Minimum Overhead - Maximum Sales

There is an old phrase about technology that goes "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". That principle may be true of one of the many great features about the Clickbank marketplace and how they set you up to put product into their markets. When you want to sell in Clickbank, the process is pretty simple. You create an account like you do on any other website. And there is a $50 fee to become a valid vendor to sell product through the Clickbank affiliate membership. But when you consider that Clickbank has over 150,000 affiliates ready to pick up your digital product and sell it and that many of these affiliates are some of the most accomplished internet marketers in cyberspace, you are probably going to make that $50 back on your first product into the system.

A mistake some new merchant make is to see a Clickbank account as a single product account. So if you want to put several products out into the system, the assumption is you need several dozen accounts. This simply is not the Clickbank operating philosophy. They want you to put as much product as is reasonable into the system so everybody makes plenty of money. After all, not only do the affiliates make money on each sale, you prosper and Clickbank takes a little commission as well. That those little commissions add up to big bucks for the people who run this very large marketplace. They know they are not going to get rich on those $50 start up fees.

The fact that Clickbank by policy encourages you to offer many products with only one account set up is reflected in the way your account is structured. You can sell up to fifty digital products on Clickbank and do it all under a single account. This gives you the chance to take full advantage of your $50 application fee (which represents $1 per product being sold if you take full advantage of Clickbank). But it is also much easier to manage and the more products you sell under one umbrella, the better your ranking in the Clickbank marketplace will be. These are pretty compelling motivations to use one account to handle all of your product offerings.

To fully take advantage of Clickbank's resources to sell a lot of products under one account, you should plan to organize the products to step around the Clickbank landing page facility. The landing page is your home base for your product which the affiliates who grab your products and sell them across the internet must have to link their customers to your product.

Now in the past even though Clickbank encourages you to sell many products under one account, they only supported one landing page per account. This problem is being worked out within Clickbank but it has been a weakness of the Clickbank infrastructure worth avoiding. So to step around using Clickbank's landing page entirely, simply set up a landing page for each product outside of Clickbank. This way you also have all the flexibility in the world to make that small web site as elaborate as you want to and to expand and modify it because you are doing so outside of the Clickbank system. Your sales page is independent of the system so you can make it part of your overall internet marketing program which may include other approaches to the internet market such as MySpace and YouTube.

There are resources both sold commercially and within Clickbank to intercept incoming traffic for a product and send it to the landing page you have set up externally to sell the product. But work with the system so your affiliates get the sale and are energized to create more sales so they make you successful. They are a group well worth taking care of.

Sorting Out Clickbank

The problem that comes up sometimes when creating an online business using the Clickbank marketplace is that Clickbank almost is drowning in its own success. For many people, sorting through his vast marketplace to figure out what product to promote can be a nightmare. Because Clickbank is the virtual marketplace of choice for any digital product that can be bought and delivered exclusive through the internet, at any given time there may be over ten thousand products you can pick from to promote in the huge Clickbank products catalog.

Just going through that vast catalog can become your second life all by itself. And if you did try to sort, catalog and understand every product, your brain would be so muddled it would not be able to figure out which products are the winners for you to promote and get big money from. But at the same time, anyone who has been successful with the Clickbank system has done it by being a smart marketer and learning first how to pick the product that is choice for the market right now and then how to promote it to land big sales from the system.

The first order of business is to set yourself up as an affiliate on the Clickbank web site. This is just getting your foot in the door but it's an essential step. It's easy to do and free at the Clickbank web site so take the few minutes you need to get yourself set up in the system and step through the easy sign up form and become an affiliate citizen of Clickbank.

The first thing that will jump out at you when you start looking for a product to promote is that there is a small elite group of products that are clearly the most popular sellers in the catalog. You might be drawn to those on the idea that if they are popular now, why not cash in on the wave and get some of the revenue from all those sales. But keep in mind that a popular product also is one that is probably being merchandised by hundreds or thousands of other Clickbank affiliates. So the internet customer base is being bombarded with sales pitches for that product. Why join the flood when it may be already dwindling down to a trickle?

This doesn’t mean you pick a product that is not selling well just because it isn't on a lot of other affiliate web sites. The skill is to pick a product that there is a good market out there in cyberspace for that product but it is a market that has not been heavily "tapped" yet. Its tricky business and give yourself permission to experiment. You may not hit pay dirt with the first product you select. But you will make some money and you can experiment and learn how to select the right product over time. There is an "intuition" to any kind of market and getting a gut feel for what the internet market is going to want can happen but it’s a gut feel that is developed, it doesn’t just come naturally to you.

There are some other factors of how a product is positioned and how it is already performing that can help with your decision. Look at the sales copy for the product to see if it is the kind of marketing tool that is likely to work. Read through it and see if it creates a desire in your to buy the product. If they can't convince you, it's probably a poorly crafted sales page and you would be wise to steer clear of the product.

But another variable about the products you pick other than popularity or movement numbers is far more important to your profitability. You should pick products that pay outstanding commissions. A commission on the sale of a product on Clickbank can run from 1% to 75%. That’s a pretty huge variation in profitability. A good guideline is never promote a product that pays less than 50% commission. That way even if your sales are not through the roof, you still make a decent return on your investment for promoting the product and the product owner makes money too. That’s what this partnership is all about.

Clickbank Refunds and What You Can Do About It

The internet is not the only place that refunds is an issue to a retailer. From the perspective of the internet merchant, customer satisfaction is of the highest priority. Because competition for customer loyalty is fierce, you know that keeping repeat customers coming back is the fastest and best way to long term financial success in sales. So offering an iron clan refund guarantee if the customer is not satisfied sends a message to the consumer that their happiness is top priority to you and that they can shop with you in confidence.

As customers, we like to know that there is a return or refund policy in place. We come to expect that when we get home with a product that it will be to our satisfaction of the store will stand behind the product and give us a refund no questions asked. Sadly even outside the internet, refund fraud happens all the time. People bring back stolen merchandise for refund to exchange what they took for money. There are so many scams like this that one solution the non-internet retail world has turned to is store credits so the money never leaves the store.

Within the world of Clickbank marketing, we are faced with a similar dilemma. Except because our products are digital, the problem is compounded significantly. Clickbank offers an iron clad refund guarantee. But unlike more wary merchants, there is no "store credit" to protect store funds. And because both Clickbank merchants and affiliates must abide by the policies of the marketplace, if Clickbank gives a refund, so do you.

The problem is there really is no such thing as a "return" when it comes to a digital product. Because you download the product to the customer, once they have a digital copy, they have it and there is no way to make sure they are not keeping it. And that little quirk of digital sales means that the Clickbank policy is pretty much open season for internet thieves and shoplifters if they chose to buy and download products, cash in on the policy and just keep getting their money back.

While Clickbank is working to solve this problem, we need to know what we can do until it is solved to cut down on Clickbank refunds taking profits out of our accounts which we very much deserve to keep. The first line of defense, of course, is legitimate refunds because of customer dissatisfaction. Put extra work and effort into putting onto Clickbank only products of the highest quality so there is little room for complaint. That is part of it. But the other part is making sure customer perception of the product is accurate.

On the internet, overselling a product is almost a way of life. We all seem to turn into infomercial merchants and we sometimes give the impression our product might be something it isn't. So go back to your web site and specifically your sales language. It's ok to use good marketing language on those pages. But be sure you are telling the customer the truth so there is no reason for them to have a case to say that you sold them something that was not up to what was claimed. Have others read your marketing copy and get to know the product so they can confirm that what is being sold is what the customer gets.

By building strong customer relationships and building a community of repeat customers, you are more secure not to have to give refunds constantly. It's an old adage of business but the best defense against lost business is satisfying the customer. Other than that we can only trust that Clickbank will eventually solve the problem and just keep on selling and doing the best we can.

Driving the Customers to Clickbank

Clickbank is a great marketplace and it's worth the work and small expense to get your digital product out there because of the huge exposure it can get to a very large army of affiliates. But just putting your product into the market and letting it go at that to wait for the affiliates to do their job not only doesn’t seem to be enough, there is a lot more you can do to make the sales of your Clickbank entries take off. So its just smart business to find the best internet marketing techniques that will pay the most rewards in terms of sales through Clickbank.

Learning to advertise your Clickbank affiliate is just as much a big priority as it was to learn to market your website or products you sell there via internet marketing methods. And how to be a success marketing on the internet is something that is changing all the time as the internet changes and evolves. It’s a living place and each year we have to stay on top of what works to bring the customers in. And in our case we adapt that knowledge to specifically promote our Clickbank campaigns combines the power of Clickbank with your own marketing talents for that one two punch to wealth.

When you add Clickbank to your marketing plan, you have put a powerful resource in your corner. But because you are now listing on what is hands down the largest internet marketplace in the world, its best to go back and evaluate your entire internet marketing plan in light of what you are doing on Clickbank. That is because when you were driving customers to your web site to make a sale, it was pretty much a one customer at a time approach to sales which takes a long time to see real progress. But since there are over 150,000 affiliates on Clickbank, the more you do to make your product successful and drive customers to Clickbank, the more you can see the return on that investment come by in multiples of hundreds or thousands.

It's not a bad idea to approach your internet marketing research from square one looking for advice and tools that are focused specifically on how to use your web site to create traffic to your Clickbank products. If the person behind a web site that is promoting training or tools in marketing for Clickbank knows their stuff, they can take your sales to the next level. As with anything else, networking with your friends who also are learning the ropes of internet marketing in a Clickbank environment is a great way to sort out the good tools and experts from those who are not going to benefit your business.

In fact, if you are already involved in affiliate marketing directly with other internet merchants, you can pick their brains about Clickbank training and tools for moving product through that market place. That same body of affiliates may be your first Clickbank representatives because they know the good of your product line and they will want to see your efforts to drive traffic their way work out well.

When you first learned internet marketing before you stepped into the Clickbank world, it took some work, some false starts and some real life experiences before you got good at it. This is natural and sadly your early internet marketing programs are not as successful until you get an understanding for what really drives traffic and what doesn’t. But you are not alone in your objectives or your desires to learn to become an expert internet marketer and make the top ranks of sellers on Clickbank. And while those who have real world knowledge and advice to offer to help you get over your learning curve to become a Clickbank big money affiliate are probably selling that knowledge, maybe even through Clickbank, if that knowledge comes from real experience with the marketplace and grounded in both success and failure in Clickbank internet marketing efforts, you can learn a lot from the trial and error of others.

But be sure the source you are taking advantage of is credible in that way before you plop down your hard earned money to get your moneys worth in knowledge that will more than pay you back for the work you are doing to learn to market on Clickbank.

Some Seriously Profitable Clickbank Tips

The "buzz" about Clickbank could convince you that you can virtually fall backward into money using this service. And while Clickbank does do all it can to make the major functions of buying and selling easy to do, it does take some savvy to know the insider tips to really make big money in this marketplace. There is no disputing that Clickbank is the largest marketplace of its kind in the world and one of the biggest hot trends of this decade in terms of internet marketing and money making opportunities. But success has a price which means that many of the big deals are pretty much played out and you have to go in knowing how to look for the good deals that have yet to be tapped. So a few seriously profitable Clickbank tips can help your profitability in this big marketplace along nicely.

Your Clickbank ID is a central code you must have to put into your link. That is the one step that must happen for money to come your way. But you can be a bit savvy how you create that ID in the first place. One clever way to keep your ID from broadcasting that you are a Clickbank citizen is to use a more critic ID code. Something like research4u2 or profits2008 and excellent choices. These have the feel of an internet business and less of one person out on Clickbank trolling for profits.

Having a website is a great step to maximize your Clickbank listings. By adding links to Clickbank so your website visitors can go there and use the marketplace to buy your products, Clickbank can virtually replace your catalog pages and your shopping cart with a much smoother operation that is easy to keep up to date and that puts your products into a broader affiliate market with no work from you as well. Keep in mind your niche markets addressed by your site. You might have a wide variety of products out on Clickbank but not all of them fit with the theme of your web site. So if your web site is devoted to musical instruments, focus the way you add links and don’t include links to products that don’t fit there. If you have products that have no home to be promoted on any of your websites, it's easy enough to set up a new one.

If you are thinking about selecting a product as an affiliate on Clickbank and you want to promote it, you want to know that product is doing well in its home setting so you can capture some of that momentum. So do a little research on the websites that support the products you are thinking about. It's easy enough to run some keyword searches and to find the page rank of those web sites. That will give you an idea if the website owner who is behind this product is putting time and money into SEO on the site which would help it generate bigger profits.

Never stop learning how to make your product listings on Clickbank more successful or how to become a successful affiliate. Make it a private study to learn how to spot products that are on the verge of a boom of success. This will take some intuition and some watching the market so you learn where different products, product groups or categories are going. Like a stock market at any time some products will be surging in sales potential while others are tapering off.

It will take some dedication, creativity and even some courage to make bold moves to keep on top of your accounts and keep them profitable week to week. But if you treat your Clickbank management as part of your larger job of becoming successful on the internet, these efforts will pay off.

The Wizard of Clickbank

If you are attracted to the huge money making possibilities of Clickbank, you are not alone. The affiliate marketing profit potential on Clickbank are huge and. But like any new market, you have to learn how to work the system to your advantage. The quicker become a wizard of Clickbank, the faster you will make some real money in the digital marketplace.

Clickbank is in every way a real marketplace. As such it is a place where legitimate vendors offer real products that add value to customer's lives and purchases are made. Too many people see the internet as one big scam artist paradise. But you are not a scam artist and you just want to make a good return on your product and make a good living like anyone else. That is what Clickbank is all about.

From a merchant standpoint, you will have achieved "wizard" status when you are selling a wide variety of product consistently. So to get started, shoot for putting five products into the marketplace. Examine the product categories to find niches that fit your product catalog. Don’t be drawn to the categories that promote money making schemes as they are just that - schemes which you don’t want to be associated with by your long term customers on Clickbank.

After you have your start up products to put onto Clickbank, waste no time in finding good keywords that will draw traffic to those items to get sales moving. Keyword selection is a science in its own right but you can use internet tools to find good keywords that have a track record of pulling traffic historically. Don’t be afraid to buy or use such keyword optimizers as any tool that can help you legally make money in your business is worth using.

If you can come up with twenty or thirty solid keywords that you can build your Clickbank marketing plan around, that’s a solid starting place. With the keywords captured, now create articles around those keywords. Now we are not all writers but there are good ghostwriters on services like Rent-a-Coder that can kick out these articles for you at a reasonable rate. The writer may know keyword optimization rules but they are not that hard to get used to. Basically if the keyword is in the article title and then 3-4 times per 500 word article, that’s pretty good optimization.

There are a lot of good article sites you can use to put your articles into internet circulation and that will drive traffic to your products well if your keywords do their job for you. When you first are setting up for Clickbank, establish accounts on these article sites because you will use them a lot. Don’t just rest with a few articles but try to get an initial set of four or five per product out there and then follow up over the next week or two, try to kick out two or three a day around each product using those keywords and get them into circulation.

There are always new ways for you to get awareness of your product raised through various internet methods of promotion and you should explore them all. You can place ads on popular internet services to build traffic to your Clickbank items. RSS feeds and ads on related internet sites are also well proven methods of creating more sales for you.

You can see that the "set up" for these various services has to be a part of your entrance into the Clickbank system. But once you are rolling, you will use them over and over and get plenty of good from your membership fees. And you will have a system you can repeat with new products as well and build your Clickbank catalog and build profits along the way as well.

The Infamous Clickbank Refund Policy

Getting a new product out on Clickbank is always a moment of supreme optimism. What we envision is getting a product out there on the marketplace that truly takes it by storm and is one of those big sellers people write books about. And there is not reason to believe that any one product on Clickbank might just get there.

It's good to go into this kind of situation with your eyes wide open though and be aware that one thing can put a monkey wrench into the best marketing plan for a product. And that is the Clickbank refund policy. Now a good refund policy has to be at the very heart of a marketplace like Clickbank so people can buy with confidence knowing they can get a refund if the time comes. And since Clickbank is a full fledged merchant account in its own right, they can handle refunds directly.

Unfortunately a refund policy that is iron clad is also an open door for people trying to scam the system. Even for the best of products with a huge army of happy and satisfied customers, you will be asked for a refund from time to time. That is to be expected. But when what is happening is someone is trying to get your product for free milking the refund policy from Clickbank, that’s just wrong.

The Clickbank extensive tracking system tells us that five percent of sales in their marketplace come back as refund requests. When you give a buyer a refund, you might hear any sort of complaint. Some of them are legitimate and others are bizarre. And others just won't offer an explanation for why they want the refund. For many of these refund requests, the odds are you are dealing with an unethical buyer.

The problem is that all of ClickBank's products are digital products. That means your e-book, your software product or your music can be downloaded and paid for and then the buyer can ask for a refund, no questions asked. And because the product is digital, it's pretty silly to ask for the product back as they have a copy on their computer and perhaps copied to other computers. You can paint it like you want, its just plain theft no mater how you cut it.

This is a tough problem to solve. Even if the entire Clickbank community banned together to fight the problem, about the only possible solution is pretty weak. A reference system could be created that recorded users who were habitual customers of the refund policy. Then if that reference system actually worked, you could conceivably refuse service to a refund policy abuser who had been "busted". But this is a system fraught with holes at best. A refund abuser is intestinally stealing product so they are going to be one step ahead of your tracking list. It simply is not that hard to come back into Clickbank as a customer with a new ID and new credit and your tracking system is out the window.

It would be nice to come to the end of our discussion with an announcement that the problem has been solved. But that is not the case yet. Clickbank is aware of the problem and is putting time and effort against it. But for now we will have to wait until Clickbank comes up with a solution. But its still worth supporting a strong refund policy because that is what makes Clickbank a solid marketplace. And if you do have to entire a 5% refund but keep 95% of the sales Clickbank delivers to you, that still is not too shabby.