Well, This Explains Why I'm Not Making Any Money with Clickbank

[Dan C. Rinnert]

So, I have a website (mentioned in previous threads) that's pulling in about 7k uniques per month (or more, much more). It's a site I've largely left alone for over two years.

Still, I had some Clickbank links there.

So, I'm checking my stats today, and I see this vendor that shows up with a lot of hops. So, I investigate and discover that it's on this site I haven't touched in over two years. Lots of hops, but no sales.

Curious, I check out the site itself. Apparently, two years ago, the guy decided to stop selling the book and just give it away.

So, that explains why the hops aren't converting to sales...

The worst bit is that Clickbank doesn't have any comparable product, nor does PayDotCom. Bummer.

Oh, the title should really be "Well, This Explains Why I'm Not Making Any Money with Clickbank on This Particular Website".

[Debbie Songster]

Since there is no other affiliate product to take its place ...
Why don't you convert it over to Adsense?
You obviously get traffic to the site.
It must be ranking quite well organically in the search engines. (of course I don't know what your keywords are or what the site is about but it never hurts to try)

Take the clickbank item off (it doesn't make you money anyway) and put a prominent Adsense ad block near the top of the page.
People have to leave the site at some point - they may as well leave through a link that earns you money.

OR
Create your own comparable product and sell it. You have the traffic - give them something to buy.

Just throwing the ideas out there

[misterwrecker]

I would check some CPA networks and see if you could find something related to that niche.

If not you could always create your product or have it created.

Then there is always adsense which can be used in conjunction with other products.

Hope you take advantage of that traffic that you are getting!



-John

[misterwrecker]

Originally Posted by Debbie Songster

Since there is no other affiliate product to take its place ...
Why don't you convert it over to Adsense?
You obviously get traffic to the site.
It must be ranking quite well organically in the search engines. (of course I don't know what your keywords are or what the site is about but it never hurts to try)

Take the clickbank item off (it doesn't make you money anyway) and put a prominent Adsense ad block near the top of the page.
People have to leave the site at some point - they may as well leave through a link that earns you money.

OR
Create your own comparable product and sell it. You have the traffic - give them something to buy.

Just throwing the ideas out there

Lol.....by the time I submitted my post yours came up and we pretty much said the same thing.


I like your ideas!

[Slin]

I had the same thing happen!

Such a bummer.. (My site didn't get as much traffic as yours, but was getting enough to convert)

[Debbie Songster]

Originally Posted by misterwrecker

Lol.....by the time I submitted my post yours came up and we pretty much said the same thing.


I like your ideas!

I have no idea what his site was but here's my rational
Other than making a product to fit the traffic ...

There are numerous people out there making a great living off Adsense. I know Joel Comm beat this horse to death several years ago but it does still work.

I recently had the pleasure of reading John (Xfactor) ebook on creating micro niche adsense sites. I've seen a lot of products out there and I think he's done a great job with his course.
I wrote a blurb about it on my blog The Marketing Educator | Education for The Online Business Owner

Anyway, here's the key point to making Adsense the central money earner on your site...
EVERY click earns you money.
Vs a CPA offer or affiliate product which still needs to convert the visitor at the sales page (not your page) into a buyer.
A task which happens less than 2% of the time.

So if you run the numbers -
Every time someone leaves your site through an adsense ad you get paid - some of these guys are getting a 30% and higher ctr
If you compare that to sending someone to an affiliate or CPA offer - sure you might have 30% who click your link to go to the offer but they haven't bought anything yet (so you haven't made any money).
Then statistically you are looking at less than 2% conversion on most sales pages....
It takes a lot of traffic to make a sale.

Of course it all depends on what the niche is but for someone who already gets traffic, I'd be looking at making it an adsense site.

Just my opinion based on the earnings I've seen

[Jill Carpenter]

Uh, ahemmm.

Could you pm me the product niche and type of product?

[Marhelper]

I would create my own product via Public Domain, PLR, etc... .

[winebuddy]

what a terrific product creation opportunity! You should immediately sit down and write an ebook on the subject...

or... as mentioned above, tell me the free product site!

[Zeus66]

Dude! Seriously, get hopping on something to monetize all that traffic. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your situation? Traffic coming, interest clearly there. Drop everything and get something up there to make some money. DUDE!

[Elmer Hurlstone]

Dan,

Old buddy, old pal and future BFF...

We need to talk.

Have your "people" call my "people".

Alternatively, skype, email, PM, Tweet or Facebook me.

Elmer

[Michael Mayo]

Dan,
Everyone telling you to create the product yourself are right in doing so.
Just Do It and Do It Fast!

Elmer,
I owe you an apology.

I said I would beta test your product a while back and never even got a chance to
download it.

No excuses, I just got real busy. It was a good kinda of busy though! $$$

Sorry again for leaving you hanging!

Hope you for give me?

Have a Great Day/Night!
Michael

PS, Didn't mean to hijack this thread either! Sorry!

[SurviveUnemployment]

Slap some AdSense on that puppy and it should pull down at least a few hundred a month for you, probably closer to a thou'.

[Scott Million]

Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert

So, I have a website (mentioned in previous threads) that's pulling in about 7k uniques per month (or more, much more). It's a site I've largely left alone for over two years.

Still, I had some Clickbank links there.

So, I'm checking my stats today, and I see this vendor that shows up with a lot of hops. So, I investigate and discover that it's on this site I haven't touched in over two years. Lots of hops, but no sales.

Curious, I check out the site itself. Apparently, two years ago, the guy decided to stop selling the book and just give it away.

So, that explains why the hops aren't converting to sales...

The worst bit is that Clickbank doesn't have any comparable product, nor does PayDotCom. Bummer.

Oh, the title should really be "Well, This Explains Why I'm Not Making Any Money with Clickbank on This Particular Website".

You could download his free book and have a freelancer rewrite it, then put up a salespage and set it up on clickbank, and contact all the webmasters in your niche that have the same problem since there are no paid offers and you should get some quick affiliates in addition to keeping 100% of the profit and re-monetizing your site!

Would you put $1,000 in the fireplace right now? ...cause that's what's going down - monitize that sucker!

[Sirago]

Ouch. I agree with the posts above though. You could convert this into cash machine if you wrote a book to tailor to your site.

Best of luck to you.

[RebeccaL]

Moral of story.... check your sites and links regularly

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by Debbie Songster

Since there is no other affiliate product to take its place ...
Why don't you convert it over to Adsense?

No can do. Some of the content is not acceptable to Google.

Originally Posted by nabil08

other suggestion, collect emails from the traffic and later on offer them (to buy things of course). you are already give away free product so in exchange you can capture their email addresses by installing autoresponder in your wep page...you know...

I set up a list for it last week or the week before, and am working on an autoresponder series for it.

Originally Posted by avenuegirl

Could you pm me the product niche and type of product?

Don't get too excited. My blog typically gets more than 5k uniques a month and look at the nonsense I put there.

Originally Posted by Marhelper

I would create my own product via Public Domain, PLR, etc... .

I have related public domain material in hand, but nothing for the exact same product type.

Originally Posted by winebuddy

what a terrific product creation opportunity! You should immediately sit down and write an ebook on the subject...

or... as mentioned above, tell me the free product site!

Might be tough. The author has insider knowledge to this market, is a best selling (real world) author, and even has his own Wikipedia entry. And people search for this product by title and his name, so it's going to be tough to beat.

He does have another eBook in the same niche, but a different topic. I don't think that topic would be as hot as this one.

Originally Posted by Elmer Hurlstone

Old buddy, old pal and future BFF...

We need to talk.

Have your "people" call my "people".

Alternatively, skype, email, PM, Tweet or Facebook me.

You know, we both have a WF/Twitter/Facebook friend who knows something about this market...

Originally Posted by Scott Million

Would you put $1,000 in the fireplace right now? ...cause that's what's going down - monitize that sucker!

I do have other offers on the site, all closely related to the niche. The offer that appears immediately below the one being discussed gets only 1/10th of the hops though. So, the first product is really in demand, relatively speaking.

Originally Posted by RebeccaL

Moral of story.... check your sites and links regularly

Yes.

[Bev Clement]

Dan, I'm a friend of Elmer if that helps, he even took my photo recently

Seriously, there must be a product you can put out even if he has insider information.

[Dennis-White]

Think about creating your own product and building your own list, Im sure you know the content of the affiliate product your promoting... Create your own version

[Josef_Benjamin]

Funny.

Why not have a similar product created and resell it yourself?

just a thought.

Or you could kick and scream or whine about it.

your choice

[free2rock]

Bumm

This is why you need to have your own product to promote because in a long run... you get less problems.

Good lesson for many people here

[Keith Choy]

Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert

Curious, I check out the site itself. Apparently, two years ago, the guy decided to stop selling the book and just give it away.

So, that explains why the hops aren't converting to sales...

hi Dan,

I hit something similar to you except the merchant change from ClickBank to Paypal. So he kept all the profits with all the free traffic that affiliates were sending him. That product use to get me 4 to 5 sales per month passively.

A bit unethical if you ask me. But I guess that's just how business is run. So I just accepted it and move on to monetize in other ways (ie. I created my own product).

So bottomline, I track my stats monthly and check up those sites that look fishy.

- Keith Choy

[jimmyjay]

There's obviously a market for the clickbank product. Why not fill that gap?

[ramone_johnny]

Dude Winebuddy said it best - product creation!

What are you waiting for????????

[Steven Wagenheim]

Dan, Dan, Dan...shame on you. You're not thinking outside the box.

Here is what you do. I can't go into long detail because I have to leave
soon to go to the bank and the allergist.

People are coming to that page looking for THAT book, right?

Here is what you do.

You first, of course, have to create your own product and make it better.
I don't want to hear excuses that he has inside knowledge or whatever.
You can do it. I know you can.

THEN...you have a headline that says something to the effect of...

"Is <BOOK NAME> All It's Cracked Up To Be?"

You then print an in depth review of the book. If you don't have it, get it.

Then at the end of the review, explain how YOUR book is better. Point
out what makes it better.

Offer related VALUABLE bonuses for anybody who purchases from you.

Another offshoot of this would be to make a companion book...something
that adds to the original and sell it for some ridiculous amount like $5.

Please, there are so many things you can do with this. Above I gave you
two ideas I would be willing to bet would work.

The key is offering something or real value that they can't get JUST from
the original book itself.

Good luck...I'm pullin' for yuh.

[DogScout]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Dan, Dan, Dan...shame on you. You're not thinking outside the box.

Here is what you do. I can't go into long detail because I have to leave
soon to go to the bank and the allergist.

People are coming to that page looking for THAT book, right?

Here is what you do.

You first, of course, have to create your own product and make it better.
I don't want to hear excuses that he has inside knowledge or whatever.
You can do it. I know you can.

THEN...you have a headline that says something to the effect of...

"Is <BOOK NAME> All It's Cracked Up To Be?"

You then print an in depth review of the book. If you don't have it, get it.

Then at the end of the review, explain how YOUR book is better. Point
out what makes it better.

Offer related VALUABLE bonuses for anybody who purchases from you.

Another offshoot of this would be to make a companion book...something
that adds to the original and sell it for some ridiculous amount like $5.

Please, there are so many things you can do with this. Above I gave you
two ideas I would be willing to bet would work.

The key is offering something or real value that they can't get JUST from
the original book itself.

Good luck...I'm pullin' for yuh.

That's the best advise I have seen. Re-writing the book should be easy, add some more simple research to bring it up to date and viola! Instant credibility. You can become more famous than he!

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by DogScout

That's the best advise I have seen. Re-writing the book should be easy, add some more simple research to bring it up to date and viola! Instant credibility. You can become more famous than he!

Okay, let me make this clear. I am NOT telling Dan to rewrite the book.
That's plagiarism.

I'm telling him to research the topic and write his OWN book using his own
slant.

Yes, it will take some work, but if he's getting that kind of traffic, it's
worth it.

And if he can't write it himself, hire a ghostwriter like Bev Clement to
research it and write it for him.

He has tons of options for this.

There is NO need for this traffic to be wasted.

NONE, NONE, NONE, NONE...NONE!!!!!

[-Jericho-]

I don't know if this was mentioned but can you convert it using an amazon product or ebay? I saw someone say adsense which is good too or maybe even chikita.

Make sure to check all of the CPA networks and commission junction.

[garyv]

Originally Posted by Debbie Songster

I have no idea what his site was but here's my rational
Other than making a product to fit the traffic ...

There are numerous people out there making a great living off Adsense. I know Joel Comm beat this horse to death several years ago but it does still work.

I recently had the pleasure of reading John (Xfactor) ebook on creating micro niche adsense sites. I've seen a lot of products out there and I think he's done a great job with his course.
I wrote a blurb about it on my blog The Marketing Educator | Education for The Online Business Owner

Anyway, here's the key point to making Adsense the central money earner on your site...
EVERY click earns you money.
Vs a CPA offer or affiliate product which still needs to convert the visitor at the sales page (not your page) into a buyer.
A task which happens less than 2% of the time.

So if you run the numbers -
Every time someone leaves your site through an adsense ad you get paid - some of these guys are getting a 30% and higher ctr
If you compare that to sending someone to an affiliate or CPA offer - sure you might have 30% who click your link to go to the offer but they haven't bought anything yet (so you haven't made any money).
Then statistically you are looking at less than 2% conversion on most sales pages....
It takes a lot of traffic to make a sale.

Of course it all depends on what the niche is but for someone who already gets traffic, I'd be looking at making it an adsense site.

Just my opinion based on the earnings I've seen

I agree that it depends on the niche, but in a majority of cases you can make more without adsense. Because if you think about it, someone is paying google to have their ad placed in the adsense network. That means they are usually making more than what they are paying out.

Sometimes I like to put adsense up for a couple of weeks, just so I can trace the links back to the money. Most of the time I end up w/ a good source that is relevant to my website.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by Josef_Benjamin

Funny.

Why not have a similar product created and resell it yourself?

just a thought.

Or you could kick and scream or whine about it.

your choice

Not whining. Just making an observation and illustrating that sometimes you can't just "set and forget" things. If you're not keeping an eye on things, you could be missing out.

Originally Posted by Keith Choy

I hit something similar to you except the merchant change from ClickBank to Paypal. So he kept all the profits with all the free traffic that affiliates were sending him. That product use to get me 4 to 5 sales per month passively.

A bit unethical if you ask me. But I guess that's just how business is run. So I just accepted it and move on to monetize in other ways (ie. I created my own product).

But, did that merchant have a list to keep in touch with affiliates? If he did, and he gave them notice, then it's unfortunate for affiliates, but at least he gave them warning.

If he didn't have a way of staying in touch with affiliates (which may be because he didn't want one or didn't know he should have one), there'd be no way that he could contact them to let them know of the change. And, it could be that he was pulling in more sales himself and it just made more sense for him to switch to PayPal than to pay the higher fees at ClickBank if he's not getting sufficient value out of affiliates.

What would be nice is if ClickBank had a system whereby they would notify their affiliates when a product is no longer available. Technically, ClickBank affiliates are ClickBank's affiliates, not the merchants'. As affiliates, ClickBank has are contact information. Certainly, they could develop a system whereby if a product is no longer available, they could send out a message to us, saying "According to our records, you promote PRODUCT X. Unfortunately, this product is no longer available in our marketplace." Then they could follow with a link that would bring up comparable products in the marketplace, and suggest affiliates promote one of those as alternatives.

That would benefit both themselves and their affiliates.

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

I'm telling him to research the topic and write his OWN book using his own
slant.

...

He has tons of options for this.

Five options that I see:

1) Promote the author's other eBook. This, however, would not be a good substitute for the specific product, because it's a different topic (same niche though). And, similar topics just aren't generating the interest that the specific product is. So, this is not the best option.

2) Promote the Kindle version of the eBook. The author has the book available for Kindle. But, that's not the best option either. What percentage will actually have a Kindle and, of those that buy the eBook, I'll get a few cents?

3) Promote a physical book through Amazon. In a quick check, I found a number of options. But, still, on a paperback book, you're still looking at pennies. Maybe some nickels and dimes, but not a whole lot.

4) Write my own book. I only have a little bit of "inside" knowledge, though, which would be more valuable had I kept up in this niche, but still gives me a starting point. I'd likely need a fair amount of research in the form of interviews. This isn't something like "How to Grow Tomatoes" where I can find plenty of research material in print or online; this is something that requires a bit more specialized and inside knowledge, so the kind of insight offered by interviews would be invaluable here. I do have some potential "ins" with a couple people in the right areas.

5) Outsource. There are three Warriors I think could probably do it. One of which has, I believe (and it would be so nice if people would put up useful bios on their websites or social networking profiles -- just saying), some hands-on experience and a lot of the skills necessary to put this together. And is someone I trust to create original work, not just "rewrite" someone else's work. Ditto for the other two on that last point. I also have a freelancer that does work for me (who is not a Warrior) that could probably do it as well.

There is NO need for this traffic to be wasted.

NONE, NONE, NONE, NONE...NONE!!!!!

Well, except that I have another area where I'm getting roughly 3x the interest that this one is generating, so I'm trying to get a product finished off for that one.