Archive for the ‘Vendor Tips’ Category

Written by: Guest Author, Mark Ling

Hey everyone,

I’m writing this blog post for ClickBank Affiliates (and this applies to vendors too for that matter) who are concerned about the impact of Google Panda‘s update has on the way in which they should be optimizing their sites for the search engines going forward.

Since February 24, Google has run several Panda updates (the most recent was Panda 2.2 on June 16, 2011). Firstly I want you to be aware that Panda is an update, not an entirely new ranking algorithm so many of the things you do to try to achieve high search engine rankings still apply as they used to.

The initial Panda update did in fact affect approximately 12% of the websites in Google, however the effects were much larger than Google has stated because most of the sites that were affected were websites that rank in the top pages of Google.

In addition, Google have also publicly stated on Google Webmaster Central Blog that Panda is not the only significant update that they’ve been running and that there will be more than 500 tweaks to their algorithms throughout the year. Furthermore, Google states “Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.”

What’s more, Google’s representative says, “In fact, since we launched Panda, we’ve rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. SEO is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.”

Google’s representative went on to list the following as questions that one could use to assess the quality of an article or a page:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

As you can see based on the questions above, Panda is an attempt for Google to assess websites that have too many low quality pages. If your site carries a Panda penalty, that doesn’t mean your site is out of Google, however it does mean that your website’s pages carry a penalty that makes it harder for them to get to the top of Google’s search results.

Also remember, if you make changes to your pages based on the information above, it may take several weeks before you notice changes to your rankings as Google only runs the Panda filter periodically to calculate the values it needs (about every 5 to 7 weeks).

Going forward, the key takeaway from this is that when you build your websites you need to start with your potential visitors in mind. This is a key distinction from those who have been creating websites based on highly searched for keywords and on securing low quality writers to throw up content based on those keywords.

You now have to think about producing content that users actually want to read.

This was always a good practice, however it has become even more important for those wanting to thrive with their affiliate sites (and vendor sites) going forward.

About the Author

Mark Ling is the founder of Affilorama. Visit Affilorama to gain free and instant access to over 100 hours of easy-to-follow, step by step video lessons on affiliate marketing, plus online web based tools and a community of over 150,000 members willing to help with your affiliate marketing success. Click here to visit Affilorama.

Written by: Guest Author, Nikki Young

The majority of people that start down the enticing road of Internet marketing give up soon after their first promotion. An extraordinary amount of effort for little profit sees many retire from the game almost immediately. Both affiliate marketing and online product marketing may first appear as easy ways to make money, but people soon realize that the web is not an easily tapped goldmine. Internet marketing requires commitment and hard work and can quickly become overwhelming.

The marketing processes involved span way beyond creating a web page or writing an eBook. As a vendor there are a broad range of marketing methods that can be followed, with few of them ever resulting in success. And as an affiliate, even the seemingly basic sifting through of products you might potentially choose to promote, presents a challenging task. From building a list of potential customers that trust your word, to launching a new product to market, being diligent enough to understand the multiple disciplines of online marketing is the downfall of many. However, for those with the staying power, Internet marketing is a great way to establish a lucrative online business.

For those of you just getting started with Internet marketing you will no doubt hear the following phrase many more times, and if you’ve been Internet marketing for some time you are about to hear it again: testing is critical! Internet marketers say this all the time because there are so many different marketing mediums available to be utilized in the marketing process, that it can be quite tempting to flitter back and forth trying out each one in part. Once a person doesn’t experience instant success with one, they tend to quickly switch to a new strategy, and then to another, and so on. The problem with doing this is that it means not fully realizing the potential of each marketing method. By constantly switching between strategies you aren’t giving one particular strategy a chance to flourish. Therefore it is vitally important that you test, test, and test some more with each process, strategy and theory, so you can rule out what doesn’t work and rule in what does.

By doing this you will be able to select the most valuable parts of each strategy and start to build a bulletproof strategy of your own. It is important to recognize early on is that there is no “one size fits all” in Internet marketing, and that the same strategies don’t work for every niche, or even necessarily in the same niche. What works for you might not work for someone else, and vice versa. So decipher what works for you through a continual process of trial and error. Develop a system of your own. It will take some time but will be well worth it in the end. And who knows, one day you might be able to sell your system online as a top-selling product!

Trying multiple marketing methods and only putting limited input into each will only bring frustration. Instead, focus all your energy on one or two marketing approaches. Master them and make sure you have exhausted their capabilities before moving on or adding a new approach to your armory. Don’t keep dipping your fingers in and out of a bucketful of ideas hoping that one will suddenly come to fruition.

Think long-term not short-term. Invest wisely in the short term in order to make money in the long term. And by this I mean investing in the help of some educational programs/books and the advice and help of mentor(s) to help you learn faster and get to your destination of success quicker. If you can master one or two approaches, you will be well on your way toward a successful business. If you learn only parts of a number of different strategies you will remain a “jack of all trades but master of none.”

Internet marketing can take its toll on you psychologically, especially when you have tried out a variety of marketing methods, invested financially and put in a lot of time and effort for little or no reward. But this psychological battle presents a critical stage in your development and success. This is the very point at which many who made it past the first promotion and into further learning stages give up. A knack for perseverance is so very important in Internet marketing and indeed in starting any business. Don’t give up at the third hurdle. Stick by your guns and persevere with strategies that feel comfortable and complement your strengths and ability.

Four Solid Bits of Advice to Help You Succeed in Internet Marketing

Advice #1: Find a Mentor
Whether in business, self-development or Internet marketing, growth can be rapidly moved forward by finding a mentor. Mentoring helps you develop at a faster rate, helping you learn faster, develop skills more adeptly and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. A mentor, like a good teacher, will help you understand exactly what you need to learn, how to learn it and the best time for you to execute the knowledge.

I seek mentors in my life because I know it’s the fastest way to learn. Not only has mentoring helped me to get to where I am today in Internet marketing, but it also continues to be very important to me in other areas of my life. By having a mentor for each important aspect of my self-development, I learn faster and succeed faster. Since starting out on my own journey as an Internet marketer I myself have become a mentor to others. It has truly been a pleasure watching those I have helped grow from online newbie to successful online entrepreneur.

Advice #2: Don’t Work on too Many Projects at Once by Yourself
A huge mistake beginners make is thinking they need to do everything alone. Focus your energy on the most vital areas of your business; the areas that encourage growth and will help you reach your goals faster. If you work on too many projects at once you will find your progress is slow and hindered by many barriers. You can’t be an expert in every discipline, so outsource work where you can. Set aside a budget for delegating work to third parties that prevent you from paying attention to more important areas of your business. Taking on more and more work yourself will see you bogged down unnecessarily in tasks that will significantly slow your progress. Outsourcing will also allow you to have more valuable time away from your computer.

Advice #3: Utilize Free Resources
When a person first decides to get involved with Internet marketing, he or she will be exposed to numerous different online money making products. These products appear as very attractive prospects, and it isn’t uncommon for people to get excited and buy into multiple products in a short space of time. The truth is, almost every marketing method you will read about is potentially a profitable one, but mastering one takes considerable time. Don’t splash out on multiple expensive products. Instead, choose one or two referred to you by your mentor(s). Learn them and utilize them to their full potential before moving onto another area.

In addition to this, make use of as much free information as you can. There is a huge amount of great reference material online that can be found in books, eBooks, video and on blogs. It is often difficult to sift through conflicting information and ideas online, but again, ask your mentor and trusted associates for help in directing you toward informative blogs, forums and other reliable free resources.

Advice #4 Maintain Persistence
You never know when the breakthrough will come, it could be next week, it might even be tomorrow, or it could take six more months. If things are getting on top of you then take a step back from your business and re-think your strategy. Ask yourself, “Am I focusing my energy, time and investment on areas conducive to leading me to my goal?” “Are there things I am avoiding, ignoring or only doing half heartedly that could better position me for success?”

Your success in business is dependent on your mental attitude, your strategy and your devotion to learning and developing yourself on a daily basis. Commit to your goal of becoming a successful Internet marketer and be persistent in your endeavours. Take these words of advice into consideration and go for it. I hope that they help you to become successful in your online venture.

About the Author
Nikki Young has been active in Internet Marketing for 4 years. During this time she has built up a successful online business, which includes the selling of her cookbook series within ClickBank. www.paleocookbook.com.

One great strength shared by successful ClickBank vendors is their ability to network. Vendors need to be able to entice lots of affiliates to promote their products to thousands of people in order to build a large list of customers.

Some people think they can simply launch a product on ClickBank and sit back and watch money fly out of their computer. That may have happened to a few people, however, it is more realistic to expect that you’ll have to build strategic alliances to increase the reach of the product or service you want to sell. This is where networking comes in.

Here are my top tips for networking and building a strong foundation before a launch:

1. Know your product or service. To start, you should write down a one-line sentence describing your product that would be easily understandable by any person you meet. For example, “A coaching programme for people who want to start a business.”

It’s also important to project product sales so you can work toward that goal. Many people write down a figure that represents the amount they want to earn in a tax year – $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 – and the number of paying customers they need to obtain to reach that figure. For instance if your product is $50 you’ll need 1,000 customers to hit your target of $50,000 in a year (plus there will be expenses on that figure to account for).

2. Build your credibility online. Find five websites in the same niche as yours. Slowly get more involved with those sites, become a regular reader and commenter and offer to write a guest post for their site. This will generate a link back to your site and help build your credibility online.

3. Determine social network targets. I’ve set a target for myself to achieve 10,000 connections on the three major social sites:

* 10,000 Twitter Followers
* 10,000 Facebook Likes
* 10,000 YouTube Friends

Your figure could be lower but it’s something to aim for before you launch your product or service. As a rule, if you plan to promote your product through social networking channels, you’ll need to get your social figures high since most people are so distracted online that only a small percentage will read and click on your links.

4. Email the experts. Make sure you have an email process in place to do so. You’ll need a plan for writing to the well-known bloggers and site owners. Keep these emails to a few lines, show enthusiasm and be as helpful as possible. You’ll be amazed by what help, advice and opportunities you might get back from the “Internet celebs.”

5. Attend industry events. Determine which relevant events are taking place over the next 12 months and make a point of going to five events. Spreading these dates out will ensure that you have a constant flow of emails to and from new contacts and opportunities from a variety of sources. Additionally, the contacts you make in “real life” can be more powerful than online.

Networking is a continual process and is a huge part of business. Scheduling networking time into your calendar is just as important as scheduling time for product or service creation, if not more!

About the Author

David Edwards is the founder of www.asittingduck.com and is currently the SEO Director at Webfactore Ltd.

Recently we’ve received a few client questions about issues affecting our industry, such as the FTC’s recent case against Ivy Capital and other “work from home” business opportunities. Specifically, some of you wanted to know how these issues might affect ClickBank vendors, and what we’re doing to address them.

First, please know that ClickBank appreciates the hard work and skill that our vendors put into developing quality products and effective sales messaging that appeals to customers. We want to do everything we can to support your efforts and ensure your products convert as well as possible, while also protecting you from the possibility of getting on the wrong side of the FTC.

We wanted to share some of the most important guidelines to keep in mind when creating your Pitch Page, upsells and other sales material. To ensure that ClickBank vendors stay in good standing with the FTC, we will apply these guidelines when approving new products and working with existing vendors.

• Most importantly, please do not significantly alter your Pitch Page after approval. We recognize that some changes are necessary for testing, but if you need to make significant changes to your page (such as earnings claims or images, sales messaging or video content), please notify our Product Approval team so we can ensure the new page is also in compliance.
• For Internet Marketing products: Per the new FTC information, sales material shouldn’t create the impression that customers can easily earn money without putting in much work, and should give specific ideas of how they’ll earn the money (e.g., content marketing, video marketing, social media, etc). Sales pages should also not overstate how much can realistically be made, or imply that earnings are guaranteed.
• The FTC also strongly discourages false urgency/scarcity messaging (for example, “Only 3 copies left!”) when there is no actual scarcity. Closing the doors to new customers after a specified amount of time and reopening later is fine.
• Any Pitch Page references to ClickBank sales stats need to be verifiable by ClickBank, and need to have been earned by the methods being promoted. For example, selling an affiliate training product using sales snapshots from a vendor-only account is not allowed.
• For vendors using video Pitch Pages, if a Buy Now button appears during the course of the video, the price must appear as well. We also request that vendors provide transcripts of video sales letters when submitting a product for approval.
• For upsells, the initial product purchased must be valuable and usable on its own, without requiring the purchase of the upsell offers. Customers must also be able to immediately access their original purchase upon completion of their order, before being presented with upsell offers. An access link may be placed on the first upsell offer page, but the link must be very clear and conspicuous (i.e., not hidden or in a small font). We highly recommend that vendors use ClickBank’s official upsell flows to present upsell offers to customers.
• Please submit product approval requests at least several days before your launch, so that ClickBank has time to thoroughly review the offer and request changes if necessary. This is especially the case for products with video sales letters, since making changes to these can take time. We may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.
• To prevent customer complaints, vendors should not close refund request tickets or switch tickets from Refund to Tech Support more than once, and the latter should only be used when actually trying to help the customer and save the sale.

We hope this list helps make our guidelines clear. If you have questions about any of these items, please feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss them with you.

We also want to reinforce that our mission is to make you successful, while at the same time ensuring our industry is on a strong foundation that will last long into the future. Thank you for your valuable work, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you!

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

We’re back with a new episode of Affiliate Marketing Today. In this episode, I talk with Internet marketing veteran and membership site expert Ryan Lee on how he’s managed to build multiple 7-figure membership-based businesses, and how it’s not nearly as hard as you think to create and maintain a membership site or continuity program.

We also cover important tips like how to get people to sign up for your program in the first place, and how it’s possible to create a very successful business by creating inexpensive membership programs (we’re talking less than $5 per month).

Click here to listen now!

If you’re interested in finding out more about these inexpensive membership sites and how you can easily create them yourself, check out Ryan’s new program Nano Continuity.

Written by: Molly Lane, Marketing Specialist

Harnessing Mobile Trends

It’s virtually impossible to ignore the buzz around mobile platforms these days and these mobile trends are particularly relevant to marketers. As customers demand their content be delivered in new ways, it creates new opportunities for vendors and affiliates.

As you look at mobile as a new channel to consider for your business, a few facts stand out as outlined in an article from eMarketer:

• Almost everyone is mobile as evidenced by mobile penetration in the US weighing in at nearly 80%.
• Device and platform enhancements lead to new usage methods, creating more opportunities for marketers to reach their customers.
• Smartphones are on the rise. Half of mobile users are expected to have smartphones by the end of 2011.
• Mobile Internet adoption and usage is increasing. As a result, voice is becoming less relevant, and data is proving to be more important than ever.
• Mobile is changing the way we communicate. Social networks are quickly becoming the primary way mobile users exchange information.
• Mobile content is growing, and will continue to grow. With an increase in demand for mobile content as well as an increase in the amount of mobile content available, the need to pay for that content either through user fees or advertising is also growing. This content includes apps, games, news, digital products and much more.

So, what do these trends mean for you and your business? For vendors, these mobile trends present new ways to reach customers of existing products, as well as creating new opportunities altogether. One way to take advantage of a new opportunity is to create an app complementary to your product or niche. For affiliates, the growth of mobile applications means new ways to promote products through mobile advertising, and the chance to reach an entirely new customer base.

The App “Situation”

Last month, MTV reality star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino launched his own app designed to provide the user information, entertainment and location tracking to help them find the gyms, tanning salons and laundry facilities that are so essential to his life and image. Additionally, his app offers games, tips and the ability for users and fans to text with Sorrentino directly.

Although this app is an example taken from pop culture, it also showcases the success of taking a product or image and turning it into an application to increase customer value, all while increasing sales. Within a week of its September release, The Situation app shot to the list of top 10 grossing entertainment apps in Apple’s marketplace. The Situation app costs $4.99 and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Apps and Your Business

Adding an app to your product mix can serve a variety of purposes. Looking for additional revenue streams for your business? An app can do that. Do you want to build your brand name across a larger and more diverse user base? An app can do that. Interested in expanding into different channels (i.e., mobile)? An app can do that. Thinking of adding complementary offerings to an existing digital product? An app can do that.

There are countless ways you can use mobile applications for business, and this holds true across virtually every niche. For example, if you have a product in the heath and fitness niche, you may want to consider creating an app with functionalities like gym locating capabilities, workout routines, a nutrition plan, a diet log – really, the opportunities are endless. If you have a travel-related info product, for example, you may want to consider creating a location-based app. If you create or promote gaming products, you may want to consider creating a gaming app for your customer base.

Whether you plan to monetize your app by making it a paid version or through advertising, or if you’d simply like to offer it up for free to increase brand recognition, drive adoption and grow your customer base, it’s something worth considering. With the rapidly growing mobile environment, now is as good a time as any to take a good look at your business and your offerings to decide how to harness mobile trends and use them to your advantage.

Written by: Simon Hodgkinson, Guest Author

The secret to becoming a successful affiliate marketer: WORK BACKWARDS

This might seem odd so let me explain…

Over the last few years, we’ve generated millions in commissions and taught thousands of budding affiliate marketers how to make more money online. After many unsuccessful attempts, we finally realized what we were doing wrong.

Statistics show there’s a 95% chance that you aren’t as successful at affiliate marketing as you’d like to be, and even if you’re doing great, by simply applying the little ‘mind shift’ I’m about to share with you, you’ll be able to take your current success to an entirely new level.

Before you begin any promotional campaign you need to identify your end goal.

Think about it for a second, and ask yourself why are you even working as an affiliate in the first place? Although affiliate marketing can be fun, making money is essential.

Like everyone else, you’re an affiliate because you need the money. Making car payments, paying bills such as rent or mortgage, family vacations or the 101 different things that factor into our cost of living add up.

One of the biggest problems is that most people never sit down and add the cost of all these expenses. Once you begin to crunch those numbers and figure out exactly what it takes to live without the worry of how much things cost, or where the money for the next bill is coming from, is when you will start to see the true power of affiliate marketing.

The revelation is that affiliate marketing doesn’t just have the power to make you some ‘extra cash,’ it has the power to set you free!

So how do we start? First you need to know how much you need (pretty simple right). ☺

Grab a notebook and make a list of everything you spend money on each month. At the top of your sheet, you want to write “living expenses.” Go through the fixed costs that you have each month (everything should go in here, rent/mortgage, car payments, cell phone, utilities, food etc.).

Then you want add in your entertainment expenses (the fun stuff!). You can estimate the monthly costs but include things like movies, eating out, monthly mini-vacations etc. Next combine your living expenses with your entertainment costs and you’ll have a total monthly expense figure. Got it?

Don’t underestimate the power of doing this. This has been the number one exercise we ask our coaching students to do because affiliate marketing is not the be all and end all – it’s the tool that gets you there. Without the end goal, you don’t have any kind of way to evaluate your progress!

Let’s work an example: Say $5,000 is the amount you need each month. If your affiliate income can match $5,000 (which is peanuts compared to what you can do if you really push things), you’ll have all of your expenses covered!

Now it’s just a matter of building your system that will generate this income for you automatically, every month. We need to calculate how many sales we need to achieve our income goal. What I want you to do is take your income goal and divide it by the net amount of commission you plan to make with each sale.

For example, let’s say that we’re going to make $30 per sale. $5,000 divided by $30 is equivalent to 166 sales a month. When you break that down, it’s just 6 sales a day.

Now, if you think it’s hard to sell 6 ClickBank products a day, just understand that there are people who can sell 150 ClickBank products a day and more. What I’m talking about here doesn’t even take into account rebills and future payments and how they can compound over time!

So how much traffic do we need to get to those 6 sales?

Just take the monthly number of sales you need (which was 166), and divide that by the vendor’s sales page conversion rate.
We can make a quick assumption that sales page conversion rate will be around the industry standard of 2%. Then, we divide the total number of sales we need by .02, and see what we get from that. Don’t worry if you don’t want to do all the calculations right now, I have handy ‘one click’ resource for you coming up at the end. ☺

For example: 166 / 0.02 = 8,300 unique visitors a month. Break that down and it becomes just 277 unique visitors a day.
The point is, with this formula you’ll know how to figure out exactly how much traffic you need to reach that goal, and vice-versa. If you know how much traffic you site is getting right now, you can reverse the calculation to determine which programs to promote based on commission amounts. It’s not just random numbers floating around anymore!

You have a target to aim for!

Well, kind of. That’s the number of visitors you need to get to the vendor’s page (the page of the person you’re promoting), however, you’ll probably want to send them to your own site first, and then get them to the vendor’s site. In a perfect world you could get every visitor to go from your site to your vendor’s page (that would be a 100% conversion rate), but it’s not a perfect world. So the big question is how many do you actually need to come to your site to reach your goal?

For a quick and dirty answer just divide the number by 0.3 (this is a 30% conversion rate from your site to a vendor’s site). Although you may be able to achieve a higher conversion rate (we have pages that covert to 40%-50%), we will estimate on the conservative side. So, 8,300 / 0.3 is 27,666 and that’s the traffic we would need to reach the goal in our example. The next step is to take that 27,666 and divide it by 30. That tells us how many visitors per day we need to arrive at our own website. That’s 922 visitors a day.

And that’s everything you need for financial freedom! Beautiful how this works isn’t it?

Conclusion:

When you calculate your own personal freedom formula number, you might be surprised how close you are to it already. It’s just a matter of setting up your traffic plan and finding the best programs from the ClickBank Marketplace to promote.

You can also run more than one campaign, identify programs that offer recurring billing to automatically add fresh commissions each month to your tally without having to drive more traffic and test and tweak your own pages to increase conversions to ultimately reach your goal. In fact there are many easy-to-apply adjustments that will reduce the time it takes to achieve your objective. Just remember that knowing your objective first is the best way to achieve it.
If you’d like to calculate your own freedom formula number (and you don’t want to crunch through all those numbers in your head), we’ve put a useful online tool that will do it all for you with just a couple of clicks. Click Here: http://www.cbcashgrenade.com/freedom

About the Author

Simon Hodgkinson and his business partner Jeremy Gislason have been involved in Internet Marketing for more than 10 years and are the creators of a number of best selling information products and software applications. For more information about their business visit www.cbcashgrenade.com.

Written by:  Moe Muise, Guest Blogger

This is the second post in a two-part series.

How to Find Gaps in Niches, so You Can Create Your Own Clickbank Products

While being an affiliate definitely has its advantages, to take your income to a whole new level you need to start creating your own products.

With all of the freelance websites out there, getting an info product made is the easy part. The bigger challenge is figuring out what exactly to sell to your niche audience. I use the word “exactly” because you want be certain that your product will be a money-maker, even before you produce it.

Fortunately, there are some proven techniques that you can use to gain deep insight into the needs and desires of your niche. Using these techniques will go a long way in ensuring that your info product makes sales from the get-go.

In this section I’ll describe two techniques for discovering niche gaps: what I call The Private Investigator approach, and The Survey Researcher approach.

The Private Investigator Approach

The first technique won’t cost you a dime (unless you put a price on your time, which you should), and involves you putting on your “private investigator” hat. You’ll be going undercover around the Web to uncover clues about your niche’s problems!

Like a real-life private investigator, you’re going to observe people. Only in this case, you’re going to visit websites where your niche audience will tell you what their biggest problems are.

To gain the best insight into your niche’s pain points, you want to go to the places on the Web where people bare their souls. The best place for this is niche online forums. You can also obtain solid clues by looking at “problems” and “how-to” websites. Allow me to explain each.

Niche online forums

In a nutshell, niche online forums are places where people go to discuss very narrow topics. Back when the Internet was young, message boards used to be about everything and anything. Now we (as Internet marketers) have the benefit of forums that focus on niche topics and attract passionate participants.

Niche forums are an awesome place to gain insight into the pain that people are going through because they offer both the anonymity of the Internet, along with the support of being around like-minded people. Especially in health and relationship related niches, people will pour their souls out in online forums. Many of them will do so in hopes that someone with the same experience will provide a solution to their problem.

Here’s one way to find niche forums, and to use them to research your niche’s pain points:

1. Use a service like BoardReader.com to find forums related to your niche (BoardReader allows you to search by keyword, so you can be as specific or as general as you want). It’s important to pick out forums that have an active and passionate membership – otherwise, the intelligence you gather from it might be outdated. You can tell that a forum’s membership is active and passionate by looking at the quantity and recency of posts in the forum.

2. Once you’ve found a handful of active niche forums, do some searches to see what challenges members need help with. You can do this by entering terms like “problem” or “help” in the forum’s search box.

Here’s an example: I’ve been interested in the stay-at-home mom niche for some time, and was doing some forum research through BoardReader. I came across the forum wahm.com/jobs, which is an employment forum for stay-at-home moms. When I typed the word “problem” into the forum’s search box, here are some of the thread titles that popped up:

• “Need advice”
• “Emotionally drained”
• “Insecurities”
• “PLEASE HELP ME”

All of these threads were rich with ideas for products that could be targeted at stay-at-home moms. Can you see the desperation in the thread titles?

“Problems” and “How-to” Websites

No doubt you’ve come across these types of websites. They exist to help people solve problems, or to show people how to do something. General “problems” websites include sites like Yahoo! Answers, AllExperts.com, and Wiki Answers. On those sites anyone can post a question related to a problem, and anyone can provide an answer.

As you might imagine, the range of questions and answers on these sites is vast (there’s also quite a bit of spamming that goes on, with marketers posting fake questions, then providing an answer to the question themselves, and linking to a product they’re promoting). Then there are niche-specific problems websites, like DoctorsLounge.com, a site that provides advice from medical professionals.

Needless to say, I recommend the niche-specific problems websites over the general ones. While general sites like Yahoo! Answers are okay for getting a sense of the types of questions a niche is asking, there’s just too much junk on there to use it as a serious niche research tool. Focused sites like DoctorsLounge.com are much better sources of intelligence, however.

“How-to” websites do exactly what you would think – they show you how to do something, whether it is fixing the roof on your house, getting rid of your acne, or potty-training your child. Some great general how-to websites include HowToDoThings.Com, eHow.com, WikiHow.com, VideoJug.com and HowCast.com (with the latter two sites focusing on how-to videos). The great thing about large how-to sites like eHow.com is that they spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what solutions people are looking for. You can piggy-back on this research by seeing how they answer the questions that your niche is asking.

Here’s an example: I went to eHow.com and typed into the search box “stay-at-home-mom make money.” Dozens of articles came back with titles like “How to Make Money From Your Stay-at-Home Mom Experience.” These articles have been researched by eHow’s freelance writers, and can often provide insight into what your niche audience is looking for.

An even better source of market intelligence is paid how-to websites. These are sites that require a person to pay (either by the minute, or a lump sum) to ask an expert a question. Here’s a tip: many of these sites don’t allow you to search for common questions, but you can pay an expert to tell you what are the most common questions that people ask them!

(Bonus tip: Once you’ve figured out the topic of your info product, interview an expert from one of these sites to get the content. Now your product has instant credibility!)

Check out LivePerson.com and JustAnswer.com as two examples of paid how-to sites.

The Survey Researcher Approach

In my opinion, surveys are absolutely the best way to deeply understand your niche’s pain points. If you use a properly-worded questionnaire, and target the right people in your survey, you reduce the risk of failure by 99%. (I know this from personal experience – most of my products have been developed using a survey, and they’ve all been profitable as soon as they were launched.)

In the survey, you’ll be honing in on exactly what people’s needs are – a solution that they’ve been desperately looking for, but haven’t been able to find. What makes a survey so powerful is that you’ll hear directly from your niche audience what they want, and they’ll usually tell you in great detail the challenges they’re facing.

This is extremely powerful information. Not only will your survey data allow you to “get inside the mind” of your niche audience, but you’ll be able to use parts of the survey responses in your ad copy, in your sales page copy, and anywhere else you communicate with prospective customers. So you’ll be able to use the exact language that your audience uses when talking to them! Using the language of your audience is essential in converting prospects into customers.

In a nutshell, here’s what the Survey Researcher technique involves:

a. Choose a niche audience and a problem facing that niche

b. Identify the top keywords related to that problem (5-10 keywords, but up to 50). It’s important that your primary keyword has strong search volume, for two reasons: (1) you’ll be able to get a good number of survey responses quickly, and (2) once you’ve had a product developed (or start promoting affiliate products), you’ll have a ready advertising source.

c. Set up a survey page on a domain (4-6 questions is a good amount to ask. If you ask more than that you’ll turn people off).

d. Set up a pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google (Yahoo also works but Bing generally doesn’t have enough volume).

I can hear what you’re thinking at this point: “I don’t have the money to run a survey through pay-per-click”. Well, I can tell you that I’ve run surveys for less than $100 and gathered enough information to launch a product. The key is to make sure that you go through the “Private Investigator” steps I described above, to make sure that you’ve identified real pain points of your niche audience.

If you have an existing email list, you can also get awesome insight by sending out an email survey to them. Lists are especially great for collecting market intelligence, because they’ve already opted-in, which means you’ve already established a relationship with them.

e. Drive traffic from your PPC campaign to your survey page.

f. Analyze the data once you’ve collected enough survey responses.

g. Build your product based on the responses in the survey.

h. Start advertising your new product using the keywords and traffic sources that resulted in completed questionnaires. The reason for this is obvious: if people who were searching on those keywords were willing to fill out your survey, they are also likely to be customers for your new product. Starting out your advertising this way will allow you to quickly make some profits and give you the money to expand into other promotional tactics.

If you’ve never tried the Survey Research technique for gaining insight into your audience’s needs, you need to get on it right away. There are heaps of people in your niche audience waiting to tell you what’s on their mind!

Wrapping Up

In this article I’ve described why a laser-beam focus on serving the needs of a niche audience is the best way to build a long-term online business. If you’ve been struggling to generate an income online, step away from simply picking products to promote, and look for an audience to serve. Follow the tips in this article to learn the needs, challenges, desires, and pain points of your audience. You’ll be rewarded with their enduring loyalty – and their dollars!

About the Author

Moe Muise, M.A., is a Clickbank vendor and affiliate. He blogs at www.KeywordsBlogger.com. Moe has 10 years experience in niche research, and has been perfecting his online research techniques for the past four years. To download your copy of Moe’s FREE 60-page, step-by-step niche research report, visit his blog at www.KeywordsBlogger.com.

Written by: Allen Baler, Guest Author

There’s no question that ClickBank vendors face increasing challenges these days, including:

• Higher refund rates, even if your product is solid
• More competition and “copy-cat” products
• Higher traffic costs, as well as the risk of getting “Google slapped”
• Super affiliates demanding higher commissions and bonuses

Smart ClickBank vendors are addressing these challenges by taking advantage of a relatively new, under-the-radar feature in ClickBank; the ability to offer their customers physical products such as DVDs, CDs, or printed books.

These “hard copy” versions can be offered as an upgrade, upsell, or even included free with every digital order.

Why Should ClickBank Vendors Offer Physical Products?

Many vendors think that physical products are too complicated to set up, are too expensive to produce & ship, and require too much administrative time.

The truth is that physical products can significantly improve an info-publishing business’ bottom line and is usually well worth the effort!

Based on our experience in developing and managing the physical products programs for top ClickBank vendors over the last 2 years, vendors offering physical products have increased net profits as much as 28%, cut refund rates to as low as 1.5%, and have increased customer satisfaction. These results have had a powerful impact on these vendors’ overall bottom line.

Here are the top 5 benefits we have seen with ClickBank vendors that have implemented physical products:

#1) Significantly lower refund rates
How many times have you had a customer refund because they were having trouble downloading your product? Or had a customer ask for a refund because they were confused because they saw a “virtual product shot” of a book or CD on your sales page and thought they were getting something physical, not a digital file? Offering a physical product component to your offer can eliminate both problems and will significantly reduce your refund rate.

#2) Higher perceived value among prospective customers
Your digital products might be state-of-the-art and contain great information, but for most of your customers there is significant perceived value to receiving something tangible in the mail that they can actually hold in their hands. This allows vendors to build the value and legitimacy of their products.

#3) Differentiation from the competition
By offering physical products, you offer greater value to your customers than your digital-only competitors. Discerning customers who are shopping and comparing offers will often decide to buy from you because you offer “more bang for the buck” than a competitor who only has a digital product.

#4) More money per visitor
Physical products work great as an upsell or post-sale purchase! Conversion rates can be as high as 30% and top vendors who push a significant volume can add many thousands of dollars in incremental income with their physical products. Increasing your profit per visitor enables you to afford higher bids for traffic and test “slap-free” traffic sources.

Here’s a tip that can jump-start the sales of your new physical product: offer your new physical version to prior customers who bought the digital version with a discounted price for a limited time. A couple emails is all it takes to get a nice surge of sales and we’ve seen these promos convert as high as 40%.

#5) Easier to attract super affiliates to promote your offer

Adding more money to your bottom line through physical products means you can offer higher commissions to your affiliates and offer bigger bonuses to attract super affiliates. Also, your lower refund rate will attract the smart affiliates who recognize the huge impact of refunds rates on affiliate ROI, especially for those affiliates who drive paid traffic.

How Do You Get Started Offering Physical Products?

OK, hopefully you are starting to see the benefits, and now you want to learn more about how to actually implement it.

The truth is that adding physical products to your digital info-publishing business does require set-up work plus ongoing maintenance. Creating, producing and shipping a tangible product can be a very different experience from the all-digital world most ClickBank vendors are used to operating in.

Here are the 3 steps to get started offering physical products:

Step 1: First you’ll need to create your physical product, such as artwork and files for CDs, DVDs, layout for a printed book, etc. It doesn’t hurt to spend a little extra time and money making sure everything is polished and professional, for example by designing a nice cover or including an informative insert. Remember, this product represents you and your business! Use the highest resolution artwork and video/audio files as possible since production specs for physical printing and viewing videos on TV need much higher resolution than for the web.

Step 2: Next you’ll need to produce your physical products. You can do it yourself which is a good option when starting out, or there are companies out there that can produce CDs, DVDs, and printed books at relatively low cost. Start with small initial production quantity so you avoid inventory risk and cash flow problems of investing in a lot of product upfront. You will also need to decide how you are going to package and ship your physical products to your customers. Again, you can do this yourself or there are companies that can handle this for you.

Step 3: Finally, you will need to set up your customer service process to incorporate the physical product aspect of your business. You will need to be able to communicate with your customers about their shipments, send them tracking information as well as set up a process for handling product returns and refunds.

The good news is that ClickBank has been making the process easier for vendors by recently adding tools and features to support “shippable media” products. This makes a lot of sense as ClickBank benefits directly from lower refunds, more successful vendors and happier consumers.

Here’s The Bottom Line…

Top ClickBank vendors have proven that offering physical products yields a significant boost to their business by increasing profits as much as 28% and cutting refunds as low as 1.5%.

No, it’s not a magic pill. Yes, it does take some extra work.

But the results can be well worth it.

So if you own a digital product and want to add incremental sales and cut your refund rate, consider developing physical versions of your products now!

About the Author

Allen Baler is the owner of Reboot Fulfillment, a company that since 2008 has designed, sold & shipped over 200,000 physical product shipments as the strategic partner of top ClickBank vendors. To learn more, watch the video presentation on how to increase profits with physical products.

Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Author

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I talked about why it’s a good idea to become an information product vendor, and how to get started in the process. In this final installment, I’ll answer one of the biggest questions new vendors have:

How do I attract affiliates to market my product for me?

The challenge is to find affiliates, to let them know about your product, and convince them to promote for you! The single biggest thing you can do, is to NOT “release” your product until the affiliate resource section is completed. The affiliate resource section contains all the tools you create (or have outsourcers create for you) that help your affiliates promote your product.  These include banners, graphics, email copy, Adwords ad text, keywords, and much more.

The best way to figure out what you should be doing here is to see examples. Sign up to be an affiliate for best selling ClickBank products and see what they provide their affiliates with. One place I can recommend is our affiliate resource site (www.blueprintaffiliates.com). Signing up there will show you several affiliate resource sites and examples of tools for many different products.

Not having a solid affiliate resource section is the single biggest mistake we see product creators make. They focus so much on building their product that they leave the affiliate resource section for last, or they launch their product without it thinking they will “get to it later.” You only have one chance to grab that affiliate’s attention, so make sure you put your best foot forward when you do get that chance. That means having everything set up and making their job as easy as you can right from the first time they see your product and consider promoting it.

Another great strategy for getting affiliates is to give them something that they can give away for free to their audience, such as a free mini report that they can edit and give away, which includes their own affiliate link to your product. Potential affiliates LOVE this kind of thing, as it gives them valuable content to give to their traffic sources. People are always on the lookout to provide value to their audience, and if you can help them with that, they will consider promoting your products.

Track down potential traffic sources and find out what they’re promoting and why. Go to the places where your traffic will be. For example, let’s stay with our organic gardening theme.

Do some searches and find the top organic gardening blogs or forums, etc. Look at what they’re promoting to monetize their sites. Contact all of these people, and keep in mind that you must be relentless here! Find cool ways to catch their attention.

Once you have their attention, pitch your product. Tell them why they should be promoting YOUR product instead or in addition to the ones they currently are. You must sell affiliates just like customers. Remember what I was saying in the beginning—it only takes a small number (sometimes 1!) of super affiliates to really make a lot of money, so this is time well spent.

Here’s a trick to catching people’s attention. EVERYONE Googles themselves at some point. If you’re trying to reach John Smith because he runs the top organic gardening blog and he can reach your target audience quickly, bid on his name in Adwords.

When he Googles himself, have the ad come up and say “John Smith, you should tell your readers about this!” or something like that and send it to a page you’ve created on your site that is an “invitation” for him to promote. Some kind of variation on this theme can be fun and WILL get someone’s attention. Please do not do this for my name

Often you can find “complimentary” marketing opportunities. Let’s use that home theater example. Reach out to the product creator of the best selling home theater information product and let them know about your new 3D product. As I described, this is a product that would be of interest to this person’s audience and is not a directly competing product, but is complimentary. There are often MANY of these kinds of opportunities to be found.

Finally, tell everyone on affiliate marketing forums and blogs that you’re launching your product. Put it in your signature. Just get it out there!  Do everything you can to get it in front of as many potential affiliates as you can.

One last tip: send an email to everyone that buys, asking them if they’d like to get the product they just bought for free. All they need to do is sign up to ClickBank as an affiliate and get two others to purchase the product, and they’ve paid for their copy! You can build a small army of low volume affiliates this way.

Hopefully these little pearls of wisdom will go a long way towards helping you on your journey from affiliate to vendor! Best of luck to you!

About the Author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of a number of best selling information products in the Internet marketing niche, along with many other markets. Their Info Prodigy course (teaching how to create and market information products) is currently closed to new members, but you can get on the waiting list and get a free and very detailed 26 page report that gives away even more secrets right here. In addition, don’t forget to sign up at www.blueprintaffiliates.com to see excellent examples of affiliate resource pages.