Posts Tagged ‘vendors’

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.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

At the end of last month, ClickBank introduced the first phase of Vendor Spotlights, a powerful new tool to help ClickBank vendors communicate with affiliates like never before. Vendor Spotlights are featured in the Marketplace alongside your Marketplace listing, and allow you to create a profile that shows affiliates the following information:

• Sales statistics
• Customer-facing advertisements, to give affiliates more info about your product and what sales messages they should use
• Recommended vendors (such as other accounts you own, or other vendors you would recommend)
• Your affiliate resources page (if you have one)
• A product image

The most exciting part of Vendor Spotlights, though, is that you’ll have the ability to post announcements about your products. For example, you could tell affiliates about upcoming products you’re releasing, changes to your existing products, special promotions you’re running, or tips on promoting your product.

If you’re a vendor with an approved ClickBank product, you can now create your Vendor Spotlight listing by visiting My Spotlight under the Account Settings tab in your account. Vendor Spotlight profiles will be added to the ClickBank Marketplace on September 21, so we highly recommend that you create your listing (and a first announcement) now! Vendors with Vendor Spotlight profiles will have a distinct advantage over vendors who don’t, so don’t delay!

For more information about Vendor Spotlights, see our Help Center article.

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

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?

We are very pleased to announce that we now support vendors and affiliates from 30 new countries around the world! ClickBank is now more global than ever before.

The new countries are:

• Albania
• Armenia
• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Cambodia
• Colombia
• Comoros
• Falkland Islands
• Georgia
• Honduras
• Haiti
• Indonesia
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lebanon
• Montenegro
• Macedonia
• Mali
• Nicaragua
• Peru
• Philippines
• Pakistan
• Paraguay
• Russian Federation
• Swaziland
• Ukraine
• Uzbekistan
• Venezuela
• Vietnam
• Yemen

Welcome to all of our new client countries!

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!

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