Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

In this week’s Tech Tuesday, we’re featuring a new piece of software called Affiliate Rewarder, which lets ClickBank vendors easily run affiliate contests to reward affiliates for promoting their products or launches. If you’ve been watching the Internet marketing space for a while, you know how important affiliate contests have become, especially in competitive niches like Make Money Online and Health and Fitness, among others.

The problem has been that up until now it was a real hassle to manage the contests and keep them updated regularly. Based on the video below, it looks like the team behind Affiliate Rewarder has solved those problems for vendors! Check out the video below to find out more about the Affiliate Rewarder software.

We’ve got an incredibly exciting new episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast for you!

This week Molly and I interview Russ Ruffino, who went from being a bartender to making his living through Internet marketing in just a few short months. Russ has mastered something that gives many people a lot of trouble- getting traffic to their sites. In this episode we talk to Russ about how he’s managed to drive huge amounts of targeted traffic for just pennies, using traffic sources most people have never heard of.

If you’ve struggled to get traffic or hate how expensive most paid traffic can be, you’ll definitely want to tune in to this episode!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

For more from Russ, check out his site at RussRuffino.com or his product Endless Traffic Tap.

Written by: Guest Author, Danny Iny

Affiliate marketing is the ultimate level playing field.

Anyone can get started, and if they’re smart and hard-working, they can be making money in a matter of days.

All you’ve got to do is find a good offer, run some good ads, and watch the traffic convert into sales.

Right?

Well, maybe that used to be true, but it’s not anymore…

The Low Hanging Fruit Is Gone

It was definitely true in the early days of affiliate marketing, for several reasons; first of all, there was a lot less for sale in the online world, which meant that any affiliate marketer had a much larger share of voice just by virtue of being there.

The regulatory environment was also a lot more lenient, which means that it affiliate marketers had a lot more room to maneuver in selling their offers (it’s good that this has changed, otherwise the whole industry would have been in trouble!).

Most importantly, though, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to advertising opportunities; keywords and phrases that had a lot of buying intent behind them, but that weren’t very competitive yet, and could be had for mere pennies per click.

And yes – when you can buy high-converting keywords for cheap, it’s hard not to make money.

But times have changed, and you can’t do that nearly as easily as you once could; most of the low hanging fruit has already been pulled off of the online tree, and the affiliate marketing game of finding the next hot opportunity has changed into a different game altogether…

It’s an Optimization Game

Now the game is about optimization – finding an offer that converts, and then optimizing every factor that you can control until you max out your deal value. Here are some of the factors that smart affiliate marketers will do split-testing on:

• Lead Sources – This is where the leads are coming from in the first place; you’ll find that your Google AdWords traffic converts differently from your SEO traffic, which converts differently from your Facebook ad traffic, and so forth. Not only that, but your cost per lead for each of those lead sources will be different. With enough testing, you can find the lowest cost per conversion.
• Ad Copy – The actual text of your ads will change both the cost of running the ad, the click-through rates on the ad, and the likelihood of the clicking-through traffic to actually buy whatever product you’re promoting.
• Landing Pages – The landing page is where the most testing is traditionally done. You can test everything, from your headline, to the page format, to the colors, to the trust seals, to your affiliate disclaimers, to when the buy buttons are presented on the screen – they can all make a difference to your conversion rate, and to your bottom line.
• Affiliate Offers – Finally, you can try swapping out the actual offer for something different. Maybe your leads are more interested in one brand of affiliate product than another, and maybe the second brand – even though the deal value is lower – will end up delivering more profits by virtue of a higher conversion rate.

When you’ve maximized your conversion rates and deal value, and minimized your cost per sale, you’ve got a smoothly humming affiliate marketing machine. And yes, doing that does take time, money, patience and skill – but once you’ve got it, boy is it a sweet deal!

That is, until Google stops liking you…

Until Google Stops Liking You

The trouble is that most of the major lead sources that most affiliate marketers rely on are owned by bodies like Google, Microsoft, or Facebook.

What does that mean for you?

You can work your way to the top of the affiliate marketing world through diligent split-testing, until you’ve got sales streaming through your marketing system at bullet-speed… until someone’s algorithm changes, and their engine stops liking you.

Then your affiliate business is dead in the water, and you’ve got to start from scratch if you’re lucky, and work your way off of Google’s blacklist if you aren’t.

So what’s an affiliate marketer to do?

The answer lies in the old adage that “the money is in the list,” but with a twist…

The Real Money is in the ENGAGED List

If you have a list of eager buyers, then you don’t have to worry about Google messing with your traffic sources – whatever happens, your followers will continue to follow, as long as you maintain the relationship, and keep on living up to your end of the bargain.

With a list of eager buyers, you don’t have to keep working off of one-off traffic, because you can sell more than one thing to the same person – and research shows that someone who has already bought something is eight times as likely to buy from you again!

You probably agree that a list of eager buyers is a good thing to have… but where can you get such a list?

The answer is that you’ve got to build that list yourself – and for that list to be as eager to buy as you want them to be, they need to be engaged. In other words, you need more than a list – you need an engaged community.

You need an audience.

How to Build an Engaged Audience, from Scratch

Building an engaged audience from scratch is part science, and part art. You don’t have to learn it all through trial and error, because others have already done that, and you can learn from their mistakes, and from their successes.

To get you started, here are three things that you can do to convert your one-off affiliate traffic into a loyal list that will stick with you for the long-haul:

1. Start blogging and showing your true nature. The days of the anonymous affiliate marketer hiding behind a copied landing page are over; too many people have been burned by false claims, and for your prospects to trust your recommendation, they will have to know who you are. So tell them – start blogging, and give them a reason to keep coming back, so that even if they aren’t ready to buy now, they can start following you, and buy from you in the future.
2. Create a value-adding auto-responder sequence. People are justifiably careful about who they let into their inbox – so don’t just offer some PLR e-book and start marketing to them non-stop. Instead, give them something that they will get real value out of, and that will demonstrate to them just how trustworthy and credible you are (like we do with our free video course about how to Get More Cash Out of Any Business, Website or Blog).
3. Offer an incentive to buy through your link. Instead of just recommending your affiliate offer, why not give people an incentive to buy through your link? This is great for improving conversions, but the best part is that it gives you a good reason to keep on interacting with your prospects after they have made the purchase – which means that you retain control of the customer relationship, and you will have the opportunity to sell to them again in the future.

Of course, this is just the start, but if you start with this, you’re already three steps ahead of most affiliate marketers, and that much closer to the pot of gold at the finish line.

And if you need a little more help…

Yours Free: Engagement from Scratch!

All of these ideas are expanded with pages upon pages of details and ideas, which I compiled into my new book called Engagement from Scratch! How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same!

Today, the book is launching, and I’m very excited to be able to share it with you – for free!

Yep, that’s right – the book is free. You can download the entire book without paying a cent. Just visit the book’s website, click on the download link, and tell me what email address to send it to, and moments later you’ll the full-length PDF waiting for you in your inbox.

Prefer a hard copy? Spend a few extra bucks and get the paperback version so that you can read on the couch or in bed, and write notes in the margins.

About the Author

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark and Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

We’re back with another great episode of our Affiliate Marketing Today podcast for your listening pleasure! This week we have Andy Hussong, a veteran affiliate manager and JV broker, who shares his JV Attraction Formula for attracting JV partners, affiliates and more. Andy has worked with some of the biggest names in the Internet marketing industry, and shares some killer tips on how to find, attract and retain affiliates and other promotional partners.

As any successful affiliate marketer can tell you, working with the right partners is one of the fastest paths to success, so you don’t want to miss the great info Andy shares on this episode!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW!

As part of our continued efforts to create new ways for ClickBank clients to make their products available to new markets and to continue to grow their businesses, we are pleased to announce that ClickBank is now supporting 2 new languages and 18 new currencies.

New Languages

These two new languages, Portuguese and Italian, are the latest additions to a growing number of languages supported by ClickBank including English, German, Spanish and French. At this time, Portuguese and Italian are supported for end customer experience only (i.e., Order Form and Customer Support) and the website and website behind the login are not yet supported for clients in these languages. We do, however, offer full customer and client support in English, German, Spanish and French. These new languages open up opportunities for you to sell your products globally to an international audience!

New Currencies

We are also excited to announce the addition of 18 new acceptable currencies to our previous total of 13 acceptable currencies, creating flexibility for both you and your customers. New currencies include Mexican Peso,
 Brazilian Real, Argentinean Peso, 
Chilean Peso, Colombian Peso,
 Russian Ruble, Korean Won,
 Singapore Dollar,
 Indian Rupee, Thai Bhat, Turkish Lira, Polish Zloty, 
Czech Koruna, 
Indonesian Rupiah, 
Malaysian Ringgit, Chinese Yuan, 
Hungarian Forint and
 Philippines Peso. For a full list of the currencies ClickBank supports, click here. With 31 currencies to choose from, you have more opportunities to sell to new paying customers and more reasons for your products and promotions to convert.

What This Means for Vendors

You can now translate your products, Pitch Pages and Thank You pages to earn more in these markets. Additionally, we now offer Customer Support in Portuguese and Italian to support your sales. If you have a top selling English language product and you’d like to take advantage of these new languages, we can help. To learn about how you can work with a licensee to have your products translated and promoted in these new markets, check out our ClickBank Bestseller Program. For more information on going global with your product, click here.

Additionally, accepting new currencies means that there’s a greater chance that customers who typically pay in these new currencies will purchase your products once you get them to the Order Form.

What This Means for Affiliates

If you’re an affiliate and are familiar with one of our supported languages, you can now promote translated products in these high-opportunity, low-competition markets! To find products in the Marketplace to promote that have been translated into other languages, go to the ClickBank Marketplace, click on Advanced Search, scroll down and select the product language you would like to appear in your search.

Additionally, ALL affiliates can benefit from the addition of the 18 new acceptable currencies. Even if you’re promoting an English language product, you may see higher conversion rates in the local regions of the new currencies.

For more information on languages and currencies, click here. To learn more about the ClickBank Global Bestseller Program, click here.

ClickBank’s Tech Tuesday feature brings you some of the best tools and technology, both free and paid, available to ClickBank clients and Internet marketers.

This week on Tech Tuesday we’re happy to bring you a product called easyClickmate, which has been helping ClickBank vendors sell their products more effectively since it was originally created all the way back in 2002 by ClickBank client and Internet marketing veteran Adrian Ling. It was the first script of its kind that enables ClickBank vendors to provide multiple landing pages (for multiple products) to their affiliates.

Since then, it has evolved from a simple text-based script to a complete Affiliate Management Tool that enables ClickBank vendors to easily communicate with their affiliates and provide various marketing tools to them via the web-based affiliate center.

EasyClickmate has many features, but here are 4 main features that we think will benefit ClickBank vendors looking to increase their sales and attract more affiliates:

1. Sell multiple products from different websites with a single ClickBank account

Let’s say you have 2 products that you want to sell through ClickBank: Widget A (Pitch Page at www.widgetA.com) and Widget B (Pitch Page at www.widgetB.com ). The default HopLink Target URL you set in your account limits which product your affiliates can promote.

Your affiliates can only promote the product you have set up in the HopLink Target URL field. In other words, if you set the HopLink Target URL to www.widgetA.com, your affiliates can ONLY send traffic to www.widgetA.com.

However, if you use easyClickmate, your affiliates will be able to promote (i.e., send traffic to) both WidgetA and WidgetB via their custom affiliate links.

Since each ClickBank vendor account allows you to sell up to 500 different products, a single install of easyClickmate will empower your affiliates to promote up to 500 different products (which can reside on the same website or different websites).

2. Communicate with your affiliates via automated autoresponder integration

One of the biggest advantages of ClickBank over other digital publishing platforms is its huge network of affiliates (over 100,000 and growing). As a vendor, your success is assured if you can tap into this vast network of affiliates and get them to promote your products. Therefore, the ability to track and communicate with the affiliates that promote your product(s) is crucial.

EasyClickmate provides a framework that enables you to do this easily by integrating the Affiliate-Center with the 4 major autoresponders (Aweber, Getresponse, MailChimp & AutoresponsePlus).

When affiliates sign up with you to promote your products, you can automatically subscribe them to your autoresponders without any extra work/coding. Then you can communicate with them and provide them with marketing pieces, latest news, promotional tips, new product launch announcements, etc.

Imagine having a (modest) list of 100 or so affiliates that you can contact for your next product launch – that will definitely help you get started with a bang!

3. Auto-subscribe your customers via automated autoresponder integration

In the same way, you can easily build your customer list when someone purchases your product. You can assign an autoresponder list to each of your products, and easyClickmate will automatically subscribe your customers to those lists after they have completed the purchase.

This is a powerful feature because it allows you to stay in touch with your customers; for example, providing product updates, upgrades, news, upsells, cross-sells, etc.

4. Advanced affiliate links

This is perhaps the most powerful feature in easyClickmate to date.

If you decide to enable this feature, your affiliates will be able to send traffic to any page you define – even if that page is on a 3rd party site. For example, if your product is featured in CNN or one of the top authority sites, your affiliates can link to that article and still get credit for the sale if the visitor ends up buying your product after reading the article.

How cool is that? Instead of sending traffic to a ‘hypey’ sales letter, your affiliates can send traffic to case studies, neutral reviews, Facebook, etc, and still get credit for the sale!

You could also create a free report or an ebook and have your affiliates send traffic to this page instead of the main sales page, or you could create unique personalized landing pages for specific (super) affiliates.

FAQs

Q: Does easyClickmate work with 3rd party scripts such as Amember, WishList, DLG, DAP, ECG?
A: Yes

Q: What are the server requirements?
A: php4 or php5, mysql and unix/linux host

Q: Will it work on a Mac?
A: EasyClickmate is a server-side script, so it is installed on your webhost, not on your PC or Mac. This means you can run it no matter what kind of computer you prefer.

Q: Is the script outdated since it was created in 2002?
A: Definitely not. EasyClickmate is updated regularly, usually 3-4 times a year. Current version is 11.7, version 12 (2012 edition) is in the works.

Q: I’m a complete “script newbie” – is this script difficult to install on my webhost?
A: Adrian and team provide detailed step-by-step PDF guides with plenty of screenshots. However, there are a few that find installation a challenge. For those that find it a challenge, Adrian’s team is more than happy to help with the installation, setup or any other issues you may run into.

ClickBank Tech Tuesday Special!

Adrian was generous to include a special deal for readers of ClickBank’s Tech Tuesday feature. You can use the promo code CBTECHTUES to save $30 off retail pricing and get free installation and setup service! This promo code is only valid for a few weeks.

If you’re a vendor looking to improve your ability to support your affiliates and grow your sales, you can check out easyClickmate here.

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

On the latest episode of the Affiliate Marketing Today podcast, we’ve got affiliate marketing master Matt Carter, who has built a huge network of profitable SEO-driven niche websites.

Matt has mastered the art of identifying profitable niches and building websites that Google loves to get his sites ranked highly. He then monetizes these sites with affiliate links and other methods to bring in a great income purely from free traffic.

Matt shares some of his best tips and strategies with us, including the reason many affiliate marketers struggle to get traffic and make money, and how to make sure you approach and analyze new markets properly to make serious money using SEO traffic. If you’re looking to get the most out of free traffic from the search engines, this episode is a must listen!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW!

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

This week, we’re excited to use Tech Tuesday to announce a new feature that is now available to all ClickBank vendors- Custom Order Form! Until now, this feature has been in closed beta testing with a few select vendors so we could measure its effectiveness in improving conversion rates for vendors. We’re happy to report that based on our testing, most vendors saw a marked improvement after implementing Custom Order Form in their accounts. Now all ClickBank vendors, even people just starting out, can take advantage of this conversion boost.

What is Custom Order Form?

The idea behind Custom Order Form is that by providing a more seamless shopping and buying experience for your customers, they’ll be more likely to complete their purchase when presented with a version of the ClickBank Order Form that looks more like your Pitch Page or website.

Custom Order Form gives vendors the ability to customize the ClickBank Order Form to match their site, by adding matching header graphics, color schemes, and more. It also gives vendors the ability to pass this customization to the ClickBank Success Page where customers access their purchase, increasing their level of trust and confidence in their purchase.

How to Get Started

To create your own Custom Order Form now, we recommend checking out our Custom Order Form Help Center article. It has all the instructions you need to start taking advantage of the increase in conversions today!

This past week, we announced, through a blog post and emails to vendors, an update to the ClickBank refund policy and vendor fees.  As a result, there have been questions regarding consumers who may abuse the ClickBank refund policy that we would like to take a moment to address.

Protecting ClickBank client sales is a top priority, and cracking down on consumers who may abuse the ClickBank refund policy represents a significant portion of our recent efforts to reduce refunds and chargebacks. We have and will continue to actively monitor and block consumer purchases that abuse our ClickBank Return and Cancellation Policy. On a daily basis, we review consumer behavior for refund and chargeback history, block purchases from consumers who have a record of frequent refunds or chargebacks and blacklist consumers who we’ve identified as policy abusers. We do this to ensure that the refund and chargeback rates for ClickBank clients’ products accurately reflect the product and promotions, and are not the result of problem consumers. On the whole, “serial refunders” make up a small percentage of all refunds.

ClickBank clients who act as consumers by purchasing products from other ClickBank clients are also subject to this policy, in addition to the Client Contract. ClickBank clients who abuse the refund policy may be subject to corrective action in accordance with the Client Contract.

As part of our efforts to help clients lower refund and chargeback rates, and in addition to best practices outlined in our updated promotional guidelines (e.g., no blind offers) and other tips available on our blog, we have been trialing additional features through our beta program including:

• Exclusive Affiliate Whitelists — Vendors can utilize exclusive whitelists to select which affiliates are permitted to drive traffic to their site to eliminate problem affiliates.
• Affiliate Blacklisting – Vendors can request that specific abusive affiliate accounts be added to a blacklist, prohibiting the abusive account from driving traffic to their site.
• Partial Refunds – This will allow a vendor to determine the percentage of a refund to grant to a consumer, based on their business rules.
• Digital Rights Management for eBooks – New technology that will allow a vendor to revoke access to their digital product if the consumer requests a refund.

We anticipate these new features will help vendors to manage refund rates as well as improving the consumer experience. We will continue to communicate the availability of these features as they are released from beta.

We’re committed to supporting both our clients and consumers, and ensuring refunds and chargebacks are kept at reasonable low rates is the responsibility of clients, consumers and ClickBank. We are committed to working together to make sure this industry remains profitable and viable for a long time to come.

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

In this week’s Tech Tuesday, we’ve got an amazing new WordPress plugin to share with you. It comes from Matt Broich, the affiliate marketing expert who runs CBEngine, one of the top ClickBank analytics and market research sites. With CBpress, Matt and his team have created a plugin that lets you build “ClickBank mall”-type WordPress sites quickly and easily, and then customize them to target customers and convert like crazy. Since this plugin has so many features and options, I’ll let Matt tell you more about them:

Read the rest of this entry »