98 replies
Using CB and so far i've been choosing products to promote that had low popularity ,thinking that competition will be less rough.
But lately am not sure,cause if you exclude the avrg-sale, commission,refrd etc
they dont really matter as much as popularity and gravity,which shows the potential earnings you could make but also the competition.

Which criteria do you use for product selection?
#product #selecting
  • Profile picture of the author patrickmorgan
    How do you promote? To what niche? First, find a hungry market and find out their need, want or urge. Then you'll know what product to sell them
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  • Profile picture of the author tyroneshum
    Before choosing a product, you should have started with keyword research because from there, you'll eventually get an idea whether it's a hungry market needing promoters or not. Afterward, you could head off to Clickbank to find ideas in creating your own product.
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  • Profile picture of the author georgeg_g
    I see.
    Ok,now lets forget niches and hungry markets and keywords for a while.
    So,there are dozens of products of different niches,you choose one niche and that specific has 5-10 products,which one do you chose to promote?
    Only by the stats the product has (ave/sale,refrd,comsion etc).
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    • Profile picture of the author scrofford
      Originally Posted by georgeg_g View Post

      I see.
      Ok,now lets forget niches and hungry markets and keywords for a while.
      So,there are dozens of products of different niches,you choose one niche and that specific has 5-10 products,which one do you chose to promote?
      Only by the stats the product has (ave/sale,refrd,comsion etc).
      How do you think you can make money if you forget about the niches and hungry markets? Who cares about the product if nobody wants to buy it? You have to find a market that has people who want to buy the stuff you are promoting.

      Find a hungry market FIRST then find the product whether that be creating it yourself or being an affiliate. Done any other way and you are going to flop on your face and continuously be frustrated.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by scrofford View Post

        How do you think you can make money if you forget about the niches and hungry markets? Who cares about the product if nobody wants to buy it? You have to find a market that has people who want to buy the stuff you are promoting.

        Find a hungry market FIRST then find the product whether that be creating it yourself or being an affiliate. Done any other way and you are going to flop on your face and continuously be frustrated.
        Let's take this one step further.

        Select a hungry market, find a product that will satisfy that hunger, and then present it in a way that they will believe that what you offer will fill their want.

        Take "weight loss" for example...

        If I find a hungry pool of women wanting to lose ten pounds to fit in a sexy dress for a class reunion, and I hit them with an offer for a system to lose 100 lbs in one year, I'm not going to get a lot of takers. Make sense?

        It doesn't matter what the stats line says. If the group you are marketing to doesn't want what you offer in the way you offer it, you are S.O.L.
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  • Profile picture of the author secrets2010
    Originally Posted by georgeg_g View Post

    Using CB and so far i've been choosing products to promote that had low popularity ,thinking that competition will be less rough.
    But lately am not sure,cause if you exclude the avrg-sale, commission,refrd etc
    they dont really matter as much as popularity and gravity,which shows the potential earnings you could make but also the competition.

    Which criteria do you use for product selection?
    I choose the products that pay the highest comission, the produtcs that has a good sales page, the products that will help my subscribers...I don't choose products that wont help my subscribers and that don't offer the value that you pay for...why? because my buyers will not buy again if they feel scammed...

    i don't take into consideration popularity/gravity because the more popular is the product the less chances i have i will be the first in presenting the product to the subscribers...chances are that my subscribers already know about the product...
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by georgeg_g View Post

    Using CB
    Originally Posted by georgeg_g View Post

    Which criteria do you use for product selection?
    Good question: I think CB product selection's probably the single area where most affiliates make mistakes that are most expensive in terms of opportunity-cost.

    Here's my own 10-point checklist for CB product-selection (and these are more or less the order in which I look at them, too, I think):-

    1. Has to be a niche in which the prospective customers are not already Clickbank affiliates themselves (obviously! - otherwise how can you possibly ever earn an affiliate commission on a sale to them?!) - so for me that completely excludes the "IM advice" and "make money online" niches.

    2. No leaks on the sales page: (no opt-in, no "free trial", no "contact the vendor here" etc.)

    3. No ridiculous hype or deceptive tactics on the sales page (nothing obviously non-FTC-compliant, no phony urgency/scarcity, nothing clearly deceptive/dishonest, no credibility-losing claims, no income-claims, no cancer-curing claims, no deceptive crap about "as seen on Yahoo/MSN" which people will rightly ridicule!).

    4. No pop-ups/discounts.

    5. Gravity not too high (over 30 puts me off a bit; over 60 puts me off a bit more; over 100 I won't consider at the moment).

    6. Sales-page looks to me as if it will convert my traffic well (obviously subjective and not entirely reliable, but as a copywriter I like to think I can guess pretty well, and I can tell whether it's "professional copy" or "home-made copy" - and I don't care about anyone else's traffic so "overall conversion rates" aren't relevant to me, not that they're available anyway).

    7. Good product (I don't promote anything without seeing and assessing it myself, obviously)

    8. Good vendor reputation/attitude/behaviour (I'll contact them first, one way or another, and if I don't get a reply I won't promote their product, because I can imagine what their after-sales behaviour will be like if they won't even reply to a prospective business associate).

    9. Reasonably high earnings per sale (75% of small amount, 60% of medium amount, 50% of larger amount etc.) - I slightly prefer more expensive products around $100 when I can find them, because I think they're easier for me to sell than cheaper ones (really).

    10. Has to be something I can write about (I'm an article marketer) - for me, that probably excludes anything terribly technical or for which I'll have to go to night school to understand the vocabulary.

    The things I don't really care about, though I recognise that some affiliates do, which are therefore not on my list at all, are (i) "% rfd", and (ii) affiliate gimmicks (banners/articles etc) offered by the vendor, which I'm probably not going to use anyway. I strongly suspect that almost no professional affiliate has much interest in "marketing tools" provided by the vendor or really takes this into account in product-selection.

    In my first 4 or 5 months as a Clickbank affiliate, I earned very, very little. The two things that made a huge and dramatic difference to my income were (a) not touching anything with a vendor's opt-in on the sales-page, and (b) staying well away from high gravity products. I changed just those two things and quite quickly I was really making a living, and have been ever since.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

      Why does a gravity over 30 put you off? You think the competition is already to stiff?
      Not necessarily, and I wouldn't hesitate to promote a product with a gravity of 45 or so if everything else was right about it, for me. But I can't avoid noticing a real inverse correlation (especially when including all the dreadful things I initially tried to promote when I started, having absolutely no idea what I was doing at all) between gravity-figures and my own sales-numbers. And I'm talking about well over 20 products altogether, which just feels like too many to be a coincidence.

      I remember commenting here about 4 or 5 months ago that my two best-selling and easiest-selling products by far both have single-figure gravities, and that's still true now.

      It took me a long time to learn and understand that there's no correlation at all between gravity and numbers of sales. I started off making all the same mistaken assumptions that everyone does, imagining that if a product has a higher gravity, this simply must be some sort of evidence that it "must be selling well". And of course it doesn't help that so many "guidebooks" and "e-courses" and even WSO's misinform people about this very point. The reality is very counter-intuitive, after all. :rolleyes:
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

        Of those 20 products you promote
        No, I don't promote 20. I said "more than 20 including the ones I first promoted at the start when I had no idea what I was doing" (or something like that). I tried initially to promote some with vendors' opt-in and high gravity. Big mistake! I actually promote 14 at the moment.

        Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

        you typically have 2 of those within a particular niche, right?
        I have an average of two within a particular niche. I have one niche with 4 products and a couple with one each, but yes, in principle, I like to try to choose a niche in which I can "add a second product later", if possible: I think it's a good idea. My overall experience with it so far has been something like getting 35% extra sales for 10% extra work.

        Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

        And if this is generally so, does this mean that you typically have 2 landing or review pages and test which one of the products do better? That kind of thing?
        I always start with one product, and sometimes add a second one later. I like to do the "selection" with my rigorous 10-point list above rather than by testing sales; but I'm never promoting a product I haven't seen myself, so I ought to be able to "get it right", really ...

        Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

        do you have pages on your sites where both products you are promoting within the niche are presented?
        Not normally but I can do. Depends a bit what you mean by "presented". But anyone going to the site will know that (among other stuff) there are details of two (or more) products there. I'm not sure whether I answered your question ...
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

          Maybe another stupid question, but how will they know this, if you don't mind?
          They'll see prominent picture-links to them with enticing wording. I use "little banners" to link to other pages within the same site. For no reason other than that I know how to do them (for me, this a huge advantage for anything, and a rarity), and it doesn't make it look like a "blog contents"/"archive" thing, which I don't like. I do actually make my little sites out of blogging software, but it doesn't show: I like them to look like static sites, not Wordpress blogs, however regularly updated they are.
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        • Profile picture of the author andr3w84
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          I have an average of two within a particular niche. I have one niche with 4 products and a couple with one each, but yes, in principle, I like to try to choose a niche in which I can "add a second product later", if possible: I think it's a good idea. My overall experience with it so far has been something like getting 35% extra sales for 10% extra work.
          I would have thought that it's a good strategy to specialise in few niches (about 2, 3) and promote many products within those niches, as it's easier to become an expert in fewer fields (say weight loss and fitness only instead of weight loss, fitness, alternative energy, background checks, dog training, antiviruses, guitar playing, languages etc etc) so I infer you prioritise entering markets with products that can actually pass your 10-point criteria list, right?
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          • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
            Banned
            Originally Posted by andr3w84 View Post

            I infer you prioritise entering markets with products that can actually pass your 10-point criteria list, right?
            Right.

            And mine are really niches, not "markets". Real niches are kind of slightly easier to become an expert in, I think? Weight-loss, fitness and alternative energy, to me, are not really niches. (Besides which, I'm skinny, ill, and like sports cars and nuclear power, myself). I do have one "bigger niche", though, in which currently I have 4 products, and there'll always be new products, and they'll always be marketable to the same list.
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            • Profile picture of the author andr3w84
              Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

              Right.

              And mine are really niches, not "markets". Real niches are kind of slightly easier to become an expert in, I think? Weight-loss, fitness and alternative energy, to me, are not really niches. (Besides which, I'm skinny, ill, and like sports cars and nuclear power, myself). I do have one "bigger niche", though, in which currently I have 4 products, and there'll always be new products, and they'll always be marketable to the same list.
              You are right. Weight-loss, fitness and alternative energy are indeed markets (the first two quite large in fact). Anyway, rephrasing my comment above, it was apparent to me that it'd be a better strategy to focus on several niches within a single market (i.e. fat loss for working mums, fat loss for new mums, fat loss for seniors, no-diet fat loss, and so on), instead of focusing on more distant niches. What's your opinion on this?

              Cheers
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              • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
                Banned
                Originally Posted by andr3w84 View Post

                it was apparent to me that it'd be a better strategy to focus on several niches within a single market (i.e. fat loss for working mums, fat loss for new mums, fat loss for seniors, no-diet fat loss, and so on), instead of focusing on more distant niches. What's your opinion on this?
                I hear you and of course completely see the logic of "related" rather than apparently "unrelated" lists, and I have one market like this, myself.

                I suspect different things work for different people, and maybe we also look at it slightly differently. In a sense, my opinion has kindly been given by Bgmacaw in this thread, who pretty often saves me from typing stuff out!
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    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      6. Sales-page looks to me as if it will convert my traffic well (obviously subjective and not entirely reliable, but as a copywriter I like to think I can guess pretty well, and I can tell whether it's "professional copy" or "home-made copy" - and I don't care about anyone else's traffic so "overall conversion rates" aren't relevant to me, not that they're available anyway).


      Wish I would have seen this thread this time last year. Would have saved me alot of frustration. I would say I probably went against every rule you followed here, and never made a dime. Now I know why...

      Quick Question about the statement above, how do you tell the difference between "professional copy" and "home-made copy"? What sorts of things do you look for? Everything else in your 10 points is obvious in and of itself, but this part I can't grasp.

      Also, do you ever direct link to an offer? Or do you send them to a review page first? Im guessing you do reviews to "warm up" the potential customer, but how do you think the conversion rates compare?

      Not even sure if your still following this thread, but i figured i would give it a shot.

      Rob
      Signature

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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Wish I would have seen this thread this time last year. Would have saved me alot of frustration. I would say I probably went against every rule you followed here, and never made a dime.
        Well, so did I, when I started. So did many of us, I'm sure. Nobody was born knowing how do affiliate marketing. The annoying thing, in a sense, is how much misinformation there is "out there" which purports to inform and educate and actually ensures it's unlikely that most people will succeed. :rolleyes:

        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        how do you tell the difference between "professional copy" and "home-made copy"? What sorts of things do you look for? Everything else in your 10 points is obvious in and of itself, but this part I can't grasp.
        It's inevitably the most subjective and "impressionistic" part, I think. I'm afraid my answer's unlikely to be helpful, really. But I've read a lot of copywriting books myself, done some copywriting (including Clickbank-type sales pages), and have just gradually built up a picture of what will convert. Reasonably reliably, I hope.

        In a way, it's easier for most people to identify specifically the negatives rather than the positives, perhaps, and the matters covered in the third point might help there, a bit? No ridiculous hype or deceptive tactics on the sales page (nothing obviously non-FTC-compliant, no phony urgency/scarcity, nothing clearly deceptive/dishonest, no credibility-losing claims, no income-claims, no cancer-curing claims, no deceptive crap about "as seen on Yahoo/MSN" which people will rightly ridicule).

        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Also, do you ever direct link to an offer?
        I don't; no.

        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        how do you think the conversion rates compare?
        My guess is that for most people, most of the time, there isn't enough of a conversion-rate with direct linking even to measure it meaningfully. I suspect there's no comparison at all. (Talking about CB products here, of course, not necessarily CPA stuff).

        Specifically, I think there's one huge mistake to avoid, which is to try direct linking first and "on the basis of its early results", decide which ones are worth creating a little "review-site" (or whatever) for. This is completely fallacious. I believe that some people assume that if something brings in a sale or two by direct linking, then it's going to bring in a lot more with a review-site, and vice-versa. I'd almost be more likely to assume the exact opposite, myself: that the ones that can make any sales on their own aren't going to make any more with a review-site, whereas the ones that bring in nothing by direct linking might be the ones that really need a review-site and could do very well with one.

        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Not even sure if your still following this thread, but i figured i would give it a shot.
        Sorry - my answers are probably of no real use at all.
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        • Profile picture of the author ago
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post


          Sorry - my answers are probably of no real use at all.

          Yes, they are...thanks a lot
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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce NewMedia
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      6. Sales-page looks to me as if it will convert my traffic well (obviously subjective and not entirely reliable, but as a copywriter I like to think I can guess pretty well, and I can tell whether it's "professional copy" or "home-made copy" - and I don't care about anyone else's traffic so "overall conversion rates" aren't relevant to me, not that they're available anyway).

      7. Good product (I don't promote anything without seeing and assessing it myself, obviously)
      Alexa, I like your checklist alot. Thanks for sharing it.

      Numbers 6 and 7 are particularly important to me. How the sales page looks can make all the difference, of course. I find many CB pages to either be way too 'slick' or so amateurish that they can't be read without snoring. Hitting the 'sweet spot' in sales page copywriting is hard, and most on CB don't come close.

      Also, buying the product and seeking a little support tells me a bunch about whether there's any 'there' there. I've sent an email after purchase and waited a week for an answer....now why would I want to promote that?
      _____
      Bruce
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    • Profile picture of the author jafris
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      7. Good product (I don't promote anything without seeing and assessing it myself, obviously)

      8. Good vendor reputation/attitude/behaviour (I'll contact them first, one way or another, and if I don't get a reply I won't promote their product, because I can imagine what their after-sales behaviour will be like if they won't even reply to a prospective business associate).
      Hi Alexa,

      that's a complete paradigm shift from what I have been taught; that is, minimum gravity should be 100?

      For readers sake, would you like to post some links of the products that you have selected. A one or two could be taken as benchmarks for of us.

      Thanks & Regards
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by brucerby View Post

        How the sales page looks can make all the difference, of course. I find many CB pages to either be way too 'slick' or so amateurish that they can't be read without snoring. Hitting the 'sweet spot' in sales page copywriting is hard, and most on CB don't come close.
        Yes, I completely agree. When you're looking round for something new to promote, you can plough through huge numbers of sales pages dismissing most of them very quickly indeed. But to me, that's a good thing, because there are 12,000+ products there, and I need to get the numbers down to something pretty small, so the more quickly I can reject them, the better.

        Originally Posted by brucerby View Post

        Also, buying the product and seeking a little support tells me a bunch about whether there's any 'there' there. I've sent an email after purchase and waited a week for an answer....now why would I want to promote that?
        Yes, again I agree entirely: one wants to know that the vendor's ok, as well as the product, though I suspect there's an overall correlation between the two, to some extent, anyway.

        Originally Posted by jafris View Post

        For readers sake, would you like to post some links of the products that you have selected.
        For my competitors' sake, you mean? Please excuse me if I "politely decline", Jafris ...
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    • Profile picture of the author Ngwu Ogonnaya Precious
      Banned
      [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by Ngwu Ogonnaya Precious View Post

        Then you will definitely hate the IM niche because these are their major characteristics and how will someone buy a product where he or she can't reach the vendor through customer service?

        I don't see it happening, if you are afraid of loosing the affiliate commissions then here is a news flash.

        Clickbank uses cookie system, so each time a visitor clicks on your affiliate link, your clickbank id will be cookied into his computer and if he visits the site another time without your affiliate link then you don't have to worry because on the payment process, you will be listed as the affiliate.
        Here's a return flash, smart guy...

        There are so many ways for that cookie to be lost, deleted, overwritten, whatever that it bothers a lot of us.

        Including some vendors who think it's clever to

        a) put their own affiliate links in their follow-up emails and/or
        b) encourage people to buy through their own affiliate links.

        They don't care who or if anyone gets a commission or a back-door discount, as long as they get theirs.

        Whether the loss is deliberate or accidental, it's still commission we've earned and lost.
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      • Profile picture of the author JayKing
        Amazing! I've just joined WF a few hours back and already I'm learning things I never expected could help so much!

        p.s. in those 4-5 hours I've been here, I've already thanked Alexa thrice for sharing her clear insight and honest views and experience! Thanks Alexa, you rock!
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    • Profile picture of the author JDE
      Alexa, thank you VERY MUCH for your 10-point checklist for CB product-selection. It has really helped me to focus on products that will convert, and stay away from the IM niche, which I learned a long time ago to stay away from. There is so much cr-- on Clickbank. Sure you may sell a lot of IM programs, but one may also spend a ton of $$ getting traffic to it, only to slip further into the red as the massive refunds start to pour in.

      Would really appreciate anyone else's additions to Alexa's list.

      Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author malaika
      Now I know why I never made any significant amounts of money with clickbank. Let me go at it again. Will post a review of my attempts here after 3 months.
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    • Profile picture of the author yours2u
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      In my first 4 or 5 months as a Clickbank affiliate, I earned very, very little. The two things that made a huge and dramatic difference to my income were (a) not touching anything with a vendor's opt-in on the sales-page, and (b) staying well away from high gravity products.
      That's my theory in a nutshell. Excellent list and comment - thanks
      Signature
      How many IM's to change a light bulb?
      Add your answer - this must be solved!
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    • Profile picture of the author debmanks
      Hi there,
      you say in your post that you will alway check a product out before opting to promote it. So presumably you buy it. You must end up buying and getting refunds on loads of products through Clickbank. Don't they mind if you JUST CHECK THINGS OUT?
      Deb
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      • Profile picture of the author jbsmith
        The mistake most affiliates make is thinking there is a shortcut method to finding killer products WITHOUT investing the time to learn and understand your market.

        Sure - you COULD take 5 of the 10 products and (assuming you had enough traffic) test one against the other until you discover one that sells...but here's the dicey part...

        In order to get that traffic, you have to know what your market is looking for, otherwise you end up spending a TON and getting unrelated traffic

        Also - in order to convert that traffic from your landing page, review page or what have you...you must understand the message to product match. If you don't, your click through rates are going to be horrible.

        What I have done entering new markets where I didn't know 90% sure what the product angle should be is to build a relationship with the market first through a blog, content site - then work the warm prospects toward different angles through teleseminars, surveys, q&a sessions, etc...

        Far better results this way.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by debmanks View Post

        Hi there,
        you say in your post that you will alway check a product out before opting to promote it. So presumably you buy it. You must end up buying and getting refunds on loads of products through Clickbank. Don't they mind if you JUST CHECK THINGS OUT?
        Hi Deb,

        Yes, they certainly do mind that, and understandably they wouldn't tolerate it for long before closing your account as being that of a "serial refunder", because you'd clearly be costing them money (in processing and administrative costs).

        I've never asked for a refund on any product I've bought to check out, with a view to promoting as an affiliate, and in my opinion it would be dishonest to do so, even if I decided not to promote that product: the point is that if my purpose in buying it is to assess it for that reason, then as long as I've been able to do that (even if the assessment was negative), it's been fit for the purpose for which I bought it. So clearly it wouldn't be right for me to ask for a refund.

        There's nothing wrong with buying such products for affiliate-assessment, when you have to, through your own affiliate-link, which makes them very cheap (and vendors who don't agree with that shouldn't be using ClickBank in the first place).

        But the overwhelming majority of products I've looked at in this way are ones of which I've been given free "review copies". It's really very easy to get those.

        There's advice here on how to go about getting a free "review copy".
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    • Profile picture of the author Chuxy
      Hi Alexa this is very informative. Do you also check the the monthly global/local searches on Google before promoting a product. If you do what sort of volume would you consider to be potentially profitable.

      kindest regards,

      Chuxy

      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Good question: I think CB product selection's probably the single area where most affiliates make mistakes that are most expensive in terms of opportunity-cost.

      Here's my own 10-point checklist for CB product-selection (and these are more or less the order in which I look at them, too, I think):-

      1. Has to be a niche in which the prospective customers are not already Clickbank affiliates themselves (obviously! - otherwise how can you possibly ever earn an affiliate commission on a sale to them?!) - so for me that completely excludes the "IM advice" and "make money online" niches.

      2. No leaks on the sales page: (no opt-in, no "free trial", no "contact the vendor here" etc.)

      3. No ridiculous hype or deceptive tactics on the sales page (nothing obviously non-FTC-compliant, no phony urgency/scarcity, nothing clearly deceptive/dishonest, no credibility-losing claims, no income-claims, no cancer-curing claims, no deceptive crap about "as seen on Yahoo/MSN" which people will rightly ridicule!).

      4. No pop-ups/discounts.

      5. Gravity not too high (over 30 puts me off a bit; over 60 puts me off a bit more; over 100 I won't consider at the moment).

      6. Sales-page looks to me as if it will convert my traffic well (obviously subjective and not entirely reliable, but as a copywriter I like to think I can guess pretty well, and I can tell whether it's "professional copy" or "home-made copy" - and I don't care about anyone else's traffic so "overall conversion rates" aren't relevant to me, not that they're available anyway).

      7. Good product (I don't promote anything without seeing and assessing it myself, obviously)

      8. Good vendor reputation/attitude/behaviour (I'll contact them first, one way or another, and if I don't get a reply I won't promote their product, because I can imagine what their after-sales behaviour will be like if they won't even reply to a prospective business associate).

      9. Reasonably high earnings per sale (75% of small amount, 60% of medium amount, 50% of larger amount etc.) - I slightly prefer more expensive products around $100 when I can find them, because I think they're easier for me to sell than cheaper ones (really).

      10. Has to be something I can write about (I'm an article marketer) - for me, that probably excludes anything terribly technical or for which I'll have to go to night school to understand the vocabulary.

      The things I don't really care about, though I recognise that some affiliates do, which are therefore not on my list at all, are (i) "% rfd", and (ii) affiliate gimmicks (banners/articles etc) offered by the vendor, which I'm probably not going to use anyway. I strongly suspect that almost no professional affiliate has much interest in "marketing tools" provided by the vendor or really takes this into account in product-selection.

      In my first 4 or 5 months as a Clickbank affiliate, I earned very, very little. The two things that made a huge and dramatic difference to my income were (a) not touching anything with a vendor's opt-in on the sales-page, and (b) staying well away from high gravity products. I changed just those two things and quite quickly I was really making a living, and have been ever since.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Chuxy View Post

        Hi Alexa this is very informative. Do you also check the the monthly global/local searches on Google before promoting a product.
        I don't; no. I think other people might. But I'm an article marketer, and concerned primarily about getting high-quality articles syndicated in front of well targeted traffic. The number of searches in Google isn't relevant to my product selection. (Of course, such things may be relevant to my keyword selection, at a later stage, but that's a different matter. I've looked at things as low as 300 searches per month).

        Originally Posted by Chuxy View Post

        If you do what sort of volume would you consider to be potentially profitable.
        I barely use quantitative approaches at all. For me what matters is the SEO quality of the top 5 competing sites (and I don't care at all how many competing sites there are, as explained here and here). But for me this has nothing to do with "selecting the product".
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        • Profile picture of the author Chuxy
          Thanks Alexa for your response. I really appreciate
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    • Profile picture of the author Tiffan Meloney
      Sorry to bring back an old thread, but this piece right here is golden . I just re read it twice and wish I could thank twice...i think that part of the forum might need fixing mods so get on it.

      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Good question: I think CB product selection's probably the single area where most affiliates make mistakes that are most expensive in terms of opportunity-cost.

      Here's my own 10-point checklist for CB product-selection (and these are more or less the order in which I look at them, too, I think):-

      1. Has to be a niche in which the prospective customers are not already Clickbank affiliates themselves (obviously! - otherwise how can you possibly ever earn an affiliate commission on a sale to them?!) - so for me that completely excludes the "IM advice" and "make money online" niches.

      2. No leaks on the sales page: (no opt-in, no "free trial", no "contact the vendor here" etc.)

      3. No ridiculous hype or deceptive tactics on the sales page (nothing obviously non-FTC-compliant, no phony urgency/scarcity, nothing clearly deceptive/dishonest, no credibility-losing claims, no income-claims, no cancer-curing claims, no deceptive crap about "as seen on Yahoo/MSN" which people will rightly ridicule!).

      4. No pop-ups/discounts.

      5. Gravity not too high (over 30 puts me off a bit; over 60 puts me off a bit more; over 100 I won't consider at the moment).

      6. Sales-page looks to me as if it will convert my traffic well (obviously subjective and not entirely reliable, but as a copywriter I like to think I can guess pretty well, and I can tell whether it's "professional copy" or "home-made copy" - and I don't care about anyone else's traffic so "overall conversion rates" aren't relevant to me, not that they're available anyway).

      7. Good product (I don't promote anything without seeing and assessing it myself, obviously)

      8. Good vendor reputation/attitude/behaviour (I'll contact them first, one way or another, and if I don't get a reply I won't promote their product, because I can imagine what their after-sales behaviour will be like if they won't even reply to a prospective business associate).

      9. Reasonably high earnings per sale (75% of small amount, 60% of medium amount, 50% of larger amount etc.) - I slightly prefer more expensive products around $100 when I can find them, because I think they're easier for me to sell than cheaper ones (really).

      10. Has to be something I can write about (I'm an article marketer) - for me, that probably excludes anything terribly technical or for which I'll have to go to night school to understand the vocabulary.

      The things I don't really care about, though I recognise that some affiliates do, which are therefore not on my list at all, are (i) "% rfd", and (ii) affiliate gimmicks (banners/articles etc) offered by the vendor, which I'm probably not going to use anyway. I strongly suspect that almost no professional affiliate has much interest in "marketing tools" provided by the vendor or really takes this into account in product-selection.

      In my first 4 or 5 months as a Clickbank affiliate, I earned very, very little. The two things that made a huge and dramatic difference to my income were (a) not touching anything with a vendor's opt-in on the sales-page, and (b) staying well away from high gravity products. I changed just those two things and quite quickly I was really making a living, and have been ever since.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dietriffic
    Alexa, that is very enlightening.
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    • Profile picture of the author georgeg_g
      Wow alexa thats a post that exceeded my expectations
      Big thanks <3
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  • Profile picture of the author Capricorn
    Thank you Alexa for sharing so much valuable info. I've been on Clickbank & tried to promote some of the products a few months ago and have virtually done exact opposite of your 10 steps process - because I was told to do so aaahhh...Esp. in terms of the gravity (always use high gravity as a selector!) LOL. Now I know why nothing ever converted.

    Since then I've moved to CPA and am just starting out, but one thing that I have found is that your 10 steps process relates very much to CPA offer sales pages. So many thanks for posting it :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author arnold55
    I go to the vendor spotlight and see how many others are subscribing. If there is only one or two I go to another product in the chosen market. In my opinion (in most cases) the more subscribers the better. The second thing I do is look for an affiliate page. This makes my job a lot easier. If it is a well promoted product the vendor will have email letters, articles and other useful tools.

    george michaels
    "arnold55"
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  • Profile picture of the author willoh
    Whoa Alexa, that list puts things in a whole new perspective! Thx for sharing
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    • Profile picture of the author rawstyle
      Beautiful post by an even more beautiful internet marketer. Thank you for this, I was fooling around direct linking to CB and using blog articles...but I think I will print that 10 point list out...with your permission of course
      Imagine that, making a living with CB products!
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      • Profile picture of the author vastcosmos
        Thank you for the information. I am just starting out (again) and your ten points are well taken. I had just selected for, my next campaign, four products based on gravity.

        Thanks. I will start over. I don't pretend to understand gravity but your post is well taken.

        thanks

        Jim
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        corporateespionage.info

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        • Profile picture of the author mcmahanusa
          Thanks, Alexa, for that very helpful post.

          I'm technically-challenged, marketing-challenged, and am trying to master walking and chewing gum at the same time, and I need the best input possible.

          Your methods seem to be very carefully thought-out. Nice job!
          Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author LindaC
    Very good info Alex. I have purchased e-books that did not contain as much information as you have provided within this thread.

    And, in my opinion...your 10-point checklist for CB product selection is among the best post I have read on any of the forms in some time.

    My Best 2 U,

    LindaC
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Alexa, you are a dangerous woman - a hottie with brains and the ambition to use them. Well done...

      I had pretty much written off CB and such in favor of physical products for affiliate marketing, but your checklist makes so much sense I may have another go at it.

      Thanks...
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        I had pretty much written off CB and such in favor of physical products for affiliate marketing
        If that's one of the physical products you're holding in your avatar, you're doing a great job anyway, John. Hoping that nobody will interpret this as straying into politics at all, you might be interested to know that Durbin asks Obama to appoint carp czar - Chicago Breaking News
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        • Profile picture of the author TracyZ
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          If that's one of the physical products you're holding in your avatar, you're doing a great job anyway, John. Hoping that nobody will interpret this as straying into politics at all, you might be interested to know that Durbin asks Obama to appoint carp czar - Chicago Breaking News
          And funny too!

          Great 10 points - thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    I agree with most of what alexa says. well, we have disagreed in the past
    about opt-in forms. I have been burned before, but it was because I didn't opt-in first myself and made sure that the vendor wasn't going to give me problems. But I certainly uderstand Alexa's reluctance.

    Also, what I look for depends on how I plan on marketing.

    If I'm want to rank for product name searches, then I look at the competition
    in the serps.. I also want the product to be somewhat popular, otherwise there
    won't be much searching going on

    If I'm promoting to my list, it needs to be a really solid product (and it goes
    w/o saying that I either bought the product, or was given a review copy). Burn your
    subscbribers, and I doubt they will ever buy through you again. I've had plenty of
    success here promoting products with low gravity.


    No matter how I promote, I look at the quality of the sales page. And by quality,
    I'm referring to the copy - not fancy graphics. Good copy has a way of making me
    want to buy the product, regardless of my personal interest in the niche!

    I also like to be able to get in contact with the product owner. If I generate a lot of sales for someone, I like to be able to start up a relationship with them so that they can do some promoting for me if I decide to do a product launch
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  • Profile picture of the author wwwBaron
    2. No leaks on the sales page: (no opt-in, no "free trial", no "contact the vendor here" etc.)

    Hey Alexa - While I agree with you about the opt-ins, the "contact the vendor" is actually required by ClickBank:

    "Customers must be able to reach you if they have a question about your product prior to purchase. Please include an email address, a link to your email address, or a contact us link on your Pitch Page."

    I would have removed the "Contact" link on my pitch pages if it weren't for this directive from CB. So don't hold that against me!
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by wwwBaron View Post

      I would have removed the "Contact" link on my pitch pages if it weren't for this directive from CB. So don't hold that against me!
      Fair enough: good point and thanks for mentioning it. I won't hold it against you, just as I'm sure you won't hold against me my preference to affiliate with some of the many thousands of vendors who have either removed it after their sales pages have been approved, or never had it there in the first place and still got approved anyway.

      This is, I think by pretty common consensus, an altogether lower, far more trivial and less concerning class of "leak" than an opt-in, though.
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      • Profile picture of the author reillymary56
        @Alexa

        I have read you list and I am curious about one thing. When choosing a clickbank product is it best to create a website with your own domain to promote the product or would the results be just as good/better writing articles and publishing them?

        Since your last piece of advice I have been going through click bank searching for a product I can write about, just wondering what's the best method on how to promote it.

        Thanks
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by reillymary56 View Post

          @Alexa, is it best to create a website with your own domain to promote the product or would the results be just as good/better writing articles and publishing them?
          These are not either/or alternatives, really. Typically, you wouldn't get far writing articles and publishing them without creating a website/landing-page (it doesn't need to be a full-sized website: a one-page bloggy-type site will do, to start with, and you can add articles to it as you go). The articles should go on your own little website first, and after being indexed there, go to article directories: all very clearly explained in this thread, among others.

          "Direct-linking" (i.e. linking from the articles' resouce-boxes to your hoplink), though not impossible, is (at best) a very poor second-best method of promoting Clickbank (or any other) products as an affiliate, because it deprives you of the two essentials for producing realistic affiliate income: (i) the ability to build a list, and (ii) the ability to pre-sell effectively.

          There are one or two Warriors (I think literally one, or two) who sell Clickbank products this way, and do ok, but it's certainly not something I could manage, myself.

          There are many other ways of promoting Clickbank products, though, without writing articles: through PPC advertising, and so on. But to the best of my knowledge, these other ways also all work better with some sort of "site" in-between the ad and the product's sales page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Derwin
    Before choosing products, use few good keywords for searching.Then you will get an idea. It is your own idea that how you want to sell and promote the product. You can design and use your own website, or create a free blog to promote your product.Read the comments of all the members and then decide about your plan.
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  • Profile picture of the author chriscubos
    Hi Alexa, your post and replies to other queries have been very enlightening and encouraging. I'm new to affiliate marketing and I see that most of what you're written is opposed to what is normally being taught, even on some ebooks that I've read. I'm still on my experimenting stage to see what works best for me but I'll try to follow some of your advice up there. Thanks for sharing!
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  • Profile picture of the author MilesT
    Thanks for the good tread everyone. Bookmarked.
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    • Profile picture of the author MilesT
      Originally Posted by MilesT View Post

      Thanks for the good tread everyone. Bookmarked.
      ... and by 'tread' I mean "thread" :rolleyes:
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  • Profile picture of the author jbsmith
    Alexa's list is - of course - a terrific way to assess candidate products to promote - but even then, in my experience with dozens of CB, CJ and other affiliate products - you still want to have a method to quickly test conversions.

    If you are more established then you have a list that you can test on, if you don't then it means systematically buying or generating that traffic quickly around some solid keywords so you can test conversion.

    There have been situtations where the product would have passed all the criteria (minus #6 which is one of the areas many people cannot make a correct decision) and still failed in trials, while others where they broke the rules (high gravity, affiliate links, opt-in first, etc... and conversion was very good).

    Finally, a very important factor is how much of a relationship you have built with your market - cold affiliate marketing is tough, but if you look at the niche as a longer-term opportuntiy to help those within your niche, you create a relationship, give them some good content, then they will buy pretty much anything you recommend (which means a much greater responsibility on your part to only market the highest quality products).

    For example, if you operate in the fitness niche and you plug your prospects into a weekly program of tips, techniques and strategies on fitness, hold a free teleseminar with a guest expert, provide a case study or two and THEN recommend a high quality product you will see your sales explode...

    Jeff
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  • Profile picture of the author flipfl0p
    How about this product? Do you think this will convert sales?

    Welcome to Government-Records.com

    Is this professional Looking?
    This has 100 gravity on click back If Im not mistaken...
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    Attention! This offer is only limited to 10 copies/orders monthly!
    (will create a Warrior thread in 2 weeks)
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    • Profile picture of the author sme
      Amazing thread and great advice by Alexa. Thanks a lot.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lauryn
    Alexa's got some kick-butt advice in just about every thread I happen to peruse.
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    I Go Hard = "Slanguage" for putting forth a lot of effort.

    Don't be an arse and try to flip something you clearly have no knowledge of against me.

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    • Profile picture of the author Haphiza
      There are some excellent posts on this thread. Since I am just trying to learn about affiliate marketing I have found some very good advice here which I can use.

      Thank you all
      Haphiza Baboolal
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      • Profile picture of the author Shemp Hain
        I really don't think gravity matters much as you can always find keywords in any niche. I think the most important thing is the sales page. If the product's sales page looks like crap it doesn't matter how many hops you have... it won't convert.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Lim
        Hi, normally I market the products with email markeing.
        I will choose the high Gravity rate product, and I will make sure theirsales page is good enough.
        Soetimes I will search on Google or Warrior forum for reviews, so that can see the user feedback, so I just make sure is a good product to suggest to my customers.
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  • Profile picture of the author markwilson
    great information. i now feel bad I didn't join this forum last year.. would have save me a lot of head ache
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  • Profile picture of the author sayu88
    This post is perfect timing for me. I have just NOW developed my first list of CB products and now I need to do some major editing. Like many others I created my list with high gravity playing the key role.

    This is all starting to click with my bank. Start with my own niche and look at many products sales pages to find those I can 'relate' to. Then try to contact the owner to see if I can get comp or review of their product.

    In other words start feeling all fuzzy about that product which will then come across in my writing style.

    While I'm a fair writer, I'm thinking about some way to automate the content generation a bit at least. Not looking for fully automated, as then the same thing ends up everywhere, but it would be nice to have part of the job done for me.

    That's next on my list.

    In the meantime your list is much appreciated Alexa Smith
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  • Profile picture of the author Michele Buch
    Alexa,
    Thanks for your 10-point checklist for chosing a Clickbank product.

    All,
    Suppose there is a product that you love and want to promote, but it has leaks galore on the sales page or a sloppy sales page. Of course you can negotiate just about anything, so you could negotiate with the vendor to have your own sales page that links directly to the Clickbank checkout page. The vendor would have to approve your sales page to ensure you aren't making false claims or doing other naughty stuff.

    The questions are, is this probably relatively easy to do, allowed, and a good idea?

    Thanks in advance for your input.
    Michele
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Michele Buch View Post

      Suppose there is a product that you love and want to promote, but it has leaks galore on the sales page or a sloppy sales page. Of course you can negotiate just about anything, so you could negotiate with the vendor to have your own sales page that links directly to the Clickbank checkout page. The vendor would have to approve your sales page to ensure you aren't making false claims or doing other naughty stuff.

      The questions are, is this probably relatively easy to do, allowed, and a good idea?
      It's allowed, with the vendor's permission.

      But for most people, most of the time, it's a dreadful idea for several reasons.

      The most important one is perhaps the fact that linking to the order-page doesn't set an affiliate cookie on your prospects' computers. In other words the only sales for which you'll earn the affiliate commission are the "immediates" (said to be 15% overall) but you'll clearly lose the earnings on many others who don't buy it at their first visit to the sales page (said to be up to 85%).

      There are a few other reasons for avoiding this, too, but this one alone is enough to rule it out for most people, clearly.

      There are over 14,000 active products there. There's really no need, for most people, to promote products with leaks on the sales page, or with terrible sales pages.
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      • Profile picture of the author Michele Buch
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        ...it's a dreadful idea for several reasons.

        The most important one is perhaps the fact that linking to the order-page doesn't set an affiliate cookie on your prospects' computers.
        Couldn't you copy the cookie-setting code from the original sales page into your sales page? I'd think there's a technical way to do so, whether copy/paste or iframes and redirects or what not.

        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        .
        There are over 14,000 active products there. There's really no need, for most people, to promote products with leaks on the sales page, or with terrible sales pages.
        True, but if you really believe in a product and can wrap additional services around it, then it provides more motivation and a way to differentiate yourself from other affiliates.

        Another great benefit I thought of is that you can have an opt-in form on your sales page.

        I'm thinking about the Chris Farrell Membership site, which has a recurring monthly income. It breaks some of your tips, but I'd wager that most subscribers don't use their own affiliate link when joining, either because they are so new they don't know they can, or because of their ethical reasons.

        Michele
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Michele Buch View Post

          Couldn't you copy the cookie-setting code from the original sales page into your sales page?
          I think not in compliance with Clickbank's rules; no. Hence the problem.

          Originally Posted by Michele Buch View Post

          if you really believe in a product and can wrap additional services around it, then it provides more motivation and a way to differentiate yourself from other affiliates.
          Agreed.

          This is why I said "for most people, most of the time".

          It's a huge amount of work, though. The only time I'd envisage doing it myself would be if I had an existing list and felt strongly that in spite of the sales page being no good, the product itself would be ideal for them. But there you are: I got paid a lot of money for the last sales page I wrote, and I admit to a strong personal antipathy to writing one unpaid, myself.

          Originally Posted by Michele Buch View Post

          I'm thinking about the Chris Farrell Membership site, which has a recurring monthly income. It breaks some of your tips
          It breaks the first one, certainly. For myself, I don't look further if they break that one. Not with 14,000+ other products from which to choose: there's simply no need. But I do wish you very well with it, if you try it.

          But remember that you won't be setting an affiliate cookie (not unless you put some subfusc headwear on, anyway, as far as I understand).
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    • Profile picture of the author focused
      [quote=Michele Buch;3716766]Alexa,
      Thanks for your 10-point checklist for chosing a Clickbank product.

      Thanks also for the useful info.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fazal Mayar
    alexa pretty much said it all.....

    don't judge products on their stats too much and select a few of them and start promoting.
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    Blogger at RicherOrNot.com (Make Money online blog but also promoting ethical internet marketing)

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  • Because this thread was super helpful, and because I have an interesting question for alexa (in my eyes), I hope no-one minds me bringing it back to life for a bit.

    Didn't want to bother her with a pm, and perhaps others who have had the same success or pretty much function their business like hers would like to jump in too.

    Alexa,

    Those niches you are in, have you known about them enough to write helpful content to your target audience previous to working in them, or, through purchase of the product and research have you learnt sufficiently enough to then provide useful content to your target audience, and list?

    Or a mix of both?

    Curiosity really, I hope it isn't much to ask
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Jason Perez O'Connor View Post

      Alexa,

      Those niches you are in, have you known about them enough to write helpful content to your target audience previous to working in them, or, through purchase of the product and research have you learnt sufficiently enough to then provide useful content to your target audience, and list?

      Or a mix of both?
      In my case, a mixture of both.

      Like many people's (I think), my first couple of niches were ones I knew reasonably well to start with. Others much less so.

      I do avoid niches for which it's going to be extremely difficult/unappealing for me to learn enough - but that's because I do all the necessary writing (articles, email series, etc.) myself, and if I were outsourcing that, I perhaps wouldn't mind so much about it.
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      • Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        In my case, a mixture of both.

        Like many people's (I think), my first couple of niches were ones I knew reasonably well to start with. Others much less so.

        I do avoid niches for which it's going to be extremely difficult/unappealing for me to learn enough - but that's because I do all the necessary writing (articles, email series, etc.) myself, and if I were outsourcing that, I perhaps wouldn't mind so much about it.
        Gotcha! I'm going through a very dull time in my life, and the only thing I know most about currently is anxiety, depression and panic attacks.

        I know of them, and how one can go about getting rid of them. But, I don't feel like I would be doing justice to anyone by giving them this info because I've yet to overcome the problem myself.

        Other than that my income is based off physical products. My other hobbies aren't really ones that could be marketed, either because the audience is really small, or because they're ridiculously savvy.

        I've got everything to go ahead with it I suppose, but, the 3 evils above continually stop me in my tracks, curse them! = )

        Thanks for the response.
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        • Originally Posted by Jason Perez O'Connor View Post

          Gotcha! I'm going through a very dull time in my life, and the only thing I know most about currently is anxiety, depression and panic attacks.

          I know of them, and how one can go about getting rid of them. But, I don't feel like I would be doing justice to anyone by giving them this info because I've yet to overcome the problem myself.

          Other than that my income is based off physical products. My other hobbies aren't really ones that could be marketed, either because the audience is really small, or because they're ridiculously savvy.

          I've got everything to go ahead with it I suppose, but, the 3 evils above continually stop me in my tracks, curse them! = )

          Thanks for the response.
          Saying that, I do have my spanish which I could market, my grammar isn't so great though :x
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  • I would follow Alexa's advice she made some strong points!



    Kristof
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  • Profile picture of the author VijayNadaGuru
    Here is something to consider. Ask someone who is totally not related to IM/MMO market to take a look at the salespage of a few products that you are considering promoting and find out which among the list of products they are most likely to buy.

    I have found that being constantly bombarded with offers in the IM/MMO market can cloud your judgement regarding what kind of salespage is appealing to the target audience to what is not.

    Fancy graphics and videos can be a great turn off in some markets and I have found that many a time a simple salesletter (sometimes an ugly looking one) converts better than a professional looking salespage.

    Alexa as always has made great suggestions.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by VijayNadaGuru View Post

      I have found that being constantly bombarded with offers in the IM/MMO market can cloud your judgement regarding what kind of salespage is appealing to the target audience to what is not.
      I'm sure this is absolutely right.

      I suspect that even many less-than-ideal copywriters fall into this trap, with the result that some of their clients' sales pages are totally unsuited to the niche. Many people looking at cauliflower soup recipes, domestic desalination technology and picture-framing courses probably don't respond to sales pages with screaming headlines in which Every Word Starts With A Capital Letter: they probably don't even read them.
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      • Profile picture of the author VijayNadaGuru
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        I'm sure this is absolutely right.

        I suspect that even many less-than-ideal copywriters fall into this trap, with the result that some of their clients' sales pages are totally unsuited to the niche. Many people looking at cauliflower soup recipes, domestic desalination technology and picure-framing courses probably don't respond to sales pages with screaming headlines in which Every Word Starts With A Capital Letter: they probably don't even read them.
        Not to forget an autoplay video with no controls, eye hurting graphic headlines, count down timer, exit pop-ups etc
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  • Profile picture of the author GMM
    Posted this under the wrong thread initially, sorry.

    Alexa, I just came across this post and want to say thank you so much for your excellent advice. I tried ClickBank a few years ago and failed dismally and have just started again with a little more success but nowhere near as good as it could or should be. Your 10 point checklist and other comments are going to be engrained in my mind for every product that I look at promoting from now on. I will be closing off my advertising for my current product campaigns, especially the one with the highest gravity, it's getting loads of impressions using exact 2,3 and 4 word keyword phrases but clicks are dismal at less than 2% and sales even worse.

    Got to rush off now and look at the other end of the Clickbank scale. Thanks once again for the treasure of info.

    Chow chow,
    Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author GMM
    Update after using only 1 of Alexa's points from her checklist

    After a bit of consideration I decided to keep my current product live for a few days as it already had stats and would provide a good benchmark. I checked the landing pages that I was using (4 different ones) and 3 of them fell foul of the 'No Leaks' check, having opt-in pages. I changed my links to only open landing pages that had no opt-in sign-ups etc. and 48 hours later my CB order form impression count had increased by 120%. WOW!

    Sadly, my order form submits did not increase in conjunction with this (only running at about 4.5%), but that's probably to do with the product (high gravity etc).

    I always like to make only one change at a time to see the effect and this one change is definitely a big step in the right direction. Next up I will be looking for a more suitable product that ticks all the boxes of Alexa's checklist. Cant wait to see the results. More updates to follow.

    Thanks again, Alexa,

    Chow chow,
    Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author GMM
    Sorry, posted on wrong thread so deleted.
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  • Profile picture of the author christina ward
    I use gravity over 50, and earning per sell over 20$.

    Thank you
    christina.
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  • Profile picture of the author dagaul101
    The price per commission as well as the popularity would be what I would go for
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by beep beep View Post

      Well, I was feeling generous and energetic at the time, so I wrote up a rather extensive critique of the sales page. And I told the vendor what problems I saw from top to bottom of the sales page... explaining why they were problems, and how he could easily remedy what was lacking. I even wrote quite a bit of copy for him, and told him specific images he should use that would be more effective than what he was using. Plus, I explained to him how to much more effectively highlight the testimonials he had, a couple of which were really impressive if properly showcased. Also, I suggested a more appropriate pricing structure for his product. Etc.

      Now, I wasn't looking for any remuneration or work from the vendor. This was something given away gratis.

      I was quite polite and emailed the vendor with my suggestions.

      And... never received a reply. And the sales page never changed.

      beep beep
      Imagine that! A total stranger emails a laundry list of why his sales page sucks, what needs to change and what it should be changed to, and the vendor ignored it? Whooda thunk it? :p

      From my perspective, if John Carlton emails me such a list, I jump all over it. If Clayton Makepeace emails me such a list, it gets done. At least as a test...

      If "beep beep" emails me such a list, with no intro or bona fides, it gets trashed. Not because it's necessarily bad advice. It's just unsolicited advice from a stranger with no context to give it value.
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  • Profile picture of the author cantaxian
    OMG There is a valley of information here for newbie like me . I have bookmarked almost all your threads I found while reading this . Hope to taste some success with your guidelines Alexa, This was immensely immensely helpful.

    Thank you very much for providing these guidelines .
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  • Profile picture of the author NoBSGuy
    Originally Posted by georgeg_g View Post

    Using CB and so far i've been choosing products to promote that had low popularity ,thinking that competition will be less rough.
    But lately am not sure,cause if you exclude the avrg-sale, commission,refrd etc
    they dont really matter as much as popularity and gravity,which shows the potential earnings you could make but also the competition.

    Which criteria do you use for product selection?
    Hi,
    I stick to high gravity, quality products, and there`s a reason for this.
    They convert better.

    Even if you want to promote a product in a highly competitive niche, there will be no probs at all if you bring your efforts into the right keywords. The weight loss niche, for example, is highly competitive but has so many relative keyword phrases to use that it is next to impossible to not find a good low competition keyword related to it and start making profits.

    Yes, you can
    Dennis
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  • Profile picture of the author PPCprof
    go for medium gravity.

    too high and its already over saturated.
    too low means the general public is not interested in such offer.

    go for medium.

    and it depends on the niche as well.

    for IM niche a 200 gravity would be medium.

    but in dog training 90+ would be medium.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by PPCprof View Post

      go for medium gravity.

      too high and its already over saturated.
      too low means the general public is not interested in such offer.

      go for medium.

      and it depends on the niche as well.

      for IM niche a 200 gravity would be medium.

      but in dog training 90+ would be medium.
      "Too low" could just mean that the offer is not well-publicized, and people simply haven't heard of it yet. Another explanation is that not a lot of affiliates are promoting it.

      1 affiliate making 100 sales would give a gravity of ~1, as I understand the calculation. 100 affiliates making 1 sale each would give a gravity ~100. Neither one measures whether or not the public would be interested in the offer...
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by PPCprof View Post

      too high and its already over saturated.
      Not necessarily.

      There are many internet marketing products, in particular, with very high gravities caused by affiliates buying one copy each through their own affiliate-links. High gravity doesn't necessarily signify that any affiliate is successfully promoting or selling it at all.

      Think about this. I mean it very, very literally: I'm not just making some theoretical, abstruse, semantic, pedantic point here - it's actually true and it's real. High gravity does NOT in itself necessarily signify that any affiliate is successfully promoting or selling it at all.

      Originally Posted by PPCprof View Post

      too low means the general public is not interested in such offer.
      Not necessarily.

      It might mean that affiliates aren't very interested in promoting the offer. Some of those offers can be real gold-dust. The few affiliates who know about it may be selling it by the thousand, without the gravity moving up at all.

      It's very common - for many reasons - for low-gravity products to outsell high-gravity ones.

      There's no intrinsic correlation between gravity and numbers of sales, nor between gravity and conversion-rates.
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  • Profile picture of the author WishfulDoing
    Alexa, I'm new to affiliate marketing and was just going through the process of viewing ClickBank offers to promote. Based on your criteria, I was way off! You just saved me lots of time and money. Thanks you!
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  • Profile picture of the author filippot51
    what has been told here is very interesting and of high value.
    How can I know (leaving other considerations a part that are important ,as no optin etc etc)what is the trend actually of clickbank products what kind of products sell better I can find a beautiful clean vendor with a high commission per sale..and the product is not sold because people are not interested .I found some decent product (i dont understand why lot of clickbank products have terrible graphic with yello and red lights etc etc ).Where to gather the informations of what the people like to buy in the last 2 months or the last six month tops sellers?
    I can have 2000 people a day in my website and promote a vendor that sells something that people has no interest to buy
    thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author wwwIMHire
    Not really sure but whatever CB products you choose you will need traffic. I am sure of that.
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    • Profile picture of the author filippot51
      you can have 10000 people coming to your website for interesting content monthly but if you redirect them to a web site elegant refined but selling something they are no interested to buy your efforts will be vain
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      • Profile picture of the author filippot51
        we PRE-SELL we warm up potential buyers ,but if we warm them up into something they are not interested to buy ..what is the point of your beautiful traffic on your website?
        People like white Mercedes and not black Mercedes ,,,now if i send them to the vendor specialized in black Mercedes i dont make one i say one dollar ,also if the Mercedes is a excellent perfoming car(only an example OF COURSE) because the actual trend is only to buy White Mercedes
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Originally Posted by filippot51 View Post

          we PRE-SELL we warm up potential buyers ,but if we warm them up into something they are not interested to buy ..what is the point of your beautiful traffic on your website?
          People like white Mercedes and not black Mercedes ,,,now if i send them to the vendor specialized in black Mercedes i dont make one i say one dollar ,also if the Mercedes is a excellent perfoming car(only an example OF COURSE) because the actual trend is only to buy White Mercedes
          If you know that color is the real issue, you go for the rebels...

          "Tired of looking at a sea of white Benzes? Want to stick out from the crowd while still getting the benefits of a Benz? Want a deal on a car most people aren't smart enough to want? Check Joe Blow's Black Mercedes Benz Salon."

          (You'd need to tighten that up, but you get the idea.)
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        • Profile picture of the author celente
          Originally Posted by filippot51 View Post

          we PRE-SELL we warm up potential buyers ,but if we warm them up into something they are not interested to buy ..what is the point of your beautiful traffic on your website?
          People like white Mercedes and not black Mercedes ,,,now if i send them to the vendor specialized in black Mercedes i dont make one i say one dollar ,also if the Mercedes is a excellent perfoming car(only an example OF COURSE) because the actual trend is only to buy White Mercedes
          yes the Here is my effing product, BUY IT!

          wow, great job.

          But the pre-sell is even more important now, even in this economy as people still have money, but they are more careful with how they are going to spend it. So you have to pre-sell and get them even more warmed up.
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  • Profile picture of the author Murlu
    What I always do is to take a look at the product I plan to promote and actually use it. You can get a hold of most product owners and ask for a review copy.

    Having used a product gives you the insight about what you need to convey to your audience. Likewise, it will always be more believable (and trustful) when you talk to your audience because you have experience with the products.

    So, you can parse out the crap products, make sure you're delivering quality and easily stand behind your promotion - that's how I do it.
    Signature

    PLRArticlesNow.com - Niche-Ready PLR Articles Packs at just $12.95 each!

    Murlu.com - Where I write about starting an online business and taking your blog to the next level.

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  • Profile picture of the author Spyder77
    Lots of good info here (I've bookmarked it). I'm still in the content creation phase and plan to add the affiliate links once sufficient content is in place, the sites have made enough progress in the SERPs, and there is some organic traffic coming in (ideally this will all happen at the same time, though I'm expecting to have to go with the flow and adapt my affiliate linking according).

    One thing I've ruled out is linking to affiliate sales pages from my domain's home page or SEO optimized article pages. This is to keep OBL on those pages as low as possible. Plus I'd rather have the affiliate links on their own page(s) that are off the home page, and where I do whatever additional pre-sell there that I go with (product review, etc) that is product specific.

    I'm planning to implement this in different ways on my two sites which are both in different niches. The sites themselves are also blueprinted & designed differently: both are WP, but one is a micro-niche site that is made to look as static as possible and not 'bloggy' because that better fits the marketing approach I'm taking with it. The other is more of a traditional blog, and is in a broader niche.

    Both are content driven, while the content itself is presented differently to match the static vs. blog visual formats adopted. One also lends itself best toward a 1 (or possibly second later) product while the broader, bloggy blog is better suited toward selling several different product (as in maybe 4 or 5 CB products).

    I'll be using Alexa's checklist for selection, with the final verdict being based on a review copy of the product: I'm not paying for it to have to make that money back after X number of sales, provided its even worth selling. If the vendor isn't willing to provide it for review, *shrug* their loss as they aren't the only game on CB. As with others, I'm not going to burn the list by selling crap I haven't checked out myself and felt satisfied was value for the money and not recycled PLR or other garbage.

    Anyway, this thread is a goldmine of good info.

    -Spyder
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  • Profile picture of the author Phillips Pierce
    First of all, you got the basics wrong. If a product is low gravity (in other words it is NOT SELLING) that should tell you something about the market demand for that product. If the gravity is 200 and several hundred individual affiliates made money promoting that during the past week then why can't YOU make money off it as well? Go where the money is. Don't try to materialize it out of thin air.

    Though product selection is important, so long as you stick with reasonably popular products you probably wont have issues with product appeal. You need to be focusing on competitive research and rob other affiliates of their traffic.
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