What Is A "Leaky" Salespage?

I don't, really.

I much prefer it if they don't have a link from the sales page to the affiliate page, but to me it isn't really a "leak", per se, because:-

(i) The Customer Distribution Requirement serves its purpose well, for the most part: it protects affiliates from the risk that their customers can become affiliates themselves to try to "save the commission" by buying through their own link;

(ii) Most customers wouldn't know how to do that anyway;

(iii) If your potential customer is already an active affiliate (i.e. the CDR doesn't stop him from grabbing your commission), there isn't a way to earn a commission on a sale to him anyway, because even if the sales page doesn't mention the word "Clickbank" (which some do), the order page obviously does;

(iv) You're not really allowed to conceal, in your pre-sales materials, that you're an affiliate earning a commission anyway, so it's not exactly news to anyone that there are "affiliates".

I certainly wouldn't let a link to an affiliate page put me off promoting a product which otherwise fitted my requirements.

Don't confuse your site visitor. You can build a mailing list with your opt in box or you can close a sale but you can't have both.

Ask yourself, what is the purpose of this website. Then act accordingly. Give your user a simple choice perform "x" or close the web browser.

You'll increase conversions, then again you'll increase your bounce rate.

"There are no choices in life, just trade-offs".

It depends what the vendor sends the people on his list.

If he does nothing wrong, then your cookie still lasts 60 days and there's no problem.

If he sends them emails containing his own affiliate link (or his wife's, or his dog's, or his cousin's friend's cousin's) to the product, then you lose, because "the most recent cookie gets the sale".

By the way, don't let anyone tell you that you can see whether they're "cheating" by opting in yourself and seeing what comes back: that's completely wrong, and invalid, and mistaken thinking (explained in detail in the long poll/thread linked to above).

No opt-in box and a convincing sales page, yes.

I don't agree at all with the "gravity 20+" criterion. In fact, my best-converting and highest-selling products have gravities well below 10.

My own little 10-point checklist for product selection is here, if it helps.

A very good move, in my opinion. But choose the product very carefully indeed, because if you get that wrong, you waste a lot of time, effort and energy. You can correct other mistakes, more or less, but that one not so easily!

You should. That's just black and white. Otherwise you may be aiming at a ceiling of about 15% of what you can make from it.

I don't agree with this at all. I have very successful vendor clients (copywriting clients) who have sales pages with opt-in boxes, and have tested and proven that this works better for them. They're not selling through affiliates at Clickbank, though.

It really isn't, Jason. Not in this context. It's not about whether they leave the site (your cookie will protect you for 60 days, if not replaced, and anyone can leave a site by closing the window anyway). It's about whether there's the potential for the vendor producing another way of paying for the product that loses you your commission. And in any case an opt-in (the biggest leak of all) doesn't take them off the site.

Absolutely - definitely.

There are two different ways you can do it:-

(i) Send the traffic to a squeeze page (incentivised opt-in and virtually no other content), which many people do and can work very successfully;

(ii) Send the traffic to a website (even if it's a small blog with a review or two, an article or two and some bits and pieces - huge content not required) which has the incentivised opt-in on every page (easy, with blogging software: just put it in a sidebar).

I use (ii) and have some (masked) hoplinks on the site. I get some immediate, direct sales from people who don't even opt in, as well.

I've tested with and without squeeze-pages and do better without. There are reasons for that which may not apply to everyone (basically, it's about my traffic and whom I've attracted with my articles). It helps me to show people that there's a website there, with more content on it, like the article they just read that took them there, before I ask them to opt in. Or at least at the same time as I ask them to opt in.

You want (I hope) to build a list in whatever niche you're promoting a product. If you don't want to build an IM-advice list, then don't promote an IM-advice product! :p

Yes; we do for sure.

Exactly so.

I haven't properly split-tested this with all my niches (only half of them), but I'm now using it with all of them, because it suits me anyway.

If we're talking about the IM-advice "niche", then it's not my niche and I don't know.

But my guesses are that (i) it quite possibly is, yes; and (ii) you'll be right to use confirmed opt-in rather than single opt-in for that "niche".

Well, different niches suit different people, obviously. May I just mention that there are a lot of small sub-niches in what one might collectively call "health" which can be pretty good, because the potential customers can be "desperate buyers"? There are potential problems, too, of course.

That one is easy to advise about. You won't find any successful affiliates telling you not to.

Good luck!