Posts Tagged ‘affiliate’

ClickBank is excited to announce and invite you to the first ever ClickBank Exchange! The ClickBank Exchange is an Internet marketing conference that will take place on August 19th-20th at the Crowne Plaza Times Square in New York, NY. Our event will be action packed, with two days of high level educational content and networking opportunities.

An amazing collection of speakers and panelists has been assembled to teach you the strategies and shortcuts to building your digital empire. We’ve gathered a mix of industry leaders and under-the-radar marketing “ninjas” to share the specific tricks, as well as the business philosophies, that have helped them dominate the Internet marketing industry. Here are some of the many topics we’ll be covering at the Exchange:

• Keynote panel: How to build your Internet marketing empire
• The latest SEO tips & tricks from the CEO of SEOMoz
• The secrets of killer copywriting that really converts
• How to drive massive amounts of free, qualified traffic through Facebook
• How to be a marketing rockstar and get raving fans
• And much more!

In this day and a half of inside information guests will get real time cash creation secrets from the top Internet marketing millionaires that ClickBank has assembled. The speaker line-up includes:

• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Yanik Silver
• Joe Polish
• Chris Farrell
• Rand Fishkin
• Ryan Lee
• Marc Ostrofsky
• Jeff Siegel
• Mike Hill
• Joe Sugarman

And the list doesn’t end there! Discover the full lineup here.

ClickBank Exchange attendees are sure to learn more money-making techniques at this event than at any other event this year.

Click here for more information and to register today!

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.

ClickBank is proud to announce that we’ve introduced several new features designed to help our vendors and affiliates take advantage of the rapid growth of mobile commerce. These features will improve the mobile customer’s shopping experience when accessing ClickBank vendor Pitch Pages and the ClickBank order form, as well as giving affiliates an entirely new way to promote products to mobile customers.

Hop Traffic Management

This feature allows vendors to specify a mobile-optimized version of their HopLink Target URL (commonly referred to as the Pitch Page) and Thank You Page. ClickBank’s Hop referral tracking system will determine whether a Hop is occurring on a computer or a mobile device, and will route the customer to the appropriate version of the HopLink Target URL accordingly. This will improve the shopper’s experience and should result in higher conversions among mobile customers.

Mobile Order Form

If a customer reaches the ClickBank Order Form on a mobile device, we will now display a version of the order form that is visually optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices. Since users will no longer have to scroll or zoom in to view the order form, this should also result in improved conversions.

HopCode 2D Barcode Encoded HopLinks

We have introduced a new kind of HopLink that affiliates can use to promote products. When you click the Promote button in the Marketplace, enter your affiliate nickname and click Create, you’ll now see a barcode to the right of your HopLinks.

This barcode, which we call a HopCode, is encoded with your affiliate information just like a HopLink! When a mobile device user scans this HopCode with a QR code reader on their phone, they will be directed to the vendor’s HopLink Target URL, and you will earn the normal commission if a sale occurs.

This feature opens open many opportunities for new places to promote ClickBank products.

For more information about any of our mobile features, please visit our Help Center article.

Today ClickBank is announcing an exciting new feature now available to all vendors, to help both vendors and their affiliates get more out of every sale. Over the past year, ClickBank made the PitchPlus feature (formerly one-click upsell) available to a select group of vendors, and their success with this feature was impressive. Vendors who participated in this pilot program have sold more than $40 million worth of upsell, cross-sell or downsell offers to date. These are all purchases above and beyond the initial sale!

There are now two different versions of the PitchPlus feature that you can take advantage of and incorporate into your sales process.

PitchPlus Basic

With Pitch Plus Basic, the beginning of the order process works like any other ClickBank purchase; a customer visits your Pitch Page, clicks the payment link, then enters their payment information on the ClickBank order form and completes their purchase.

In a non-PitchPlus purchase, the customer is then taken to a confirmation page where they see their order details and can access the product. In a basic PitchPlus purchase, however, the customer is instead taken from the Order Form to an additional Pitch Page of your choice! The customer is given the opportunity to accept or decline the additional offer, and are then taken to a ClickBank Confirmation Page, which contains links to the individual Thank You pages of the items purchased. If they accept the additional offer, they’re able to purchase it immediately without having to re-enter payment details.

PitchPlus Advanced

Vendors must be approved for the PitchPlus Advanced feature, but once approved they can create PitchPlus flows with up to three additional offers. Like PitchPlus Basic, the order process begins like any other ClickBank purchase. After the customer enters their payment information on the ClickBank order form and completes their purchase, the vendor can display up to three additional offers to the customer within the same purchase cycle.

Within each step of the PitchPlus flow, you can decide what action to take if the customer agrees to the offer or declines the offer. Once the customer completes the flow, they are taken to a ClickBank Confirmation Page, which contains links to the individual Thank You pages of the items purchased. ClickBank automatically displays the correct combination of purchased items.

Vendors who wish to take advantage of these advanced multi-step flows must submit an application for access to PitchPlus Advanced to the ClickBank Security Team.  We will review your application, account history and intended use and respond to you directly regarding your request.

Remember, PitchPlus Basic is available to all vendors, while PitchPlus Advanced version is only available to approved vendors.

What Does This Mean for Affiliates?

Affiliates can earn additional money from PitchPlus sales too! Affiliates can receive a commission for each successful upsell purchase, with the commission rate for upsell purchases set by the vendor.

Affiliates can identify vendors in the ClickBank Marketplace who use PitchPlus offers by either looking for the PitchPlus icon ( ) or by choosing Advanced Search and selecting the Upsell checkbox under the Product Type section.  Affiliates can earn more with every promotion by promoting products from vendors who utilize PitchPlus.

Summary

The PitchPlus feature (formerly one-click upsell) is now available to all vendors. And remember, affiliates can benefit from the PitchPlus feature too by promoting products that come with additional offers!

PitchPlus is a great way to:

1) Make more money by offering additional, relevant products during the checkout process

2) Easily sell more products to customers who are already ordering from you

3) Attract more affiliates by offering extra commissions on upsell purchases

For more information on PitchPlus and for help setting up your PitchPlus offer, click here.

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of identifying and targeting search keywords that aren’t overly competitive, but that also receive enough searches to build a profitable site around.

Let’s walk through the process now of finding these “Moneywords.”

Take a moment to look at the Moneyword Matrix Chart, developed by my team at Niche Profit Classroom. You can see exactly what keywords you’re trying to find within any given niche market.

As you can see, the sweet spot is finding keywords with over 500 searches per month but under 10,000 competing pages for that particular keyword.  The higher the search volume per month and the fewer the competitors, the better the keyword.  You can plug any keyword you like into the matrix and instantly see whether it is poor, fair, good, excellent, or jackpot.  Let’s walk through a real-world example of how to use this matrix, so that you can apply it to your own niche.

To begin, you’ll want to type the general niche topic into Google’s External Keyword Tool.

For example, if you type the term “Roses” into Google’s external keyword tool, you’ll get back hundreds of results. These are the terms related to roses people are actually searching with when they’re looking for information.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see three different settings you should use for your initial keyword research:

1. Type the niche topic into the search box.
2. Set your Match Type to “phrase.” Without going into too much detail, this gives you more accurate information to base your keyword research on.  Some people use the exact term, and that’s a great tip for PPC advertising. But for information on organic search results, I prefer the phrase match.  (The “exact” match is too restrictive).
3. Use the advanced filter to remove any keywords or keyword phrases that get under 500 Global Monthly searches per month from the results.

While not highlighted in the picture, note that we use the United States as the locale. Using a different country, even if you live in that country, is not going to give you the full potential audience, since you’re marketing to people worldwide.

If you get a lot of results that aren’t specific to the niche you’re looking at, use the “Include terms” and “Exclude terms” boxes in the upper left to further filter your results.

Looking at the results, we find there are tens of thousands of searches for many of the keywords. For example, according to Google’s tool, the phrase “blue roses” gets an estimated Global Monthly search volume of 49,500, as pictured below:

However, the number of competing pages for that term is 6,040,000 — which means over 6 million others are competing for it.

How did I find the number of competing pages?

Go to Google’s home page and type in the term within quotes.  It’s important that you use the quotes so that you get the correct phrase match search results and the correct number of competing pages.

The picture below shows the correct way to look for competing pages for a particular term.

Now, if we plug those two numbers into our Moneyword Matrix, we can see immediately that the results are not very encouraging. This is a poor keyword to target for your website.

One of the terms that came up in our example above was “Rose Drawings,” which has 6,600 Monthly Global Searches per month. When we put that phrase into Google’s search engine inside quotes, the number of competing pages is 12,600.  Can you see where we’re going here?

Let’s plug these numbers into the Moneyword Matrix.

We’ve found a Moneyword!

This would be a superb keyword phrase to build a page on your site about. You could feature pencil drawings, or have other drawings displayed, or maybe include an article on drawing techniques to create the perfect rose drawing.  Such a page or article is likely to be ranked at the top of the organic search results within days or weeks, and can drive continual traffic to your site.

Finding 10 or 20 of these types of Moneyword keywords will cement your site, articles, and content at the top of Google’s organic search results and drive thousands of visitors to your site every month.

You definitely want to keep all the Jackpot, Excellent, and Good keywords, but don’t discard all those “Fair” keywords just yet. They can be useful in finding additional Moneywords.  First, however, I want to tell you that very few people are going to take the time to do manual research for keywords in this manner, even with the Moneyword Matrix Chart to give them exact results.

This means that if you’re willing to take the time to do your due diligence, you’re going to be way ahead of the game when it comes to competing for search engine rankings.

Fortunately, there’s an automated solution that will save you time and effort. We’ve developed a tool that does most of the work for you. Simply download the Google results to your computer via a CSV file, and then run the tool. It will automatically get all the competing pages, match them with the number of searches per month, and return the rating of Jackpot, Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor.

Here’s a screenshot of Niche Profit Classroom’s Moneyword Matrix keyword tool, which is available to Niche Profit Classroom members.

Remember I told you to not discard those Fair keywords? Search through the Fair keywords and locate the ones that have over 10,000 searches per month. You can then use those keywords to do additional keyword research and find other terms that may be useful.

For example, let’s take our “blue roses.”  If we put “blue roses” into Google’s AdWords Tool search suggestion box, one of the terms returned is “blue roses meanings,” which gets 4,400 searches per month.  If we go to Google and type in “blue roses meanings” with the quotes, we find the competition is only 7,700 sites. Using the Moneyword Matrix Chart, we discover that this is another Excellent keyword.

So while “blue roses” is not a Moneyword, the phrase “blue roses meanings” (note that it’s plural) is a Moneyword we can confidently rank for.

One way you can put Moneywords into action is by searching ClickBank’s Marketplace to find affiliate products to promote. By using our explanation here to find the right keywords, you can easily dominate the affiliate market for that product.

Once you’ve found a market you know is profitable, these steps make it easy to find highly searched, low competition keywords and phrases.  This is the key to your continued success and profits. The Moneywords Matrix is your key to the keyword kingdom!

About the Author

Adam Short is a successful Internet marketer, speaker, and coach. Through his training, software and coaching platform at Niche Profit Classroom, he helps others start and grow successful and profitable online businesses.

Written by: Mike Sole, Guest Author

Whether you’re an affiliate or a vendor, the number one thing you are constantly striving for is better conversions. You split test everything from the subject lines of your emails to the color of the order button on your pitch page in hopes of bumping up that conversion rate even just half of a point. Why are we all obsessed with conversions? Why do we spend hours poring over our iContact or AWeber statistics and why do we dedicate a huge chunk of our time to constant testing? It’s simple: higher conversions = a higher ROI = more money in your pocket. Not to mention, higher conversions means that affiliates are more likely to promote your product.
To help you in your constant quest for that ever elusive peak conversion rate, this article will show you three sneaky tips that you can implement this week to double your conversion rate.

(Please note: These tactics are not Google-friendly. If Google is a significant traffic source for you, these tips will probably not work for you.)

1) Use the Presale/Follow-up One-Two Punch.

Did you know that 80-85% of people who click the ‘BUY’ button and arrive on the payment form actually end up abandoning it? Some people say the percentage is even higher than that! This could be for many different reasons – from second thoughts to simple issues like “I’m too lazy to go find my credit card now” or “my wife/husband is calling me for dinner” or a random technical issue on the side of the credit card processor. The only thing we need to do in each of these cases is ask the customer to try one more time.

So, instead of sending your prospects directly to the payment form, use a “squeeze page” to collect the customer’s name and email address before you send them to the order form (see example below). You may have heard that adding this extra step in the order process will reduce your conversions. However, I have performed numerous split tests and adding the squeeze page to the order process has never had a negative impact on my conversions.

According to my tests, the ideal pre-sale form must contain the following:
• A request for the customer’s email address, first name and last name. You can (and should) automatically pass this information to the ClickBank order form so that the customer does not have to enter them again.
• Trust Guard seal (or similar type of seal) saying that your business is verified and legitimate.
• Progress bar at the top of the form showing where the customer is at in the order process and what they can expect next.
• A few testimonials, if you are allowed to use them.
• A product image (package) so customers can visualize what they are buying.

According to my split test results, I am able to capture about 85% of my leads this way! This means that for every 1000 customers who click my ‘BUY’ button but do not purchase, I am able to capture the names and email addresses of 850 of them!

These are the hottest leads any vendor can get because all of these people not only Clicked “BUY,” but also cared enough to fill in their details with a clear intention to buy!

All you need to do now is follow up with this list by sending them an email and offering them an incentive to try their order one more time. The incentive could be in the form of a bonus, a price discount or a free give-away. According to my results, 25-30% of them will actually try again and buy it, so you can easily increase your conversions by 30% by implementing this tactic!

2) Use a Video Sales Letter

Using a video sales letter as your main sales pitch, or using it in conjunction with a text sales letter that goes under the video, can easily boost your conversions up to 34% according to my split test results. Video sales letters are easy to create once you know the proven formula and follow it carefully. I believe video sales letters work for several reasons.

First, with text-only sales letters, you’re only able to stimulate one of your customer’s five senses: sight. And in our time-crunched, attention-deficit society, most customers will not take the time to read your sales copy long enough to become truly engaged in your pitch.

With video sales letters, however, you can stimulate a second sense: hearing. Not only can your customers read your pitch, but they can also listen to you say it! Now you can use tone, humor and inflections in your voice to emphasize certain points – all of which help keep the customer’s attention! Moreover, giving customers the ability to hear you can help you gain their trust and give them the sense that they “know” you.

Also, video is still a novelty in marketing since 90% of vendors are still using old school long-form sales letters. Customers are used to those long scrolling pages and they tend to get “sales letter blindness.” Instead of reading your 14-page masterpiece about how you got rich overnight by finding a super trick that no one else has yet discovered, they simply scroll down to see the price and leave your page forever without giving you a chance to build the value first.

With a video sales letter YOU control the selling funnel. You don’t allow customers to fast-forward the video (the equivalent of scrolling to the bottom of your sales page) so they either have to leave or listen to it fully to realize the full potential benefits of your product.
Yes, some customers will be irritated by the lack of controls on the video or they may get bored watching it and leave your page before the video is over. However, don’t worry about losing them because those people were never serious about buying from you anyway. The people who are actually interested enough to watch your video to the end are the ones you care about. They are fully engaged, ready to buy your product, and a large percentage of them WILL convert!

Video sales letters tend to work great in Internet marketing, weight loss, and other smaller niches.

3) Using Exit Chat and Exit Splash

I guess everyone has seen these annoying exit splash pop-ups that appear on many sites. Despite its annoying effect, it really does work and it’s a great way to capture leads! If the prospective customer is not convinced enough to buy your product right then, he may still be interested in getting a freebie that you can offer him on a squeeze page that appears after the exit splash.

According to my tests, using what I call the “video fake-out trick” on the squeeze page can further increase conversions. The “video fake-out trick” involves using a flash player that looks clickable because it contains an image of a play button. If the prospect clicks it, a pop-up appears saying something like “You are really going to love this video. Simply enter your email address in the opt-in form below for instant access.” Don’t play the video BEFORE the customer opts in because most of them won’t find enough time to watch the entire video and will leave before you’re able to capture their information.
I’ve also found that using an exit chat that appears to be a live operator is another great way to boost conversions. Program the “live” chat robotic operator to offer customers a $10 discount and watch your conversions increase 35-40%!
Like you, I am constantly testing and searching for ways to increase my conversion rates. These are some my best tips and I hope they work as well for you as they have for me!

About the Author

Mike Sole has been a successful ClickBank vendor since 2007. You can learn more about Mike and his split-tests by visiting his blog at http://whatsworkingnowreport.com/.

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 first post in a two-part series.

If you’re new to Internet marketing, you’ve probably spent some time staring blankly at your monitor and thinking, “what do I promote?”

In this article I’m going to describe an approach to choosing profitable niches that has allowed me to generate a full-time income online – an approach that is the opposite of what most gurus recommend, but in my opinion is the best way to build a long-term online business.

Why You Should NOT Pick Products to Promote

Focusing on products first is a mistake that many newbie marketers make. While it sounds like a logical approach, it’s a bit like picking out your furniture before building your house. Shouldn’t you build the house and paint the walls before settling on that lime green sofa?

Here are the biggest problems with trying to build a business by picking products – any product can easily become uncompetitive (if “new and improved” competitors come onto the market), untrendy (hello, Atkins diet!) or obsolete (CD player, anyone?).

In contrast to products, the vast majority of niches will never become uncompetitive, untrendy or obsolete. And with so many more people getting into Internet marketing in 2010, the competition to make money online is ratcheting up. That’s why choosing the right niche from the start is so important. By choosing the right niche you’ll not only start making money quicker, but you’ll gain a bit of confidence. This confidence will help you weather the ups and downs that come with running any kind of business.

What Exactly is a Niche?

Put simply, a niche is a distinct segment of a market. In other words, it’s one slice of a large pie.

You can slice a niche out of a larger market in many different ways. A niche market can be comprised of:

• A demographic group (e.g. women between the ages of 45-55 who have a college degree)
• A psychographic group (“psychographics” consists of people’s activities, interests, and opinions – e.g. golfers, democrats, backpackers, etc.)
• Particular needs (e.g. people with back problems)

All of the groups mentioned above are examples niche audiences. Unlike customers who are looking for a particular product, niche audiences have multiple needs, desires, challenges, and pain points. Do you see the opportunity here?

The Ultimate Way to Build a Sustainable Online Business: Focus on a Niche Audience

If you focus on serving the needs of a whole niche audience, you won’t get burned when a product you’re promoting disappears or becomes uncompetitive – you can simply find another product to promote!

Just think about it for a minute: niches have multiple needs, but products don’t.

So if you start your Internet marketing business by focusing on the “new mother” niche (for example), you can attack that market by first making a list of all the needs that new moms have:

• Baby clothes
• Parenting ebooks
• Weight loss programs
• Time management advice
• Yoga gear
• Sleep aids (if you’re a parent of young kids, you understand this one!)
• Kids’ books and videos
• Marriage help (the arrival of kids often strains marriages)

And when you build a network of sites that serve a niche audience (which is what I’ve done), you can cross-promote your websites, getting an even bigger bang for your promotional buck. This works even when your sites are in different product categories. Why? Because even though your sites are in different product categories, they’re targeting the range of needs of the same niche audience.

When approaching a niche market, look at it this way: Your job is to serve as a guide for your niche, helping them solve their problems. Kind of like a guide who helps climbers reach the top of a mountain (also known as a “sherpa”).

And what will you get in return for your role as “niche sherpa”? Well, if you do it right, you’ll get a thriving online niche business!

Why Clickbank Affiliates (Not Just Vendors) Need to Do Niche Research

If you plan to make IM your full-time income, you need to treat it like a business by reinvesting your profits, leveraging your time through outsourced staff, and, most importantly, developing an intimate understanding of your audience – their pain points, challenges, needs, and aspirations. In sum, you need to develop an intimate understanding of your audience.

At this point you might be thinking, “I’m an affiliate. I don’t have customers. So why do I need to understand my niche audience?”

The answer is simple. While you might not have direct customers, you do need to attract prospects to your merchant’s sales page. Attracting prospects usually involves writing ads for PPC campaigns, crafting copy for your review pages and writing many other pieces of copy that try to get your prospects’ attention and compel them to click.

So where do you get the information that you can use to write good copy? Like a sculptor, you need something to work with – a piece of clay to mold a masterpiece. Your clay will be the tidbits of information that you collect during your niche audience research!

How to Find Niche Audiences That Will be Profitable for the Long-Term

As I mentioned above, the key to a sustainable online business is to choose a niche audience. But how do you know if a niche audience will continue to have needs, problems and challenges that you can serve and make money from for years?

In truth, all niche audiences have problems, and will continue to have new problems for years to come. But there are audiences that are better than others in terms of profitability.

Below I’ve listed my core criteria for a profitable niche audience, and I follow that up with a description of the audience I focus on in my business, and why it’s a good one.

Core Criteria for a Profitable Niche Audience:

1) Online in large numbers. You can have a tiny audience (1,000 for example) and still have a solid business. But you’ll have to sell higher-priced items to those people. Internet marketing is a numbers game, so the bigger the audience the better.

2) Actively looking for solutions to their problems. Ideally, you want an audience that is actively searching the Internet for a solution to a problem (or more than one problem).

3) Have a strong emotional need for solutions to their problems. When you’re looking for a niche to serve, it’s best to choose one that not only has problems, but that is desperate for solutions to those problems. Now, that might seem like a tall order. It might seem like only some purchases are driven by emotion. But the reality is that emotion plays a much larger role in our lives than we think – including in most of our purchasing decisions.

4) Are willing to spend money to solve their problems. While all niche audiences have challenges in their lives, not all groups are able (or willing) to lay out the bucks to make their problems go away. Here’s an example: The first website I ever started was a directory of government grants for homeowners. For some reason, that site attracted a lot of senior citizens, many of whom were on pensions. The best I could do with that site was monetize it with Adsense – because my audience for that site just wasn’t willing (or able) to spend money on their problems!

5) Are underserved by the market. Believe it or not, there are some niche audiences online that aren’t well-served by marketers. If you think about your own experience searching online, this makes sense. How many times have you gone online to find something and came up empty-handed?

There’s one key reason why marketers ignore some audiences, and it has to do with one criterion that a lot of Internet marketers use to assess a market: the number of pay-per-click ads. Many IM gurus say that you shouldn’t go into a market that has few PPC advertisers, because few ads means there’s no money to be made in that market. That’s foolish logic, in my opinion, and I currently make auto-pilot profits serving a niche audience where I’m often the only advertiser. The audience? Farmers (more on that audience below).

A great example of a niche audience that fills all of the criteria above is overweight, male baby boomers. This is the main audience that I target in my business.

Why is this such a great niche? Let’s put them through my five niche filters:

• Online in large numbers. Baby boomers are not only a huge market, but are growing in number every year. They’re a significant force online now (although a lot Internet marketers ignore them), and as the Web becomes more easily accessible through more and more outlets – like the iPhone and iPad – even more will pile on.

• Actively looking for solutions to their problems. The explosion of niche forums has provided an outlet for any group to get together with like-minded people.

• Have a strong emotional need for solutions to their problems. Baby boomers are like anyone else – they want to look good, and feel good, in front of their family and friends. And as they age, some of their problems grow. Take health, for example. As boomers age they have more health ailments. And few problems are more emotionally-draining than health problems, particularly when a person gets into their 50′s and 60′s.

• Are willing to spend money to solve their problems. We all know that financial wealth increases as we get older. While many teenagers don’t have two nickels to rub together, baby boomers have been accumulating wealth for decades. And despite the recent economic downturn, there are still millions of boomers who have a substantial nest egg built up from years in the workforce. Need proof that boomers are willing to spend money on their problems? Sales of Viagra were $466 million in 2009!

• Are underserved by the market. As I mentioned above, a lot of marketers (with the exception of the makers of Viagra) ignore the above-50 group. I think this is because of the obsession with youth we have in Western countries. Everyone is chasing the “fountain of youth,” and being old is considered bad. Well, that’s great news for those of us who focus on those neglected baby boomers.

So what’s an example of a niche that doesn’t fit my criteria? Here’s another example from my own experience: farmers. In my early days online, I did a lot of research in niches with low cost-per-click (CPC) keywords. My rationale was that if I could find an unmet need in a low CPC market, my advertising costs would be minimal, and when I launched a product my profits would be higher.

Eventually my research led me to develop an information product on how to raise a particular kind of farm animal (yes, an info product on raising a farm animal!). To this day, that product brings in a steady $1,000 per month in auto-pilot profits. And because it’s such an obscure niche, I’m able to advertise on the “big three” search engines at a very low CPC.

So if my campaign is making a profit and it’s on auto-pilot, why do I consider it a loser? Because farmers are a relatively small audience and, in my experience, their disposable income is limited. In a nutshell, the “farmer” niche violates two of my core criteria: they are not online in large numbers, and they are not willing (or able) to spend.

If I wanted to scale my per-per-click campaigns for this product, it would be difficult – because there simply aren’t many people searching for a solution each month. A final reason I would not get into this kind of niche again is that there aren’t many affiliate products that I can pitch to farmers after they’ve gotten on my list. What do you sell to men who spend a lot of time with livestock – dating offers?

For Part 2 of this series, click here.

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: 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.

Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Author

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed why moving from affiliate to vendor, or doing both at the same time, is a great idea. I also discussed how to pick a topic or niche. In this part, I’ll answer a couple of other common questions I get asked.

Don’t I have to Be an “Expert”?

This is something I talk about often with our customers who are starting a search engine management consulting business. They feel very insecure, as they think they have to be the most knowledgeable expert in this field in order to begin marketing their services. That’s simply not true.

In order to be valuable to someone (a customer), you simply need to possess information that they don’t. That’s it. Not ALL the information, or the LARGEST resource of information, or anything like that. Knowing more than your potential customer and being able to present that information to them creates the value.

This can even be true when you are less of an “expert” than your potential customer. Let me give you an example. I’m a complete home theater nut. Projectors, TV’s, Pre-amps, amplifiers, speakers, sound formats, Blu-ray, etc.

I consider myself an expert on all of these things. However, I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on the latest home theater craze: 3D. It would be VERY valuable for me to have someone prepare a report (an information product!) on the various standards, equipment, and integration techniques for this technology. This is called information or content aggregation, and it’s essentially a research project. It just requires going through all of the available information online and in print, etc., and aggregating (summarizing) all of the content out there in one cohesive package. This would create a highly valuable product for an expert like me, and could easily be researched and created by a non-expert.

Can I outsource this so I don’t have to do it all myself?

Information products are excellent candidates for outsourcing. You can outsource the entire thing, or just the pieces you want help on. There are many people that make a full time living online creating information products for people. These are people that truly enjoy research and writing and the whole creation process, rather than trying to find ideas and markets and trying to sell their own products. The key is to find out the parts of information product creation that you enjoy and that you’re good at (very often the same!). These are the steps to do yourself, and the others are perfect for getting others to do them for you.

How do I outsource ?

The first challenge is to find a place where there are contractors waiting to do work for someone like yourself. There are several options, but we find the best overall place to go is Elance. The quality is very high, and there are plenty of choices there.

When picking someone to work with, I recommend you pick a person that specializes in creating information products, and someone that has a portfolio of examples you can examine to determine their quality level. This is not to say that someone completely new wouldn’t be able to do a good job, but you have to ask yourself if you have the time to risk your project to a complete unknown. Usually, it’s better to pay an experienced person a bit more to lower your risk.

One thing everyone wants to know about is cost, so I’ll give you an example. We recently outsourced a whole information product that required a lot of research (50 page ebook and a 1000 word sales script) for about $750 USD. This will give you some idea of the cost. It’s incredibly reasonable, and only takes a few sales to make your money back.

The biggest thing to focus on during the outsourcing process is managing expectations. The key is to ensure that you know what you want, that your outsourcer knows what you want, and that he/she can deliver what you want in the timeframe specified at the appropriate cost. This is harder than it may seem!

If you spend a LOT of time upfront specifying what you want, you can typically be successful in managing expectations.

Here are the things to focus on:

Deadlines – Make sure that the work can be completed in the timeframe by which you need it.

Chapter titles and summaries – This may seem like you’re having to do a lot of the work, but it’s time well spent. It doesn’t have to be the final version of the product, but the more you can give your outsourcer about what you expect, the better the whole process will be. You can be clear that they can still exercise their creative powers (that’s one of the reasons you’re hiring them) and make changes, but it’s a starting point for both of you to work from.

Voice, tone and style – In some markets, a casual or fun tone and writing style is important. In others, you need a more serious one. Make sure your outsourcer knows what you’re looking for.

Overview of the audience – Give your outsourcer as much detail as you can about the potential audience. This will only help them as they craft your product.

100% original content – Make very clear that you need original content. Research from sources is just fine, of course, but the finished product MUST be their own work product.

Specify font size, margin size and spacing (and/or just use word count) – A 50 page document can be a very small amount of content if the fonts are huge and lots of spacing is used! Ensure that you’re getting the amount of content you’re paying for.

Table of contents/Index – Do you want or need these?

Check in regularly – Don’t wait until the product is completed to check on progress. Request regular updates over the life of the project and check each chapter as it’s done. This will ensure that you’re on the same page.

Revision policy – Ask and make sure you understand what the creator’s revision policy is. What if you don’t like what’s being done? How many times and what scope can you change and still stay at the same price point?

These are the biggest things to get correct up front and to track during product development. In order to help, here’s an example (PDF / Word) of the product spec sheet that we use to communicate back and forth with outsourcers.

These tips on getting started and outsourcing should help get you on your way to creating a great product, but check back tomorrow for the final part, when I’ll talk about how to get affiliates to promote your product!

Update: Part 3 is now available!

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.