Need help with promoting ClickBank products

17 replies
Hello everyone,

Over the last week or so I have been promoting ClickBank products via free reports that I write. These reports are usually between 6 - 8 pages in length. And I usually place one or two affiliate links in the report. Usually after the first page and another at the end of the report. I never promote more then one ClickBank product in the same report. The products that I promote also relate to the report.

With that said, I am actually surprised that I have not yet received my first ClickBank sale. I don't believe that it has anything to do with the products that I am promoting.

So that leaves two possibilities:

1. I am not getting enough traffic to my reports and
2. Maybe I am not placing my affiliate links correctly in the reports.

I have been giving these reports away for free via ebay classified ads. I have also been uploading them to sites like:

scribd.com
docstoc.com

(Please feel free to share some more links)

I don't have a ton of money at the moment. So I decided to promote ClickBank products. It seems to be the cheapest way to make money. I have a fair amount of free time. So I have lots of time to create reports/articles.

It would be awesome if someone could give me some advice. I really need to start making some ClickBank sales. I intend to use the money that I make to launch my first ebook.

I also just setup a Google adwords account. I have approximately $100 dollars in that account.

Thanks in advance,
Gordon
#clickbank #products #promoting
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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    • Profile picture of the author TheChanger
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Hi Gordon,

      How many copies (in total) of your reports have been downloaded?

      How many views (in total) have you had of your affiliate-links to vendors' sales pages?

      What makes you so sure that this has nothing to do with the products you've chosen?

      Regarding AdWords, the learning-curve is typically long, slow and expensive: when I tried it last year, I'd studied two AdWords textbooks and an awful lot of freely online information on the subject in some detail before I started, and I went through a lot more than $100 before achieving my first sale from that source - just saying!
      I have been mostly promoting ebooks that help people solve some sort of medical problem. I have been told that this is a good niche. Do you think I should promote something different? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Damz
    Gordon;
    Converting a visitor to a buyer is harder than ever with CB products these days.
    you have to be conscious on these points before promoting clickbank products.
    1.Proper keyword research:
    Low competition; Long tail keywords which get at least 50 searches per day.
    2.Look at the google 1st page results for that keyword..If there are lots of authority sites like amazon;wikipedia..just left the keyword and move to another,
    3.Select at least 20 superb well targeted low competition keywords by this method.
    4. Write 300 word articles around each keyword and submit to top 10 article directories;web 2.0 sites,and document sharing sites..
    5.submit rss feeds and social bookmark each article.
    6.Don't send traffic to the sales page directly,,Use a squeeze page,
    7.Then via autoresponders ,promote your product..

    Hope this helps..
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  • Profile picture of the author Damz
    Alexa...I just gave him an advice , the method which has worked me so far..
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  • Profile picture of the author ~Davor Debrecin~
    Hey Gordon, how's it going?

    Your strategy is ok, but in my own opinion, your reports have to give a lot of useful and specific information to "presell" your readers so that they eventually click on the links and buy the product.

    That being said, you have to be an expert to some extent in that field to be able to write a good report that will presell the product efficiently, making you a sale.

    Also, I have to say that you're probably wrong about products not having "problems". I think that only 10 products on CB DON'T have "problems".

    And by problems I mean - no product, or to be more specific, no offer has no problems. Any info product that doesn't convert at 1% every time you send targeted but "cold" traffic (e.g. direct linking from an ad) has problems. And there's no info product like that right now.

    All CB products you see that are converting like crazy (supposedly) and have a high gravity, are most of the time offers that have a large number of affiliates who know how to "presell" effectively the traffic they send.

    Either by having a list of subscribers/customers with whom they have a strong relationship or by having a SUPER landing page with lot's of useful content and which they have been improving, split-testing and building for a fair amount of time.

    Successful CB products owe their success (as far as volume they get) to skillful and hard-working affiliates. If they only got cold traffic, no matter how good their offer is, they would convert far far less.

    So, whether or not the product you promote has problems or not - that's not the most important factor. A general rule of thumb is to pick products with a gravity of 100 or higher. There's no guarantee it will convert at 1% for you, but it's more likely than with a product with zero gravity.

    If you think you are an expert in this field and have a limited budget, here's an idea that I've been testing recently and it has produced great results.

    I won't go into details in how to drive traffic to your offer. I'm driving it from Facebook, but you can drive it from anywhere including adwords or ebay, or anything else. Just make sure it's targeted and that you're not paying too much per click.

    This is the model:

    Drive traffic to a survey or as some call this an "ask campaign" and ask your visitors to tell you what's their biggest problem they have about ****, or if they could have an expert in ***** what would they ask him, etc.

    And tell them you'd like to PERSONALLY answer their question. You see now why you need to be an expert to some extent.

    Ask them a general question and don't mislead them.

    In your ad copy, write something like "Tell me what's your problem about *** and get a personal response from me" or something like that. So that they know what to expect.

    On the next page of the survey ask them for their email address and make it optional. Say something like, "if you want me to personally contact you with a solution to your problem, leave me your email address in the for below.

    Then on the last "thank you" page, thank them and tell them how you'll get back to them as soon as possible.

    But then, tell them that you've got a lot questions already and that you've realized that most people have problems with 2 or 3 things. So you've made a small report that answers those 3 problems and they can download it immediately if they want and maybe solve their problem right away. And then provide a download link.

    Two things can happen - either they find a solution in the report or they don't.

    If they do, make sure you tie it to the product, saying that this product is by far the best in helping them solve their problem even quicker/better/cheaper.

    If they don't, leave your email address and tell them to contact you for help.

    Also you'll be able to see the answers they gave you and you'll have their email, so you'll definitely contact them no matter if they found a solution in your report or not. And thus, increasing your chances of making a sale.

    Use a survey tool called Survey Gizmo, it's free and the best survey tool out their in my opinion. Just play with the interface and you'll get a hang of it. If you are having some problems, feel free to email me.

    Pfew, that's a looong post.

    Hope I helped and let me know if this worked out for you.

    Take care and have a great day,

    ~Davor.
    Signature
    MY CV ❱❱❱ 12+ yrs exp, 7-fig revenues, 40 employees.. 39 actually, someone just left the company, f**k!
    I like to innovate stuff and babble IM stuff into a camera:
    I do this on the side, will try to sell you something, be sure of it!
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  • Profile picture of the author mlord10
    Gordon,

    It is hard to know what your problem is, because I do not have any stats to analyze. Writing short, free reports is a great way to pre-sell traffic, but you must include a lot of quality information within your report, and you should be building an opt-in email list by giving these reports away in exchange for a name and email address.

    I think aweber has a 30 day trial for $1. Anyways, you really need to focus on how much traffic you are getting to your affiliate links, and the conversion rate. If you have sent 50 visitors to your link and have not make a sale yet I would not be too worried, however if you have sent 500 people to an affiliate link without any sales, then this is a cause for concern.

    You may also want to investigate other methods of traffic generation, such as article or video marketing. I know it is not perfectly inline with what you are already doing, but you can always test a variety of inexpensive traffic techniques and see what works best for you.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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      • Profile picture of the author TheChanger
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        Hi Gordon,

        How many copies (in total) of your reports have been downloaded?

        How many views (in total) have you had of your affiliate-links to vendors' sales pages?
        No reports have been downloaded so far. I am not sure how many people clicked on my affiliate links. How can I find this out? I am not currently building a list with Aweber. Maybe I should start.

        Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

        I'd like to know how you are getting traffic to these reports you create. Can you describe that?
        I am just uploading the reports to document sharing sites. Sites like Scribd and Docstoc. I am also giving the report away via eBay classified ads. So I guess I am getting traffic to the reports by using lots of keywords in the titles. I have also started making Squidoo lenses.

        Originally Posted by mlord10 View Post

        Gordon,

        It is hard to know what your problem is, because I do not have any stats to analyze. Writing short, free reports is a great way to pre-sell traffic, but you must include a lot of quality information within your report, and you should be building an opt-in email list by giving these reports away in exchange for a name and email address.

        I think aweber has a 30 day trial for $1. Anyways, you really need to focus on how much traffic you are getting to your affiliate links, and the conversion rate. If you have sent 50 visitors to your link and have not make a sale yet I would not be too worried, however if you have sent 500 people to an affiliate link without any sales, then this is a cause for concern.

        You may also want to investigate other methods of traffic generation, such as article or video marketing. I know it is not perfectly inline with what you are already doing, but you can always test a variety of inexpensive traffic techniques and see what works best for you.
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        This is the problem, Gordon. People are trying to help you here, but it's really hard to advise you without the facts. Are you talking about no sale after 50 or 100 hops (which would be entirely normal), or no sale after 500 or 1,000 hops (which would be a cause for concern)?

        Are you building a list?

        Do the sales pages of the products you're promoting contain an opt-in with which the vendor's building a list from your potential customers?
        How do you find the hop information? I am not currently building a list. I see no opt-in forms on any of the sales pages that I am promoting.

        Thanks for the help
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        • Profile picture of the author TheChanger
          Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

          When you log into Clickback just hit the "reporting" tab and then hit the "analytics" tab. You'll see your hops there.

          If you don't see any opt in forms on the sales tab, that's good. I personally also wouldn't like to see a way to email the vendor because that's another way you could possibly lose potential sales.
          Thank you for this information. My hop counts are very low
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          • Profile picture of the author frankstar
            A further way to analyze your hop count is to create shortened URL's from your clickbank link.

            For example, go to bit.ly, a simple url shortener. Let's say you have 3 reports / articles for the same clickbank hoplink.

            You can create 3 separate shortened URL's for the same clickbank hoplink..you just use the custom name field. You could also use them on the same website - eg link one to image A with one call to action, another to image B with another call to action etc.

            This way by logging into your bit.ly account you can see which bit.ly url's (and so which reports/ articles or which images/ calls to action) are getting the most clicks.

            Whether or not they buy after this is another question!


            Regards


            Francis
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            • Profile picture of the author TheChanger
              Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

              I don't know, but maybe you should consider article marketing. I honestly don't don't know anything about creating reports like you are doing, but I do know article marketing can work well if you do it correctly. Or maybe do these reports as a supplement to article marketing.
              I will read up on article marketing. Thanks for all the advice.

              Originally Posted by euhlir View Post

              There lies your problem. Without traffic it's hard to make any sales.

              If you want to stick with the free reports method then I'd recommend working on your copyrighting skills.

              You basically have 6-8 pages to convince the reader why they NEED to buy the product you are linking to immediately.

              This strategy can work, but it can be tougher to get the traffic if your reports simply aren't getting downloaded enough.

              While you're still learning the system you could put your reports on paid to download sites and earn some extra money while promoting your products.

              -Eric
              Thanks for the advice

              Originally Posted by paulbarrs View Post

              Gordon,

              Your reports... are they in PDF?

              If so you should also upload them to your site so they can be indexed by Google. May pick up some extra traffic.

              The key however is to market your reports to a 'warm list' - perhaps look at placing some adds in eZines, so it in a recommendation style add.

              ie. "Special Report on XXX - your free is you act quickly"

              I just finished a beautiful half hour sitting back reading this latest special report by Gordon XXX. Excellent! It got me real excited about XXX (the need). I've worked out a special arrangement to allow you as a subscriber to get Gordens Special Report for as a free download - however, it's only going to be availle for the next 7 days.

              blah blah.com

              Got the idea?
              The reports are in PDF format. Thanks for the advice.

              Originally Posted by frankstar View Post

              A further way to analyze your hop count is to create shortened URL's from your clickbank link.

              For example, go to bit.ly, a simple url shortener. Let's say you have 3 reports / articles for the same clickbank hoplink.

              You can create 3 separate shortened URL's for the same clickbank hoplink..you just use the custom name field. You could also use them on the same website - eg link one to image A with one call to action, another to image B with another call to action etc.

              This way by logging into your bit.ly account you can see which bit.ly url's (and so which reports/ articles or which images/ calls to action) are getting the most clicks.

              Whether or not they buy after this is another question!


              Regards


              Francis
              Thanks for the great idea.
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            • Profile picture of the author Ruth Hendrickson
              I've used free reports to market products and found they work much better as a means to get subscribers. Then once they are on your list you can send emails with your affiliate links.

              You could continue to give them away and inside the report offer another free report to get them to opt in to your list.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rajan Cajan
    Alexa, good insight... that's the hard part. To convince your subscriber to opt-in to your sight instead of the vendor.
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  • Profile picture of the author euhlir
    Thank you for this information. My hop counts are very low
    There lies your problem. Without traffic it's hard to make any sales.

    If you want to stick with the free reports method then I'd recommend working on your copyrighting skills.

    You basically have 6-8 pages to convince the reader why they NEED to buy the product you are linking to immediately.

    This strategy can work, but it can be tougher to get the traffic if your reports simply aren't getting downloaded enough.

    While you're still learning the system you could put your reports on paid to download sites and earn some extra money while promoting your products.

    -Eric
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