces to work with.

This is another great example of how affiliate marketing is becoming more mainstream all the time, and is being recognized as a great way for creative entrepreneurs to succeed online.

The article also has some good tips for beginner affiliate marketers on how to get started and the various ways you can make money. It’s worth a look if you’re still learning the ropes.

6 Easy Ways to Make Money Online- MSNBC.com

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

Affiliate Summit is the premier affiliate marketing conference in the U.S. Affiliate Summit East 2009 is going to be held August 9-11 in New York City.

Attending Affiliate Summit is a great way to learn the best strategies and techniques in affiliate marketing and to meet and network with other top vendors and affiliates. ClickBank will be attending, presenting, and exhibiting at this year’s event.

ClickBank is pleased to offer ClickBank clients a 20% discount on any Affiliate Summit pass.

To get the discount, enter the coupon code ASE09CLICKBANK20 during registration. You can also save money by registering before June 12.

We hope to see you in New York!