Selling your eBook on Clickbank

Despite what most people think, you don't really make your money on the up front sale. The real money is made on the back end sales after the customer makes that first purchase.

For example, suppose you buy a new car. The dealer makes a few thousand dollars on it (the rest goes to the manufacturer, etc). What happens then? They offer you back end sales such as a warranty, a year's worth of oil changes/inspections, winterization, etc. for additional costs. They will, in the long run, make more from your new car purchase from the additional services that they offer you than from the actual purchase of the car itself.

In your case, suppose you offer your ebook for $15 and give 100% commission to your affiliates. Yes, I know, you can only give 75% commission at Clickbank but bear with me for the example.

Say your affiliates manage to sell 1,000 copies of your ebook. You haven't seen a cent of that $15,000 because you have a 100% commission. However, you now have 1,000 people on your email list (you are planning to collect buyer emails, right?). They've spent $15 with you, you provided them with good information, they like you, you contact them regularly through email to offer them more advice, tips, etc. Then, you offer them the "advanced" course for, say, $49.95. Suppose you get 10% of those 1,000 buyers to take you up on this offer. You've now made $4,995 plus you can keep selling them more courses, ebooks, affiliate products, coaching/training (this is where the big bucks are, by the way), and so on for years to come.

If you do this, be sure to segment your autoresponder list. For example, when a customer buys your initial $15 ebook, they're put on one email list. This email list is where you will promote your $49.95 ebook occasionally. Those that buy the $49.95 ebook will be removed from the $15 ebook list and put on one where you promote a $97 product, for example. You keep funneling the customers into ever higher priced products this way so that eventually you'll have a list of people who have purchased everything that you've put out--which may amount to several thousand dollars per customer--and they not only trust you but love you. These are the people you start offering coaching/training to for $495/mo. or more (depending on what you think they'll pay).

Anyway, my point is that you don't have to worry about not making money on the first ebook. It's future ebooks, videos, membership sites, courses, coaching/training, etc. where you make the real money. Your affiliates make a lousy $15/sale and you get to benefit from being able to sell over and over again to the customers they bring in for you.

It depends on the affiliate. Some only see dollar signs and the better it converts and the higher the commission the harder they'll promote it. Others refuse to promote anything that isn't a quality product that actually helps those who buy it, no matter how much the affiliate themselves actually earns from it.

Make sure you provide some affiliate tools such as prewritten articles and emails, PPC keywords, banners, etc. for the less experienced affiliates. The full time affiliates will either make their own or will have been around long enough to write their own content that matches their own style and audience but the new affiliates will need the help.

Thanks Alex! Sometimes with all the products, tips, tricks and strategies, it's hard to break thru the noise to see how simple this business is... It's about building trusted relationships!