Posts Tagged ‘affiliates’

Posted by: Kristen M., Marketing Communications Manager

By now I suspect most of you have seen the updated look and feel of the ClickBank website. We’re very excited about these changes as they not only make the site more attractive, but also easier to understand for prospective clients. Our new colors of red, green, yellow, and taupe give us a bold, fresh look that differentiates us from the competition.

To further assist prospective clients we also updated our vendor and affiliate pages. The 5-step slideshows show beginners how ClickBank works.

The changes to these pages are not aimed at our current clients, but rather at prospective clients who aren’t familiar with what ClickBank can do for them.  If you’re a current ClickBank client, though, don’t feel left out. We have some additional changes planned to make the site easier to use and navigate. No need to worry, though, we won’t change anything substantial, including the order form, without testing it first.

Oh, and one last thing – the ticker is real and accurate. Pretty cool, eh?

Posted by: Dave Gale, Guest Blogger

For years, article marketing has been an effective tool for affiliates to generate visits and sales from interested consumers.

Here is a brief overview of how article marketing works and how it can benefit your efforts as an affiliate.

First, you should identify a product niche that you’re knowledgeable about, and then write an article related to that topic. At the end of the article, you can add a ‘resource box.’ Typically, this is a couple of sentences about you and what you have to offer, followed by a link to your website, where you can then direct people to useful products in that niche.

The trick here is to use those sentences to entice people to click on your link. An easy way to accomplish this is to offer a free report or other freebie related to your niche market.

Next, you’ll submit that article (for free) to various article directories on the web.

The two main directories to start with are:

www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com

To find more, just do a Google search for ‘article directory’ or ‘article directories.’

Please note that one of the conditions of publishing your article in these directories is that you allow other people to republish your articles as long as they don’t change the content and leave your name and the resource box at the end of the article intact.

Don’t worry; this is a good thing, as it will lead to more traffic for you! There are two main ways this practice will get you additional traffic.

1) Getting Published

Website owners in the niche market you are writing about will come to these directories looking for suitable articles they can use as content on their websites or ezines.

If they pick your article to publish on their site, their visitors will see your website link in the resource box at the end of your article, which could generate extra traffic for you with no additional effort or expense on your part.

2) Search Engine Rankings

Article directories can rank highly in the search engine results, so your article may get a good search engine listing by being on some of these sites. This is especially the case if other websites link to your article.

To try to get a good search engine ranking, you should target specific keyword phrases you want to rank for and make sure to include them in your article. The less competitive the keyword, the better the chance your article will rank well in the search engines.

A note of caution-don’t overdo your keyword targeting by stuffing loads of keywords into the article. If you do this, many people won’t want to read your article or click on your link, and the search engines may punish you for writing “spammy” content. This completely defeats the purpose of article marketing, which is to provide useful information that gets people to take the action you want them to take.

Instead of repeating your keyword dozens of times, just get your main keyword in there a few times, and start the article title with your keyword if you can. Your best bet is to strike a balance between having your keyword in your article enough to get noticed by search engines and keeping it readable, informative, and enjoyable for actual humans. After all, it doesn’t matter how many visitors see your article if it doesn’t convince anyone to click on your link!

In addition to getting your articles ranked in the search engines, you can also increase your own website’s search engine rankings by linking to it from your articles. With each article you submit, the more links you’ll have to your site, and the better your rankings will be.

That’s article marketing in a nutshell. Give it a try, and be aware that it may take some time and effort before you start seeing results. The best article marketers put a lot of time and effort into improving their work, just like any author, but since it’s a free and simple way to generate traffic and sales, it’s well worth the time you invest!

Dave Gale is an Internet marketer specializing in information publishing. To read more of Dave’s articles, visit http://www.publishingsuccessblog.com.

Here at ClickBank, we’re always trying to recruit great new publishers and affiliates, since having more products and people to promote them benefits everyone. And there’s no better way to show prospective ClickBank members how successful they can be than for them to hear about the experiences of our existing clients. If you’ve been successful using ClickBank, whether that means making millions, getting your product in front of a wider audience, or just having a little extra money each month, we’d love to hear from you!

Just fill out the form below and share your thoughts about working with ClickBank, along with your name, location and company name (if you have one). Please note that by leaving a testimonial, you give us your permission to use your name and your testimonial in our marketing materials. If you prefer, we can use your first name and last initial only.

Thank you for working with ClickBank!

Gideon Shalwick of Become a Blogger has created a very useful video showing beginning ClickBank affiliates how Hoplinks work, and how to add them to posts or pages using the popular blogging platform WordPress. If you’re looking for a new way to promote ClickBank products, this video can help you start using a blog to expand your promotional efforts.

If you’ve wanted to create your own blog but weren’t sure how to get started, Become a Blogger’s tutorial videos will walk you through every step of the blog creation process. Be sure to check them out!

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager- Client Account Management

In my conversations with clients, I have found that most people search the Marketplace using the default “Sort by” option, Popularity. Popularity is determined by a publisher’s net sales over a recent time frame and also rewards vendors who have many affiliates promoting them.

While popularity is a useful measure of a product’s earning potential for you as the affiliate, there are many advantages to using the other “Sort by” options available in the Marketplace as well.

High Gravity: Sort by ‘Gravity’->’High to Low’ if you are looking for products that have a proven track record for converting well. Gravity refers to the number of affiliates who have earned a commission by promoting a particular vendor’s product(s). Therefore, if a publisher has a high gravity score, it means that the vendor has lots of affiliates earning money by promoting their product. This, in turn, should be an indicator to you that the product sells well. The downside to promoting products with a high gravity score is that you will encounter lots of competition in promoting it.

Low Gravity: If you are looking for hidden gems and want to be one of the first to market with a product promotion, sort your Marketplace search by ‘Gravity’->’Low to High.’ This is a bit of a high risk/high reward option. Low gravity means little competition from other affiliates, so you may be able to spend less time and money promoting that product than with a high gravity product. If the product converts well, you can win big as one of the only affiliates promoting it. This is the high reward side.

However, low gravity also means that the product either hasn’t been tested by many other affiliates or has been tested by affiliates and hasn’t converted well. Either way, it’s possible that you could be spending your time and ad dollars on a product that doesn’t sell. That’s the high risk side of low gravity.

Initial $/Sale: This is a great option for people who know they need to make a minimum amount of money on each sale in order to be profitable. If you know about how much you’re going to spend on promotion for each sale you earn, you can sort by Initial $/Sale and only promote products whose payout meets your minimum threshold for profitability. For example, if you know you are going to spend about $10 in advertising per sale, you may choose to only promote products that pay at least $20 per sale.

Avg %/Sale: This is similar to Avg $/Sale, but it ranks vendors according to the commission percentage they offer on each sale. If you are looking for vendors that give a high percentage of the sale to affiliates, sorting by Avg %/Sale is your best option.

Avg Rebill Total and Avg $/Sale: Are you interested in earning recurring revenue from a single sale? Then subscription products are for you. Sort by either Avg Rebill Total or Avg $/Sale to find products that bill customers at regular intervals, such as bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. The higher the dollar amount, the more money affiliates earn from that product, on average.

Each “Sort by” option offers a different picture of ClickBank vendors and offers affiliates different ways to find great new products to promote. Try experimenting with different types of searches, and you could find the product that’s a perfect fit for your affiliate business!

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Jan. 6, 2009 – ClickBank, a world leader in online retail of high-converting, digitally downloadable products, is attending the Affiliate Summit West. The conference will take place Jan. 11-13^th, at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.

Come meet with ClickBank executives at Table 47 at the Meet Market on Sunday, Jan. 11 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The Affiliate Summit West, the premier affiliate marketing conference of the year, provides an opportunity for affiliates, merchants and networks to attend educational sessions on the latest industry issues. The Affiliate Summit West presents an opportunity for ClickBank to meet its affiliates in person, receive feedback about its services and keep its affiliates up to date on enhancements coming in 2009.

“The Affiliate Summit West is an excellent opportunity for ClickBank to meet its affiliates in person and discuss the latest trends in affiliate marketing,” said Brad Wiskirchen, ClickBank’s chief executive officer. “We have a number of dynamic additions planned for our services in 2009.”

In an earlier blog post, I described the Ten Habits of Highly Successful Publishers. Through my conversations with our top affiliates, I discovered that they also shared many important habits that have led to their success.

1. Promote products that address specific needs: While most fledgling affiliates tend to focus on the Internet Marketing vertical expecting to make quick money, there is a wide range of products on the ClickBank Marketplace that cater to a huge variety of needs. Products that address a specific need or answer a particular question sell extremely well.

2. Promote widely: Many successful affiliates rely on a wide range of promotional methods-e-mail marketing, blogs, review sites, and pay-per-click advertising-since each type of promotional method works well with a particular demographic.

3. Promote seasonally: Successful affiliates tend to vary the products they promote based on the season. With New Year’s resolutions being made at the start of the year, a lot of people look for self-improvement products at that time, while in the summertime products relating to outdoor recreation tend to be more popular.

4. Persevere through hardship: Many novice affiliates tend to assume they cannot be successful if their initial attempts to promote products don’t go well. Nothing succeeds like perseverance. Stick with the effort and don’t allow early disappointment to deter you. Many of our most successful affiliates have attained success after disappointing early results.

5. Broaden your portfolio of products: In general, all products don’t do well at the same time. When some products are doing well, other products are not. Promoting a variety of products will allow you to benefit by smoothing out the peaks and valleys in the life cycle of each product.

6. Test relentlessly: Since your commissions depend on the links from your site to the publisher’s site working consistently, test everything and test regularly. Simulate a visitor’s journey from your site to the publisher’s site and then on to the ClickBank order form, and make sure that the order form displays your nickname as the affiliate. You should also test and tweak the language you use in your promotions to make sure it is compelling.

7. Make realistic claims for the product: Refunds are high when products don’t meet the claims made by the promotional material. By making extravagant claims for the product you may be able to get more people to buy the product initially, but this success is short-lived when customers end up refunding the product if it doesn’t measure up.

Our top affiliates generate several million dollars worth of business each year, even in difficult economic times, by adopting these seven simple habits. Perhaps now you can too!

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

Now more than ever, users are accessing the Internet with high speed connections, which invites the use of rich media. SOHO (Small Office Home Office) businesses have discovered the following sure-fire ways Internet video can improve their customer experience:

Product Demonstration
For years, publishers have looked for ways to clearly demonstrate their product and articulate its value proposition. This exciting new media allows you to quickly go through the whole process, screen-by-screen, showing the product “in action,” overcoming some of the limitations of words and pictures. Creating a video to demonstrate your product can be the tipping point that convinces a visitor to buy. For example, if you can show a technology-averse visitor that your product is easy enough for even a beginner to use, you’ll overcome one of their biggest objections to buying.

Confidence Building
Since the early days, when Internet purchasing was a new idea, customers have sided with companies they trust when making their purchases. Much of this decision is based on confidence, credibility, and being able to identify with the creator of the product/service. Video allows you to remove barriers by inspiring confidence and putting a personable face on the product, ultimately winning customer trust and closing more sales.

Problem Solving
Not only is it a good idea to use video to sell your product, but it will also pay dividends with customer service. For example, creating a video that walks customers through resolving a very common customer service request could save your organization money and time. Things that are difficult to describe with words and pictures are much easier to express in video format!

Marketing Materials
Lastly, if you upload product demonstration videos to YouTube or other video sites, affiliate marketers can use them to help promote your products by embedding them in their site, which will save you money on marketing. Publishers with products that can be easily demonstrated by video should start making videos available to their affiliate partners!

The time to wonder if video will change your business has passed; it is time to leverage this powerful new media!

Happy selling, friends!

Posted by: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Business Development

Every time I go to a large department store, I think the seasons are coming earlier and earlier. The weather outside is a balmy 90°F and the fall fashions are already on the shelf. Almost before the ghouls and goblins of Halloween displays are put away, holiday music seems to flood the stores.

But when you think about it, seasonal marketing makes a lot of sense. Even on ClickBank, where a number of products have year-round appeal, there are products whose appeal is definitely seasonal. Capitalizing on these seasonal trends can be a very lucrative approach for both affiliates and publishers.

For instance, looking up searches on Google Trends for specific seasonal terms like ‘Halloween costumes’ or ‘Christmas ornaments’ shows not only the time of year when these searches peak, but also the top 10 geographic areas from which these searches originate. This knowledge allows affiliates to not only plan their spending on AdWords and SEO efforts, but also to geo-target their advertising by having their ads shown in specific geographical markets.

Just as an example, I looked up ‘ski fitness’ on Google Trends and found that, predictably, the searches started in middle of the last quarter of the year, peaked from around the end of the year to the middle of the first quarter of the following year, and remained flat at zero volume for the remainder of the year. The top four countries these searches came from were UK, Australia, Canada and Switzerland. Doing a search on the ClickBank Marketplace for ‘ski fitness’ yielded a number of fitness products, including one that is specifically aimed at ski fitness.

So with a little forethought and planning, you could have a series of different promotions for each season, geographical area and topic of interest.

‘Tis the season to promote, it would seem.

Posted by: Jen Johannsen, VP of Operations

Early in August, I posted a blog entry about using some of the tools we provide that allow us to provide better customer service to your customers (“Help Us Help You”). Well, here I am again to announce the newest tool that we have added that will allow us to help you assist your customers more quickly.

Yesterday, our release included the addition of a field that will allow you to enter a Customer Service Web site. Input this information, and we will provide it to customers in notifications and via the order locator on the CLKBank.com page as an alternate source for technical support.

We envision this being used in different ways by different publishers. We know some publishers have a helpdesk URL that can be listed as the Customer Service Web site. Others may want to add their FAQ page that answers their customers’ most commonly-asked questions. Some may add a page that has a script that will allow customers to generate a new password, in case they lose the original password that was generated at the time of the purchase. I’m sure there are other ways it can be used, as well.

Just remember that if you list a Customer Service Web site under the “My Account” section of your ClickBank account, the URL will be sent to the customer in the email notifications that are sent out by ClickBank.

Our hope is that you can use this to help your customers as quickly as possible – and hopefully keep more sales!