First Clickbank Commission Pleeeeaaaassse Help

[burton4550]

Hi my name is Brad Spears and Ive been trying to learn affiliate marketing for about 7 months now, so I can finally get out of my 9-5 job and make some decent money. Ive read Profit Lance and Mymarketingland.com and Im still as lost as monkey in New York. I have learned alot, but it is just kind of all over the place and I don't really know how to put it all together in one simple format.

I started a blog, because I was told this was the best way for a beginner to start off, since I don't know much about html or website design or anything quite yet. So the steps I started with was to pick a niche then to make sure it was a profitable niche. Then I was told to get keywords and then create my blog then get traffic and make sales. Well I created my blog and Ive been trying to get traffic with article marketing, answering questions on yahoo answers and wiki with links to my blog , forums related to my blog I put my url in my signature and I also post new post and ping my blog everyday. Yet I can only seem to get about 5-25 people a day. I just started all this about 2 weeks ago, is it to soon to be expecting more traffic then this ? If so how long does it usually take to recieve your first commission?

Any help or pointers would be great because im really struggling here. Am I doing something wrong or missing something I should be focusing on more ? .Im just really struggling and trying to get some help to make my first commission. I dont even care if its only 1 dollar, I just want to know im doing this all right and not waisting hours a day trying to get traffic and make sales. Id put a link to my blog so you could check to see if i was doing something wrong but they wont let me . But my niche is all about fat loss and muscle building .

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Brad,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

Well for starters you are in a very competitive niche. Next, 2 weeks is not much time at all and since it sounds like you are trying lots of things that typically work, I think you just need to keep generating content, keep marketing, keep trying to improve your knowledge and traffic should gradually build.

How long til you make a sale depends on conversion rate of the product, how you are doing your ad placements, calls to action etc and very importantly how much targeted traffic you are getting.

Average ecommerce conversion rates are only 2%. That's 2 sales for every 100 actual clicks (not visits but clicks on your affiliate links). However when you are new it can easily take 200 - 500 clicks before you get that 1st sale. Some products don't convert very well and some are better than 2% so it varies.

So to run some basic numbers if you got 1000 targeted visitors… If you had a 5% click through rate that would be 50 clicks. If you had a 2% conversion rate that would be 1 sale out of 1000 visitors. So IF you were getting 25 visitors a day and IF your numbers were this good it would take you 40 days to make your 1st sale. (Then again you could get lucky and make a sale after your 10th click too. ) So these are just general numbers to use as a guide.

But in general I'd say give it 200 clicks on your links, to the merchant, before you expect to get that 1st sale and if it ends up taking fewer than that - then great!

I don't work with CB at all but as far as I know they still don't have click tracking which to me is just ridiculous. If that's still the case then you have no way of knowing how many are clicking through. (unless you use some other type of click tracking).

Someone correct me if I am wrong. I think I remember CB saying they were going to add click tracking, but not sure if they ever did.

 

[burton4550]

Hey thanks very much for the reply. Thats some great information. Im definitely not planning on giving up, Im certain I can figure it all out and start making this a great business to generate revenue and get out of my 9-5 job. I kinda figured it was a bit to soon since I just started 2 weeks ago and alot of my articles are not even live yet. I do make sure I put alot of links on each one of my posts to click on. Im just gonna continue doing what im doing since it appears im on the right track.

As for the tracking through Clickbank, they actually do have tracking now. You can put a number or however you want to track it when you create your affiliate link and with that you can go on there and track to see how many hops you got on that one link. So it definetely helps knowing what people are interested in and looking at. I just need to generate more traffic so I can get more clicks on my affiliate links. Thanks again for the reply have a great day.

 

[James Martell]

Hi Brad,

Sure. Let me see if I can offer some suggestions. I have been a full-time affiliate marketers for 10 years now with my wife Arlene and your story is not all that different from ours.

It's sounds like you are working your way through the learning curve because you already have a website that's up and running.

The business itself can seem a little confusing and it's sometimes difficult to decide where to focus your energies to maximize your time and produce the greatest results.

Right off the bat I should point out that the topic you have chosen fat loss and muscle building is one of the more competitive topics. It's not impossible to compete, but you need to be prepared to work hard if you want to succeed in this topic.

Here's four must do items... in order of priority:

1. Build a List - It's one of the bigger mistakes new affilaite make, and that is not gathering up the names and email addresses of their visitors for a newsletter. It's a known fact that on average a full 70% of the people who land on your website will never return unless you give them a great incentive (free report, mini course, audio interview, etc.) to optin to your newsletter. This has to be a priority. There are a number of hosted email marketing services such as iContact.com and aWeber.com that you can use. If you need a low cost cover for your report, mini course, audio, etc., I would recommend TrustyCovers.com. They are great! I feel that building a list is so important that I would NOT doing anything else until I had my optin offer up and running on the website and converting your visitors to newsletter subscribers. Even at 25 visitors a day, at a 10% optin rate, you would have 2.5 new subscribeers a day. In a year that 912 subscribers that you can build a relationship with and keep inviting back to the website.
2. Landing/Product Page - You need to create one amazing page on your website where you feature the product you are selling for your merchant. This page should be free of distrations, have an amazing headline, a compelling offer and a call to action. Once set-up you direct your traffic to the landing/product page. Here's a link to a good looking landing/product page. You can purchase it from the same site.
3. Google Website Optimizer - Go ahead and set-up Google Website Optimizer on your optin page and your landing/product page. It's free and vital to measure and improving your conversion rate. Keep in mind if you are converting a half a percent and you can increase your conversion by another half of a percent you will get a 100% increase in income.
4. Build Traffic - Notice how building traffic is the last in this list. In my opinion, the absolute easiest and best way for new affiliates to get free traffic is to rank highly in the Google natural search results. To accomplish this you need to do two things. 1.) Add one fresh page of 100% unique and interesting content to your website everyday Monday through Friday. 2.) Distribute 15-20 quality articles each with a link back to your home page, optin page and landing/product page to quality websites (no article directories). Each of the 15-20 unique articles should be placed on 15-20 unique websites. No short cuts.

If you follow through with the four points above, you will be building your audience, measuring and monitoring your conversion rate and have lots of free traffic from Google. Once that's done you can begin to focus on other methods of traffic building.

SIDE NOTE: I always get shot for this one, but this so called strategy of "article marketing" is a disaster for website owners. It may bring a trickle of traffic from the "article directories", but it will NOT boost your rankings in the search results. I would recommend avoiding it like the plague. The only people who are really benefiting from it big time is the people who are creating the software to distribute the articles.

I hope this helps.

James

 

[Linda Buquet]

SIDE NOTE: I always get shot for this one, but this so called strategy of "article marketing" is a disaster for website owners. It may bring a trickle of traffic from the "article directories", but it will NOT boost your rankings in the search results. I would recommend avoiding it like the plague. The only people who are really benefiting from it big time is the people who are creating the software to distribute the articles.

I am SOOOOO happy to hear you say this James. I've said it as well and gotten shot for it too. I wrote a post called <a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/article-marketing/12866-isnt-article-marketing-just-one-giant-leak-energy-suck.html#post38754">Isn't Article Marketing Just one Giant Leak &amp; Energy Suck???</a> and took a lot of heat.

BTW I think the ones that make out are the directories too. All that user generated content feeding clickers to all those Adsense ads!

 

[burton4550]

Hey great information. This forum is really awesome. Im getting more pointers here in a faster amount of time then I got with both the courses I paid for that promised one on one coaching (ha what a lie by them). Im a little confused though, Im only using a blog right now with blogger.com. I wasn't sure if thats what you were referring to by saying my website ? If so how do I add an email input to have people give me there email address on my blog so I can start making a list. I also do have stuff that I can give away from affiliate programs that they give me. So I can kinda use this to intise them to give me there email information and start building my list this way.


The other things that you mentioned, like the landing page and google optimizer. Do I need to set up a website first ? Or can I do this in addition to my blog I have right now. Im wanting to try and make money with my blog before I have to start forking out money to get a website all set up. This is only because I want to make sure this works before I start spending money. I already rushed into adwords and blew about 100 dollars there. So im a little more hesitant on spending more money.

The other thing I was kinda curious about was the article marketing you were talking about. Were talking about having the articles on my website to get higher rankings with google to get more traffic ? Or having my articles applied to other peoples website with a link back to my page?

Thanks again for your help you guys it really means alot. Im just a young fella trying to figure this all out on my own and its kinda stressful at times.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Im a little confused though, Im only using a blog right now with blogger.com. I wasn't sure if thats what you were referring to by saying my website ? If so how do I add an email input to have people give me there email address on my blog so I can start making a list.

Yes if you are using blogger that would be considered your site right now.

But to get your own domain is less than 10 a year and you can get a decent small hosting package for under 10 a month. So the cost to have your own site is negligible.

I think you can add an email sign up/opt in form to blogger. You need to pay for Awebber or some other email list manager, then they give you the code to add to blogger. (I believe this would work, not certain). One of the drawbacks to building a site or blog on a turn-key platform is sometimes you are limited by what you can add, but I think blogger is fairly flexible. You just need to be sure whatever email management program you buy has a list building format that works with blogger.

 

[burton4550]

Ok cool thanks . I am gonna get to designing my own site and landing page and review page and all that fancy stuff once I finally make my first dollar using blogger. I want to just take it one step at a time to make sure I don't miss anything, because I wanna be a pro at this ..

 

[InternetZine.co.uk]

Some people tell me it's easy to make money online with CB, but its hard to me. I really need help too.

 

[kpfingaz]

I don't work with CB at all but as far as I know they still don't have click tracking which to me is just ridiculous. If that's still the case then you have no way of knowing how many are clicking through. (unless you use some other type of click tracking).

Someone correct me if I am wrong. I think I remember CB saying they were going to add click tracking, but not sure if they ever did.

CB does have click tracking or hop link tracking. Under the reporting tab, look for analytics and under that click on GO for Affiliate Reporting. Its even more effective if you use tracking ids (TIDs) with your links.

To add to what everyone else said, the easiest way to make sales is to target someone who is ready to buy. So if you're looking at your keywords you have to determine who is ready to buy, who is just researching and so on.

This is called the buying cycle which is usually characterized by three stages.

Since I cant link to a post on my blog, I'll just copy it here:

Searcher #1 - The researcher - The researcher is very early in the buying cycle. He may not even make a purchase or have the means to do so. He is looking for information on how his problem can be solved and would use very broad keywords.

For example if he might have heard about people making money on the internet using Google.

His searches may be "lose weight", "how to lose belly fat", "online diets". With these searches, you may be getting clicks on your affiliate links without him making a purchase because he is just looking for information.

You can take advantage of the researcher if you set up an opt in and offer a free 7 day course, a free sample, a free guide or newsletter or something of use to the researcher.

Searcher #2 - The Informed - Searcher #2 used to be a researcher and has found what he is looking for - the information he came online to get in the first place. The interest is now building up and he is now an informed searcher. He is getting closer to the end of the buying cycle but may not even buy (might be a cheapo).

His searches using the above example, would be keywords like "weight loss guides", "best weight loss pill that works", "weight loss diet with no exercise" and so on.

Again it might be possible to get him to your website and turn him into searcher #3 but why not target searcher #3 instead.

Searcher #3 - The Buyer - The buyer's interest has been peaked and he has his credit card in hand or has logged into his paypal account already. He is looking for reasons to buy (or not to buy) something that could solve his problem. He definitely is going to spend money.

His searches using the above example are now very targeted. He has seen some weight loss guides and has heard suggestions on 'best weight loss guides' and has singled out one. He searches for "Fat Loss 4 Idiots review", "buy Fat Loss 4 Idiots", "Fat Loss 4 Idiots vs Jenny Craig Diet". If you advertised on "buyer type" keywords your conversions are going to be much higher.

Buyer type keywords contain words like 'review', 'buy', 'purchase', 'bonus', 'coupon' etc and the brand name.

You want to put your affiliate links in front of Searcher #3.

Hope this helps.

Jay

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for copying your blog post here Jay.

Excellent advice. Catch people when they are in the buy cycle!

 

[Sweetestmiracle]

WOW! You people are good!! Each time that I come back to this forum which is every 2-3 days, you all blow me away. I have not received so much information from one forum in a long time. i appreciate all that you have shared. Please keep it coming, I have so much more to learn

PS I will definitely go and check the CBTracker!