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HOLY COW! I accidentally made my first dollar online! HELP!

by thegoddessofeleven
23 replies
I'm boggled. I've been around the Warrior Forum for what feels like ages (but has actually only been eight months or so). I've never made a dime. For all the ebooks I've bought, Adsense I've splashed over blogs and webpages, I had ZERO success with ANY campaign I've ever began.

I've tried every method under the sun... sort of. It's my usual M.O. to start down a road, start second-guessing myself, and scrap whatever I'm doing before I've even gotten started. I recognize that about myself and I hate it, but I've been unable to overcome it so far.

Today, for the first time in months, I logged into my Clickbank account to try to find a product that's associated with a niche I'm researching. I mean, it's been so long since I logged in, I couldn't even remember my Clickbank username. I had to dig around in my email account to find it.

I logged in and the welcome page loaded. I moved to click on the "Marketplace" link when... what? What the heck is that? What is that long bar down there, flanked above and below by nubs? Holy crap, did I make a SALE???

I did.

I did!!

I made a sale!

From a product for which I put up a website (MONTHS ago!) and wrote two articles to promote before I scrapped the entire project because I decided the product was worthless after reading it, myself.

But, there it is, worthless no more. I made a sale, quite accidentally, in the middle of the night on Saturday, December 13th. And a commission of $24.92.

My first sale. And my first taste of truly passive income.

I'm beside myself. Sitting here in my cubicle (yes, I'm at work... don't judge me!), minding my own business, and I suddenly have more money than I did when I arrived. And it isn't even payday.

Wow. I'm just astounded.

But I need help! I have no idea how where this sale came from. How can I find out? If it's too late for this one, how can I track where my future sales come from?
#accidentally #cow #dollar #holy #made #online
  • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
    Congrats!

    Did you use any tracking IDs in the ClickBank links you posted anywhere? Using those can help you keep track of where the sales are coming from.
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    Congratulations. It's a good feeling remember it. There will be many more to come.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gene Pimentel
    Congratulations on the sale! I don't know if you can learn where the buyer came from at this point (unless you do some detective work in AWstats), but for the future, you should set up Google Analytics for yourself.

    Here's to many more sales!
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    • Profile picture of the author Benchlegs
      Congratulations! You're on your way!

      You seem to be doing what I'm constantly trying to fight off doing...that is buying every new WSO that sounds promising, but never focusing on the last WSO to complete the actions necessary for it to begin working.

      The WF is a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing as there is SO much excellent information here along with a lot of really caring people always willing to help.
      A curse because there's too much info here, and I find myself always thinking "the next WSO is REALLY gonna be the Holy Grail" when probably any WSO that I purchased would work if I just FOCUSSED on it and gave it the time each requires.

      So pick something and focus, focus, focus! If you don't see any results, then pick something else.

      You've broken the ice and that's the hardest part, so keep on keepin' on. Happiness is just around the bend.
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  • Profile picture of the author Imran Naseem
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      Congrats! It's a terrific feeling, isn't it?

      Using an ad tracker of some sort will help you see where your sales and clicks come from. There are several out there. Just run a Google search for ad tracking.

      One of the quickest ways is, as someone said, to use Clickbank's own tracking tool. You create extensions to your CB affiliate link that you can use to follow the clicks. Look in CB how to add tracking code:
      https://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_...aff_question_7

      Sylvia
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  • Profile picture of the author Kelly Verge
    So here's the key: whatever you stopped doing on that site/niche months ago... ramp it up. Stick with it. Go from making a sale every 3 months, to every 3 weeks, to every 3 days, to 3 a day.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Burton
    This says to me a few things.

    First, Congratulations are in order. Even though you scrapped the project originally, you didn't pull it down, and by leaving it out there you still eventually made a sale.

    Second, you might want to revisit what you'd done on that particular project and see if you can't increase its exposure a bit.

    You said
    From a product for which I put up a website (MONTHS ago!) and wrote two articles to promote before I scrapped the entire project because I decided the product was worthless after reading it, myself.
    Perhaps you can find your way to create a handful more articles. It's possible this is a fluke event, but if you put a few more articles out there, they too might lead to a few sales down the road. Likewise what you already have out there might still land a few more sales as well.

    If from 2 articles you made 1 sale in, say, 6 months, and you created several more articles. You just might end up making 2 or 3 sales every six months. While this sounds like chicken feed to some folks, we all start somewhere. I'm happy for an extra sale, whether it's an hour after I did something for it, or a year after.

    Some people make fortunes with a small number of sales of a product over a long period of time. Especially if they are making a small number of sales of a lot of different products.

    $25 every 6 months doesn't seem like much. Only $50 a year. But if you happen to have 60 different products out there each bringing you $25 every 6 months, it does add up. Especially if these are trickling in from a 'fire and forget' marketing effort which this sale sounds like. 60 products would be about 10 product sales per month, or $250 per month.

    Not a fortune, but it's a nice little stepping stone if you are looking to achieve a supplemental income of say $1,000 a month.

    It's always good to know that even what we think was a flop can still come back to benefit us in several ways later.
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  • Profile picture of the author thegoddessofeleven
    You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for the kind replies, words of encouragement, and suggestions. The sale may have been a fluke, but it gives me motivation to keep trying, which is exactly what I needed right now.



    My method of choice had been to submit articles to EZineArticles with a resource box that directed users to a squeeze page. So, technically, any sale I made would technically come from the squeeze page. Would the CB tracker be able to tell me which article the user came from to get to the squeeze page?
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    • Profile picture of the author thegoddessofeleven
      Originally Posted by thegoddessofeleven View Post

      My method of choice had been to submit articles to EZineArticles with a resource box that directed users to a squeeze page. So, technically, any sale I made would technically come from the squeeze page. Would the CB tracker be able to tell me which article the user came from to get to the squeeze page?

      Edit:

      It had been so long since I launched the campaign, I forgot that I had changed my campaign midway through. I started out with a squeeze page, but when I realized that my aWeber account was costing $20 a month and was collecting dust, I canceled the account, deleted the squeeze page, and replaced it with a page that immediately redirects users to the product's sales page via my hoplink. I suppose I should revisit that aWeber idea...
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      • Profile picture of the author sylviad
        Originally Posted by thegoddessofeleven View Post

        Edit:

        It had been so long since I launched the campaign, I forgot that I had changed my campaign midway through. I started out with a squeeze page, but when I realized that my aWeber account was costing $20 a month and was collecting dust, I canceled the account, deleted the squeeze page, and replaced it with a page that immediately redirects users to the product's sales page via my hoplink. I suppose I should revisit that aWeber idea...
        Then it would appear that you were better off sending your visitors directly to the sales page.

        Yes, by all means redo Aweber, but make sure you take advantage of the people who opt-in. Don't just let them opt-in and then forget them. Do a good auto responder series around the product you are selling. On each AR message, always include your affiliate link to the product sales page. Within your message series (about every 3rd or 5th message) do one message that is solely to promote the product you're pushing.

        Make those promotions positive, tell them the benefits of the product - and if possible, let them know how it worked for you. You'll need to convince them that you have seen and used it - or at least that you have some knowledge on its benefits.

        Remember that you want the sales page to make the actual sale. This is very important. You don't want to try selling them. You want to give them the benefits. Let the sales page do the selling. People don't want to be pitched to twice.

        What you do is pre-sell, and a common method to do that is with a review. So you could do an unbiased review as your AR promo message.

        If money is a problem for you, there are free auto responders you can use, like Email Aces is pretty good. But eventually you'll want to get your own AR. If you can, get a 6-month or 1-year account at Aweber or GetResponse. This will reduce your monthly fee. I use Get Response and if I purchase monthly it's $17. If I purchase by the year, it's $12 a month. The only thing is, you have to pay the whole amount up front. But in the end, you do save money.

        I just purchased a 6-month contract for $89 which makes it about $14 a month. A small savings, but every penny counts.

        Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author Stangracer
        Originally Posted by thegoddessofeleven View Post

        My method of choice had been to submit articles to EZineArticles with a resource box that directed users to a squeeze page. So, technically, any sale I made would technically come from the squeeze page. Would the CB tracker be able to tell me which article the user came from to get to the squeeze page?
        Originally Posted by thegoddessofeleven View Post

        Edit:

        It had been so long since I launched the campaign, I forgot that I had changed my campaign midway through. I started out with a squeeze page, but when I realized that my aWeber account was costing $20 a month and was collecting dust, I canceled the account, deleted the squeeze page, and replaced it with a page that immediately redirects users to the product's sales page via my hoplink.

        First congrats on your first sale. Keep it going...

        As far as clickbank tracking for each article:

        You would have to change the links in your resource box on your different ezine articles and add a variable to each link. The variable would be something like:

        yourlink.com/landingpage.html?w=EA1
        yourlink.com/landingpage.html?w=EA2

        Where the ?w=variable is added to your links.

        When someone clicked on your links it would carry the variable to your landing page where you would append it to your hoplink:

        AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=w (your variable)

        You can do this with a little PHP code, it really isn't that hard to do. If you would like the code just let me know.

        Tracking software can be somewhat expensive, but would track your links and tell you which article converted the sale. You would still need to change the links in your resource box to tracking links or redirect links if you wanted them to look good for the visitor.

        There is free tracking software available like tracking202 (service) and Prosper202 (self hosted), but they are mainly designed for PPC tracking.

        As you start growing your campaign and doing more campaigns, tracking will become more and more important.
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        • Profile picture of the author avandrunen
          Gratz Goddess,

          I can't wait for the feeling of my first sale...although I am hoping it is a little more deliberate than yours...

          With this taste of sales tho you may want to re-attack this whole IM thing and make your futures sales deliberate sales...ones you have gone after.

          Good luck
          Adrian
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        • Profile picture of the author thegoddessofeleven
          Originally Posted by Stangracer View Post

          First congrats on your first sale. Keep it going...

          As far as clickbank tracking for each article:

          You would have to change the links in your resource box on your different ezine articles and add a variable to each link. The variable would be something like:

          yourlink.com/landingpage.html?w=EA1
          yourlink.com/landingpage.html?w=EA2

          Where the ?w=variable is added to your links.

          When someone clicked on your links it would carry the variable to your landing page where you would append it to your hoplink:

          AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=w (your variable)

          You can do this with a little PHP code, it really isn't that hard to do. If you would like the code just let me know.

          Tracking software can be somewhat expensive, but would track your links and tell you which article converted the sale. You would still need to change the links in your resource box to tracking links or redirect links if you wanted them to look good for the visitor.

          There is free tracking software available like tracking202 (service) and Prosper202 (self hosted), but they are mainly designed for PPC tracking.

          As you start growing your campaign and doing more campaigns, tracking will become more and more important.

          This is exactly what I needed. Thank you! I have a little experience with PHP, so I think I can probably puzzle it out. I just didn't realize I had the option of doing it this way.

          Many thanks!
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          • Profile picture of the author Stangracer
            Originally Posted by thegoddessofeleven View Post

            This is exactly what I needed. Thank you! I have a little experience with PHP, so I think I can probably puzzle it out. I just didn't realize I had the option of doing it this way.

            Many thanks!

            Your very welcome...
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  • Profile picture of the author thomasukm
    First Congrats!

    Keep doing what you're doing right, and you will be ok.

    Now, here's your question: How do know where my sales came from?
    As you mentioned, the sales came from some articles that you posted some months ago, and if you know where the articles is, go and check it out.

    And one other way is to search your clickbank hoplink in google, just search using this format:

    "yourcbnickname.vendor.hop.clickbank.net"

    yourcbnickname: your cb login user name
    vendor: the vendor id

    Thomas
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  • Profile picture of the author moneymaker1206
    Congratulations on making your first sale! I remember mine like it was yesterday. A $10 CB commission. haha I danced around the room like a crazy man.
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  • Profile picture of the author sradd1959
    Hi,
    That's great. If you want to make more sales with your home business you need to spend some time learning how to get you products or services in fron to people all over the net

    Selwyn
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  • Profile picture of the author zeppb
    Congrats! I had made my first sale about 2 months ago so I know exactly how you feel. Good luck with your future projects.

    I actually made a sale last week from a niche i stopped working on 3 months ago and now I'm planning to write some more articles and see how it goes.

    One main thing to do is make sure you've had enough traffic going to there before you decide to ditch the niche. Looking back now I only had about 80 visits when I stopped working on it so that was a big mistake for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    clickbank DOES work, it just needs consistency. Once it's rolling it's rolling. Make more blogs, promote, articles, squidoos, reviews etc....
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Marshall
    Congratulations! Two weeks ago I made my first money on Clickbank. I started in October. I made $40.00 with two sales in one day! One of my articles was featured on a prominent website, and I got about 100 views in one day. Two people bought something from me!

    You should know that you won't get paid for that Clickbank sale until you make at least 5 sales with 5 different credit cards. I found that out after I made my first sale. Now I am ramping up my article marketing to try to get more clicks to my websites.
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    • Profile picture of the author thegoddessofeleven
      Originally Posted by kevinmarshall80 View Post

      Congratulations! Two weeks ago I made my first money on Clickbank. I started in October. I made $40.00 with two sales in one day! One of my articles was featured on a prominent website, and I got about 100 views in one day. Two people bought something from me!

      You should know that you won't get paid for that Clickbank sale until you make at least 5 sales with 5 different credit cards. I found that out after I made my first sale. Now I am ramping up my article marketing to try to get more clicks to my websites.
      Hmm. No, I didn't know that. I suppose that means I need to get busy on my marketing efforts.
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