Posts Tagged ‘affiliates’

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

It’s no secret that out of the hundreds of thousands of new people who decide to try affiliate marketing every year, only a small percentage ever make enough to quit their day job or significantly change their lifestyle. Is it because affiliate marketing is too competitive, too hard for non-techie people, or just not all it’s cracked up to be?

Having met many successful people in the affiliate marketing world, and knowing what I know from working at ClickBank, I don’t believe that any of those are the reasons why most people don’t make it as affiliate marketers.

In my opinion, success as an affiliate marketer comes down to two factors: dedication and perseverance.

Dedication and Desire

If you were seriously thinking about taking up a new craft or skill, something you’d never really done before, and wanted to get good enough at it to make a living, think about how dedicated you’d need to be.

Let’s take golf as an example—if you wanted to make a living playing golf, do you think you could just go out and hit 100 golf balls a few times a week and expect to be on the pro tour any time soon?

No way! Pro golfers hit literally thousands of shots a day, every single day, whether they want to or not—because that’s what it takes to be great.  They study the game, they try to identify their faults and fix them, and most importantly, they develop or find a training system and stick to it—for months or years on end. Because that’s what it takes to be great.

According to author Malcolm Gladwell, who studied exceptionally talented and successful people in his book Outliers, found that being in the top tier of almost any endeavor, whether sports, business, or the arts, requires incredible dedication and work. He found that people at the absolute pinnacle of their craft have all put in at least 10,000 hours of work over the years.

Hopefully it won’t take you anywhere near 10,000 hours to become a successful affiliate marketer, but you need to approach your efforts as if it will. Many people buy an Internet Marketing training system, read it and get really excited, then either don’t actually follow the system to the letter, or do it for a week or two and give up if they don’t see results.

People that follow marketing systems to the letter, day in and day out, are very rare. But they are often the people who really succeed, and sometimes even develop their own system that works even better.

Pick a System and Follow It

Over the years, I’ve seen many affiliate marketing training systems, and with a few exceptions, their advice is usually very good. However, the techniques they teach can be tedious, repetitive, and usually take weeks, if not months, to start showing results. Just like golf training, or learning a musical instrument, or anything else that requires dedicated effort and perseverance.

I’ve talked to quite a few affiliates over the years that tell me, “I’ve been doing this for months and haven’t made any money! I’m ready to give up.” Sometimes they’ll even tell me they’re using a training system I’m familiar with, and are disappointed in its results.

Whenever I talk to someone like this, I’ll ask questions like:

• How many articles have you written and posted?
• How many niche websites have you built?
• How many hours did you spend researching a niche and keywords before choosing it?
• How many backlinks do you actively try to build each week?

Typically, the answer is “Not many” or “I’ve never really done backlinking” or “I picked a niche in a few minutes.” Having seen many of the top training programs out there, I can guarantee that they don’t promise success if you don’t regularly write articles, do serious niche and keyword research, and consistently build backlinks!

It would be like a golf instructor telling you to hit 300 chip shots every day, but instead you only do 10 shots 3 times a week. Can you blame him that you’re not getting any closer to your goal? Or is it a matter of dedication and desire?

Making the Time

At this point, you might be saying, “That’s easy for you to say. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” For a very small number of people that might be true, but according to the Nielsen Company, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every single day. Imagine how much you could accomplish in your Internet Marketing efforts if you used 1 or 2 of those hours each day to focus on the kinds of tasks I mentioned above!

Remember the 10,000-hour rule? Think about how much quicker you’ll get to that level of success if you dedicate your time and focus to becoming great at affiliate marketing, rather than trying it for an hour or two here and there without a real system or plan.

Fortunately for you, with a high level of dedication and perseverance, it’s not going to take a decade of practice to become great, like it does for athletes or musicians. It can be much quicker (though not overnight or in a few weeks). Depending on the amount of time you spend, it could be anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. In the grand scheme of things, to reach your goals and change your life for the better, isn’t it worth skipping some TV every day?

If you’re really serious about becoming an affiliate marketing success, maybe it’s time to ask yourself, “Have I been doing everything I can to make the dream a reality?” If not, there’s no time like the present to start!

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

ClickBank is very proud to announce the Beta release of our new Featured Marketplace! This complement to our current Marketplace is intended to showcase a wide variety of top quality ClickBank products, including top sellers, great new products you might not be aware of, and featured listings from a wide variety of established ClickBank vendors.

In the Featured Marketplace, you’ll be able to learn more about a vendor’s products before deciding whether to promote them, and every listing includes a link to the vendor’s Affiliate Tools page so you can get immediate help and guidance in promoting their products. It’s a great new way to learn about products and quickly get your promotional efforts up and running.

You can check out the Featured Marketplace here: http://www.clickbank.com/featured

We’d love to hear your feedback on the Featured Marketplace, so please leave a comment with your thoughts! Since this project is in Beta, we’ll be making regular improvements based on feedback and testing.

Written by: Beau Blackwell

Last week, ClickBank sponsored and exhibited at AffCon 2010, a premier affiliate marketing conference held in Denver, CO, a short distance from ClickBank’s Colorado offices.

The show was jam-packed with great opportunities for networking and learning, including many great panels and sessions run by industry veterans. ClickBank’s VP of Business Development Dush Ramachandran participated in a panel on working with affiliate networks, as well as hosting a workshop entitled “Secrets for Affiliate Marketing Success” alongside ClickBank superaffiliate and vendor Kyle Wakefield, creator of The A to Z Guide. They gave audience members some great tips on getting started and succeeding in the affiliate marketing business.

Throughout the show, we raffled off thousands of dollars worth of affiliate marketing-related products from some of our top vendors. A few of the prizes we gave away included memberships to IMeye and The A to Z Guide, copies of CPA Arbitrage, Affiliate Silver Bullet, Niche Blueprint, CB Pirate, Cash Making Power Sites, Banner Ad Blueprint, and much more.

In addition to all of the great prizes, everyone who entered our raffle got access to a free Lite version of The A to Z Guide, which includes several chapters on a variety of Internet Marketing topics. Since we know not everyone who wanted to could make it to Denver for the show, we’re giving all of our clients a chance to get the Lite version, too!

To get access, just fill out this quick form letting us know a bit about your affiliate marketing efforts, and you’ll be able to access the guide for free.

Written by: Mark Ling, Guest Author

Since I’ve been a successful affiliate marketer for a long time and have coached many affiliates on how to be more successful, I thought it could be helpful write about the key differences that I see between the mindsets of super affiliates and struggling affiliates.

If you have dabbled in affiliate marketing but aren’t making a killing yet, then you might find that some of the differences I mention below are issues you need to resolve first.

1. Super affiliates take action towards their goals, while struggling affiliates often procrastinate, or spend too much time overeducating or preparing themselves and not enough time DOING. Super affiliates are usually prepared to fail fast and often, learning from their mistakes, rather than not making any progress at all.

2. Super affiliates invest their money in software, marketing, and outsourcing, and then spend what is left. Struggling affiliates spend the vast majority of their money on other parts of their lives, and then invest what is left in their online business.

3. Super affiliates invest their time in networking with and learning from other successful people, whereas struggling affiliates often try to work alone, or listen to people who have a negative influence on them. In addition, super affiliates try to learn as much as possible from other successful people through books, audio, or DVDs. This is especially important when you’re not in a position or location where you can network with other successful Internet marketers face to face.

4. On a similar note, super affiliates enjoy the process of learning, even when they’re learning from their failures. Struggling affiliates often don’t enjoy having to constantly learn new techniques and ideas, and don’t appreciate the experience of failing in order to learn and grow.

5. Most super affiliates understand the power of their mind and focus on developing strong self belief and an abundance mindset, whereas struggling affiliates can get derailed by negative self-talk, focusing on what is going wrong in their lives and in their affiliate marketing efforts.

6. Most super affiliate millionaires that I’ve met in person (and I’ve met dozens) only focus on one or two niches. It’s true that most have experimented in many other niches in order to find the ‘golden’ one or two that work for them. Struggling affiliates, though, are often scattered all over the place, and even when they find a niche that makes them money, they keep moving on to the next niche without fully maximizing their potential or getting to know a niche in extreme depth.

7. Most super affiliates build a strong mailing list through email capture and make regular repeat sales to the same people. Struggling affiliates often like to skip the process of building a website to gain leads and focus on direct traffic, missing out on the chance of repeat sales and having more marketing opportunities.

8. Most super affiliate millionaires I know, including myself, make the vast majority of their money from the big competitive niches, and not from the smaller, less competitive niches. Super affiliates are not afraid of competition, whereas many struggling affiliates are. Super affiliates realize that to make big money, you have to go where the big money is. I’ll clarify this by saying that small niches are good to sink your teeth into early on and to make some sales, but in the long run, to make 7 figures or more online, you need to get good at marketing in one of the major niches where billions of dollars are being spent (e.g., diet/fitness, make money online, dating/relationships niches, self-help, security software, etc.).

I hope the above differences between super affiliates and struggling affiliates inspire you to upgrade your mindset and start thinking and acting like a super affiliate! Above all, make sure you follow point #1: super affiliates take action towards their goals.

All the best to your success!

About the Author

Mark Ling is the Founder of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers cutting-edge free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow Affilorama on Facebook or read Affilorama’s Affiliate Marketing Blog.

Written by: Chris McNeeney, Guest Blogger

When I first got started as a ClickBank vendor several years ago, I faced one of the major challenges that faces all new ClickBank vendors: how to find and attract affiliates to promote my product. Since then, I’ve sold several very successful products through ClickBank, and have learned what it takes to get affiliates to promote your product, which is absolutely key if you want to make a lot of sales. In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned over years of finding and attracting affiliates.

First Things First

An extremely important step in attracting affiliates that many new vendors don’t know about or ignore is promoting your offer yourself before seeking out affiliates. The reason for this is that you need to make sure your offer converts. Otherwise, all your efforts will be wasted. Many affiliates, especially highly successful ones, will only give a product one chance. If it doesn’t convert into sales for them, they’ll stop promoting it and probably won’t try again, especially if they spend money to promote it.

Pay Per Click traffic is a great way to test how well your product converts. The goal is to get a conversion rate of at least 1% – ideally closer to 3%.

This may sound like unncessary groundwork, but it really is a vital first step: the importance of having a high converting offer can’t be stressed enough.

If your offer converts, recruiting affiliates will be a piece of cake. Any affiliates you bring on board will make money and continue promoting you. Their efforts will quickly pull in many new affiliates, and so on – its a virtuous cycle. Your offer will go viral if your conversions are high, as other affiliates start to see what their competitors are promoting.

However, if your offer does not convert you will have a tough time keeping any new affiliates you do manage to enlist. Your offer will likely stagnate and then disappear for good.

So be sure to run a simple PPC campaign to test your conversion rates before reaching out to affiliates. You can get more info on PPC at my Affiliate Videos page.

Next Steps

Now that you have a proven 1-3% conversion rate, its time to start contacting affiliates. The good news is that some of the work is already done. With ClickBank, you are never working from a dead start.

First, the ClickBank Marketplace will introduce your new site to a potential network of hundreds of thousands of affiliates (you should submit your product to the Marketplace as soon as you are approved). Second, the fact that all payments are handled by ClickBank ensures you have instant trust with affiliates. ClickBank have paid out over $1 billion to vendors and affiliates – so your affiliates know they will be paid on time, which is important since you don’t have any reputation right now. In short, listing your product with ClickBank gives you a firm platform to recruit affiliates from. You may well even attract affiliates passively before you start work.

But a mere presence on ClickBank won’t be enough; we have to actively build on that platform and reach out to affiliates if we want to succeed.

So how do we do that? And what kind of affiliate do we recruit? To a large extent, it depends on your niche. In the fat loss niche, for example, you have many avenues open to you. There are thousands of potential affiliates, some with lists of customers (so they can promote you via e-mail), some spending huge amounts of money on Pay Per Click traffic, and others with well-visited “authority sites” that pull in masses of free (“organic”) traffic from the search engines.

Smaller niches may be more restrictive, with all the sales coming from one traffic source or affiliate type. For example, in your niche, perhaps there are 10 big e-mail affiliates (“list owners”) who account for 70% of all sales. I’ve seen it happen before. Perhaps all the action is happening on a handful of search engine keywords that can be targeted via “organic search” or “pay per click” (this is actually the norm).

I have divided affiliates into 3 types here, but there are many other traffic sources, such as affiliates who purchase ad space on media networks (“media buys”). For simplicity’s sake I have restricted the affiliate types to e-mail, Pay Per Click and organic.

Pay Per Click Affiliates

PPC affiliates are very often the easiest to reach of all, although often the most fickle (they are constantly tracking their return on investment, and so will move to the highest converting offer in a heartbeat – another reason to ensure you are converting before you recruit affiliates).

PPC affiliates basically buy traffic from search engines such as Google, so that when people enter a keyword relating to your niche (e.g., “fat loss guides”), their ad shows up on the right hand side of the search results page.

If you enter a few keywords that relate to your niche, look at the ads that appear down the right hand side. Do any affiliates appear here that are promoting your competitors’ offers? Are there are any vendors promoting their own offers but collecting leads? If so, they may be open to promoting your offer to their lists.

If you find advertisers like these, you should contact them and ask them to promote your offer.

You can brainstorm keywords to find these PPC affiliates by entering the URL of your website or related keywords using the Adwords Tool or my affiliate keyword tool. Search for each related keyword that the tool returns and look for affiliates advertising on that phrase.

Organic / Website Affiliates

Some affiliates buy traffic from the search engines via PPC, but others have established sites that actually get free rankings in the search engines. These “organic” affiliates often have a huge amount of traffic coming to their sites, and so can be superb affiliates.

The first step to finding them is to take the keyword list you generated earlier (when you were looking for PPC affiliates), enter the same keywords, and now look for webiste owners appearing on the left hand side of the results page. Visit every site and head to their contact page, explaining how your offer is relevant to their website. Some website owners may not be familiar with affiliate marketing, so you may need explain to them why it can be lucrative for them and a good fit for their audience.

You can also search for the name of a competitor’s product (e.g., “The Ultimate Fat Loss Guide”) and contact any website that has a review of your competitor’s product. If they are promoting your competitors, they may well promote you also. When contacting these organic affiliates be sure to emphasise why your offer will add value for their visitors.

E-mail Affiliates (“JV Partners”)

These are the hardest affiliates to get on board, but also potentially the most lucrative. E-mail affiliates have a list of customers that they can promote offers to. It stands to reason that many of your top e-mail affiliates will be your competitors, such as other product vendors. These guys have a customer list of their own, and may be interested in promoting your offer to their list.

If you do get them to promote, they can generate huge numbers of sales with a single e-mail. Secondly, e-mail affiliates are the key to going viral: since all the big product vendors and affiliates sign up to each other’s lists, if they do promote you, other affiliates can jump on board quickly. A high-converting offer can go viral off a single e-mail, as more and more affiliates see the e-mail blast and jump on board. That’s the power of reaching thousands of people with a single e-mail.

List owners like this are in theory very easy to find – just do a simple search on the ClickBank Marketplace and contact any vendor in your niche who is collecting names and e-mails on their Pitch Page.

However, while they are easy to find, these affiliates are also the hardest to recruit. Many of your e-mails asking for promotion will probably go ignored, much more so than the other kinds of affiliates. These guys are bombarded with e-mails like yours, and they just don’t have the time to answer every one they receive. It isn’t personal, its just business.

For this reason, I advise you to focus on the PPC and organic affiliates to start with. Then, when you have some grass-roots traction behind your offer, and you know your product converts well, you can approach the big e-mail affiliates from a position of strength.

What to Say When You Contact Affiliates

You usually only get one shot at contacting affiliates, so it’s vital that you do it right the first time. First, make your e-mail personalised to the affiliate in question. Reference their site and start by telling them your offer is relevant and will deliver value to their visitors/customers. Please do not send out a “one size fits all” e-mail. Any potential affiliate receives dozens of e-mails like yours – you need to make it personalized if you want your offer to stand out.

Next, tell them why they will make money by promoting your offer – give them your overall conversion rate, details of any affiliates you already have on board, and how successful they’ve been. Explain what is working especially well for you. Finally, close by giving them a call to action – tell them to either visit your affiliate page or e-mail you back for further information and a review copy of your product.

Closing Thoughts

I’ll repeat my advice from earlier: it’s vital that your Pitch Page converts before you recruit affiliates.

This will make it much easier to retain the affiliates who you do recruit, and also bring on new affiliates once you get your first set of affiliates on board. Once you have a high-converting offer, set up your affiliate page, listing details of your conversion rates at the top of the page. The affiliate page is where you will be sending potential affiliates, and should include your HopLink info and any resources (Adwords ads, e-mail swipe copy, etc) that affiliates can use.

You should also submit your offer to all the affiliate directories that are out there, along with the “announcements” sections of the top affiliate forums. This will take some time, but is vital to establishing your initial grass-roots foundation. Then, once your offer converts, your affiliate page is live, and you are listed in some directories, you can approach the above 3 affiliate types and start generating some real sales for your ClickBank product.

Finally, understand that affiliate recruitment is a numbers game. Look at it as a process rather than an “end game.” You’re looking to build gradual momentum, get your offer out there, and if it converts, the viral power of the Internet will do the rest. A high-converting offer only needs a little push before it gathers traction. So get to work – and build that initial buzz yourself!

About the author

Chris McNeeney is the owner of Affiliate X – a resource site for ClickBank affiliates with affiliate tools, affiliate videos and training information.

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

Those of us in the affiliate marketing world work hard to get visitors to our pages, so it’s disappointing when they turn on their heels and walk out without even clicking a HopLink. The disappointment is intensified if you actually paid for the traffic using PPC advertising.

What can you do about this? Is it possible to still get value from visitors who are leaving your site? Do you just let them walk away, or can you still convert them into potential customers without requiring them to buy right then?

A lot of smart Internet marketers realize that every visitor to their site has value, and they maximize that value by realizing that even though not every visitor will hand over money, they can part with something that may prove just as valuable – their email address. Having a list of qualified, opted-in visitors can be very valuable to your marketing efforts, allowing you to re-market to these visitors later (just follow all CAN-SPAM guidelines), and can be a powerful bargaining chip when negotiating joint ventures with other Internet marketers.

Studies indicate that the majority of site visitors leave within 8 seconds of visiting a site. Another significant percentage leaves after reviewing the landing page and deciding the content is either not relevant, or not compelling enough for them. A mere 3% will actually make a purchase, on average. Interestingly enough, though, approximately 30% of visitors will sign up for a newsletter.

If you’re not getting many email addresses from visitors right now, and you’re feeling frustrated by all the traffic just walking away, then I strongly encourage you to try the following methods to improve your signup conversion rate.

• Popover – A popover is a small overlay containing newsletter signup information that can be set to appear on every visitor’s screen shortly after they arrive at your site. Unlike popups, browser blockers do not affect popovers. They can’t be missed either. They appear in an overlay that sits over the top of the page and can be as detailed as you like, listing the reasons why they should sign up and fields for their name and email address. You can see an example of this on SaleHoo’s main landing page (give it a few seconds to show up). You can style them any way you like and include as much or as little text as you want. To maximize your chances of a signup, make it clear what’s in it for them and make sure the whole process is easy and works smoothly!Testing indicates that delaying the popover for about 20 seconds gives visitors a chance to get familiar with your site so they’ll be more inclined to sign up.

• Sidebar signup – If you run a WordPress site, then adding a sidebar widget is something you can probably do in your sleep. Signup form code can be pasted into a standard text/HTML widget. With your signup form appearing on every page of your site, it increases the chances of it being seen and capturing an email lead before they exit, regardless of the entrance page.

Give them a reason to give you their email

Asking for an email address outright doesn’t generally work. The novelty of getting emails wore off about 10 years ago, so there needs to be a good reason for someone to part with their email address these days!

The secret to getting a visitor’s email address is to think about what they want. It sounds obvious but it’s often ignored. You get them what they want and they’ll give you what you want. Simple.

Think about what you have of value that you can offer in exchange for an email address.

• A free eBook
• A free 7-part mini-course
• A free trial membership
• A free SEO report on the visitor’s website (using an SEO tool like Traffic Travis)

Obviously free is a good start, but make it relevant and you’ll be on to a sure thing. For example, if you have a site about dog training, then offer a 7-part course on house training a puppy. Or, if your site is focused on Internet marketing, tempt them with a “Beginners Guide to PPC” eBook.

Give visitors two options: Buy or leave their email address

If you’re only focusing on making sales you’re ignoring around 97% of your visitors. That’s not good business practice. If you put as much effort into capturing email addresses as you do trying to make a sale then you can look forward to a far more successful online business in the future, with an email list that can potentially earn you a lot of extra dollars in the months to come.

Do you try to capture email addresses? What works for you?

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

Posted by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

At Affilorama we specialize in helping our members get buyer-converting traffic. One of the most important ways to do this is learning what keywords to use. We want to share some lesser-known techniques for building a highly-optimized keyword list, including some novel ways to catch extra traffic. You’ll learn methods that will help you find keywords your competitors are missing. Follow these steps and you should be on the right path to affiliate success.

Step 1: Know who your target is

Start by thoroughly researching your target market. The better you know your buyers, the more effective your keyword list. Here are some ways you can do that. As you research, note down potential keyword phrases you could target.

• Visit forums related to your niche
• Join special interest groups (online or offline)
• Subscribe to competitor newsletters
• Read up on the industry

Once you’ve done your background keyword research on your chosen niche, it’s time to start seriously drawing up your keyword list. From this list you can build out the structure of your campaign.

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords

On a blank sheet of paper note down all the keywords you gathered from your research. Let your mind freewheel and try to capture as many as possible.

Your list can be as broad or as narrow as you like – anything from single words to five- or six-word phrases are worth recording. For example, in the dog training niche you could have a broad keyword like “dog obedience” and a narrow phrase such as “Walking a Chihuahua on a leash.”

This brainstormed list is a great starting point – now let’s convert it into a killer list with some advanced techniques.

Step 3: Fragment your list the easy way

Since there’s a lot of search engine competition for popular keywords, one of the best ways to make headway is to “fragment” your list into a much larger collection of keywords you can target. To help fragment, or expand, your list, use the following tools.

• Google Keyword Tool
• Traffic Travis SEO Software (Traffic Travis queries all major search engines, not just Google, to get its results)
• Affilorama Keyword Suggestion Tool

Using one of the keywords you noted down earlier, enter it into either of these tools and it will build a list of similar phrases that actual searchers have used, along with their search volumes.

This can be a great way to find some variations of keyword phrases that you haven’t thought of to add to your existing list. Google’s keyword tool will also give you an idea of how competitive a phrase might be, so you can decide whether the competition to traffic ratio is worth trying to rank well on it.

Step 4: Smart ways to uncover effective keywords

Another way to expand and add variety to your keyword list is to try these different methods. With a little lateral thinking you can often uncover some largely untapped, yet high value, traffic.

• Misspellings – If you check the search volumes for “loose weight” you might be surprised how much traffic this misspelling gets. Try to think of similar common misspellings in your niche.
• Product or Author Names – Adding a product or author name to your list can help you target searchers nearing the end of the purchase cycle.
• Immediate Words – One of the main reasons people turn to the internet is to solve a problem. When they want a problem solved they want it done now. Even tomorrow is too late. So add some immediacy to your phrases by adding words like “stop,” “fix,” or “now.”
• Money Words – Target the buyers by using words they are likely to search on such as “get …” “review …” or “buy …” No surprises there.
• Information Words – Not everyone who goes online is planning on buying but that doesn’t mean you don’t want them visiting your site. The power of your sales copy could easily lure their credit card out of hiding, or if you have a tool to build a mailing list, you can contact them again in the future. Try adding words such as “how to…” “free guide…” or “homemade” to catch this type of traffic.

After assembling your keyword list, it’s important to identify the intent of the visitor that has searched for the particular keyword and group them into different traffic types.

Step 5: Focus your aim by sorting your list

It’s important to think about the intent of your visitors and the types of keywords they will use. Linking your keywords with specific visitor types will allow you to concentrate and strengthen the focus of your sales pages.

Divide your keywords into the following three types of visitors:

• Buyers – This is the highest quality traffic you can attract, since they are right at the end of the purchase cycle and very close to buying. Unfortunately it is also the lowest volume. Words that buyers use include the money words mentioned above, as well as product or author names.
• Product seekers - This segment has more traffic but it is lower quality, since they are not as close to making an actual purchase. They know about the niche and are thinking about buying a product to improve their experience but they don’t really know what products are available. Words found in this group are similar to information seekers but will tend to be more about solving an immediate problem and recognize the need for help. For example, in the dog training niche, they may be searching for a “dog training book,” “fix Doberman behavior problems,” or “training collar.”
• Information seekers – While this is the lowest quality traffic it is also the highest volume, meaning it’s easier to get plenty of these types of visitors. The keywords assigned to this type will be the most general, or broad. Group your information-based words (see above) in this category, including any phrases that relate to information on how to solve a problem.

The first two are your most valuable; in particular, you should focus most of your energies on attracting product seekers. This has the best combination of traffic and potential buyers.

Shorter, broader phrases often have more competition, so don’t be afraid to target the long tail keywords that are more focused and have less competition. For example, in the dog training niche, you could focus on a specific breed or a well-known trainer like Cesar Millan.

With experience comes the natural intuition of recognizing “money keywords.” Spend time studying the search engine results for the keywords you are targeting. Monitor the traffic you are attracting to your site with the use of statistical tracking. Refine, tweak and experiment.

What types of keywords do you find work best to target your buyer traffic? What methods do you use to unearth good quality keywords? I’d be interested to know what works best for you.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education and software tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers.

Please note: Any opinions expressed here represent those of the author, and are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by ClickBank.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

Several times over the past few weeks, I’ve been asked what advice I would give to affiliate marketers who are just starting out and trying to learn the ropes. During my time at ClickBank, I’ve seen many affiliates go from knowing very little about what they should be doing to being extraordinarily successful. While every affiliate’s path to success will be different, as I’ll explain below, there are several general pieces of advice that I think can benefit every affiliate marketer. I hope they’ll be useful in helping you on your journey to affiliate marketing success.

• Treat affiliate marketing as your job- I can’t stress this point enough. While the ultimate goal of most affiliate marketers is to eventually make enough money to only have to work an hour or two a day (and there are many who do), one key to starting off well in affiliate marketing is to work as hard as you would at any other job. The most successful affiliate marketers start out by putting in long hours and doing lots of work on their promotional efforts, both in studying effective methods and actually putting them into practice. If you work 8 hours a day doing affiliate marketing, you’re going to be successful a lot sooner than if you only work 1 or 2 hours a day. Even if you’re doing affiliate marketing part-time, the more time you spend on it, the more successful you’re likely to be.
• Do what you’re good at- Affiliate marketing takes a lot of work, but one of the best parts of being an affiliate marketer is the freedom to choose how and when you work, what products you want to promote, etc. One of the best ways to avoid burnout, especially when you’re not yet making good money, is to choose promotional techniques that fit your personal style. Not everyone is a great writer, or even enjoys writing. If this describes you, you’re probably better off avoiding article marketing, which requires you to write large quantities of high-quality content. If you’re not the most social person and prefer anonymity, you probably won’t enjoy social media marketing very much. Since one of the main reasons for doing affiliate marketing is so you can work how you want to work, it’s important to figure out what suits your style and personality. Your work will be better, and you’ll be more willing to stick with it, if you’re enjoying yourself.
• Recognize that there are many ways to succeed as an affiliate- Since many new affiliates start out by reading books or following programs created by affiliate marketing experts, they think that these techniques may be the only way to make a lot of money and do well in the business. I’ve met many successful affiliates, and they’ve gotten to where they are today by many different paths. What works for one affiliate may not work at all for another, and there are always new tools, techniques, product niches, etc, being developed that can completely change the affiliate marketing game. Never be afraid to branch out on your own or try a crazy idea that you think just might work. Don’t be afraid to fail, because when you make mistakes you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t, making you more successful in the long run. There’s a lot to learn in the business, so the sooner you start making mistakes, the sooner you’ll start learning what works!

Besides this advice, I recommend reading our Help Center article Affiliate Dos and Don’ts, which offers some more specific advice for working with ClickBank and how to avoid common mistakes.

I’d also like to welcome comments from experienced affiliate marketers who have advice to share with beginners and can offer some encouragement or guidance. Please share your advice by leaving a comment!

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – (Aug. 10, 2009) – ClickBank officials will continue to work with affiliate marketers in states that are enacting new laws to tax the marketers’ sales, while Amazon and Overstock.com, among others, have been moving swiftly to halt its business relationships with affiliate marketers in various states because of the new tax implications.

In late June, Amazon terminated its marketing affiliate program in North Carolina after a new law took effect that will tax affiliate sales, and on July 1, Overstock.com notified affiliates in Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island that it would immediately cease doing business with them because of similar new tax laws.

But ClickBank, a major online retailer, says it has no intention of terminating relationships with affiliates in certain locations or discontinuing its longstanding policy of collecting and remitting taxes to the appropriate tax authorities in various domestic and international jurisdictions.

“We will continue to honor sales agreements with affiliates in the U.S. and abroad, despite new taxes that are being levied against them for sales and marketing efforts,” said Dush Ramachandran, vice president of sales, marketing and business development for ClickBank.

“One of the benefits of being a ClickBank affiliate is that you can operate wherever you live,” said Ramachandran. “We don’t want to place limits on that now. Our affiliates deserve the opportunity to earn income regardless of where they live, and ClickBank will continue to support them in their efforts to do so.”

New state tax laws aim to collect sales tax revenues from affiliates whose marketing activities lead to ecommerce sales. The key issue is whether the affiliates have a physical presence in a state that taxes ecommerce activities. The state of New York was the first to enact such tax laws, and more states are following suit.

Posted by: Matt Broich, Guest Blogger

Every successful ClickBank vendor knows that having a large number of affiliates promoting your product is the key to driving more sales. Unfortunately, many ClickBank vendors make mistakes when designing their Pitch Pages that hurt their ability to attract and retain valuable affiliates. The biggest mistakes vendors make when designing their websites include:

1) Accepting non-ClickBank forms of payment. Nothing upsets an affiliate more than losing a commission because the vendor accepts multiple forms of payment. Multiple forms of payment include PayPal (which ClickBank already accepts), a second non-ClickBank option for credit card processing, or a mail or phone-in payment option. ClickBank can only track affiliate HopLinks through the ClickBank order form. If an affiliate refers a customer and they end up mailing in their payment, the affiliate loses out on their hard-earned commission. Most affiliates check to see if a vendor offers multiple forms of payment before promoting their product, and might not promote the product if it does. I realize that vendors want to be customer-friendly by offering multiple forms of payment, but they may end up missing out on a lot of potential affiliate-driven sales.

2) Openly advertising the affiliate recruitment page. I often see vendors putting ‘Join Our Affiliate Program’ or ‘Webmasters Make Money’ links below the product order button or in their website navigation. This may upset some affiliates because a customer can easily view this link, learn they can sign up for ClickBank, get an ID, and receive a commission rebate. It therefore bypasses the affiliate commission. Instead, a vendor should bury their affiliate sign-up as a small text link in the footer of their sales page where it won’t be noticed as easily, and instead promote the page in their ClickBank Marketplace listing and other locations.

3) Presenting a poor design. Your website design should be optimized for the highest conversion rate possible, since affiliates want to feel confident that their efforts will regularly convert into sales. This requires: 

• Professional graphics. Vendors should present a clean, professional, fast-loading design with an attention-grabbing title. Invest in a professionally designed logo, header and footer graphics. Include a professional graphic of an e-book/software 3-D product box or, if you run a membership site, a membership “swipe card” graphic. These boxes and membership cards have been proven to drastically improve conversion rates.
• Well-written copy. Copy should be grammatically correct, conversational and free of typos.
• Minimal navigation. Sites that convert best have a single sales letter. If a vendor presents potential customers with a page full of links, it can prompt confusion or indecision. A page filled with links can overwhelm users so they don’t know where to start and may eventually leave without placing an order. A single page ‘squeezes’ potential customers into either buying or not buying, without unnecessary distractions. To increase conversions, provide only one decision.  If you are a vendor who needs multiple navigational links, keep them to a minimum and be sure to make navigating your site easy.
• Multiple calls to action. Place text or graphical order links throughout your sales page. Vendors should invite people to order after a few paragraphs of sales copy. If there is only one order button at the bottom, conversion rates will be lower. Vendors shouldn’t overdo order buttons. They should be fairly aggressive, but never annoying or pushy.

4) Placing ads on site. Vendor Pitch Pages should not include third-party text or banner advertising on the sales page, such as Google AdSense or ClickBank HopAds. Affiliates aren’t going to send traffic to a vendor and risk losing that traffic to a user clicking a text ad or buying another ClickBank product through the vendor’s HopAd. 

5) Not offering upgrade products. Affiliates love vendors that offer upsell opportunities because it’s a chance to earn more money. Take two products that are comparable in every way, but one offers upsells and the other doesn’t; which one is the affiliate going to promote? When you offer attractive upsells, you will not only attract more affiliates, you’ll also attract more aggressive and active affiliates. 

Avoiding these costly mistakes can help vendors attract and maintain productive affiliates, which can have a huge impact on sales. Above all, it’s of the utmost importance to treat and respect affiliates like the valuable business partners they are.

Matt Broich is a seasoned ClickBank affiliate and vendor. He manages CBengine, a ClickBank Marketplace product finder and analysis tool that helps ClickBank affiliates find high converting products. Discover more: http://www.cbengine.com