Pricing your Product to Move

In any marketplace finding the price to ask for your product or service that appeals to customers but doesn’t cut you out of profits is a tough balancing act to pull off. Pricing at what you think you deserve for your work may suit your self image but it might mean your product or service will not sell. A big factor is the competition because if someone else comes into the market with a similar product for a little less, they can steal your market share. But on the other hand selling too low means losing margin which means at some point you lose money so why be in the marketplace at all?

This dilemma is just as much of a challenge when selling your product online in a digital marketplace like Clickbank as it is outside of cyberspace. Clickbank doesn’t set your prices and you will live or die in their market based on the quality of your product, how well known what you have to offer is and the relationship between price and value. All of these things are age old market principles that are unchanged just because our marketplace and our product has all gone digital.

One school of thought calls for you to come in with as low a price as you can so you can capture larger sales numbers. Within the context of Clickbank, this does have some solid business thinking behind it. The Clickbank tracking system reflects the movement of your product quantitatively and that is reported to existing or new affiliates. So simply put, the more product your sell, the better it looks to new affiliates. This means more affiliates pick up your product out of the Clickbank marketplace and your sales continue to go up which is a delightful momentum to see happen. That kind of market behavior can offset setting your price low fairly easily.

The other school of thought calls for you to set your price higher to reflect a higher quality product and realize a greater profit per unit on each sale. This may result in fewer affiliates picking up your product on Clickbank but the sales they do generate give you a higher return per unit. It's possible the outcome could be a wash so deciding which approach to you can be intuitive and may be an area worth some experimentation to see which business model works best for you.

Much of the beauty of becoming an internet marketer in the first place is that you have so much more price leverage than a traditional merchant outside of cyberspace. Because your product is entirely digital, you operate at basically zero overhead. Once you produce the software or the e-book, production is nothing more than generating another digital copy which costs nothing. You may have some software costs for specific formatting software but once your infrastructure is in place, your only cost is the time it takes you to make more product. There is no manufacturing, no cost of goods sold, no distribution costs and with the Clickbank system, virtually no advertising cost either.

This means you can afford to price your product competitively because you will always make a profit of some sort. Now the shelf life on digital products is not very long so you want to milk as much profitability out of each product during the months when it is "hot" and then pump more product into the Clickbank marketplace. But you still have the leverage to experiment with price to see where the proper price level for your product might lie.

You do have to beware of adjusting your price too much on a single product. If customers see your price moving around, they lose faith in you as a merchant. The best way to "experiment" with pricing is to set a price on a product, track its sales and then sell a very similar product at a different product and continue to track and compare the results. While other factors influence sales, you can eventually develop a model which will serve as a solid pricing strategy. And once you have that, you are ready to compete in the Clickbank marketplace successfully for the long term.

Ebook Publication is a Breeze on Clickbank

A lot has changed in the world because of the internet and nowhere is that more noticeable than the publishing industry. At one time the big publishing houses ruled the land like wizards from stone castles and any fledgling author who wanted to have a prayer to get a book published had to scale those walls. That meant a lot of talented writers and some excellent books never saw the light of day because the executives in those companies did not see a profit margin in it for them.

Just as in the music industry where music distributing has been completely overhauled by the internet, publishing has gone through a similar revolution. It’s a people's revolution too because no longer is it the large publishing houses that tell the public what they can or cannot read. Now good authors can get their works out there simply by producing an ebook. And merchandising services like Clickbank have completed the cycle by making merchandising, marketing and distribution a breeze as well.

There was a time that the term "self publishing" created the image of some pitiful quack with an axe to grind paying one of those do it yourself companies to put his book into prepaid print to be sold out of the back seat of his car. But there is a new respectability to self publishing because so many ebooks have reached the public that were of just as high a quality anything the big publishers could have put out. And for the aspiring author, moving to an internet based business model when it comes to publishing your book makes a lot of sense.

It is the ability of even writers just starting out to be a big success with online publishing that has made this revolution possible. And there is no doubt that the reason for that ability becoming so easy for writers to access is due in a large part to Clickbank. Clickbank being an internet marketplace devoted 100% to digital product sales and distribution is an ideal place for an ebook writer to find success. And by simply going through the well known steps for merchandising their works, an author doesn’t have to become an "expert" internet marketer at all, just be good at following directions.

Step one is simply to write your book. You, the author know how to do this and the merchandiser doesn’t need to teach you your craft. A word processor any sort is a fine tool for the composition and you can put the finished product together as a PDF file or as a compiled ebook using a commercially available ebook compiler.

Now to give Clickbank what they need to merchandise your ebook, you will need a very simple web site. This doesn’t have to have dancing babies on it, just basically two pages of html that can respond to internet traffic flow when Clickbank sends it your way. After setting up the web site, just follow ClickBank's instructions to set up the ecommerce software on the site which will also make possible the payment for the book. That’s all you need and you have the means to make a lot of money selling your ebook on Clickbank.

Now you are free to play with that web site and make it as elaborate as you wish. But the beauty of the simplicity of the basic Clickbank system is it can work at the barebones level just fine and let you go back to do what you are good at doing and what you love to do which is to write. As you compose your next masterpiece, things will be happening in the marketing of your existing book on the market that you don’t have to do a thing to help along.

The 150,000 affiliates on Clickbank will get wind of this new exciting ebook product and they can quickly link it into their sales mechanism without even telling you it happened. That means that a virtual internet marketing army will be able to sell your book with complete liberty taking their small commission and bulging out your bank account while you never know who they are and you never will know. All you know is the market value of your book will be fully realized on Clickbank which means financial stability for you. And for a creative soul, that is a highly prized commodity.

Selling Everyday on Clickbank

There is a prevailing mythology about the Clickbank marketplace that it is virtually an effort free profit machine. Its easy to get the wrong idea because it is a marketplace where if you get your product out there into the Clickbank marketplace, there are over 150,000 eager affiliates ready to pick up your product and begin to sell it. Those affiliates don’t need to tell you that they are going to sell your product or get your permission. Just by virtue of being in the Clickbank community gives them liberty to sell your product. So in theory you could put a product out there and see its sales soar with no more effort than that.

But even if you get some marginal or good sales from your products using that approach, you don’t want to settle for marginal or good. You want to get the maximum sales potential you can from your listings on Clickbank. And that means you don’t just sell one day and put your product on auto pilot. You sell every day on Clickbank and you reap the rewards in terms of higher sales, higher profits and a better rating because you are being aggressive about your sales. And when your products rise in the sales numbers, they get noticed by more successful affiliates in Clickbank and you get to a larger audience. It's all about establishing momentum and then keeping it.

One way to raise your profits on your product has more to do with production than it does promotion. If you own the product you put out there so you are not selling someone else's product, 100% of what you get from Clickbank after the affiliate cut and Clickbank's fees are yours. You can either have the product made for you and buy the rights to it completely or make it yourself.

A good example of this approach is in the marketing of an ebook. If you write it entirely yourself, you have complete ownership over it and all of the profits are yours. But even if you have a killer idea for an ebook that will sell like hotcakes, not all of us are writers. But there are starving artists out there on the internet job services who for a few hundred dollars will put together an ebook that will read well and deliver a great concept to your customers. And by having the book ghostwritten, you purchase complete ownership of the rights to the book and you can market it and reap all of the rewards all for yourself.

Within Clickbank, there are a wealth of tools that you can use to keep tabs not only on how well your products are moving but on the relationship of advertising to product movement and how your commissions look to be sure they are healthy and not undergoing any form of commission theft that is sometimes possible in Clickbank. So part of selling every day isn't so much just paying attention to sales but to the variables of sales such as the success of specific affiliates and the level your product is reaching as a desirable product to promote.

There is something to be said for simple positioning and learning to help your product move up so more affiliates pick it up. So after you get your product into the system, make it a major ambition to get familiar with all of the Clickbank tracking and reporting systems. These reports can let you stay on top of your product's performance on a daily basis and if you see change happening, you can adjust accordingly.

That is the kind of dynamic product management that will result in stronger sales. If you see your product take a turn in the statistics that is not healthy, you have the chance to intervene and make adjustments or even pull the product if it’s a serious enough situation. On the other hand, if you see a sudden surge in popularity and sales and a greater participation in the product, you can do your part to make sure the affiliates are enabled to jump on the band wagon and make your product successful. And while the subtle changes to how you position your product and manage advertising is not exactly selling every day, it is making sales work better for you every day and the outcome of greater profits is the same.

More Than One Way to Wealth on Clickbank

As is true in any marketplace, the potential for money making is diverse and always new in a place where merchants and buyers are always coming together to negotiate and make deals happen. So as an entrepreneur it’s a good idea to have a fix on the various approaches to profitability in what is the largest internet marketplace in the world - Clickbank.

Clickbank at any given time represents over 10,000 products that any affiliate with the proper Clickbank account can promote and sell. So by becoming an affiliate, that huge catalog is entirely at your disposal to sell without the need for you to request permission or any formality whatsoever. This is the Clickbank agreement with the sellers which is one of the real secrets to success in the marketplace.

Signing up to become an affiliate on Clickbank is shockingly easy and you can have an account. Simply log into clickbank.com and step through the process in a matter of moments. And you are ready to go. Now just proceed to the products catalog and work through the categories to find the niche you want to promote and the products that you feel have the best potential for profits.

Next to selling as an affiliate, putting your own products into the Clickbank marketplace is an outstanding means to make big money. And setting up a product is almost as easy as becoming an affiliate. Your merchant account on Clickbank is a one time fee of $50 which you can make back quickly on the sale of one product that moves well. And the economy of Clickbank is you can sell 50 products at a time from the same account for that same set up fee. You are sure to make at least $1 per product to pay back that set up fee.

Once you get your products set up and some sales logged, there is an army of over 150,000 marketers really to take your product and get it out there into the sale stream. That means that after you do the basic set up steps, you are out of the internet marketing game and you can hand off that little problem to experts who are skilled at selling literally thousands of units of your product. You don’t have to do a thing. Just set a commission level which is a percentage the affiliate will make for his hard work and then just sit back and let that army of skilled internet marketers do their stuff. The money can just roll in while you focus on creating new product.

Of course you can get proactive and not wait for strangers to promote your product. If you have a sales team, put them to work as Clickbank affiliates and they can focus exclusively on your products. Clickbank provides their outstanding marketplace structure and one of the best run merchant accounts on the internet to assure your money is collected and accounted for correctly and safely and delivered to you on time.

There are other ways to pick up additional revenue as Clickbank rewards any kind of behavior that benefits the market. If you send Clickbank customers of the service itself, that referral gets a reward. There are also specialty Clickbank promotional concepts being created and promoted all the time like the Clickbank storefront. So keep your eye on the Clickbank newsletters and "What's New?" web pages because it is such a fast moving marketplace that you may find a new moneymaking opportunity out there ready for you to jump into and pull yet more profits your way through Clickbank.

Clickbank is About More than Just the Stuff

Most of us think of Clickbank as a service dedicated entirely to digital products. A digital product by definition is a something you sell. It might be an e-book about anything from children's stories to an analysis of clinical depression to a guidebook to how to play a great game of golf. It might be a software package that makes life easier or a really cool game you invented. But by definition, it is "something". Which means that in that context, Clickbank is all about the stuff.

One of ClickBank's rules of living for merchants lines up with the product only approach to the marketplace because you are expected to deliver the product within 24 hours of payment and preferably immediately by download. The method of delivery might vary. It can be by download, by email or by directing the customer to a membership site to download the product. Clickbank doesn’t get into the details as long as the customer gets his product inside of the time window.

While the variety of predicts that can be sold through the Clickbank marketplace is unlimited, Clickbank does not have any provision for selling services using their terrific marketplace tools. That 24 hour rule which is entirely reasonable for a digital product is really problematic if the nature of your internet business is a service you provide, even if the outcome is a product. A service is delivered based on a lot of variables that the merchant cannot necessarily dictate. Some services are continuous with periodic payments either based on milestones or on deliverables. In either case, a specified delivery date is questionable and to limit that time frame to 24 hours virtually out of the question.

So many merchants have found ways to take advantage of the excellent marketplace infrastructure and the merchant account services of Clickbank to do business with clients that work within the 24 hour product delivery restriction. A good example is ghostwriting. A customer can contact a merchant using ClickBank's communication resources to make arrangements for the creation of a series of articles. But the actual "product" would not be created within the Clickbank merchandising system until the product is complete and ready for delivery. Then the customer and buy the product which is an outcome of the service and use Clickbank's systems to work with the ghostwriter.

Whether you organize your service to be moved through Clickbank in advance or after you complete the service, the key is for the price to be well understood before logging the project into Clickbank. This is healthy for the business relationship between seller and buyer and keeps your nose clean with Clickbank as well. It might take some work to convert your hourly billed service into a fixed price product. But simply focus on the outcome. So if you work by the hour to produce a requirements document for a project, you can set the fixed price when the project is near the end and you set up the payment vehicle as a Clickbank digital service.

Also keep in mind that Clickbank expects to see delivery. Your service may have consisted of a series of 15 phone calls where you offer expert guidance and advance in your field of expertise. So to create a deliverable, keep your notes per session and prepare a summary at the end that captures the results of your sessions as well as your conclusions and you can "sell" that to your client for the price of the total consulting charges for the 15 sessions.

It really just takes some creativity and ability to not just think outside the box to work within the Clickbank box to offer your services as a digital product. But as an internet entrepreneur, being innovative is second nature to you.

Making Clickbank Affiliates Your Own

One thing many merchants love about putting product out on the Clickbank market is they really don’t have to recruit affiliates to sell the product. Clickbank has some 150,000 affiliates scanning the product listings every day and picking up new digital products to sell. Among this army are some of the top names in internet marketing who could be looking at your product and picking it up to sell to their very large customer base.

You would think that with this huge number of affiliates that you would be guaranteed some good sales if you put virtually any product out there. But believe it or not, it's still possible to list your digital product in the Clickbank marketplace and for it to just "sit there". For one thing, your product is competing for attention with some 10,000 other products. And the products that already have strong sales and good affiliate association are the ones that are in high demand. If your product enters at a dead stop, it’s a hard to path to get it into the "fast lane" so the good affiliates take notice of it.

Moreover, among those 150,000 eager sales people, there is a fair share of bad ones. And if your product gets picked up by rookie affiliates or those in the market but who are not skilled at what they do, your product can just "lay there" making you wonder what went wrong. So anything can do to draw affiliates to your product and to even recruit your own affiliates is entirely justified to get your sales moving in Clickbank.

Many merchants remain satisfied to just allow the nature of Clickbank to bring affiliates their way. But to get aggressive and actually get out there and draw affiliates to you gives you some ownership of the process. Not only do you accelerate the process of becoming successful within the Clickbank environment, you develop relationships with affiliates and work more in partnership with recruited affiliates than you would if you simply relied entirely on "random" affiliates picking up your product and beginning to make the sales you need.

Identifying new affiliates and making them part of your affiliate network takes some creative thinking but in many ways you already have all the resources you need at your disposal. Your primary objective is to build lines of communications which would not exist if you simply left the Clickbank affiliate arrangement operate as it is. The assumption of the Clickbank culture is that merchants and affiliates do better if they do not have to communicate because you can focus on creating more product and affiliates can focus on sales and not having to be accountable to dozens of merchants if they are promoting a lot of product.

Of course, this formula does work in a lot of cases, particularly if your product becomes part of a catalog of hundreds of thousands of products for some very large affiliates who move a lot of digital products under the Clickbank system. But that doesn’t mean there is not plenty of room within the Clickbank system for a partnership relationship between affiliate and merchant. You already may be in such relationships outside of Clickbank with affiliates you work with through your web site. That body of sales people is a natural place to go to recruit affiliates to sell for you in Clickbank. By approaching them to consider becoming part of Clickbank and selling your product there, you can sweeten the deal by offering a higher commission and the lure of such a large catalog of products there that they can become more prosperous selling in the Clickbank marketplace.

The ideal situation is to cultivate a large body of affiliates, some of whom do sell your products "anonymously" and others with whom you are in relationship. You can recruit affiliates for future product announcements and by simply thanking affiliates who made your last product offering a success and offering to keep them in the loop when you put more products into the marketplace. By building a mailing list of successful Clickbank affiliates who like your work and want to know when you have something new to offer in Clickbank, you will slowly build a "team" of sales people with a good focus on your marketing approach and how they can join in your success as a merchant by seeking you out when you have something new to offer.

Safe Selling on Clickbank

In the non-internet world, retailers are always fighting a war with shoplifters and people who would take your product without paying for it. You would think that this kind of thing would not be a problem in an online world. But in Clickbank which is the largest internet marketplace in the world, one of the biggest problems is stopping people from downloading a digital product and then not following through with payment.

Like any other retail setting there are security weaknesses in Clickbank as there are with any software environment. But with some proper caution on the part of the vendor at the individual level, you can find ways to plug those security holes and keep your product secure so every time it gets downloaded, you get paid.

In reality we sometimes are our own worst enemies when we become Clickbank merchants because we do some things that undermine the security Clickbank already has in place. The first thing to recognize when you market on Clickbank is that it is off limits to put links to your product files on Clickbank on one of your other website pages. Don’t try to extend the marketing by driving traffic to your Clickbank pages in this way. For proper security, the only way your customers should be able to download your product is after going through the normal Clickbank payment pages which enforce that payment is made before delivery. This is one very simple precaution to keep someone from getting to your content and bypassing the payment procedure.

Another good reason not to put links to your product on your web site is that it will cause this back door to your products to appear on the search engines as links others can use. Google will find the links and index them and they could appear fairly high in search engine rankings and that is very dangerous for the security of your product.

Some risks that your product page could get leaked are outside of your control. There are internet thieves who would collect your thank you page and product URL where and post them on newsgroups and forums devoted to underground theft of online products. The actual amount of thefts you might have from that happening is fairly small. The real problem is if those postings get picked up and listed on a search engine. Then you could have a serious security risk.

There is one step that will eliminate the search engine problem which is the bigger risk of your thank you or product pages for Clickbank getting "out there". That is to contact your web hosting provider. They have a way at the server level to build a customized security file that is checked by the search engines to exclude certain files form becoming indexed. By adding the URL for your products page on Clickbank as well as your thank you page, even if those links get listed, you stop the bleeding in its place so the amount of losses will be quite minimal.

However this approach must be used with extreme caution. The file that many web hosting servers used is called the robots.txt file. The problem is that hackers are very aware of that file as much as search engines are. And if a hacker can find that file, and they can, that opens the door for the locations of your product files to be stolen and then posted on another web site which opens the whole can of worms all over again.

The best thing is not to reference those locations at all so if there is going to be any leakage of their location, it will be through hackers whose influence is minimal at best. That way at least you are living a clean life and doing what you can. And by watching the Clickbank FAQ and updates notices so you are always up to date on any new security updates they are putting in place.