ClickBank ® is one of the most popular and successful affiliate marketing programs on the internet for digital goods like info products, eBooks and software. With the right efforts, one can get a six figure income using this program. Both vendors (creators of info products and digital products) and affiliate marketers can use this program. It is a website marketplace which connects vendors (sellers) or creators of digital products with affiliate marketers giving a win-win situation to both. Sellers can create digital products like eBooks and list them for sale on their website. Affiliate marketers can then promote these digital products and they get a commission for each sale. A percentage of the commission also goes to ClickBank thus making it a win-win situation for all the three parties involved.
Making Money as an Affiliate; The marketplace website provides a huge marketplace for digital products for affiliates to choose from and sell online. These digital products are categorized into buckets like Health, Business, Software, Money etc. making it easier for affiliate marketers to pick a product to sell based on their interest. Here are the steps required to get started as an affiliate:
1) The first thing to do is to apply for the program from their website (http://www.clickbank.com/promote_products.html). Its always good to have a blog or website running before applying for the program. The blog can either be a generic one which covers multiple products though its good to have a niche blog or website on a particular area of interest
2) Once you apply and get accepted, the next step is to choose the product to sell. Browse through the marketplace (http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm) looking for a product or multiple products to sell.
3) The website provides many factors or indicators which will help you to gauge how good the product is for an affiliate marketer to sell. Some of these are Popularity, Gravity, Average $ per sale etc. Gravity is a formula that is arrived by calculating the number of sales by different affiliates over the past few weeks. They help in judging what is hot and what is not in the marketplace, at that moment. Use these factors to decide one or multiple products to sell.
4) Once you have picked up a list of products, the next step is to visit the product’s website and read about the product throughly. Some of the websites also provide affiliate banners and promotional material (which are typically located at the bottom of the website). You might want to download these so that they will be helpful in your product marketing.
5) Make sure that you have the hoplinks for the products ready. HopLinks are links (URLs) that contain your affiliate id. You will get a commission of a sale only if the user buys the product after clicking on your hoplink. Whenever a hoplink is clicked, a cookie is set in the users computer and it is valid for up to 30 days or so. If the user buys the product within that period, you will get a commission of the sale.
6) Now that everything is set, the next job is to actually market the product and sell it. There are many ways to market the product; blog about it, use forums, use email lists etc. The very basic method used is article marketing. It involves writing articles about the product or about the product category and posting them in your blog or website or web 2.0 sites like EZineArticles.com, Squidoo or HubPages. For example, if you are marketing a product for losing weight quickly, you can write about weight loss in general, what are the causes of increase in weight and how the product will help in losing weight quick. Make sure that the product doesn’t sound too promotional; this might put off the users. If you are not good in writing or just don’t have enough time to write, you can consider outsourcing the writing in sites like www.freelancer.com, www.fiverr.com etc. Make sure that the articles are of good quality. Affiliate marketing Gurus who make six or even seven figure income per year often have thousands of articles written and posted in these article directories.
7) Once you have written some articles and posted them to your blog and web 2.0 sites or article directories, the next step is to popularize your website and start getting some traffic. So some basic SEO for your website or blog like link building, social bookmarking and directory submission. You might also want to post about the product in related forums. Another way is to post in Yahoo Answers about the product.
The most important step to be successful in affiliate marketing is to have a targeted email list. Make sure that you have a newsletter or an opt-in form in your website. When people subscribe to this list, you can send them useful information and also send an affiliate link promoting your product. Ask any internet marketing Guru and they will tell you to ‘Get their (readers) email first’.9) Check your account periodically for statistics and reports on how many hoplinks were clicked and how many sales you have made. If there are many hoplink clicks but very few sales, then it probably means that the product you are marketing isn’t good enough. If you are getting very few hoplink clicks then it means that either your website or blog isn’t getting traffic or the traffic is getting diverted elsewhere. Try to redesign your website or layout and remove unnecessary links or advertisements to other products.
10) Rinse and repeat these steps till you have a steady traffic flowing through. Continue to write articles so that you get visitors back to your website.
Making Money as a Vendor or Seller; ClickBank provides an excellent opportunity for sellers of digital products to establish a presence in the affiliate marketing world. The advantage here is that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of hungry affiliates who are waiting to sell the product on your behalf. That is, you just create the product and have someone else sell it for you which ends up with both of you making money.
1) The first thing to do to become a seller or vendor is to choose a niche for creating a info product on. Browse through the marketplace to see what is hot and what is not.
2) The next step is to create an info product (or any other digital product like software) on that particular niche. Put all your efforts into creating an useful and worthy info product or report. An info product can be either an eBook that tells how to do things or a short report that answers a desperate question. Examples of info products are ‘how to create a chicken coop’, ‘how to get your ex back’, ‘how to gain weight’ etc.
3) Create an attractive website with a squeeze page, affiliate section, email opt-in list, an order form page and a homepage with a great sales articles. It’s most important to have an email list for both end users as well as your affiliates. If you are not familiar with these terms, try reading about these terms on forums like the warriorforum and digitalpoint forum.
4) Submit your product in the sellers page: (http://www.clickbank.com/sell_products.html). It might cost you some money initially but it would be worth it. Offer a good commission rate for the affiliates and also price your product wisely. Do not sell it either at a very low cost or at a very high cost.
5) Start promoting your product to affiliates through forums like WarriorForum and DigitalPoint forum. Try to get into joint ventures with affiliate marketers.Once all this is done, you should see some sales in your sellers account. Keep marketing your product to affiliates so that will help sell more of your products. Always refund the money if requested by any customer.
