Work Yourself Up!

Making the Most from ClickBank

ClickBank is definitely a leading connection between product developers and affiliate marketers. It’s also a place that buyer can go directly to purchase information products. Plus ClickBank has a positive reputation for its ease of use.

With all that going for it, just upload your information products and you’re good to go, right?  Not exactly. You might make a few sales, but if you want to make ClickBank a centerpiece of your marketing, then you have to do more than just upload, post a link and wait.

Set up targeted minisite.  Create catchy sales copy to accompany it. You can also add a video demonstration or an audio that expands on the product.  Offer a “bribe” or freebie when the viewer clicks that Buy Now button.

If you have strong testimonials, add them on the sales page or with video clips that are scattered inside the sales copy.  Post product reviews. Write short reviews or ask a colleague to review your product.

If you’re looking for reviewers, offer the product free to a limited number of potential reviewers. This is a popular technique on marketing forums to get testimonials. You can also get reviews from people who are significant contributors to forums in your niche. Then get those reviews posted on as many sites, forums and discussion boards as possible.

Trade mailing lists. Contact sites with comparable niche interests and tell them about your ClickBank product.  Offer an affiliate sales opportunity. You can also agree to trade mailings - your offer to their lists, and then a few weeks later send their offer to your list.

Since any sale makes an affiliate commission for the seller, everyone wins. If you find that your product doesn’t get picked up by affiliates, reduce your cut and increase the profit for affiliate sales. Information marketing is about volume, so remember that 40% of 1,000 sales is worth more than 60% of 100 sales.

Keep it fresh.  Like produce, eBooks have a certain shelf life. Even if the information is still good, add a new twist or update at least twice annually. Unless you’ve written a true classic, then you’ll begin to see a downturn in sales.

That’s the time to tweak it. You can make a slight title change or a major change. Just give the buyer a reason to find this interesting. If you’re doing a tweak, contact your best affiliate sellers to let them know that there’s new information or updates worth sending to the their list again.

3 Killer Affiliate Marketing Tactics

Affiliate marketing has got to be one of the greatest business models the world has ever seen. Basically it allows someone with no products of their own without any customer service hassles to make a good living online by funneling traffic to other websites ad collecting a sizable percentage of the sale. It sounds fantastic, and it really is for some, but sadly for many it just doesn't produce the sort of income that would be necessary for them in order to do it full-time comfortably. The great thing is that by learning a few really good and clever techniques it is easy to have a great increase in the amount of money that you make for pretty much the same effort as before. Remember always work smarter but not necessarily harder.

First and foremost remember to always build a list if you are doing affiliate marketing. This is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and so if you haven't started a list already then you really must do so. It is the only way to build long term profits with security in this industry. Now we've cleared that up let's move quickly on to the 3 killer affiliate marketing tactics:

1. Use Video In Order To Increase Conversions

Over the past couple of years video has really taken the Internet by storm and whether you like it or not in order to keep with the times and produce maximum profits it has got to be an integral part of your marketing. The great thing is that it is not that complicated anymore and is also really cheap. The important thing is to have your video follow onto the affiliate program which your promoting after it has finished playing. A great tool which only costs about $30.00 can do this easily and is called CamStudioPro. The investment should pay its self back quickly.

2. Use A Link Cloaking Service

Nowadays, particularly in the Internet Marketing niche but also more and more in outside niches, people are becoming more and more aware of affiliate links and as a result less commissions are being made. Therefore it is a good idea to use a link cloaker service to protect your links. There are some free ones and paid ones out there and so it is a good idea to do a Google search and find a suitable one.

3. Offer Bonuses For Buying

This is a great way to increase conversions. Just create a nice bonus to go with a product and then tell people when they buy to send their receipt to you in order for you to send them their bonus. This is open and up front and since it benefits both parties it works really well.

Making Money on the Backend

Always love to see creative people taking advantage of the promotion and marketing opportunities that the Internet has to offer.  The potential to reach tons of new fans via the web, email, or elsewhere online is mind blowing.

But how do you monetize giving something away for free?

Watch the first couple of minutes of the video below to see how indie filmmaker Francis Stokes is doing it...

This is actually a pretty good movie, by the way.  Reminds me of a lot of musicians I've worked with. :)

Affiliate Marketing - Alternatives to Clickbank

Entering the affiliate marketing game can be a ruthless and frustrating exercise in futility these days.  There are gobs of people attempting to make it big online as affiliate marketers, and those numbers definitely play against you when it comes to PPC and organic search engine optimization.  It can be very costly to begin drawing traffic, and in many cases you still won’t get the kind of traffic you’re looking for.  Let’s look at a few things you can do to shift the odds in your favor.

First and foremost, learn to write articles.  Article marketing is free and will bring you quality, targeted traffic for months and months.  It takes awhile to learn to use PPC and profit, so allow yourself to dabble in PPC while focusing in article marketing for the time being.  You will find plenty of prospective buyers without spending a penny in advertising.

Next, let’s get to the real topic of this article – finding alternatives to Clickbank.  Why?  Because Clickbank is oversaturated with affiliates and want-to-be-affiliates, so your competition is very steep.  The most popular Clickbank products, the ones that really sell, will cost you a fortune in PPC campaigns.  It is surprising that so many beginning affiliates do not realize how unnecessary Clickbank is.  The only real benefit to Clickbank is convenience, in that you can search products all in one place, you get paid from one source, and you only need one account to do so.  The benefits of using other sources, in my experience, have far outweighed those conveniences.  Let’s look at some other options.

Did you know that most sites offer their own affiliate programs?  Do a search for a general topic that you want to find products for.  Find several of the top organic search results pages that actually offer a product for sale.  Now scroll to the bottom of those pages (in most cases).  On many of these sites, you will find a link for “Affiliates”, “Join Affiliate Program”, “Partners” or “Become a Partner”.  There are other variations, but it should be obvious that you are seeing an affiliate program.  Click there and sign up with the sites that you want to promote with.  Many direct affiliate programs offer more options and better commissions than Clickbank programs, and you have the added benefit of competing against much smaller numbers.  Try to pick programs that don’t also have a program with Clickbank, or you wind up in the same position as before.

By going straight to the product vendors and becoming affiliated with them, you put yourself in the unique position of being one of the very small percentage of online affiliates who are working with individual companies, which gives you a great competitive edge.  It’s amazing to see a campaign that costs almost nothing yield great results, when having been accustomed to watching expensive campaigns hemorrhage your money.  Cutting yourself away from the masses of Clickbank affiliates is one of the best advantages you can give yourself.  Let the professionals dominate, and let the want-to-be’s through away their money.  This way, neither of those will stop you from taking your cut, nor cause you to pay far more than you should for PPC ads.

Wow! - The Biggest Launch of 2007

I get approached with a lot of offers each day and see even more.  It takes something really special to get me excited these days.

Well, this did it.

This is such a great way to get people excited about your product, get folks talking, get folks promoting, and more.

This one is going to be big!

How to Promote Your Site and Drive Traffic via Online Video

A few weeks ago, I attended a seminar which focused on Web 2.0 traffic generation strategies.  As you can imagine, video was a big part of that.

I could go into how people are using video, but there are a million ways to do it.  So for this post, I'm just going to show you one of the ways I am using it to drive traffic and get the word out about what I am doing.  I'm also going to show you how to do it and give you an couple of easy options that won't require you to do so much as pick up a video camera.

A little about me...

I'm host of a syndicated radio show on the music business, so I'm in the studio a couple of times per week to interview people.  As you can imagine, we have TONS of audio content.

Had a cheap video camera that I picked up to record dance lessons with, so I started taking it along to my radio interviews and doing video promos for the show.  Like this...

The great thing about the camera I use is that it has a built-in USB port, which flips out.  I just plug it into my computer and download the video clip.  Easy.

I then send the raw clip to my assistant, who edits it and puts on the front and back using Windows Media Maker and Ulead Video Studio.

Don't have an assistant?  This is a quick and easy job that you can hire out for few bucks via Scriptlance.

By the way, the voiceover guy on the front is Chris Davies of ProVoiceUSA.  Send him a script and he will usually have something back to you within a day.  For another voice, try Dan Buckley of Buckley Productions.  Dan is a DJ at WRLT and engineers my radio show.  Dan has done a couple of audio books for me and you can sample his voice at Amazon.

So now that you've got your video done, it's time to submit it to sites who host videos.  I've put together a list of the Top 20 Video Sharing Sites for Online Marketers.

Options to submit everything:

GOOD:  It's not rocket science to submit everything on your own, but it will take some time.

BETTER: It's much easier to have somebody else do it.  You can hire somebody for a few bucks via Scriptlance or, if you're in need of somebody fulltime, I recommend contacting Your Outsourcing Solution.  You can get a fulltime person cheaper than you think, so I highly recommend considering that option.

BEST: Traffic Geyser is an automated system that will submit your videos to the top 35 sites as well as top social bookmarking services.  My suggestion is to do this route and  hire somebody for a few bucks via Scriptlance to run it for you. 

What do do with audio content...

As I mentioned earlier, being in radio, we have a ton of audio content.  Hours and hours of shows, outtakes, promos, and more.  But until recently, we weren't doing anything with video...

You may be in a similar situation.  Most people involved with marketing have audio recordings of teleconferences, presentations, or other material.

GOOD NEWS:  Creating a video presentation of your audio with still images is a great way to make use of this content.

EVEN BETTER NEWS: Traffic Geyser, the submission service I mentioned above, will do this for you.  Simply upload your audio, upload a few photos, and you're got a new "video" to help drive traffic and promote yourself.

More ways to create and use video...

It's so easy to join a site like 100articles.com, where you'll get 100 private label articles for $9, read the articles into some recording software, and then make a video slideshow.  Traffic Geyser has a way for you to do it by phone.  Easy.

Let me give you an example...  Let's say you have an article on "satellite radio."  You read the article into some recording software, so now you have an audio version of it, right?  Then you attach some photos of satellite radios to it, so it's a slide show.  You then upload that via Traffic Geyser so it goes out to the top 35 video sharing sites.

People search for "satellite radio" and one of your videos comes up.  They watch the video, which then directs them to an affiliate link.

Easy money.

But it gets even easier. :)

Dr. Mike has this program where he makes these videos for you.  He made me this video to attach to this article, which has some pretty impressive case studios and should give you some ideas on how you can use this approach to make more money with your online projects.  So check out his site and let me know what you think below.

Hope this has helped you to come up with some new ideas on how you can use video.  If it has, please click one of the links below to add this URL to Digg or another social bookmarking site.

5 Ways to Fail as an Affiliate

Today I'm going to teach you how to fail as an Internet affiliate. You've learnt about how to succeed as an affiliate but today you'll learn how to fail.

In other words, what I want to do is point out 5 things that will surely make you a failure if you do them. It's  your decision to follow or avoid them.

1. Don't build your own opt in list

What do you need your own opt in list for? After all, who's got the time? Remember you have to keep in contact with your list to keep it fresh.

And my goodness!!! You can't even write. How do you hope to publish your own newsletter? To make matters worse you have to pay about $19 monthly to your autoresponder service.

2. Don't use Google Adwords and other PPCs.

Who wants to waste money on PPCs? How can you possibly be paying for every click on your advert. That's just too expensive. Besides, there are loads of marketers using them these days and competion has driven the cost up.

I also heard that most of the PPCs engage in click fraud so PPC campaigns don't look like a good investment to me.

3. Don't build your own website.

You don't really need your own website to succeed as an affiliate. Afterall, you're only an affiliate. There is too much stress in building and maintaining your own website.

You can always take advantage of the turnkey website littered all over the Internet. Come to think of it,a quality web host will cost you about $25 monthly. It ain't worth it.

4. Pick any product to promote.

For a person to create a product (ebooks, software and so on) then goes ahead to promote it and look for affiliates, the product must be good to promote.

There are thousands of products to promote at clickbank so you can just pick any of them. You don't have to bother about it's quality, price or sales process. Just pick one of them.

5. Give up when you lose your first investment.

It's not good to lose money, is it? To me it doesn't make sense. Once you lose money promoting your first affiliate campaign, the solution is to pack it in.

That way you'll be safe and you won't lose money any longer. Maybe the whole Internet "thing" is untrue.

That's it. Those are my 5 surefire steps to failing as an Internet affiliate. Follow them if you want to fail and avoid them if you want to succeed.

Easy Adsense Money Through Article Marketing

One of the easiest ways to make money with articles is to get PLR articles, do an edit of them, and submit them to directories.  Everything can be easily outsourced, so this won't take a lot of time.

Take a look at this...

There is no charge to join and you'll make 50% of the Adsense money that comes in.

Plus, you'll be able to put your own links at the bottom the the articles you submit and get traffic to your sites that way.

Pretty easy... 

If you're wondering about rewrites, you can find somebody on Elance or Scriptlance to do them for about $3.

THE PLAN...

1. Sign up for Info Sweet. (it's free)

2. Get some PLR articles.  

3. Have somebody at Scriptlance rewrite those articles and submit them for you.

Easy.

Cool Web Advertising Tool - Take Advantage of Unused Space

Just found something really cool, which I know will help you to:

- getting more web traffic
- getting more affiliate sales
- get more people on your mailing list
- and more...

The best way to explain it, is for you to take a look.

Look in the top right corner or the page.

Imagine what this will do to get attention for your products, mailing list, and other offers.  It's a great way to take advantage of web traffic and "unused" space, without annoying people.

I'm putting it on ALL of my pages and suggesting that my clients do the same.

If you're feeling ambitious, you could approach people in your market and offer to "rent" space from them.  You'll be right at the top of their sites, without being intrusive.