Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Jan. 6, 2009 – ClickBank, a world leader in online retail of high-converting, digitally downloadable products, is attending the Affiliate Summit West. The conference will take place Jan. 11-13^th, at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.

Come meet with ClickBank executives at Table 47 at the Meet Market on Sunday, Jan. 11 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The Affiliate Summit West, the premier affiliate marketing conference of the year, provides an opportunity for affiliates, merchants and networks to attend educational sessions on the latest industry issues. The Affiliate Summit West presents an opportunity for ClickBank to meet its affiliates in person, receive feedback about its services and keep its affiliates up to date on enhancements coming in 2009.

“The Affiliate Summit West is an excellent opportunity for ClickBank to meet its affiliates in person and discuss the latest trends in affiliate marketing,” said Brad Wiskirchen, ClickBank’s chief executive officer. “We have a number of dynamic additions planned for our services in 2009.”

Posted by: Bob King, CEO

Have you seen the show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Sometimes I think our clients at ClickBank are smarter than the people in charge of our economy.

On Monday evening of last week I’d just gotten home, had a bite of dinner and settled into my easy chair to unwind after a particularly busy day. I was frustrated by the news that the U.S. House of Representatives had failed to pass any kind of rescue legislation to begin the turnaround and recovery of the U.S. economy. (I apologize to all of our global readers for starting this off in such a U.S.-centric way, but bear with me.)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m mad about the greedy leadership of the financial institutions that are largely responsible for this mess. But we have to deal with them later. Right now we have to put some mechanism in place to restore credibility and confidence in the system, to make credit available to individuals, small business, and yes, big business too.

One more tirade and then I’ll get to my point. The mainstream media did a horrible job of explaining the whole picture of the bailout. They chose to sensationalize it as $700 billion right to the taxpayers, $2,000 to $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. What baloney. The assets sold off and managed, plus the government’s ownership and interest in the ongoing institutions, causes it to net out to much less than $700 billion. We are close to the economic abyss, so let’s all get real here.

ClickBank is responsible for the livelihood of its employees and tens of thousands of affiliates and publishers who depend on us for income. I’m happy to report we are rock solid, no debt, and continuing to grow. Consumers will continue to look for and buy informational products. All of you in the ClickBank community do an amazing job of developing and promoting those products. It seems you always adapt to the changing times and come up with products particularly well suited to the issues of the day. I’m seeing some interesting new products in the last few weeks providing information on how to prosper in these trying times. Keep up the great work!

Now if we could just get the U.S. Government leaders to be as creative and hardworking as you, we’d be well on the way to recovery.

Thanks for listening. I feel better already.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

This past weekend, Bob Dunlap, our director of marketing, and I had the pleasure of attending the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. The event has grown tremendously since last year. Attendance was great and many important figures from the blogging world spoke at the sessions. Sessions covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from blog widgets to SEO to using blogs for affiliate marketing.

One topic that many of the sessions addressed was how to more effectively make money from blogging. After attending several of these sessions, it became clear how mainstream blogs have become, and how they are an effective tool for anyone wanting to make money online, regardless of their niche. In fact, many of the speakers focused on how blogging in a niche is actually more effective for traffic generation and monetization, because niche visitors will be more motivated to buy a product you recommend, especially if you provide valuable content and information to them.

In addition to reinforcing the potential effectiveness of blogs, especially for small businesses who are looking to get more traffic and highlight their brand, many of the sessions talked about how bloggers can take advantage of social networking to drive even more traffic and increase visitor loyalty. We learned some impressive, often free, tactics for achieving this, and plan to share them with our ClickBank clients in the months to come.

If you haven’t already created a blog to highlight your product or products you promote, you’re missing out on the ability to communicate directly with your target audience. There’s no better time to get started, and soon you can be marketing more effectively than ever, often without spending much money at all. If you already have a blog and want to find out more about how you can use ClickBank in conjunction with your blog to dramatically increase your profits, check out our ClickBank for Bloggers page.

In addition to being able to help our ClickBank clients more effectively use blogs to boost their business, we’ll be using what we’ve learned to improve the ClickBank Blog and make it as useful as possible for our readers. Please comment and let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of in the blog. We hope to see you next year at BlogWorld 2009!

Posted by: Bob Dunlap, Director of Marketing

Working online is great. You can work from anywhere at anytime ­ – at home, your favorite café, even the beach. All you really need is a computer, Internet access, and maybe a cell phone. This ability to connect in near real-time around the globe from anywhere you choose is a major attraction of an Internet-based business.

On the other hand, there is still no substitute for meeting face to face. Whether meeting a colleague, client, or business partner, technology still can’t replicate a handshake or take the place of a live discussion. I was reminded of this recently when I had the privilege of meeting a group of ClickBank clients “live and in person.”

On Friday, June 6^th, ClickBank management met with a small group of clients in London for our second European Advisory Board. We invited a diverse group of product publishers and affiliates to spend the day with us and provide their thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of subjects important to the entire ClickBank community. During the meeting we had in-depth discussions on our product roadmap – what new and improved capabilities we plan to build in the coming months and years, how to better serve our current clients, and how to attract and recruit more product publishers and affiliates to the ClickBank community. The discussions were open and honest, and provided our management team with excellent insights into what is really important to our client base. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who attended this year’s meeting. We genuinely appreciate your active participation and the generous use of your time.

This Advisory Board meeting is one important channel for feedback, but by no means the only one. In fact, another major vehicle for client input is just around the corner. In the coming weeks we are initiating our second annual client survey. The survey is sent to a random sample of ClickBank clients, so if you receive an invitation to participate, please do. The survey is a great opportunity for you to tell us what you think.

And if you get the chance to meet with your business partners or customers live, I highly recommend it. It certainly takes more time and effort, but it’s almost always time well spent.