Clickbank For BeginnersClickbank Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Recently, there were lots of make money programs been using Google’s name. For example, Easy Google Profit, Google Money Tree, Google Money Machine. Some of them are scams, others could be legit. Now, if you are new to online business, probably you didn’t know that Google has its own associate network, similar to Amazon. It is known as Google Affiliate Network, established in 2008 after Google acquiring Doubleclick Performics network. So, it is safe and not a scam. Doubleclick is a was legit associate network since 1998.

However, just because it is under Google, don’t expect the business would be easy. Yes, Google will pay you, only base on your performance. If you can’t refer any customer, you earn nothing. Just like other online or offline business, you need to understand the right skills, about search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising to make thousands from it. Anyway, don’t fall into other scams that uses Google name in the future, especially when come to home business kit or money making eBooks. Google never sold information products. In fact, they created free learning resources for webmasters and advertisers, like Google Learning Center, Webmaster Central and Conversion Room blog.

So far, only these programs really endorsed by Google. Keep in mind that all of them are free to join, except for Adwords. That’s because in Adwords, Google send you customers. If any program you found in the future claims they associated with Google, but requires payment, stay away:

1. Google Adsense: Google Adsense program is free to join. If you can make a simple blog at Blogger, you can start making money using Adsense. All you need to do is paste Google Adsense code in your blog or website, wait for the visitors to come. Should the visitors click on the ads, the you will get paid. However, you cannot click your own ads or encourage someone, including your friend or visitors to click on it. So, if you don’t have a website with decent, targeted traffic, don’t expect this to would be easy.
2. Google Affiliate Network. This is also free to join. Again, don’t expect it would be easy. You will be paid based on your performance, and how many customers you refer. So, if you fail to sell anything, don’t expect to get the money.
3. Google Adwords: If you ever search on Google, probably you’ve seen Google Adwords. It is small text links on the right side of the search result. Advertisers will pay to Google each time searchers click on his link. The purpose is to connect a product or service using Google search. It is not necessarily your own product. You can register and sell other people’s products as affiliates.

I mean no offense here, but Starting Online Business For Dummies in my opinion, is not a good guide for online business. For newbie, this book might get you excited, however, being an experienced internet entrepreneur myself, I can tell lots of information in this book is misleading and outdated. Plus, you can easily found such information easily if you search at Google for related blogs or forums. Or you can sign up for my mini course for better and practical step-by-step techniques. This review is based on my personal experience.

What’s inside
Basically, this book is about using the internet as a way to start, sell and connect with your customers with lower cost. It introduces lots of social media and business related website: Flickr, Microsoft business tools, eBay, Amazon, Social network like MySpace.

What to sell
This book highlighted a few business models including:

• selling on eBay.
• becoming Amazon and Cafepress seller.
• selling your knowledge.

The fact is, these models is not as easy as it sounds. Take example selling your knowledge. Of course, you know about something. However, does other people on the internet is looking for your knowledge anyway? While selling on eBay could be hard. How much profit you’ll gain depends on the demand and type of products.

Web hosting and site creation
Despite for dummies name, lots of methods inside this book is not doable, especially when you are a dummy. Also, some of the jargons inside is not necessary to start making money online. These are some jargons and methods related to website creation:

• Hiring technical experts to assist you.
• How to find a good web hosting service.
• How to use free Site Builder.
• Creating an AOL store.
• How to create a quality content for your website.
• Using Yahoo Geocities.

Site promotion
Based from my experience, site promotion is the most important part for online business. Too bad, Starting Online Business For Dummies doesn’t give much information for this part. You can still make money online without having your own product. You don’t need to master lots of site creation methods, since there are lots of do-it-yourself site builder available. You don’t even need to know how to handle customer support or setting up payment processor. However, without effective promotion, your online business is as good as dead.

The only promotion method being taught in this guide is search engine optimization (SEO). From what I can tell, getting good ranking in search engine like Google is hard. You need to learn lots of things, doing lots of works and waiting for months to see good result.

I found that the best, faster way to drive traffic from search engines is by posting articles to websites like Ezine Articles (ezinearticles.com) or Squidoo (squidoo.com). These websites are loved by Google, with lots of backlinks. You can post articles for free to these websites and get ranked in less than one week without much things to do and learn.

In my opinion, any books about online business should focus more than just search engine optimization (SEO) methods. Latest and sustainable techniques like video marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and affiliate marketing should be highlighted.

Conclusion
Starting Online Business For Dummies could give you a brief picture on a few things involved when starting online business. However, don’t depend too much on this guide when you really want to start online business. This guide contains lots of outdated and misleading information. If you like Starting Online Business For Dummies, I guarantee you’ll like my mini course even more.

Being a Copy N Profit member itself, I know exactly what’s inside. After trying one of their hottest campaign, Copy N Profit is an average product in my opinion. Not as good as you read in the sales page, but due to certain reasons, it is not a scam either. I tried being honest as possible, and I’m not going to insert my affiliate link in this review.

My experience with Copy N Profit
My campaign: I wanted to be safe, so I decided to copy one of their tested campaigns and not the feeder campaigns. I used their landing page, sending traffic using Adwords and after wasting around $30, I made no sale at all. When I checked my website stat, 90% of visitors who arrived at my landing page didn’t even click my affiliate link while the rest didn’t buy. Finally, I decided to pause the campaign. That campaign actually the one they claim to be the highest conversion.

No landing page for some campaigns: They do provide landing pages, but not for all campaigns. Most of their actual campaigns are tested using direct linking method, that is send traffic directly from Adwords ads to your affiliate link.

The follow up: After one week of purchase, I got a phone call from Copy N Profit staff. I’m not a US resident and quite surprised when receiving a phone call from USA. I didn’t expect to receive a call from unknown person from other country. The guy told me to get a pen and paper, asking me about my job, my monthly goal and want me to jot down what do I expect from this program.

Other’s experience: I browsed Warrior Forum to check how others are doing with Copy N Profit program. Just expected, lots of them get the same result as I am. Some of them did make the sale, but not much.
Check out what others said about CNP (including the owner himself).

Actual campaign area
Disclaimer: First, before you could see the actually campaigns, you’ll see a long disclaimer here. They tell you that the result could vary and in case you have no experience with Adwords, you better watch videos at Google Learning Center.

The campaigns: This one could be a good thing about this product. You will be given actual campaign, the product that you could promote, keyword list, traffic volume, conversion rate, budget, earned per sale and time when the conversion is the best. They also give you keyword list, geographic targeting for Adwords, ads text, the max CPC bid, daily budget and for some campaigns, you also get landing page.

The videos area
All the tutorials here are just basic and somewhat just introduction to affiliate marketing for beginners. This includes Adwords basic, forum marketing, offline promotion, keyword concept. It’s absolutely nothing new to experienced while not enough for beginners to earn money based on these videos. In my opinion, it would be better if they could expose more about how to create a quality landing page and how to use autoresponder to maximum.

The support
This part is great in my opinion. You have access to the support ticket, and to CNP forum. If you asked questions using support ticket, a staff will reply and assist you. If you need one-on-one support from CNP owner himself, you need to post question in the forum

However, what I don’t understand is they don’t provide link to CNP forum in the member’s area. When I first arrived here, I thought there is no support forum available for CNP. The only link they provide is to Niche Chopper forum. Actually, to access this forum, you need to contact CNP staff via support ticket and you’ll be given the link. Anyway, Jamie seems to be actively helping members in CNP forum. Which is why, I wouldn’t say that CNP is a scam, rip off or something.

Success stories
Does Copy N Profit do work? Well, if you want to make one sale or two, probably yes. However, if you want to make steady income online, in my opinion, you need more than Copy N Profit. Have a look inside success stories forum.

My recommendation
Due to the support and campaigns given, Copy N Profit is not always bad for everyone, but for most people, it is not a good way to start. If you have experience on publishing a website and creating Adwords campaign, but still don’t make the money, CNP might be good for you since you can eliminate the guesswork and testing part. But if you already make at least $300 per month, CNP is not worth trying. Not much of new things that you can learn here and there’s no point to compete with other member’s while you can try lots of untapped niches out there.

Anyway, Copy N Profit is not for beginners and is not the only product that you should buy before start making consistent income online. Whether you made sale or not with CNP campaigns, I strongly encourage you to look for more resources about email marketing and how to grow your list of subscribers. From experience, I can tell that growing mailing list is a must for every online marketer, whether you are selling your own product or others.

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Is Clickbank a scam? Well, if you think Clickbank is a scam, then e-commerce itself is a scam. Affiliate marketing is a scam. eBay, Paypal and Amazon are scam companies. The fact is, Clickbank is not a scam. However, there are some issues with Clickbank that makes some people think that it is a scam while some affiliates, especially experienced marketers don’t like Clickbank. Let me explain.

Issue 1: Clickbank doesn’t pay some affiliates, although their commission earnings exceed minimum $100. Well, actually this is to avoid lots of affiliate from using Clickbank just to get rebate for every purchase they made. Yes, you can buy any Clickbank product from your own affiliate link and get paid for it, but they won’t pay you until these conditions are met:

• The transaction must be made from five different credit card numbers. Two of them must be from both Mastercard and VISA. Paypal is not counted here.
• Total earning must be at least $10. For more information, see their affiliate FAQs.

Issue 2: There are lots of low quality make money products sold via Clickbank. People buy this product with hope they will earn money by investing on these products. However, in the end, all they got is low quality products teaching methods that didn’t work. So, they consider that product, even Clickbank itself is a scam company. Well, you cannot blame one big organization just because of a few bad apples. Anyone can sell their digital products at Clickbank for $49 payment. With such low capital to start but a huge potential to be made, it’s normal to see some publishers take this advantage to get rich by scamming people. However, it doesn’t Clickbank itself is behind all these. In fact, Clickbank has refund policy which allows any customers to request for refund in case the product is defected or not as good as it sounds. You can always request for refund by filling this form.

http://www.clickbank.com/orderDetail.htm

I made this several times this year and always gets my money back in three days. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t ask refund from the product owner himself. Some publishers refuse to refund your money and won’t answer your support ticket. This is example of my purchase which had been refunded. I hide some information inside this screenshot for privacy and to protect credibility of product owner.

Issue 3: So many commission thefts that you sometimes could hardly sell products. People can register as Clickbank affiliate for free, hence they knew they are going to buy form your affiliate link. Unethical people can very easily place a cookie at the time of purchase that changes or adds their affiliate ID into the link. In the end, he buyer gets the rebate, but you’re not.

Issue 4: High refund rate. It’s easy to request refund from Clickbank. Some buyers even created same email copies asking refund from four different products. This is bad for both affiliate and merchant. As an affiliate, should the customer asked for refund, it means goodbye to your hard-earned commission.

Issue 5: Ugly hoplink at the address bar.Whenever visitors click your hoplink, they understand that you’ll get paid for their purchase. It’s not that hard, just look at the address bar. Compared to other network like Commission Junction, RegNow and Shareasale where people don’t see your ugly link at the address bar.

Conclusion: Clickbank itself is not a scam. Many marketers make good income, even quit their day job thanks to Clickbank. However, you need to be smart and think a way to avoid all these issues. One way is by looking for Clickbank alternatives like Paydotcom, Commission Junction or in house affiliate programs. If you still want to use Clickbank, don’t start by promoting internet marketing related products, unless if you use mailing list techniques.