Would you build a house without solid foundations? Probably not. And if you did then it wouldn’t take much to bring it crashing back down to the ground. We all know that foundations are important for buildings, but what you might not understand is that the right “foundations” are also crucial for successful affiliate marketing.

So what are the foundations of affiliate marketing?

• Selling a great product (if the product you’re promoting isn’t very good then you’ll have a high refund rate, dissatisfied customers, or people just won’t buy it in the first place).
• A proven marketing method — whether you like to build multiple highly targeted niche affiliate sites or sell through a highly personal blog, it pays to stick to a method that is proven and which is known to work for others. Once you’ve found a great method, rinse and repeat it for increased profits over time.
• Sufficient niche research. Not all niches are created equal! Some are always going to be more profitable than others, some have more competition, others are fleeting yet lucrative for a short period of time, whilst there are always the tried-and-true “evergreen niches”. Picking the right niche(s) can make the difference between struggling to make money and lining your bank account with cash.

If there’s one affiliate marketing foundation I see people ignoring the most, it’s niche research. Many affiliates seem far too keen to dive straight into site building, content creation, or traffic generation. It’s kind of like jumping into a car and driving off before you check to see if there’s any fuel in the tank — you won’t get very far, and once the warning signs come up it could be too late!

The importance of finding profitable niches should never be underestimated. You will never regret spending that little bit of extra time in the early stages of niche research, as it will almost certainly result in you making more sales.

Let’s take a brief look at the mistakes that many affiliates make with their niche research:

• Not remembering that the long-term trend is your friend. It can be tempting to promote products in the latest red-hot niche, but often these can be here today and gone tomorrow. On the other hand, evergreen niches such as pet training, hobbies and sports, weight loss, and relationship help will almost certainly always have long-term appeal. This means that all your hard effort will keep on reaping rewards for years to come. Compare this with the frustration of building a website in a non-evergreen niche, where you might make lots quickly only to have your earnings taper off over time. If you’re new to affiliate marketing, or want to build a consistent and passive income, then start with niches that have long-term appeal. Think of markets that will be popular in years to come, and promote accordingly!
• Ignoring product quality. If you sell poor quality products then you will have the unpleasant experience of high refund rates, dissatisfied customers, and low earnings. However, if you do your due diligence and thoroughly check for great products that offer lots of value (and have top-notch customer service and support) then you’ll be on your way to making much bigger commissions. Keep an eye out for affiliate products that really deliver on their promises, and avoid anything that doesn’t have positive reviews from REAL customers (avoid relying on so-called “review sites” that are just soft selling the product). The best way to do your market research here is to look on forums or discussion boards in the niche and see what people are saying about the product in question. Don’t hesitate to ask the product owner for review access as well, so that you can thoroughly check it out for yourself. Some niches have far more quality products than others do.
• Avoiding or fearing competition. When you next have some spare time for more niche research, head over to any popular Internet marketing forum; one of the most common complaints will along the lines of: “I can’t find any niche that doesn’t have much competition. Where are all the ‘hidden gems’? Unfortunately, when it comes to online niches there aren’t many hidden gems left! Niches with low competition and high demand are in short supply, and the very nature of the Internet means it is difficult to hide any such niche from others for long. However, instead of fearing competition you should learn to embrace it. Competitive niches have high competition for a reason — because there is lots of money for the making. A great example of this is the fat loss niche; it appears over-saturated at first. However, when you think of all the various sub niches (lose stomach fat, get 6 pack abs, fat loss diets, etc) that are closely related yet different in terms of customer base, you will realize that there is still room to carve out your own little slice of the profit. These competitive niches also tend to have high quality products available to affiliates as well, which is an added bonus.

The secret lies in creatively seeking your own slice of profitable niches. If you can master niche (and keyword) research then you’ll do well in evergreen niches that still have that higher level of competition. The benefit of this approach is that you will build a lasting business that will continue to earn you profit for years to come. Long-term profitability is the biggest benefit of proper niche research!

About the Author
Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and internet marketing tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. Now that Simon has explained why it’s so important to find a profitable niche (and the biggest mistakes that you might be making) it’s time to discover exactly how to find truly profitable niches. You can learn some of the best niche and keyword research methods with his free video training report called How to Find Profitable Niches. You can get it here free (and receive an accompanying PDF report too).

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Proven Techniques for Finding a Profitable Niche: Part 1
2. Proven Techniques for Finding a Profitable Niche: Part 2
3. Three Constants in Affiliate Marketing

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In this episode, Jeff shares how he accidentally stumbled on the formula that lets product owners generate huge profits from their launches, and which has since been used by industry legends such as Frank Kern, Ryan Deiss and many more to generate maximum sales and exposure for their products. Jeff shares how his product launch formula can be used in almost any niche market, not just the “big 3″!

You’ll also learn:

• How Jeff steadily refined and improved his launches to make them as powerful as possible
• What’s working now in product launches, and how to apply it to your business
• How you can build a pre-launch list that will be a valuable long-term asset
• The key stages in a product launch, and how they all fit together
• How to run successful evergreen launches (meaning you can launch over and over, reaping the benefits each time)
• Jeff’s #1 tip on how to pull off the ultimate evergreen launch!
• And much more…

Jeff is the guy the gurus look to for advice on how to launch their latest products, and people pay big bucks for his advice on how to make more from their products, so you don’t want to miss this episode! It’s packed full of awesome advice that any infopreneur can use to take their sales to new heights!

More from Jeff:

• Product Launch Formula — Jeff’s flagship training, and everything you need to know to successfully launch your product
• JeffWalker.com — Jeff’s personal blog with thoughts on business, marketing and more

Other ways to listen:

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here to subscribe via RSS (non iTunes)
• Click here for more episodes

If you’re enjoying the show, please leave us a review on iTunes! Please also leave us a comment below and let us know what you think of the show, future guests you’d like us to interview, or topics you’d like us to cover! We love to hear your feedback.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 8: Email Marketing Mastery with Andre Chaperon
2. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 7: Copywriting & Sales Secrets with Chris Haddad
3. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 6: Traffic Master Justin Brooke

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This year’s ClickBank Exchange is only a few months away! We’ve just opened registration and tickets are moving fast. The second annual ClickBank Exchange will take place on August 10th and 11^th in New York City, and we’ll be satisfied with nothing less than making this the best Internet marketing event of the year.

Click here to visit the ClickBank Exchange Site.

This year, to bring you the absolute best in the industry, we conducted a global search for our hand picked selection of speakers. The result will be an unprecedented gathering of industry celebrities, experts and thought leaders that only ClickBank could gather in one place, at one time, for one incredible action packed, mind blowing weekend.

During this two-day exclusive and content rich experience, you will discover real time cash creation secrets from the top Internet marketing millionaires, and learn traffic, conversion, copywriting, and empire-building techniques that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

And as if that’s not enough to get you booking your flight, as a ClickBank Exchange attendee, you will rub elbows and share cocktails with the Internet marketing elite. Learn how become successful NOW, from those who have already done it hundreds of times over, including:

• Robert Cialdini: Dr. Cialdini has spent his entire career researching the science of influence, earning him an international reputation as an expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance and negotiation. Learn how to improve your customer engagement and conversions by incorporating into your sales process the valuable psychological principles taught by Dr. Cialdini, the most cited living social psychologist in the world today.
• Ryan Deiss: As 10+ year Internet marketing veteran, Deiss has become a widely followed and respected IM Guru releasing countless reports and courses on subjects ranging from Social Media to Continuity Programs and SEO. His company, Idea Incubator, currently contains 6 companies offering products in the health market, relationship market, IM market, and even household green cleaning products.
• Joe Polish: Founder of Piranha Marketing, Inc., creator of the Genius Network interview series and Genius Network Mastermind Group, Joe commands $25,000 for a half day of private consulting. Since 1994 his 3-day business transformation events have attracted people from around the world to learn from Joe and other top-level speakers how to build an “ELF” business—one that is Easy, Lucrative, and Fun.
• Chris Farrell: A full time Internet Marketer, Chris began in 2008 with no prior experience. Chris has steadily grown his business and following, creating dozens of online courses and eBooks and has made millions online.
• Ryan Lee: Ryan Lee is one the world’s most sought after marketing experts and entrepreneurs. He is the author of 2 best-selling books and has been featured in dozens of media outlets including the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the cover of Millionaire Blueprints. He helps over 220,000 people dominate their markets through his daily blog at www.ryanlee.com, his products, sold-out workshops and his coaching programs.
• Mike Hill: The master of traffic and conversion, and one of the most sought-after consultants in online marketing, Mike has forgotten more about online traffic and conversion than most will ever learn in a lifetime. Discover the latest trends from this marketing master.
• Chris Haddad: Chris “Mr. Moneyfingers” Haddad is an elite level copywriter you can’t hire at any price. He’s the “secret sauce” copy guy behind several multi-million dollar launches. Learn his secret – a unique approach to sales letters and sales videos that crawl into your prospect’s mind and force them to pay attention . . .
• And many more!

Click here for the full list of speakers.

Here’s the best part. As a loyal ClickBank Blog reader, we’d like to offer you an early bird rate to this year’s ClickBank Exchange for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. Book your ticket by May 11^th using coupon code “blogfan100” and save $100 off the conference price of $797. For other events featuring a lineup of speakers this good, you can expect to pay thousands of dollars. At $797 this event is a steal, which is why tickets are going fast. And with your $100 off limited time discount, you will be hard pressed to find a price this low for a conference of this caliber.

Don’t Miss Out. Register Now.

We’ve heard all of the excuses in the book. You don’t want to spend the money, you’ve got a vacation planned, we know the drill. But the bottom line is, investing in the Exchange is investing in your future. This is a conference for serious Internet marketers, ready to “get real” about reaching their potential and their ability to make money online. So grab your coupon code, lose the excuses, and make a commitment to yourself that you will be successful this year.

Register Now.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Announcing the ClickBank Exchange!
2. ClickBank Exchange 2011 Recap: A Look Into the Future of Internet Marketing
3. The Ultimate Internet Marketing Shortcut

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In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Andre’s personal philosophy on email marketing- and why so many people get it wrong
• Tips on how to get your audience to truly know, like and trust you, and how that leads to huge results
• The #1 secret to getting insanely high conversion rates
• Why Andre’s signature “Soap Opera Sequence” is the quickest way to build automated email profits
• List-building secrets for those of us without a list to market to
• And much more!

Andre is the guy the gurus look to when they need advice on email marketing—now you get the chance to learn straight from the master himself!

More from Andre:

• Autoresponder Madness
• Tiny Little Businesses (how to create profitable, sustainable businesses from start to finish)
• Affiliate Bully (a great example of Andre’s Soap Opera Sequence, with no opt-in required)
• The Autoresponder Madness process in a nutshell (referenced during the show)

Other ways to listen:

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here to subscribe via RSS (non iTunes)
• Click here for more episodes

If you’re enjoying the show, please leave us a review on iTunes! Please also leave us a comment below and let us know what you think of the show, future guests you’d like us to interview, or topics you’d like us to cover! We love to hear your feedback.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 7: Copywriting & Sales Secrets with Chris Haddad
2. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 6: Traffic Master Justin Brooke
3. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 1: Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

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Frankly, most business people will just not go through the “detailitis” required to test — which is why it’s a very good idea to model proven promotions. And in some cases where you’re only going to use something once or twice, or you’re dealing with a very small number, it’s just not worth testing; instead, you take your best shot. But let’s assume you’re working on something you intend to use over and over and over again in some significant quantity, so that it’s worth real effort to fine-tune it…

I have some tips for you: first of all, there’s non-testing testing — huh? Well, I describe that in my book ‘The Ultimate Sales Letter,’ where I talk about the steps to take with a finished sales letter before you actually mail it. Second, there’s split testing, which is the fastest way to test and get to a reasonable conclusion. Let’s assume you have a postcard and you want to leave everything the same but test four different headlines, and you have 4,000 similar addresses to mail to. You do “nth name testing”; that means Headline #A goes to every 4th name, Headline #B to every 5th name, Headline #C to every 5th name, etc.

So you evenly divide the list without bias among the headlines being tested. Some media (like Val-Pak or MoneyMailer) will let you split test within a single buy. Third, there’s testing against a control. A “control” is a marketing strategy that already works well and you’re using it on a continuing basis — maybe it’s a series of letters you mail every month. You have been using it long enough you know what it produces. You have a “known” to measure against. Now you can start trying to improve that control, ideally one step or variable at a time.

If I’m trying to beat a control, here are the “hot” variables I’ll look at closely, to see if there’s room for improvement:

1. The offer

2. The guarantee(s)

3.  The urgency of response

4. The big idea or big promise

5. The overcoming of skepticism i.e. credibility and believability

6. The style or tone of the writing itself

7. The look of the piece

By the way, little, very testable things DO sometimes make very big differences. Recently I showed an example in my newsletter of a guy who just added four rubber-stamped words to the outside of his envelope, and beat his control by 300%. I once brought a TV infomercial back from the dead by raising the price of the product.

Gary Halbert saved the Pearl Cream advertising by adding a particular bonus. In 1984, after attending my seminar, a dentist in Sacramento changed five words on his Val-Pak coupon and went from getting two or three new patients a month to 15 to 20. This is the sort of thing that makes direct-response advertising as frustrating as golf. (Did you happen to see John Daly miss a put seven times and scratch himself out of the tournament a few weeks back?  Ugh.)

Obviously, you can’t test if you can’t, won’t or don’t collect accurate data. You have to code every offer, and track where every ounce of business comes from. If you have employees who are lax about this, you must educate them about the importance, discipline them if they goof it up, and ultimately can ’em if they won’t do it right 100% of the time. I confess that I fly by the seat of my pants in my business more than I should, but I can’t fire me, God knows there are days I should. Anyway, I can assure you: the clients I have with the best profits and incomes possess the best information about where their business comes from.

Let me switch gears and talk briefly about another aspect of “testing.” This is actually how all highly successful entrepreneurs view everything they do… as testing. They do NOT see things in the context of “success” or “failure” like ordinary people do, and as a result they do not become “de-motivated” like most people do. See, most people drain all the vitality, courage, optimism and git-up-n-go out of themselves by focusing on all the things they do that don’t work out well, as a compilation of failures.

But successful people understand the powerful impact of that negative reinforcement on their own self-image (somewhat akin to the impact of pouring a gallon of toxic waste into a pint of clear water, drinking the result, and wondering why the stomach backs up into the esophagus).  Instead, they carefully organize the things they do into a series or sequence of experiments, testing options, and focusing on the ones they find that work. And they fully expect to go through any number of experiments that don’t pan out before walking away from the lab with a winner. This not only has practical relevance, it has profound psychological ramifications.

Just like a little tweak in thinking can make a big difference in the results of say, an ad or a flyer, a little tweak in thinking can make a giant difference in the life results experienced by an individual.

About the Author

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up. His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Important Changes to Product Test Process for Vendors
2. Affiliate Strategies: A Powerful Technique to Test New Products- Part 2
3. Affiliate Strategies: A Powerful Technique to Test New Products- Part 1

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In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Chris’s advice on how to “invade and conquer” a niche market with your product
• The importance of having a “hook” and how to develop one
• How the “Magic Button” sends conversions through the roof
• How to pick your battle in the sea of different niche markets
• How to use just ONE sentence to grab the attention of your target audience
• Chris’s golden rule for ultimate sales success

Chris’ advice is great for both vendors AND affiliates, so be sure to check out this episode!

Other ways to listen:

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here to subscribe via RSS (non iTunes)
• Click here for more episodes

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 3: Success Secrets from a Superstar ClickBank Client
2. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 1: Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income
3. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 6: Traffic Master Justin Brooke

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Written by: Guest author, Kevin McClelland

Testing

OK cool – you now have traffic coming to your sales page… what’s next? The next step is to test absolutely everything you can think of on your sales page.

Believe it or not, things like the color of your background, your headline font size, what your “add to cart” button says (i.e. buy now, get access now, sign me up, etc.), and the height of your header image can all affect your conversions. Changing your headline font can be the difference between making $500 and $1000 in a month. Use a tool such as Google Optimizer to test various aspects of your sales page. You literally can never test enough.

I won’t try and give any specific tips for increasing conversion rates because with every product it will be different, but here are a few things I’ve had success with: videos on the sale page, arrows pointing to my add to cart buttons, making your guarantee offer nice and visible, and including lots of testimonials.

Capturing Leads

Have you ever heard the saying “the money is in the list”? For those who are unfamiliar with that saying, it refers to capturing leads usually with an email marketing service (Aweber or iContact for example). I am a big believer in this, as I have made a lot of money from leads I’ve captured and communicated with through email alone.

I highly recommend that you try and capture the emails of as many of your visitors emails as possible. There are a few ways to do this on a sales page. You can have a mandatory squeeze page that captures emails before visitors see your sales page (the downside to this is some people may close out and never end up getting to your sales page), you can use scripts that have email popup boxes when people try to leave your site, or you can offer a portion of your product for free in exchange for their email (example “Get 1 Free Chapter from my Cooking eBook to test out – simply enter your email below). Whatever you do you should be trying to get as many emails as you can without disrupting your sales process too much.

The next step is to create a follow up sequence with anyone who entered his or her email but didn’t purchase the product. Provide them with as much valuable content relating to your product as you can. Again, this can be sneak peaks at certain parts of your product, or whatever you think will keep the prospect interested in your product. Every now and again throw in a call to action to try and get them back to your sales page to purchase.

Note: The email marketing services allow you to automate your lists so when the prospect purchases they can be taken off the list. This way the emails aren’t being sent out to customers who’ve purchased already.

Tip: I find the more the customers you’re trying to target are like you as person, the more they are willing to purchase from you.

Don’t be overly annoying, and make sure you are providing value for free more than you are trying to sell. Once you have this all set up properly it will all be automatic and your sales will start to increase.

Cross Promoting Products

You’re now at the step where you have customers, and you have a list of people who didn’t buy your product but you know are interested in your niche.

The money making isn’t done just yet. You can now visit the ClickBank Marketplace and find similar products to yours that you can become an affiliate of and promote to your past customers and prospects list.

If your product is a video membership site teaching people how to cook Italian why not show them a great home wine making course, or a Chinese recipe cookbook?

I recommend purchasing the product first and trying it out yourself before recommending something blindly. This way you can actually give your personal experiences with the product and the selling will come easier and be more natural. If you don’t want to spend your money you can always take a look at the cool info that ClickBank has in their marketplace like average $ per sale and gravity and get a good idea of which products are the best to promote.

Lastly you can always begin the process over and create another product to cross promote to your now raving fans.

So that is how I’ve started to make a great income selling my own products on ClickBank, and I hope you found at least one or two points in here that will help you start making more money.

About The Author

Kevin McClelland is an Internet Marketer who blogs at his personal blog “DropoutGotRich.com” and has a growing lists of sites including his “Workout Tips” blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. How To Be Profitable With Your ClickBank Product (Part 1 of 2)
2. Important Changes to Product Test Process for Vendors
3. Finding Affiliates to Promote Your Product

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Hey guys and girls, my name is Kevin and I’ve been an Internet Marketer for about 4 years now, going full time about a year and a half ago. I started first as an affiliate for other people’s Clickbank products, but have recently started selling my own products and would like to share some of my tips to becoming profitable selling your own product.

Creating Your Product

Even if you have already created your product you might want to read this, as there are some valuable tips.

The first thing you want to do is make sure your product is solving a problem.

For example, someone is overweight and wants to lose weight. You create a product that helps them lose weight – you are solving their problem.

A man wants to impress his girlfriend by cooking her a nice dinner… problem is he doesn’t know the slightest thing about cooking. You create a video site that teaches a beginner how to cook like chef – you are solving a problem.

If you aren’t solving a problem you will have a hard time trying to sell your product.

The next thing you want to do is figure out if there are enough people looking to solve that problem.

Lets say you have an idea to write a strategy guide that is going to help people beat your favorite N64 video game. Is there really going to be enough people looking to solve that problem to make it profitable and worth your time?

Remember no matter how good you are at getting traffic, marketing, selling, etc., you are only going to get your product in front of a very tiny percent of your target market. Focus on markets that have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people you can target.

Sure the bigger market, the greater the competition, but there are lots of potential customers on the Internet to go around.

You can always find a big target market and find a smaller “niche” within that market. For example if you are doing a weight loss product, you could focus on weight loss for woman over 50 and still have a big market. If you are doing a cooking video membership site why not focus on people looking to learn how to cook Italian meals.

The worst thing you can do is put in weeks of your time creating an awesome product, only to find out no one is interested in what you have to offer. Do your research before you start creating your product and make sure there is a need.

Lastly I highly recommend creating a product worth at least 5-10x what the customer is paying. This is tough to judge in some niches, but as an example, if you have a course that teaches small businesses how to advertise online and you want to charge $100 for it, you will want to make sure that if your customers follow your course, they will easily make that $100 back and then $500-$1000+ more on top of that.

Another way you can look at that is lets say you have a weight loss product that costs $50. If you are completely replacing their personal trainer that would cost the person $1500, there’s a lot of value in your product for the customer so you shouldn’t be selling them too hard.

Product and Website Design

Alright, so you now have an awesome product that a lot of people are going to want to get their hands on. Next is “packaging” your product, creating your sales page, and creating your sales process.

A lot of products sold on ClickBank are “virtual” products, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need any packaging. Getting a graphic designer to create “packaging” for your product can pay off ten fold. If you are selling an eBook, you can get a book cover created, membership sites can make membership cards, and video courses can create DVD cases. These types of virtual packaging will make your product look more valuable in the eyes of potential customers (just make sure you remind them that your product isn’t actually physical and that it is just for display purposes).

If I was writing this a year or two ago I would probably come out and tell you to get a nice, professional looking template designed for your product’s sales page, but I’ve learned over the years from others and from personal experience that pretty websites don’t always result in the most sales. Sometimes ugly is better. This is something you will have to test on your own. What I would recommend as far as website/template design is that you choose a template that allows you to have content “above the fold” (meaning the part of your website that is visible when people first arrive on your sales page). This gives you room to put an eye catching headline, video, and/or content where visitors will see first. I also recommend having a sales page design that isn’t too distracting. Try to keep the eyes focused on the sales copy. Eliminating sidebars and other distracting stuff that takes the eye away from the sales copy is usually your best bet.

Lastly, create a sales process following the ClickBank guidelines. You have the option to offer customers a low priced front end product, and then upsell them on bonus products. For example, using our cooking example, maybe you will sell a basic cooking instruction book for $9, and once the customer makes the purchase they will immediately be offered an upsell of $39 to get access to the video instructions. Then after that you may want to offer them a bonus cooking for fat loss recipe book for $19. Create your sales process and make sure you get the customers email captured with an email marketing service somewhere along the way (more on this later).

Getting Traffic

Once you have your product and website set up the next thing you will need is, of course, traffic. I could probably write an entire article about finding traffic, but I will just throw out some ideas here.

The first thing you can do is try and get natural traffic from the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). You will need to make sure your page is Search Engine Optimized (SEO’ed). Depending on your product this may be hard to do, especially if your site is new. For example, if you have a fat loss product it will be pretty tough to rank for “fat loss product” or “how to lose fat”. If that is the case what you can do is try to rank for a variety of “longtail” search terms. The easiest way to do this is to start a blog and write relevant, quality articles around your topic. Sticking with the fat loss product, you can start blogging about anything fat loss related and you may have people finding your site via searches like “yoga for fat loss,” “struggling losing weight because I’m stressed,” etc. Once the visitor is on your site you can direct them to your product via calls to action within your articles.

The next thing you can try is pay per click advertising. This is where you run ads and pay a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad and gets taken to your sales page. Pay per click is popular on Google, Bing, and Facebook (just make sure you meet their guidelines). Be careful with pay per click advertising if you aren’t familiar with it, as you can run up your advertising very quickly this way. I’m not too familiar with search engine PPC, but with Facebook I know you can do some cool stuff such as targeting certain categories and interests, which really helps get your costs per click down.

My favorite way to get quality and cheap traffic is to contact website or blog owners that have sites within your niche and ask them if they are willing to sell you advertising space. Often times these sites are run for fun, and the website owner will be thrilled to be paid for advertising.  Create a banner that stands out, grabs attention, and has a call to action and ask them to post it somewhere (above the fold is best). Another thing you can do is ask to buy an advertisement paragraph or sentence within their content. This gives you a great chance to create a solid call to action and get click throughs to your sales page. Plus it will help with your SEO (as long as you make sure they don’t “no follow” the link).

Lastly is something that ClickBank does a great job with – affiliates. As you probably already know, you can get other people to promote your product for a percentage of the sales. If you are offering a virtual product that doesn’t cost you money to take on a new customer I highly recommend looking at offering at least 50% commissions. Think of it this way – without the affiliate you wouldn’t be getting the sale. Assuming 50% and a $100 product – would you rather have $50 over $0? Offer your affiliates a generous commission and more people will be willing to promote your product.

Don’t be afraid to go out and actively search for affiliates. Find people who are promoting other products within your niche and ask them if they’d be willing to promote your product.

Also I highly recommend putting up an affiliate page, and link to it from the footer of your site. On this page include your ClickBank hoplink, and creatives (banners, email copy, etc.) that affiliate can use. The easier you make it for the affiliates the more affiliates you will get promoting your product.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article coming soon!

About The Author

Kevin McClelland is an Internet Marketer who blogs at his personal blog “DropoutGotRich.com” and has a growing lists of sites including his “Workout Tips” blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Finding Affiliates to Promote Your Product
2. How Online Marketers Can Use Webinars to Generate Profitable New Revenue Streams
3. Ustream: Your Gateway to the Ultimate ClickBank Product Review

More details

Since we all need more traffic, and getting traffic through sources like Google PPC has gotten much harder than it used to be, we went straight to the master of “alternative traffic,” Justin Brooke. Justin has mastered several sources of traffic that most people have never heard of, and in this episode he shares tons of useful tips on how to take advantage of the sources, drive traffic for pennies per visitor, and how to get the most out of your advertising efforts.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why Google and Facebook aren’t the only sources of quality traffic out there
• How you can drive traffic to squeeze pages, sales pages, naked affiliate links- anywhere you want
• The names of high quality, low cost ad networks you can start advertising on today
• How to decide whether PPC or CPM advertising is better for you (and what the difference is)
• The one thing you should never skimp on when advertising
• Specific tips for getting more clicks and conversions on your ads
• Why you should consider running paid traffic instead of trying to get visitors for free
• And much more!

If you’ve been struggling to drive traffic, or just want to ramp up your efforts with some great new resources and channels, you can’t miss this episode!

Other ways to listen:

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here to subscribe via RSS (non iTunes)
• Click here for more episodes

More from Justin Brooke:

• TheTrafficStrategist.com

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 2: ClickBank Tools You May Have Missed
2. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 3: Success Secrets from a Superstar ClickBank Client
3. ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 1: Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

More details

Here’s the quick overview of how it works:

More and more people prefer to watch videos to get the information they want online. Video is easy, and most people are on fast internet connections these days, so it makes sense.

Google knew this years ago, that’s why they bought YouTube.

Also because Google owns YouTube they favor these videos, and reserve videos slots in the regular Google results for videos…

We’ve all seen YouTube videos in Google’s search results. But how do they do it?

http://www.cbengine.com/visit/videocomm

All this makes for a HUGE opportunity for affiliate marketers.

This system teaches affiliates how to find offers from Clickbank and Market Health to name a few networks, and create very simple 30 second videos, which are designed to funnel people via your affiliate link to the merchant sales page.

These guys will show you how to SCORE those secret slots. Plus, they show you how to bust out marketing videos in under 5 minutes.

Highly recommende! ——–> http://www.cbengine.com/visit/videocomm

More details