Posts Tagged ‘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: Jennifer Johannsen, VP of Operations

With the start of every new year, of course, comes New Year’s Resolutions… Well, this year, one of my New Year’s Resolutions (which I challenge you all to take on, as well) is to spread the word about ClickBank to friends and other acquaintances.

During these challenging economic times, ClickBank offers a unique opportunity for anyone to make a little extra money, either as an affiliate or as a publisher. I realized that while I see all of the benefits ClickBank has to offer day in and day out, I rarely tell people that I run into outside of work why it would benefit them to join and how they can get started.

As Greg and Jeff mentioned in their blog posts (“DIY with ClickBank” and “Put Me in Coach…“), first you need to think about your unique knowledge and about your niche. Then you can take that to the next level, and think about what kinds of problems and questions your friends have the answers to that most people don’t, and explain to them the benefits of writing that up in an e-book and selling that through ClickBank.

For those of you that spread the word online, there is something in it for you too…  ClickBank’s publisher referral program is a great way for you to promote ClickBank and earn extra commissions for doing so. You will earn 20% of the $49.95 activation charge when your referred publisher activates their account. You will also earn 5% of ClickBank’s typical markup of each sale that your recruited publisher makes for one calendar year. For more information, please visit the Referral Program and the Referral Program FAQ page on the ClickBank Web site.

I wish you and all of your referrals the VERY best in 2009!!!

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

As a rule of thumb, you should gather competitive intelligence (CI) for your business. Doing so will allow you to better understand current and potential competitors, industry trends, and possible threats. As a result, you will be empowered to make more informed decisions about your product and strategic initiatives.

To do this effectively, you should implement a process designed to filter large volumes of data into clear and actionable insight. For instance, using a RSS parser such as Jawfish to receive, organize, and redistribute feed content can automate CI data mining and distribution. Simply take the repurposed RSS feed content and display it on an intranet or wiki page, and voila, you have a CI portal.

Similarly, you can use Web page monitoring tools to ensure you are “in the know” regarding your competitors’ activities. For example, you can use a tool like TrackEngine, InfoMinder, or WatchThatPage to notify you every time your competitors’ news or press release pages are updated. Review the content as you are notified, identify if it is significant, and redistribute within your company as necessary.

Lastly, use tools like Twitturly or Twitterfox to easily monitor popular links being tweeted for subjects related to your competitors, your industry, or possible threats to your business. Doing so will give you nearly real-time visibility into their activities and the community’s response to it. You can also use the tool Tweet Scan to get emailed updates on tweets for particular keywords. It delivers information less frequently than the other tools, but can be good for receiving summaries if you don’t have a lot of time to monitor the other tools.

In conclusion, the Internet has changed the meaning of “readily available information.” If you haven’t already, you need to leverage tools like these to help you capture this information and organize it in a fashion that makes sense for your business. Taking the time to do so will lead to greater success.

Happy selling, friends!

Please note that all applications mentioned in this post are not affiliated with ClickBank and should be used at your own risk.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager- Client Account Management

Today is my first day back in the office after attending the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas on January 11-13, and I’m excited! The conference was extremely productive and was a lot of fun, too!

We spent most of Sunday at our table at the Affiliate Meet Market. We had the opportunity to meet and speak with a myriad of people, whose knowledge of ClickBank ranged from “I’ve never heard of ClickBank. What do you do?” to “ClickBank!  I’ve been waiting for years to see you at one of these conferences!” We also thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of our current clients, several of whom we had corresponded with via email and phone calls but had never met face-to-face. How wonderful it is to finally be able to put a face with those names!

Monday was spent walking the show floor, talking with potential partners, and learning about other networks. We were blown away by how much the Affiliate Summit had grown since our first trip there last winter.

On Monday night, we hosted a VIP party at The House of Blues Foundation Room, an exclusive club at the top of the Mandalay Bay hotel with a fabulous view of the Las Vegas Strip. About 25 people attended and we had a wonderful time getting to know our clients on a social level, while listening to their ideas on what they like best about ClickBank and how we can improve our business. Thank you to all who attended-we had a great time with you!

We wrapped up the trip on Tuesday with a couple of meetings and another walk of the show floor, and then headed off to the airport for the return trip.

We would like to thank everyone who took the opportunity to introduce themselves to us at the Meet Market or while we were walking the show floor. We left with great memories and a boost of enthusiasm for the year ahead!

Over the past few months, ClickBank has been developing an innovative advertising platform that will help ClickBank affiliates make more money from their Web site or blog traffic, while at the same time generating more exposure and sales for ClickBank publishers.

Here’s why you should participate:

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

Update: The ClickBank HopAd Builder is now available to everyone! To learn how to use it, see our Help Center article: http://www.clickbank.com/help/affiliate-help/affiliate-tools/hopad-builder/

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!

For those of you who are hooked on Twitter, you can now follow ClickBank! We’ll be tweeting on a regular basis with updates, interesting sites and articles we’ve run across, and more. See you there!

Follow ClickBank on Twitter!

Posted by: Greg Lems, VP of Information Technology

I’m in the midst of a long-overdue remodel of the second floor of my home. Although I hired someone to do most of the specialized work, I decided to tackle several projects myself to save money in these trying times.

One task that I learned would save a fair amount of money if I did it myself was carpet removal. However, while the main part of the work was very fast and easy, I quickly discovered that removing the hundreds of staples left behind was a much bigger chore than I had imagined! At first I thought I was in for hours of extra work as I started removing each staple by hand.

Fortunately for me, the contractor I had hired for other work saw what I was doing and stopped me before I wasted too much time. It turns out there’s a simple tool that carpet installers use to remove staples quickly and easily. After he showed me how to use it, all of the staples were gone within a matter of minutes, saving me hours of work and a lot of backache.

It got me thinking about how an enterprising ClickBank publisher could have helped me solve my problem earlier. Every successful ClickBank product solves a problem or addresses a need. In my case, I’m a relatively handy person, but need some specific advice on DIY home remodel techniques that save people money. If someone like my contractor, who has a lot of knowledge and advice to offer people like me, had created an e-book that addressed common remodel techniques that save money, I’d have bought it in a heartbeat. The time, money and effort it would have saved me would have been well worth the cost.

If you’ve always wondered what kind of e-book you could write and sell, think about what kinds of problems and questions you have the answers to that most people don’t. For example, most people don’t have the time or inclination to become a full-fledged contractor, but they’d love to take advantage of all the time- and money-saving tips that contractors have learned over the years.

Chances are good that if you faced a particular problem in the past and figured out how to overcome it, there are many other people who will face the same problem at some point and would gladly pay for the solution! Some of our most successful products address needs like this. Here’s a 2009 DIY project for you: think about your experience and knowledge, write it up in an e-book, and list it with ClickBank. Who knows who else you’ll help?

Andrew Warner of Mixergy recently conducted an extensive interview with ClickBank’s Director of Marketing, Bob Dunlap. In their discussion, Bob shared strategies he’s observed over the years for successfully creating and selling ClickBank products, particularly ebooks. If you’re thinking about developing a new ClickBank product, or want to know how to increase sales of your existing product, be sure to check out the Mixergy podcast.