Posts Tagged ‘success’

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!

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 timeframe and also rewards publishers 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 ‘High Gravity’ 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 publisher’s product(s). Therefore, if a publisher has a high gravity score, it means that the publisher 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 “Low Gravity.” 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.

$ Earned/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 $Earned/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.

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

Future $ and Total $/Sale: Are you interested in earning recurring revenue from a single sale? Then subscription products are for you. Sort by either Future $ or Total $/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.

% Referred: This “Sort by” option tells you the percentage of a publisher’s sales that are referred by affiliates. A high %Referred likely means that the publisher is established and has had time to grow their affiliate base. It also indicates that affiliates stick with the product once they start promoting.

Each “Sort by” option offers a different picture of ClickBank publishers 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!

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: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Business Development

In my job, I speak to our largest publishers and affiliates pretty much every day. Just the other day after a conversation with one particularly successful publisher, it struck me that there is a common thread that runs through all successful publishers.

While their businesses may be different and the areas of their specialization may be diverse, they all have very similar habits. As I continued my conversations with these publishers, I jotted down the common habits that distinguish these successful people, and here they are for your enjoyment and edification:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

If you’re an affiliate who runs your own site and promotes it through Google Adwords, improving your Quality Score can be the difference between an advertising campaign that’s mediocre and one that’s extremely profitable. One tactic for improving Quality Score is to make sure that your Web site has a privacy policy, and that your landing page directly links to it. Many affiliates skip over creating a privacy policy on their site, especially if they have created many different Web sites to feature different products.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to become a legal expert, BBBOnline has created a privacy policy template that you can modify to fit your Web site. You’ll just need to plug in a few details about your site, and add or delete certain sections of the policy to reflect your site’s details and marketing policies. Then you’ll need to create a link to the page, preferably in the site footer so it will be linked to from every page within the site. For 10 minutes’ worth of work, it’s one of the easiest ways to improve your site and get better performance out of your advertising efforts.

Even if you don’t use Google Adwords, having a clearly worded privacy policy can make your site appear more trustworthy to visitors, leading to higher conversion rates. One of the biggest hurdles to making a sale online is convincing nervous visitors that their personal information is safe with you, and a privacy policy can go a long way to reassuring them that they can trust you. It’s unknown whether Google rewards sites with a privacy policy in natural search results, but for the small amount of effort required, it’s well worth adding a privacy policy just in case they do.

Posted by: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Sales and Business Development

At parties and social gatherings people often ask me what I do, and I tell them I work for ClickBank. This answer is usually greeted with a puzzled look and a quizzical “Who?” But when I tell the ClickBank story, the puzzlement is often replaced by wonderment and admiration, and the inevitable follow-up question is “What’s the secret of ClickBank’s success?”

Even though the person asking the question is always different and is perhaps expecting a different answer every time, I answer the question in exactly the same way every time: “Our affiliate network.” If it weren’t for our incredible army of motivated and innovative affiliates, all of the hard work we’ve put into ClickBank over the years would not amount to very much.

It is our simple, low-risk approach to becoming a ClickBank affiliate that causes an average of 2,000 people to sign up for a ClickBank account every day. And a fair number of those people go on to become successful and earn a decent income from ClickBank. Some of our affiliates have even completely replaced their traditional income with their ClickBank earnings. With over 110,000 active affiliates generating revenues, ClickBank’s affiliate network is truly at the root of our success.

We think affiliates are so important to our success that we’re going to be at the Affiliate Summit in Boston on Aug 10 to 12, and our CEO Bob King is going to be on a panel discussion about trends in affiliate marketing. If you’re planning to attend the Affiliate Summit this year, come see us at Table 23 at the Meet Market on Sunday Aug 10, between 12:00 noon and 6:00. We’d love to meet you, and say thanks for being the secret of our success!