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5 ClickBank Features That Will Rock Your Profits!

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:55:30 +0000

Guest Author, Miles Baker

Written by: Miles Baker, ClickScoop

ClickBank has several powerful features that affiliates and vendors can take advantage of in order to increase their profits. Recently, ClickBank has upgraded and added many new features that have a proven capacity to increase your sales. Below you will find 5 of these ClickBank features that are my favorites. Some of these features are new, and some have been around awhile, though all of them have the potential to rock your profits!

Feature #1: TID & VTID Tracking

Who TID & VTID Tracking is for: Affiliates and Vendors

How TID & VTID Tracking Works:

A TID is a ClickBank tracking I.D. It’s a string of letters and/or numbers up to 24 characters in length appended to the end of a ClickBank HopLink. Using a TID allows you to track your hoplinks based on the TID associated with it. There is no limit to the amount of TIDs you can use. ClickBank TID’s are also available for Vendors to use as well, the difference is the variable “VTID” instead of “TID” and that the Vendor TID is appended to the paylink instead of the HopLink.

How TIDs Make You More Money:

Using TID’s provides you with the information you need in order to determine where you should be focusing your efforts.

Tracking your sales with TID’s allows you to pinpoint exactly where sales are coming from. For example, if you want to track links from Twitter you could append the TID of “twitter” to your HopLink. Inside your ClickBank reporting you will see all the statistics associated with that TID for clicks, sales, refunds, etc.

One of my favorite uses is to use TID’s to track what specific pages on a website the sales are coming from. This allows me to focus my efforts on my most profitable pages in order to get higher rankings in the search engines.

Where to get more info:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/affiliate-help/affiliate-basics/all-about-hoplinks/#TID
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-basics/creating-a-payment-link/

Feature #2: PitchPlus (formerly known as One-Click Upsell)

Who PitchPlus is for: Vendors (but affiliates can benefit too!)

How PitchPlus Works:

PitchPlus allows vendors to add additional products to sell to their customers after the initial purchase. Once a customer enters their payment information and confirms their purchase they are presented with an upsell page. With a single click the customer can purchase the additional product without entering their credit card details again.

As a vendor you create the products to sell as your upsells. The PitchPlus Advanced feature offers the ability to present up to three consecutive upsell offers as well as downsells. In a downsell scenario, if a customer decides to decline the upsell offer they could be presented with another product or the same product at a lower price.

How PitchPlus Makes You More Money:

Adding upsells to your products increases your overall earnings per customer for both vendors and affiliates. Since the customer is not required to re-enter their credit card information, the one-click upsell can convert extremely well assuming you have related and appealing offers.

Personally I’ve found PitchPlus to be one of the easiest and most effective ways at increasing income as a vendor.

Where to get more info:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-tools/one-click-upsell/
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-tools/pitchplus/

Feature #3: Joint Venture

Who Joint Venture is for: Vendors & Affiliates

How Joint Venture Works:

ClickBank Joint Venture is a newer and extremely versatile feature. This allows vendors to split their earnings with partners, promote other vendor products as upsells, and even allow vendors to offer 2^nd tier affiliate commissions.

The Joint Venture feature also works for affiliates. Affiliates can partner together and split profits from their affiliate sales.

The Joint Venture feature allows you to set up contracts within your ClickBank account. In the contract you can specify a range of details such as how commissions are divided, start and end dates for the contract, and much more.

How Joint Venture Makes You More Money:

Partnerships are extremely profitable because you leverage one anothers’ strengths. The Joint Venture feature makes collaborating and partnering with people much easier. With the Joint Venture feature the trust factor is increased because one partner is not relying on the other partner to pay them; ClickBank is dividing up and making the payments. Additionally Joint Venture is accurate, easy, and hassle free to split up payments between partners.

There’s really an unlimited variety of ways you could use this feature. Here are just a few short examples to give you some ideas…

You could have someone write product reviews for your blog and in exchange you could give them a portion of the sales that those reviews generate.
You could partner with someone to create a new product and split the profits.
If you’re a vendor you could find another vendor and cross promote one another’s products as one-click upsells.

Where to get more info:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/account-help/account-tools/joint-venture/

Feature #4: Recurring Billing

Who Recurring Billing is for: Vendors (but affiliates can benefit too!)

How Recurring Billing Works:

ClickBank Recurring Billing gives vendors the ability to sell their product at an initial price, and then setup a rebill price for each subsequent payment for the duration of a rebill product. In addition, this gives vendors the ability to offer a trial period for the product as well.

How Recurring Billing Makes You More Money:

Creating Recurring Billing Products gives vendors a continuous revenue stream over time. With regular payment schedules, such as bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual, vendors can earn more per sale on average than with a standard product.

The recurring billing feature can also be used in combination with PitchPlus Advanced. This combination can be extremely powerful in generating additional income that is also residual.

Where to get more info:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-guides/creating-a-recurring-billing-product/
http://www.clickbank.com/help/affiliate-help/affiliate-basics/promoting-recurring-billing-products/
http://www.clickbank.com/help/vendor-help/vendor-guides/recurring-billing-subscription-and-membership-products/

Feature #5: Marketplace Search

Who Marketplace Search is for: Affiliates

How Marketplace Search Works:

The Marketplace search capabilities were recently enhanced and now allow users to search by a variety of product and vendor criteria. You’ll find Marketplace filters and attributes to search by on the left hand side of the ClickBank Marketplace. Additionally you can use the ‘advanced search’ link next to the search box for additional search features.

How Marketplace Search Makes You More Money:

Finding the right ClickBank products to promote will help you make more sales and increase profits. Using the Marketplace Search you will be able to find which vendors are offering higher payouts, use PitchPlus, offer rebills, offer affiliate tools, and much more. You can even find out which vendors offer $1 trials. Using this information allows you to find and promote the products that are the best match for your marketing efforts as well as find vendors who will make you the most money overall.

Where to get more info:
http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm
http://www.clickbank.com/advancedMarketplaceSearch.htm
http://www.clickbank.com/blog/2011/12/08/new-and-improved-marketplace-search-capabilities/

About the Author

Miles Baker has been marketing online since 1997 and has been a ClickBank client for over 12 years. He currently resides in Fort Collins, CO where he runs ClickScoop.com, a community for ClickBank Vendors and Affiliates.

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New and Improved Marketplace Search Capabilities

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:44:21 +0000

With thousands of products currently in the ClickBank Marketplace and new products being added daily, finding just the right product to promote can be challenging. If this applies to you, then you’re in luck. The ClickBank Marketplace just got better! For your convenience, we have added advanced search options to the Marketplace page, making it easier than ever for you to find the perfect product to promote.

In addition to new product search filters, you can also select product attributes based on your requirements such as language, billing type, upsell and more, simply by checking a box. Click on the video below to see a demonstration of the new and improved Marketplace search capabilities.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Visit the ClickBank Marketplace now to start searching for your next profitable product to promote.

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Announcing the Addition of New Languages and Currencies!

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

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.

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Tech Tuesday: Advanced Affiliate Management with EasyClickmate

Beau Blackwell — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:00:18 +0000

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.

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Tech Tuesday: CBpress Customizable Marketplace Plugin

Beau Blackwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:18:02 +0000

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:

Marketplace
CBpress Marketplace allows you to create a customized online mall with up-to-date ClickBank products and pricing. You control the titles, descriptions, products, and even categories presented on your site. During the CBpress installation process, a WordPress page is automatically created with the [cbpress] shortcode.

Import the ClickBank Marketplace into your own blog in less than 60 seconds.
Set up a WordPress ClickBank Marketplace page with a [cbpress] shortcode.
Seamlessly auto-sync with your WordPress theme.
Choose which categories to display.
Choose the order in which products appear.
Enable or disable certain products from appearing.
Control display further with Product Filters.

Here are some screenshots to show you what it looks like. Click on the images for a larger version:

CBpress Main Admin Area

Importer Function

CBpress Marketplace Front End Example

The Niche Setup
CBpress lets you create niche marketplaces. For example, if your site is geared towards health and fitness products, you can set the “Health & Fitness” category as the starting point for your marketplace page by setting the Health and Fitness category as your root category.

Choose what categories you want to display using the “Category Manager” page.
Create custom marketplace categories.
Setting Root Category: Display whatever category (like Health & Fitness) you wish on your marketplace default page. That can be an established ClickBank category or a custom category.

Category Manager

Marketplace Default Page

Set a Feature Category
You can display custom products on the front page of your marketplace, along with categories.

Front End Marketplace

Short-Code Assistant
A CBpress icon shows above the WP post editor that helps build product shortcodes that you can quickly insert into your WordPress posts or pages. Shortcodes save a lot of time so you’re not having to hardcode ClickBank product lists/ads to your individual blog posts and pages. It can be done on the fly!

Shortcode Insert

Product Titles & Descriptions
Many ClickBank vendors write descriptions geared towards attracting affiliates rather than customers. Here’s what CBpress does to remedy some of these issues:

You can limit the number of characters that display under each product listing.
You can edit any product title or description! This is also good for SEO purposes, giving you unique content.
By default, any edits you make will remain intact each time you run the product importer.
You can use the “advanced search” to find out what product titles or descriptions have changed.
You can enable the Smart Filter setting to automatically strip out titles/description words geared to affiliates, leaving a description better suited for customers.

Custom Product Lists
Custom lists give you the ability to easily display subsets of affiliate products within pages, posts, widgets and more:

Create groups of ClickBank Products you want to promote
Place that list on your blog using the Custom List WordPress Widget
Put the list in your blog post with a WordPress short-code

Admin Product Search

Product HopLinks and ClickBank TID Tracking:

You can add ClickBank’s TID tracking globally or set up a TID for individual products.

Tech Tuesday: Free Affiliate Tools Page Plugin

Beau Blackwell — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:37:58 +0000

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

We’re excited to announce a new series here on the ClickBank Blog: Tech Tuesday. These posts will feature the best in tools and technology designed to help ClickBank clients and Internet marketers build their businesses and make more money. Some of those tools will be free and others will be paid, but we’ve got a great new free tool to kick things off!

WordPress is one of the most popular web publishing platforms out there, and is used by many Internet marketers because it’s so simple, powerful, and best of all free. We’ve recommended in the past that ClickBank vendors use it to host their Pitch Page and Thank You page, but Internet marketing and programming genius Jack Born has created a free plugin for WordPress that does something else really cool: it creates dynamic, powerful Affiliate Tools pages that vendors can use to provide valuable resources to their affiliates.

Jack and I recorded the following video to show off the plugin and talk about how you can get the most out of it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To download Jack’s amazing (and free) plugin, visit http://affiliatesaleschannel.com/freeplugin

BONUS: Jack has created a second video where he goes into more detail about all of the available features and uses for the plugin. Be sure to check out this companion video too!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks for joining us for our inaugural Tech Tuesday- we’ll be back with more great technology and tools for you very soon!

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7 Ways to Get More Loyal Affiliates

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:48:00 +0000

Written By: Guest Author, Haden de Boer

The number one question that any potential affiliate will always ask themselves before promoting your offer is “Will this thing make me money?” In other words, will this offer convert to my list (or my web-traffic)? But beyond creating a stronger product and a more compelling sales message, how can vendors improve their program and encourage affiliates to…

Promote their product, and
Promote any other products they may release in the future?

Fact is, these days it’s not enough just to put up some banners and swipe emails and leave it at that. To build a loyal group of affiliates who are motivated to promote what you have, you need to go that extra mile.

Here are 7 ideas to get you started…

1. Offer Personalized/Custom Landing Pages

No matter what your product, different traffic sources will give you varying conversion rates. This is simply because different people are looking for different benefits from your product. So if you can somehow customize your landing pages to target different groups of people you can create a much more targeted message… and convert more sales.

For example, the flagship product at SaleHoo.com is membership to a directory of wholesale suppliers. Affiliates have the ability to send traffic to landing pages that are customized based around product type, because prospects tend to be interested in finding suppliers for a certain type of product, rather than products in general. Customization can be as simple as different headlines, or even going as far as using alternate pictures and content.

Another way you might consider customizing your landing pages, is to create unique pages for individual affiliates. Now, obviously you won’t be able to do this for every affiliate, but when they have a proven track record this is something you should certainly consider to help them convert more sales. You might even offer a special bonus or discount just for their leads.

2. Periodic Bonuses/Competitions

Another way to keep affiliates motivated is to offer incentives for top performance. This strategy is used regularly in major product launches, but there is no reason you can’t adapt it to a product that you already have on the market. The idea is simple: Just let your affiliates know that whoever sends the most leads/makes the most sales between now and a certain date will win prizes.

Don’t be afraid to get creative with your prizes, but keep in mind that most larger affiliates will be more motivated by the cash than anything else. You might choose to run these contests monthly, or even based around events such as Halloween, Christmas, or a birthday sale. (If you’re in the dating niche Valentine’s day would be a good one to use).

3. Offer Multiple Products

This one might be obvious, but it’s worth repeating. Simply put, the more products you offer, the more chances affiliates have to find something that will fit with their list/market. Plus, you’ll find that once you have one good product under your belt (that converts), affiliates will be more receptive to promoting other products that you come out with in the future. In short, it’s about giving them what they want.

A good example of this is Affilorama.com which has four main products available for affiliates to promote in their affiliate program. Each caters to slightly different segments of the market, and has a different price point (all the way from FREE membership, up to a $497 course).

4. Offer Recurring Commissions

Carrying on from #3 (above) some affiliates prefer recurring products (while some would much rather promote only a front-end offer). But by having at least one recurring offer (for example a membership site or monthly magazine) you cater to those affiliates who are looking for this type of offer. And what if your only product is a recurring one? Consider jacking up the commission to entice those affiliates who want all the cash on the front-end until you can come up with another offer for them specifically.

5. Offer Specific Guidance to New Affiliates

Not everyone who promotes your offer is going to be an experienced affiliate. Especially as your product becomes more well-known in the marketplace, you will find more and more ‘newbies’ are interested in promoting your stuff. New affiliates are good for business because they provide new potential streams of income. However, their inexperience can mean that quite often, they do not know where to start. So what can you do about this? Well, if you consider your affiliates as an important and indispensible part of your business, then why not help them out by offering your guidance and advice for free? In reality, many of these smaller affiliates may never even make a sale of your product. But some of them will, and others will eventually grow to be top promoters in the future.

To see an example of how we do this at SaleHoo (using an email newsletter) – go here and sign up as an affiliate.

6. Test Test Test

You’ve seen it here on the ClickBank blog before, and I’m sure you’ll see it again. Testing is one of the most important tools in any marketers arsenal. Even if you have a great product today – and you don’t think there is any way to improve conversions… you should still be testing new ideas. The truth is, people change. And markets change. Promises that worked ten years ago (or even one year ago) do not necessarily work today. You can keep on top of what works in your market by keeping an eye on the competition, but if you really want to know for sure, you need to be testing new ideas for yourself.

(Note for Affiliates: If you want to check if a vendor is actively testing, have a quick peek at the source code of their landing page(s). If there is some code there for GWO, Optimizely, or some other testing software then it’s a good sign that the vendor is actively tweaking and refining their offer.)

7. Having a Dedicated Affiliate Manager

As your business grows, and the number of affiliates promoting your product expands, the more demands running your Affiliate program will make on your time. Using ClickBank is a huge help, but eventually you’ll still be swamped by requests, offers, and obligations. Making it hard to focus on the rest of your business.

If you want to keep growing (and still want to take good care of your affiliates) then you should seriously consider hiring an affiliate manager. They will be able to take care of all those tasks that gobble up all your time – like handling email requests, sorting out landing pages, and sorting through JV offers… while leaving you free to work on the most important parts of the business – like creating high converting offers.

About the Author: Haden de Boer is the Affiliate Manager over at SaleHoo.com. Please feel free to check out the SaleHoo Affiliate Program and their newest offer SaleHoo Stores.

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The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Split-Testing Guide

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:18:43 +0000

Written by: Guest Author, Danny Iny

Are you an affiliate marketer? Do you want to make more money?

Yes and yes, right?

You’ve probably tried every trick in the book, right?

Google image ads, Twitter traffic, cheap Facebook ads… every possible way of getting cheap clicks to your landing page has probably caught your eye at some point or another.

Most of these tricks don’t really work, and if they do, it isn’t for long.

The real secret to making big money as an affiliate is split-testing.

And as an affiliate marketer, it’s actually easier for you than it is for a lot of other people…

Affiliate Marketers Have So Much Less to Worry About!

Affiliate marketers are already several steps ahead of the online marketing curve.

That’s because, as an affiliate marketer, you aren’t responsible for the entire chain of conversion.
All you have to do is find qualified leads, warm them up, and send them to the vendor’s landing page – the vendor will do the rest.

Not that all of that stuff is easy… that’s why some people are super-affiliates, and some people don’t make a dime.
But still, it’s the vendor who has to create an awesome product, and to tweak their landing page and funnel until it is a high-performing conversion machine. Which means that you don’t have to worry about turning prospects into customers, or keeping them as repeat customers – that’s the vendor’s job.

Which is why things are easier for affiliate marketers – they don’t have to split-test their product ideas, and they don’t have to optimize the back-end of the funnel.

But despite all that, in some ways, split testing is actually harder for affiliate marketers than it is for other people…

Affiliate Marketers Have Much Less Control

Split testing is harder for affiliate marketers because there’s less that you can split test; here’s a short list of the things that you don’t control:
• The product
• The checkout process
• The back-end funnel
• The messaging
• The imagery
• And the list goes on…

So in other words, if the offer isn’t fundamentally capable of selling itself, there isn’t all that much you can do about it.

Which is why affiliates look for tried and tested offers, with solid and proven EPC (earnings per click) rates. The trouble is that every other affiliate marketer is doing the exact same thing!

And if every other affiliate marketer is doing the exact same thing…

There’s Dramatically More Competition!

Yup, competition is a lot tougher for affiliate marketers.

Whereas people who sell their own stuff have to compete with other products and offers (which is hard enough!), affiliate marketers also have to compete with lots of other people who:
• Target the same lead sources,
• Run similar ads,
• Refer to the same swipe material, and
• Sell the exact same thing!

Yikes – what can you do to stand out?

That’s where split-testing comes in. In order to excel as an affiliate marketer, you need to constantly be split-testing the things that you do control, namely:
• Your lead sources
• Your ads
• Your landing pages
• Your incentives

Let’s go through these all one-by-one, and explore what to test, and how to do it. But first…

How do you do split testing, anyway?

Just to get us all on the same page, let’s quickly review.

Split testing (or A/B testing) is about testing two different variations of something, to see which does a better job of getting your audience to do what you want them to do. Common examples of things that you can split test include headline variations, button text and colors, and product pictures.

At a high level, that’s all there is to it.

Now, when it comes to running the actual tests, you need two things:
1. Some sort of technology to randomly serve the different variations to visitors.
2. Some way of analyzing the results to know when they’re statistically significant (in other words, to make sure that the results you’re seeing are caused by whatever you’re testing, rather than just being a random coincidence).

This may sound a bit complicated, but you really don’t need to worry about it; there are great tools that will do it all for you, like Google Website Optimizer (free), or Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer (paid, but are worth it).

And as for doing the analysis, there are lots of great free split test checkers out there that can do it for you.

Okay, are we up to speed?

Good – now let’s get into the meat of what you, as an affiliate marketer, can be testing…

Split Testing Your Lead Sources

The first thing that you can (and should) split test is your lead sources – in other words, where are you getting your traffic and prospects from.

Too many affiliates are one-trick ponies in this regard – they have their favorite traffic strategy (often the only one that they’ve been able to get decent results from), and they stick to it like glue.

Well, there are a lot of traffic sources out there, for example:
• Google AdWords
• MSN/Bing/Yahoo!
• Facebook
• Twitter lists
• CPV ad networks
• Email blasts to your list
• Email blasts to rented lists
• JVs with related products
• And the list goes on… and on… and on!

Different lead sources will work differently for different offers, so test them to see what works best. Also, when testing, make sure that you aren’t comparing absolute conversion numbers, but rather conversion relative to the cost of the traffic!

Split Testing Your Ads

The second thing that you should split test is the ad or call to action that you are presenting to your leads. Here are some things that you can test:
• The headline of the ad. Try featuring different pain points or benefits, to see what works best.
• The body of the ad. It may be short (like on AdWords) or longer, but either way, you’re communicating what you’re offering, and why it’s valuable. Change that up to see what makes a difference.
• The call to action. Experiment with more and less explicit calls to action (“click here” vs. “learn more”, for example), and experiment with a focus on action versus results (“buy now” vs. “get instant access”).
Just one thing – when you’re testing different ads, make sure you’re tracking the right thing, and that is sales (not click-throughs)!

It’s not hard to write an ad that will get lots of people to click, but what you want to do is write an ad that will get few people to click, many of whom will then buy. Consider adding barriers to interest (like a listed price) on the ad, to deter people who aren’t likely to make a purchase.

Split Testing Your Landing Pages

Yup, direct-linking to an affiliate offer is a sucker’s bet, because you’re giving up way too much control over the sales process.

Which is why your landing page is where most of your split testing is going to happen – and so it should be! Your landing page, realistically speaking, is what will make the most difference to your bottom line.

Here are some of the most important things that you should test on your landing page:
• Your headline. Yes, you’ve heard this before, but it’s true – the headline determines how many of the people visiting your page actually read the first paragraph, as opposed to clicking away. So test, and test, and test, until you get it right.
• Your page format. In other words, short vs. long copy, and text vs. video.
• Delayed button introduction. You’ve probably seen this – a button that only appears after a video has been running for a certain amount of time. Test it out – it might work for you.
• Your colors. Different colors prompt different behaviors (this is called color psychology), and you should test different combinations to see what works best for your offer and audience.
• Your button placements and text. This can make a huge difference on click-throughs and purchases, so test, test, and test!
• Your trust seals. These are the seals from Trust-E, Verisign, the Better Business Bureau, and other organizations, that let the reader know that they can trust you and the merchant that you are representing.
• Your affiliate disclaimer. This is one that many people overlook, but it can make a big difference. Sometimes you’ll get better results with the small print in the footer-style, but sometimes you’re better off working it into your text (“Hell yeah, I’m an affiliate – I’m proud to stand with this offer!”).

This can take a lot of time to do properly, but believe me, the results are worth it!

Split Testing Your Incentives

The last thing that you should be split testing is something that many affiliates overlook altogether, and that is your incentive offer.

An incentive is something that you offer so that people buy through your affiliate link, as opposed to going directly to the merchant, or going through somebody else’s link. This is particularly valuable during a launch, when your prospects are likely to be hearing about the offer from a lot of other people.

Here are some of the things that you could consider offering as an incentive to people who buy through your link:
• Free or discounted access to one of your products
• Some free consulting time with you
• Access to an exclusive webinar that you will put on
• A portion of your affiliate commission, thereby reducing the effective price of the offer
• There are many other ideas… use your imagination!

The importance of an incentive can’t be over-stated – especially in an affiliate-saturated market, it can make all the difference.

Now, after reading this post, you should be ready to go out and split test to your heart’s content. But before you do that, I have two warnings to leave you with…

Warning #1: Testing Shouldn’t Be Random…

Some people think of split testing as being akin to panning for gold – you grab a big chunk of dirt, and hope there’s something valuable in there.

So they test every random thing without any rhyme or reason, until they arrive at a combination better than what they’re already running.

This might work if you’ve got the traffic of a Google or Yahoo!, but I’m assuming that you don’t (and even if you did, it isn’t the smartest way to do things).

Your split testing should be planned and intentional; think about what is likely to have the most impact on your audience, and there for yield the best results.

If you’re not sure where to start, then use a framework to track your audience through the conversion process, to see where you need to start first – or ask someone you trust to weigh in and give you some advice.

Warning #2: Only Test ONE Thing at a Time!

After reading a post like this one, you might feel the urge to make a long list of things you want to test, and then create a new campaign implementing all of those tests.

Resist that urge!

The key to split testing is to isolate variables – in other words, you want to test one thing at a time, so that you know what is responsible for any changes that you observe.

Order your list by priority of what you think will make the most difference, and then test one thing at a time, until you are confident that the results are statistically significant (as described above – you can use free split test checkers to make sure that this has been accomplished).

So plan out your tests. Rank them by priority.

And start testing!

About the Author

Danny Iny is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, and proud co-founder of Firepole Marketing, the training program that turns non-marketers into expert marketers. Visit his site today to download a free split test checker, or follow him on Twitter @DannyIny.

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Google Panda Effects on Affiliate Sites

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:09:44 +0000

Written by: Guest Author, Mark Ling

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Author

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

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ClickBank Introduces Mobile Commerce Features

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:29:31 +0000

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.

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