How to Find and Spy on Top Affiliates for Products?

No, I'm sure some are. But I don't think you can assume that "top affiliates" necessarily will be.

There are "all sorts", really.

As far as I know, you can assume that all the successful affiliates for something like a ClickBank hypnosis product will be promoting it by email to their opted-in subscribers. That's not to say that they won't also have a clickable link on their websites, of course, but the reality is that almost all the people who click that link and buy the product will have got to the page following a link in an email from the site-owner, whose list they subscribed to at an earlier visit to the site. It's very, very difficult indeed to sell ClickBank products just "from a website", and none of the "top affiliates" will realistically be trying hard to sell them that way.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7110523

The ones who are buying traffic (e.g. by pay-per-click) will definitely be collecting their ad traffic on some kind of opt-in page (whether it's specifically a "squeeze page" or not): almost no successful CB affiliates are paying for traffic, long-term, without list-building, too: very difficult to do that profitably, and of course if it were really possible to do that easily, vendors would be doing it themselves rather than paying affiliates 75% of the takings to supply the traffic, wouldn't they?

In IM and MMO niches, there'll be people buying traffic through solo ads, too, but again they'll be building email marketing lists from that traffic, not just trying to cold-promote a CB product. (And there are hardly any MMO products left on CB now, anyway, since they've become rather more law-abiding and FTC-compliant regarding all the stuff like "income claims on sales pages"!).

I hear you, but it's pretty hard even to identify "top affiliates" for ClickBank products (the "Google method" is clearly completely unreliable and leads mostly to the "SEO-traffic affiliates" who are almost never very successful), let alone to work out where their traffic comes from. I think "asking vendors" is the only way that approaches reliability at all. And they do tend to know, and they'll say if you ask them the right way, suggesting that their candid and helpful reply will help them to make more sales.

I get almost all my ClickBank-product-buying traffic through article marketing, myself: in every single niche I've ever tried, it's been consistently (and by far!) the best-performing and most responsive traffic I've ever had: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8659398


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What I have seen among some of the top affiliate marketers (including Clickbank affiliates) that I know is they use private networks for generating massive amounts of highly targeted traffic, which is subsequently processed through a multi-channel funnel system. The funnel system is not just email; it may include many layers of communication through social media, webinars, chat, and even offline such as telephone (including Skype), direct mail, local seminars, and (for high end deals) personal sales. Most of this is far below the proverbial radar of search engines, and is extremely difficult to "reverse engineer"; generally by design.

Yes, I see that this is different.

There are some products like that on ClickBank too, and I'd think they must be exceptions to what I've said above? You wouldn't want to do too much "slow credibility-building" to sell an ebook in the "house foreclosure avoidance niche", otherwise some other affiliate will have sold it to the customer before you get a look-in?

But with "most stuff", quick sales are a mistake, because a couple of quick sales can easily cost you ten or twelve later ones to people you'll lose by "promoting too quickly". (And mostly you'll get the couple of quick ones a bit more slowly, too, so there's nothing lost anyway.)

The ones who have "authority sites", yes, but they'll be a very small minority, I'd think?

Some successful ones barely have websites at all, or have websites that aren't really much more than opt-in pages. (My own websites, especially for my first year or so in each niche, aren't actually that much more than opt-in pages, to be honest. They're just "content-rich opt-in pages" with two or three other pages attached, rather than "squeeze pages").

I think you want to start by chatting about the niche and getting yourself taken seriously, trying to sound like someone with a hungry subscriber-list waiting for your recommendation to buy something! Possibly a few of the little comments in this post - which is about a different but related question - might help (no promises!): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post3641838

Yes, I think quite a lot do.

The vendors of both my two most successful affiliate promotions do, too.

They all have (the "real" ones, the successful ones, anyway) at some point, because they had to start off with proven conversions of targeted traffic before recruiting affiliates. And they needed targeted traffic to split-test/tweak their sales pages, too.

But many do, anyway. Some just "as the vendor", and some "as their own affiliate" (which ClickBank allows, of course.)

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Nooooo, sorry. I'm really not involved in any IM-related niches or anything like that, and just running my own business.

I think people are driving traffic in a huge variety of different ways, probably including "bits of" almost everything you can read about here ...

Well, not quite ... I actually just said that I wouldn't assume that all the "top affiliates" are buying traffic (and the ones I know myself aren't: they're using content marketing of various kinds, SEO, forum marketing, social media, guest posting/blogging, niche forums of their own, and so on).

I think this is quite common in some niches, yes (IM/MMO/Forex, maybe dating and dieting, too?). But also bear in mind that there's no correlation between gravity and sales numbers, and also no correlation between gravity and conversion-rates. Don't imagine that many affiliates are necessarily promoting a product just because it has high gravity. In IM-related niches, for example, many products have (genuine, honest) high gravities just because each affiliate is buying one copy for their own use/interest, through their own affiliate link, and that can give products huge three-figure gravities (which then become self-perpetuating) without anyone necessarily promoting them at all!

Gravity High or Lower - Which Sells Best & Why?
Clickbank gravity - is there a sweet-spot here?
Understanding Clickbank Gravity
Clickbank Gravity


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What I meant is media and social networks which already are tightly targeted around specific demographics. For example, within any given commercially viable niche there are publications, websites, blogs, magazines, newspapers, organizations, groups, etc whose readers or members are often defined by narrow but common characteristics.

A proven effective marketing method for targeting such prospects is to engage them directly through these networks. This method is completely independent from SEO, although there may be some comparatively minor coinciding benefits in the SERPs. However, in many critical ways (particularly in the most intensively competitive niches), using private networks as a marketing strategy is much different and far more effective than SEO.

Perhaps the most common example of private networks in this context is article syndication to niche ezines, relevant websites, blogs, and offline publications such as magazines and newspapers. An excellent tutorial detailing this marketing model is "Turn Words Into Traffic", by Jim and Dallas Edwards. It's an ancient text from way back in the 90's, but in many ways this ebook is more current now than ever before as Google's algorithm continues to evolve.

Do you know what it was called by chance?