We’re excited to announce that we’re now accepting applications from ClickBank affiliates to participate in an expanded pilot of this new advertising platform! If you own a Web site or blog and are a ClickBank client, we encourage you to apply for this exciting pilot.

Here’s why you should participate:

• Because of generous commissions, placing ClickBank ads on your site means you can receive much larger payouts than from traditional pay-per-click or display ads
• Quick and easy ad creation and insertion process
• Ad filtering lets you only display ads that are relevant and appropriate to your Web site’s audience
• Highly customizable ad layouts and formats can be easily integrated into all kinds of sites, including blogs, forums and more

If you’d like to apply to be in our expanded pilot, please fill out the form below.

Please note that participation in the pilot is limited, so not all applicants will be accepted. If you are accepted into the program, we will be in touch with instructions on how to get started. If you would like to participate, but aren’t currently a ClickBank client, click here to sign up for a free account and then return to this page and fill out the form using your new ClickBank Account ID.

Update: All spots in the pilot program have been filled. Although we are not currently accepting any more applicants, we will post further updates about the status of the program on the blog as soon as they are available. Thanks to all those who applied!

We’ve just released a new “how to” video for ClickBank publishers, which shows how to create a customer-facing ad that will be used in our forthcoming ad platform and will soon be included in our XML feed. This video walks through the process of creating an ad step-by-step, and also includes information on our quality and content guidelines, plus some tips on writing effective ad copy. Check it out!

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!

This is part two of 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 as possible to promote your product. In this five-part series, I’ll show you some of the best techniques for becoming an affiliate magnet! Did you miss part one? Click to learn about how to take full advantage of the Marketplace.

Tip 2: Create an Affiliate Tools Page

Something that ClickBank doesn’t require, but that can make a huge difference in attracting affiliates, is setting up a Web page specifically to help affiliates promote your product.

The feedback we have received from affiliates indicates that they are more inclined to promote products that provide affiliates with assistance in their marketing campaigns. Some ideas for tools you could provide to affiliates include:

• Banner images
• Other product images
• Textual ads
• Keyword recommendations
• Cloaking scripts
• Ad content recommendations (such as features or benefits of your product)
• Customized email signature ads
• Suggestions of places where affiliates can advertise your product effectively

ClickBank also provides a method for you to recruit affiliates directly from your own Web site. This tool gives affiliates the ability to create an affiliate link for your product directly from your Web site, without having to visit the ClickBank Marketplace first. For more information on using this tool, please go to “Leveraging The Affiliate Network.”

If you decide to create a Web page for your affiliates, you should consider listing the Web address as part of your Marketplace description, for added affiliate attraction.

Check back tomorrow for the third tip on becoming an affiliate magnet – getting your site right the first time.

This is part one of a five-part, five-day series about how publishers can attract more affiliates.

As many successful Internet marketers already know, ClickBank’s extensive affiliate network can be a powerful force for taking your product’s sales from mediocre to massive. Unlike most advertising and promotional efforts, ClickBank only pays out commissions to affiliates on your behalf for completed sales. This makes our affiliate program much more cost-effective than other traditional methods of product promotion. For example, when you place a paid advertisement in a search engine, you have to pay for the cost of the ad even if the clicks you get generate little or no sales. With our affiliate program, you are only paying for marketing costs when you’re actually making money.

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’ll show you some of the best techniques for becoming an affiliate magnet!

Tip 1: Take Advantage of the ClickBank Marketplace

ClickBank provides all new publishers the option of being listed within our ClickBank Marketplace: http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace

The question is, with the ClickBank Marketplace containing over 15,000 products, what can you do to obtain the most exposure and make your product attractive to affiliates?

The first thing that most new publishers don’t realize is that the majority of the Marketplace audience is comprised of affiliates, not consumers. So rather than have your Marketplace title and description tailored to consumers, you should use it to describe what makes your product appealing to affiliates.

Do you have a high commission percentage, a high payout or a Web site containing useful affiliate tools to help them promote your product? Be sure to list features like these in your Marketplace description so that affiliates can quickly see why they should promote your product.

To edit your Marketplace title/description, you’ll need to log in to your ClickBank account, click the “Account Settings” tab, the “My Site” link, and the “Edit” link under the “Marketplace Information” section, then modify your Marketplace description as needed.

Be sure to click “Save Changes” when finished!

Check back tomorrow for the second tip on becoming an affiliate magnet – creating an affiliate tools page.

Most affiliates understand the need to run effective promotions in order to make sales. However, many affiliates may not understand how the information they can gain through the use of Tracking IDs can help them promote products more successfully. In this post, I’ll explain what they are and how they can be a huge help to your business.

Tracking IDs are codes you create of up to eight alpha-numeric digits that are added to the end of your Hoplinks, like this: http://affiliate.publisher.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=zzzzzzzz. In this example link, ‘zzzzzzzz’ is your custom Tracking ID. This ID can be anything you want, and it allows you to decipher which of your advertisements or promotions are the most successful.

I’ll give you an example: I am an affiliate with the nickname ‘nick’ and I am promoting a product whose publisher has the nickname ‘name’. I want to run a variety of ads in different locations for this publisher and I want to see which one is the most successful. Let’s say I am going to run an ad on the Web sites www.fakesite.com, www.unreal.com, and www.pretend.com; I only need to add Tracking IDs to the end of my Hoplink to be able to track the results from each Web site. The resulting Hoplinks, with tracking IDs corresponding to the Web sites above, would look like this:

http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=fakesite
http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=unreal
http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=pretend

In my account, on the Analytics page under the Reporting tab, I can see how each advertisement is doing. I can conduct a search by going to the Affiliate Reporting section on the Analytics page, choosing Tracking Codes in the “Report By” field, and a time period of my choice in the Period field. It’s important to note that the Analytics page only reports up to 30 days of Hoplink activity. When I click Go, I can see each of my Tracking Codes in the far left column, titled Code.  I can then see the following information, pertaining to the links I created above: Code, #Hops, #Sales, #Refunds, etc.

If I see that the code ‘unreal’ is creating many hops and sales, and that the code ‘fakesite’ is not creating many at all, I’ll know that the advertisement on the Web site www.fakesite.com is not doing well. I can then choose to put more focus and advertising resources into the www.unreal.com advertisement.

You can even run a variety of ads on the same site, and see what phrases or types of ads work best for each product. For example, if I want to run two differently-worded ads on www.fakesite.com, I can use the Tracking Codes ‘fakest01′ and ‘fakest02′.

Tracking codes enable you to understand your Hoplink activity, analyze your promotional efforts, and ultimately save money by not continually spending that money on advertisements that are not working well.

For more information about adding a Tracking Code to your Hoplinks, please visit:

http://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_faq.html#hoplink_question_3

Microsoft is gearing up for another major release of Internet Explorer. A recent blog post at 5 Star Affiliate Programs discussed concerns regarding this upgrade. Like the recent Firefox upgrade, the new IE8 beta promises to have additional security features that make browsing safer. With each browser release, ClickBank and other Internet advertisers are left wondering how those new security features that make “browsing safer” will affect now-common advertising practices.

At ClickBank, we always try to stay a step ahead of the latest browser releases. We recently tested the IE8 beta and confirmed that it did NOT affect ClickBank affiliate tracking in any way.  We performed the same tests on Mozilla Firefox several weeks ago and came to the same conclusion. ClickBank does not use 3rd party cookies to track affiliate commissions. Since the Hoplinks our affiliates are asked to use direct a consumer’s browser to a “clickbank.net” Web address, without the use of popups or embedded tags, ClickBank is able to place legitimate 1st party cookies on consumers’ PCs, for accurate affiliate tracking. When cookies are disabled or otherwise blocked, ClickBank uses other proprietary methods to track affiliate commissions.

The larger issue here is the public’s opinion that cookies themselves are “bad.” Most Web sites today use browser-based cookies to track user preferences, search history, etc. Wikipedia states, “Cookies are also subject to a number of misconceptions, mostly based on the erroneous notion that they are computer programs. In fact, cookies are simple pieces of data unable to perform any operation by themselves. In particular, they are neither spyware nor viruses, despite the detection of cookies from certain sites by many anti-spyware products.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie for more information.

This consumer misconception about browser cookies plagues many online retailers. When consumers blindly disable cookies, online retailers have difficulty providing a targeted and personalized experience to the consumer. ClickBank vendors and affiliates can do their part by making sure they explicitly abide by our privacy policy and refrain from any unscrupulous advertising practices. At ClickBank, we’ll continue to do our part by testing new browser releases, maintaining quality technology, and building a recognizable and trusted brand.

Many of our product publishers and affiliates turn to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, such as Google Adwords, to help drive quality traffic to their sites. While there are many ways to improve the performance of PPC advertising, one of the most useful, but occasionally overlooked, methods is a technique called daypart bidding.

Daypart bidding, also known as Ad Scheduling in Google Adwords, is a tool that is offered by both Google and MSN’s AdCenter. It allows you to adjust your bids in a particular PPC advertising campaign, based both on the day of the week and the time of day. You can turn off campaigns completely, or boost your bid to double your normal bid or more. It’s quick and easy to use, and gives you a great deal of control over your advertising.

While this technique can be especially useful for businesses with specific operating hours, it can also be very advantageous for online-only businesses like ClickBank clients. Since ClickBank reports the time of day of every sale, it can be helpful to analyze what days and times deliver the most value for you, and then adjust your advertising bids accordingly. For some people, this may be during normal business hours, but depending on the product it could be late at night or on the weekend.

Once you’ve identified your “prime time,” you can adjust your bids to make sure your product or site is getting maximum exposure at that time. Likewise, if there’s a particular day or time that your site just can’t seem to convert, you can turn down your bids during those times to save your advertising budget for more effective periods.

One great thing about daypart bidding is that you can make use of it even if you don’t have any kind of Web site analytics installed. All you need are the PPC advertiser’s traffic reporting and ClickBank’s sales reporting to start improving your advertising efforts and getting the most return on your investment. To achieve the biggest improvements, though, you should combine ClickBank’s reporting with Web site analytics and testing to get a complete picture of your site’s traffic and sales.

If you haven’t already tried daypart bidding, give it a shot and see how much more you can get out of your budget!

Posted by: Laura M., Advertising Manager

For publishers who are just starting out or want to expose their product to thousands of affiliates, advertising in ClickBank’s Marketplace has always been a great option. With that in mind, ClickBank is proud to announce the expansion of its advertising program to include Marketplace sub-categories. Now affiliates will be able to more easily connect with publishers who fit their niche.

On July 1, we added 160 new advertising slots on our “Money & Employment” and “Computing & Internet” sub-category pages (8 ads per sub-category). Throughout the rest of the summer, we will continually open up more sub-categories until all of them are available! The next sub-categories we will open up for advertising are “Home & Family” and “Marketing & Ads” on July 15. Make sure to seize this opportunity to get your product in front of interested affiliates, as spots in the Marketplace fill up quickly!

For details and pricing information, please visit:
http://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html