Archive for the ‘Strategies for Success’ Category

Posted by: Michel Fortin, Guest Blogger

There are certain things you can do immediately to help you drastically improve your sales copy. Granted, writing persuasive content is in itself deserving of an entire book. But given a choice, I believe there are seven simple tips for increasing attention, readership, and desire of your current sales copy. Here they are.

1. Headline

You might have heard of the famous “AIDA” formula in direct marketing. Successful direct response web copy is contingent on your adherence to that well-known formula. AIDA is an acronym that stands for:

Attention

Interest

Desire

Action

The first part (i.e., “Attention”) is probably the most important on the Internet. Crafting a headline on your site’s front page that immediately captures the prospect’s attention is critical to your success. Why? On the web, our attention span is enormously short. You only have a fraction of a second to capture a person’s attention and pull her into your copy.

If the prospect hits your front page and does not immediately feel a need to read further, she’ll leave at the single click of a mouse. And if so, the rest of the formula goes straight down the tubes, no matter how great your copy is. Therefore, in order to limit my writing to the confines of this short article, here are at least three important things to remember when developing headlines.

A) The 3 Top Human GOALS

The first is to focus on the three most important goals in human nature, which are to either save (or make) time, money, and energy. (And by energy I mean “effort.”) These three are possibly the most common and easiest ways to build headlines, because everyone wants to save time, make money, or work less.

B) The 3 Top Human DESIRES

The second is to focus on the three greatest human desires, which are greed, lust, and comfort (or convenience).

Of course, when I say “lust,” I don’t mean the topic of sex. But there is a way to use sex in a headline without appearing crass or even pornographic. Whether your product or service helps to make a person feel good, sexy, attractive, powerful, potent, virile, appreciated, happy, loved, etc, these are all elements we desperately seek. It all comes down to emotions!

C) The 3 Top Human TEASERS

Third, use an element of curiosity, scarcity, or controversy in your headline. For example, with curiosity you want to produce intrigue. Don’t mention everything to your readers — give them ample information but not too much so that it pulls them into the copy. Leave an interesting tidbit out or keep them on the edge of their seats, eager to read and absorb more.

Here’s an example. Don’t say, “How to Triple Web site Sales.” Instead, say, “Discover these six unconventional secrets for tripling Web site sales!” People will then wonder, “What are they?”

2. Headers

On the Web, people don’t read. They scan. They seldom read entire Web pages from top to bottom. If the headline is compelling enough, then the likelihood that they will read the entire body copy will be greater. However, the chances of that happening 100% of the time are very small.

One way to overcome this is to use headers at every two or three paragraphs so that, when the reader scans the page, headers pull readers into the copy. Similar to the headline, don’t be vague or general. Use benefits. Be specific. And think keywords. Rather than saying “Background,” “Profile,” or “History,” say “The Strange-but-True Story of How Michel Fortin Went From Colossal, Bankrupt Failure to Becoming a Million-Dollar Success.”

Just as the headline is meant to grab people’s attention and get them to start reading your copy, their desire to restart scanning and jump a few paragraphs is almost excruciating. Time is scarce, and with so many things vying for our attention both in our lives and on our computer desktops, people get easily distracted — and more so today, with the Internet, than ever before.

So write and include headers throughout the copy to get readers to stop scanning any further, and to continuously bring them back into your salesletter. Write your salesletter as an amalgamation of several “mini-articles” with headlines for each, strung together in one flowing, fluid letter that keeps them riveted from the first word to the buy button.

Be sure to check back next Monday for Part 2!

Michel Fortin is a marketer, copywriter, and author of many books and courses. For more information about Michel, including how to get your hands on several free ebooks, visit his blog and sign up free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.

Posted by: Jennifer Johannsen, VP of Operations

With the start of every new year, of course, comes New Year’s Resolutions… Well, this year, one of my New Year’s Resolutions (which I challenge you all to take on, as well) is to spread the word about ClickBank to friends and other acquaintances.

During these challenging economic times, ClickBank offers a unique opportunity for anyone to make a little extra money, either as an affiliate or as a publisher. I realized that while I see all of the benefits ClickBank has to offer day in and day out, I rarely tell people that I run into outside of work why it would benefit them to join and how they can get started.

As Greg and Jeff mentioned in their blog posts (”DIY with ClickBank” and “Put Me in Coach…“), first you need to think about your unique knowledge and about your niche. Then you can take that to the next level, and think about what kinds of problems and questions your friends have the answers to that most people don’t, and explain to them the benefits of writing that up in an e-book and selling that through ClickBank.

For those of you that spread the word online, there is something in it for you too…  ClickBank’s publisher referral program is a great way for you to promote ClickBank and earn extra commissions for doing so. You will earn 20% of the $49.95 activation charge when your referred publisher activates their account. You will also earn 5% of ClickBank’s typical markup of each sale that your recruited publisher makes for one calendar year. For more information, please visit the Referral Program and the Referral Program FAQ page on the ClickBank Web site.

I wish you and all of your referrals the VERY best in 2009!!!

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

As a rule of thumb, you should gather competitive intelligence (CI) for your business. Doing so will allow you to better understand current and potential competitors, industry trends, and possible threats. As a result, you will be empowered to make more informed decisions about your product and strategic initiatives.

To do this effectively, you should implement a process designed to filter large volumes of data into clear and actionable insight. For instance, using a RSS parser such as Jawfish to receive, organize, and redistribute feed content can automate CI data mining and distribution. Simply take the repurposed RSS feed content and display it on an intranet or wiki page, and voila, you have a CI portal.

Similarly, you can use Web page monitoring tools to ensure you are “in the know” regarding your competitors’ activities. For example, you can use a tool like TrackEngine, InfoMinder, or WatchThatPage to notify you every time your competitors’ news or press release pages are updated. Review the content as you are notified, identify if it is significant, and redistribute within your company as necessary.

Lastly, use tools like Twitturly or Twitterfox to easily monitor popular links being tweeted for subjects related to your competitors, your industry, or possible threats to your business. Doing so will give you nearly real-time visibility into their activities and the community’s response to it. You can also use the tool Tweet Scan to get emailed updates on tweets for particular keywords. It delivers information less frequently than the other tools, but can be good for receiving summaries if you don’t have a lot of time to monitor the other tools.

In conclusion, the Internet has changed the meaning of “readily available information.” If you haven’t already, you need to leverage tools like these to help you capture this information and organize it in a fashion that makes sense for your business. Taking the time to do so will lead to greater success.

Happy selling, friends!

Please note that all applications mentioned in this post are not affiliated with ClickBank and should be used at your own risk.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager- Client Account Management

In my conversations with clients, I have found that most people search the Marketplace using the default “Sort by” option, Popularity. Popularity is determined by a publisher’s net sales over a recent timeframe and also rewards publishers who have many affiliates promoting them.

While popularity is a useful measure of a product’s earning potential for you as the affiliate, there are many advantages to using the other “Sort by” options available in the Marketplace as well.

High Gravity: Sort by ‘High Gravity’ if you are looking for products that have a proven track record for converting well. Gravity refers to the number of affiliates who have earned a commission by promoting a particular publisher’s product(s). Therefore, if a publisher has a high gravity score, it means that the publisher has lots of affiliates earning money by promoting their product. This, in turn, should be an indicator to you that the product sells well. The downside to promoting products with a high gravity score is that you will encounter lots of competition in promoting it.

Low Gravity: If you are looking for hidden gems and want to be one of the first to market with a product promotion, sort your Marketplace search by “Low Gravity.” This is a bit of a high risk/high reward option. Low gravity means little competition from other affiliates, so you may be able to spend less time and money promoting that product than with a high gravity product. If the product converts well, you can win big as one of the only affiliates promoting it. This is the high reward side.

However, low gravity also means that the product either hasn’t been tested by many other affiliates or has been tested by affiliates and hasn’t converted well. Either way, it’s possible that you could be spending your time and ad dollars on a product that doesn’t sell. That’s the high risk side of Low Gravity.

$ Earned/Sale: This is a great option for people who know they need to make a minimum amount of money on each sale in order to be profitable. If you know about how much you’re going to spend on promotion for each sale you earn, you can sort by $Earned/Sale and only promote products whose payout meets your minimum threshold for profitability. For example, if you know you are going to spend about $10 in advertising per sale, you may choose to only promote products that pay at least $20 per sale.

% Earned/Sale: This is similar to $ Earned/Sale, but it ranks publishers according to the commission percentage they offer on each sale. If you are looking for publishers that give a high percentage of the sale to affiliates, sorting by % Earned/Sale is your best option.

Future $ and Total $/Sale: Are you interested in earning recurring revenue from a single sale? Then subscription products are for you. Sort by either Future $ or Total $/Sale to find products that bill customers at regular intervals, such as bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. The higher the dollar amount, the more money affiliates earn from that product, on average.

% Referred: This “Sort by” option tells you the percentage of a publisher’s sales that are referred by affiliates. A high %Referred likely means that the publisher is established and has had time to grow their affiliate base. It also indicates that affiliates stick with the product once they start promoting.

Each “Sort by” option offers a different picture of ClickBank publishers and offers affiliates different ways to find great new products to promote. Try experimenting with different types of searches, and you could find the product that’s a perfect fit for your affiliate business!

In an earlier blog post, I described the Ten Habits of Highly Successful Publishers. Through my conversations with our top affiliates, I discovered that they also shared many important habits that have led to their success.

1. Promote products that address specific needs: While most fledgling affiliates tend to focus on the Internet Marketing vertical expecting to make quick money, there is a wide range of products on the ClickBank Marketplace that cater to a huge variety of needs. Products that address a specific need or answer a particular question sell extremely well.

2. Promote widely: Many successful affiliates rely on a wide range of promotional methods-e-mail marketing, blogs, review sites, and pay-per-click advertising-since each type of promotional method works well with a particular demographic.

3. Promote seasonally: Successful affiliates tend to vary the products they promote based on the season. With New Year’s resolutions being made at the start of the year, a lot of people look for self-improvement products at that time, while in the summertime products relating to outdoor recreation tend to be more popular.

4. Persevere through hardship: Many novice affiliates tend to assume they cannot be successful if their initial attempts to promote products don’t go well. Nothing succeeds like perseverance. Stick with the effort and don’t allow early disappointment to deter you. Many of our most successful affiliates have attained success after disappointing early results.

5. Broaden your portfolio of products: In general, all products don’t do well at the same time. When some products are doing well, other products are not. Promoting a variety of products will allow you to benefit by smoothing out the peaks and valleys in the life cycle of each product.

6. Test relentlessly: Since your commissions depend on the links from your site to the publisher’s site working consistently, test everything and test regularly. Simulate a visitor’s journey from your site to the publisher’s site and then on to the ClickBank order form, and make sure that the order form displays your nickname as the affiliate. You should also test and tweak the language you use in your promotions to make sure it is compelling.

7. Make realistic claims for the product: Refunds are high when products don’t meet the claims made by the promotional material. By making extravagant claims for the product you may be able to get more people to buy the product initially, but this success is short-lived when customers end up refunding the product if it doesn’t measure up.

Our top affiliates generate several million dollars worth of business each year, even in difficult economic times, by adopting these seven simple habits. Perhaps now you can too!

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

Whether you’re a ClickBank publisher or affiliate, a key component to your success is getting people to take action based purely on the strength of your writing.

For publishers, it’s obvious that your pitch page needs to be able to sell interested visitors on why they really need your product, how it’s going to improve their lives, and why it’s better than any of your competitors’ products.  Once you’ve made the sale, your product needs deliver the value you’ve promised, and be easily comprehensible and actionable to people all over the world.

Affiliates need to have an even broader range of writing skills, depending on where and how they’re trying to promote products. If you’re paying for search engine advertisements, you have a very limited amount of space in which to convince searchers to click on your ad, and to explain what they should expect on the landing page. If you write articles, you have to legitimately inform people and entice them to click on your Hoplink. Affiliates have to master a wide variety of writing styles and learn how to use them properly in many different locations.

Since great writing is important and valuable to all of us, I wanted to share a few particularly useful articles from my favorite writing blog, Copyblogger.

• Copywriting 101: Brian’s 10-step tutorial has something for everyone, whether you’re writing full articles or just PPC ads.
• Do These 3 Common Copywriting Mistakes Keep Your Readers From Buying?: Sonia makes some great points about why solid products sometimes don’t sell as well as you’d expect, and how to remedy that.
• The Two Most Important Words in Blogging: Although the title refers to blogging, this post applies equally well to all sales writing.
• How to Write Magnetic Headlines: This series of posts about writing headlines can be especially useful to affiliates working with a limited amount of space, like in PPC advertising. It’s also great for publishers who want to grab a visitor’s attention immediately on a pitch page.
• Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques: Great advice for all kinds of copywriting.
• And finally… Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb: In affiliate marketing, credibility is key, and even smart people make grammatical mistakes from time to time.

These posts, along with the rest of the useful information available on Copyblogger, will go a long way toward help your affiliate marketing efforts thrive!

Posted by: Miles Baker, Guest Blogger

Having been a publisher, affiliate, and even an affiliate manager over the past 10 years, I’ve been able to get a unique perspective on what it’s like to be on both sides of the affiliate/publisher relationship.

Given that insight, I’ve noticed most publishers are leaving money on the table when it comes to recruiting, assisting, and building relationships with their affiliates. Therefore, I’ve put together some of the most important things a publisher should be doing in order to build and nurture their affiliate base.

Be Available – Many times I’ve been eager to promote a product or service and have a question about it, but I am unable to find an email, phone number, or any way to contact the publisher. Sometimes, even if I do find that information and contact the publisher, I never hear back from them. This doesn’t leave me with much confidence as an affiliate promoting their product. Don’t make this fatal mistake; be available in some way. One easy way is to place an email or contact box on your site and then use the phone to follow up and further your relationship with your affiliates.

Use The Phone – Don’t be afraid to talk to people on the phone. This doesn’t mean you need to post your phone number on the Web. However, it does mean that you should be using the phone to talk with potential affiliates and build relationships with them, as well as maintaining relationships with your existing affiliates.

As a publisher, you are most likely very busy, and most people don’t have the resources for a dedicated affiliate manager or the time to talk to every affiliate that emails them. However, keep in mind the 80/20 rule, which applied here dictates that 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your affiliates. If your time is limited, then at least make sure you’re talking with that top 20%.

Go To Conferences – This is the best place not only to learn, but also to meet potential affiliates and super affiliates. Going to an affiliate marketing conference like Affiliate Summit, for example, will allow you to meet new and existing affiliates, other publishers, and even people from ClickBank. When going to a conference, don’t try to recruit someone as an affiliate without getting to know the person first. Your purpose should be to get to know people and build relationships first, and then decide if they are a good candidate to be an affiliate for you.

Get Feedback – Now that you’re building relationships with your affiliates and you’re in regular communication with them, you’ll start getting priceless feedback. Listen to your affiliates, be proactive by encouraging feedback, and most importantly, take action on the feedback you get! The feedback you receive from your affiliates will help you to improve your products and services, conversions, and can give you numerous profitable insights.

As you can see, all my points are based around the same concept – the relationship. Affiliate management and recruitment is all about relationships. Whether you’re approaching potential affiliates in person or on the Web, or just working with existing affiliates, your approach should always be the same. You should work to build a great relationship with them. Not doing that is one of the biggest mistakes you could make as a publisher. Besides, you never know where that relationship might take you. I’ve known a few publishers who have even started new successful business ventures with one of their top affiliates.

Miles Baker has been marketing online since 1997 and has been a ClickBank client for almost a decade. He currently resides in Fort Collins, CO where he runs several online businesses and Web sites. You can reach Miles, learn more about him, and even view his live office cam at his Web site, MarketingWithMiles.com.

Posted by: Shelly Spafford, Senior Customer Service Representative

As an e-commerce company, ClickBank knows the value of international customers. That’s why we recently added French and German language support to our existing lineup of English and Spanish. Smart e-tailers are constantly looking for ways to limit the effect borders have on retail business. If you have a product that offers valuable information to the general public and can be adapted to apply to different cultures, you may want to consider the following pieces of information, provided by internetworldstats.com:

• The Internet is now available on all 7 continents
• In Europe, where Spanish, German, and French are heavily used, almost half of the population uses the Internet (48.1%)
• In the Latin America/Caribbean region alone, there are over 139 million Internet users
• Spanish, French, and German are among the top 10 languages spoken by Internet users
• Worldwide, there are over 1.46 billion Internet users

You can see from the information above that if your product is currently only offered in English, you are missing out on a great opportunity to reach a very large consumer base.

You do not have to speak Spanish, German, or French in order to sell products in those languages. Here are a few companies we’ve run across that may be able to help you translate your product(s), but there are many translation services available:

http://www.translations.com

http://www.asta-usa.com/languages.php

http://www.trustedtranslations.com/language-translation.asp

http://www.tranflex.com/en/

Why limit your product, and your business, to just English? With the vast number of translating services out there, virtually any Web site, product, or service can be translated and sold to speakers of these different languages. What an opportunity!

We recommend selling your foreign language product as a completely separate product from the English version. ClickBank allows publishers to specify the language of their product when they submit their product for approval. When you do this, customers will automatically be sent to a ClickBank order form in the appropriate language. We also send out Spanish, German, and French receipts, as well as other notifications.

As Platform Globalization progresses, ClickBank plans to translate more of our Web site into these languages. Now is the perfect time to join ClickBank in its effort to reach beyond English-only products. If you have questions about this, you can always contact ClickBank’s Customer Service team.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re a ClickBank product publisher, you need to take advantage of a new feature we’ve just released that will soon help increase sales of your ClickBank product(s). We will soon roll out a new ad-serving platform that will easily allow affiliates to display advertisements for relevant ClickBank products on their Web sites. This will help affiliates and Web site owners monetize their traffic more effectively than ever, which in turn leads to more sales for publishers who are included in the ad network.

The first phase of this new ad serving platform, which went live last week, allows publishers to create a customer-facing advertisement that will be integrated into the ad platform as soon as it goes live. This advertisement allows publishers to briefly highlight the benefits and selling points of their products or sites, and makes it easier for affiliates to quickly identify what a product is and how they can promote it to consumers. In addition, these new advertisement fields will soon be included in the ClickBank XML feed, which will allow developers to use them in existing and future third-party applications and widgets.

Creating this customer-facing ad is totally free and only takes a minute, so if you haven’t already submitted your ad, don’t delay! Each ad will go through an approval process to screen for accuracy and appropriate language, punctuation, etc., so be sure to submit your ad as soon as possible so you can be included in the ad platform as soon as it goes live. Click here to start creating your ad now!

Posted by: Ashley Adamson, ClickBank Senior Customer Service Representative

This is the final post in a five-part, five-day series about how publishers can attract more affiliates.

To really succeed as a ClickBank publisher, you need to get as many affiliates promoting your product as possible. In this five-part series, I show you some of the best techniques for becoming an affiliate magnet! Did you miss part one, two, three, or four?

Tip 5: Advertise

To further increase exposure of your product to affiliates, ClickBank provides a means by which you can purchase ad space within the ClickBank Marketplace, highlighting your product to hundreds of thousands of affiliates.

The Marketplace ads are three-line advertisements found on the right-hand side of Marketplace pages, under ‘Sponsored Links.’ You can see some current ads here:

http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm

The costs of Marketplace ads vary, depending upon how much traffic a particular page or category receives. More exposure means a higher priced advertisement.

All contracts are month-to-month, so clients may utilize the ad space as long as they wish without being locked into any long-term agreements. To check availability and add your name to a possible waiting list, visit https://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html. Select the location where you’d like to place an ad, fill out the form, and someone from ClickBank will contact you when a space becomes available.

Final Thoughts

Many publishers spend months, if not years, in product development. After so much arduous effort, why would you want to leave the success of your product to chance? No matter how great your product is, if you don’t do a good job of communicating that fact to the people who can help you promote it, it will never be as successful as it could be. So as you build the pitch page to sell your product, be sure that you work as hard on attracting affiliates as you do on attracting customers. By putting in the extra effort to make your product attractive to affiliates, you can become a serious affiliate magnet!

Good luck, and thank you for choosing ClickBank!