Promoting and selling Clickbank products could be hard, sometimes impossible if you do it the wrong way. You cannot just sign up at Clickbank, take a product and promote blindly. These are some tips to promote Clickbank products effectively.

1. Pick a good niche market. A good market must be less competitive but high in demand. There are lots of ways to do this. For example, you can log on to Google Trends and see the hot trends section.
2. Find only good quality Clickbank products. There is no good promoting a garbage products, since customers will ask for refund soon. One way to do this is by checking for Clickbank gravity. The higher gravity, that means the more affiliates successfully sell the products in the last two months.
3. Focus on search engine traffic only. Although you can get traffic from other resources like forum marketing, Twitter or even Myspace, traffic these could hardly convert. Remember, you don’t want just any traffic. You want buyer traffic.
4. For start, forget about getting free traffic by using SEO method. That could take months time, with more work to do. Join article directories like Hubpages or Squidoo. These websites is trusted by Google so any articles you posted there will be ranked in less than a week. One way to get buyer traffic from search engines is by writing product review. Don’t forget to include your affiliate link in your article.
5. For more competitive keywords, consider using pay-per-click traffic like Adwords. Create a website with relevant content and your affiliate link inside it. Then use PPC to send traffic to your website.
6. For long term success, consider growing mailing list. By having mailing list, you’ll get better sales rate and lifetime customers.

Tips and warning:

For more details, sign up for my mini course and I’ll show you step-by-step guide on how to successfully promote Clickbank products.

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 found that one of the best way to promote a product at Amazon is by using a directory called Hubpages (hubpages.com). Unlike a new blog or website domain, Hubpages has good reputation and page rank in the eye of Google. Hence, if you post an article to this directory, for any less competitive keywords, your article will be ranked quickly, sometimes, less than 24 hours. Which means you will get fast, targeted traffic from Google search engine. This is one of my article posted on Hubpages, which is ranked one hour later. However, unlike using your own website or blog, your affiliate revenue will be shared with Hubpages owner.

Where and how to enter your Associate ID
Register for both Hubpages and Amazon Associates account, if you don’t have one.
Login to Amazon associate account and get your unique Amazon Associate ID.

Login to your Hubpages account, then click on My Account > Affiliate Settings > Enter your Associate ID.

What to post in your Hub

For details about Hubpages and affiliate marketing, click here to download my free eBook.

1. By posting product review to Hubpages. Product reviews are the best way to get buyer traffic to your Amazon affiliate link. For one thing, anyone who read your review would probably interested in buying that product. Plus, I found that getting good ranking in Google is way easier for product name keywords, compared to general search terms. Example keywords are: Buy Nikon d40 digital camera, Ferret for dummies review.
2. Example products can be found at Amazon Best Seller section: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books
3. Usually, selling book products is way easier on the internet compared to expensive hard good like Macbook or digital camera. So, I strongly suggest that you start with book first.
4. Another great place to find ideas is Google Keyword Tool. Enter a brand name or something and see what’s coming up. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
   

   
   

1. The information inside this book is nothing new, very basic and can be easily found online for free. Easy Google Profit teaches people how to make money using Google, either by advertising and selling products as an affiliate or Google Adsense. There’s no secret or details step-by-step techniques. Just search at Google for keywords like "make money using Google" or "make money online" and you could find tonnes of similar information for free.
2. Another big problem with Easy Google Profit is their billing policies. Most people thought that they need to pay only $1.97 for shipping and handling. The truth is, there is hidden policy which most victims unaware of. By submitting their credit card information, people entered a contract which allows them to charge $72.21 per month.
3. Plus, lots of victims will be charged monthly on programs they never asked for.

How to really make money from Google Adsense and affiliate marketing
Three ways to do this:

1. By selling your own information products like eBook: People search at Google because they are looking for information. They hunger to learn something. If book of any topics is hot selling at Amazon marketplace, then you can also sell eBook in the same topic online, using Google.
2. By selling other’s products as an affiliate: You might knew this already. An affiliate is similar to marketing agent on the internet. Which means registration is 100% free and you’ll be paid up to 75% commission. Which means, even though you don’t have the skills to create a quality product, you can still earn so much profit.
3. By publishing Google Adsense: If you have a website or blog with decent traffic, Google Adsense could be your source of revenue. You’ll be paid each time your visitors click on your ads link.

For details about these techniques, download my free guide. No sign up required.

Below, I highlighted the most popular and effective business promotion online.

Pay-per-click advertising
If you ever used Google search, you’ll notice the right hand section, which is labeled as sponsored links. Those are called Google Ads. The website owner pays to Google each time people click on his link. Unlike Google organic, free listings, making your ads appear using Google ads is not too hard. Your links can appear on that section too in less than five minutes. Log on to http://adwords.google.com for more information.

I strongly recommend pay-per-click advertising for lots of reasons:

1. It’s fast. You can setup and have your ads run in a few minutes.
2. Targeted traffic. Unlike offline promotion, forum marketing or social media marketing, traffic that comes from Google search are highly relevant and targeted. Anyone who click and arrive at your website probably already interested to buy your products.
3. No hassle to learn and work for SEO. Of course your website can be ranked top ten in Google for free. However, getting that ranking could be hard, especially for competitive, profitable keywords. Plus, there’s no guarantee that your link will stay top ten. Should Google changes their algorithm, your website will drop to second page or maybe to the 30th page.
4. Cost effective. You don’t need to pay when your ads is displayed. You pay only when someone click on your ads. Hence, you can always set the budget, and maximum cost per click base on the conversion rate, and product price.
5. Lots of targeted traffic. Not only your links will appear on Google search, but also on their search partners like Ask, Youtube and MySpace.

Article marketing
On low budget? Or starting from scratch? Article marketing should be your choice. You don’t need a product since you can always find a good, quality products to sell like your own, at Clickbank or Amazon marketplace. You also don’t need a full website or blog, since the traffic comes from article directories. Websites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Ezine Articles and ehow allows anyone to register for free and post their ideas. You can also include links back to your website in your articles, giving more exposure to your products and website. Keep in mind that you are posting articles to third party’s website, so you must follow their rules. Especially when you are using Ezine Articles or Squidoo. Due to lots of marketers are abusing their system, these websites have strict rules for authors.

PS: Want to find out more about article marketing and pay-per-click advertising? Sign up to my mini course on the left.

Search Engine Optimization
For long term, you might want to consider this one. To get good ranking for Google organic listings, you need to provide good, quality content. Google loves quality content and will always give good ranking to any website or blog with great, outstanding content. Next, you also need to build lots of backlinks to your website. This can be done with article marketing, social bookmarking, affiliate programs or forum signature.

The process could be long and require lots of works. So, if you have some budget, you might want to hire someone else to do this work for you. Or you might as well switch to pay-per-click advertising. These are some tips for search engine optimization:

• Use blog instead of website. By using blog, you can easily post, manage content, interact with your customers and get ranked with less work. Google loves blog since the script is search engine friendly, the content is always updates, each time you post your blog will be submitted to directories like Technorati. Plus, the comment feature allows discussion among blog readers, which will add more content.
• Build backlinks from article directories, social bookmarking sites, blog directories and forum posting.
• Always use the targeted keyword in your page title or blog post. When Google bots indexed your website, the first thing they read is the title.
• Make the description relevant. Description is also important.
• Keep the content relevant to the keywords.

Affiliate program
If you are selling your own product, traffic from affiliates is a must. In fact, for some markets, 90% of your sales are made by affiliates, compared to the rest of traffic source. An affiliate is a marketing partner which promote and send real customers to your website. Unlike the rest, an affiliate is real people. What makes affiliate program so special is you pay to affiliates only when they made the sale. In short, if you don’t earn any profit, you pay nothing for it. If you make lots of profit, you will share the commission with your affiliates. It’s totally risk-free.

You don’t need to be tech savvy to setup and run your own affiliate programs. There are lots of companies will manage affiliate tracking sometimes even payment processing for you. If you are selling eBook, consider using Clickbank or Paydotcom since most affiliates there are good at selling information products. Plus, Clickbank will handle the payment for you as well. While for software products like DVD burning tools, you can use Regnow or OneNetworkDirect. As for the rest, like hard good, Commission Junction or Linkshare would probably the best choice.

If you are a merchant, you’ll find out that affiliate program is the best promotion method, even better than SEO or pay-per-click. These are the benefits:

• Pay to affiliates only when they made sales. In short, the better affiliate performance, the more money you’ll make.
• No hassle to to manage factors related to search engines like content creation, link building, bid management.
• Your affiliates will link to your website. Which means you’ll get more backlinks and better Google ranking.
• Some affiliates have over 100,000 mailing list subscribers. Which means the potential is huge.

Selling on eBay
Again, this is another privilege by product owner, especially hard good seller. eBay doesn’t allow downloadable products. So, if you are selling e-good, like eBook, you can list your items at eBay by burning them to CD or DVD and sell as hard good.

You need to have a Paypal account since it is trusted and used by 75% eBay buyers. The key to successful auction business is to build credibility and trust. You need to start by buying other’s products first. Then, your rating will increase. The more rating you get, the more you are trusted.

Another special thing about eBay, is that growing your eBay business will also help other businesses that you own. Customers which buy from you at eBay marketplace, will probably know your business, your website and your brand. They will buy again from you outside eBay.

Email marketing
Email marketing is recycled traffic. Which means you won’t be able to get and collect emails if you don’t implement any of above traffic strategy. The good thing about collecting emails, is the customers would probably buy from you for lifetime. Plus, by sending them emails, you will be able to constantly remind them about your business, which leads to high buying rate, on average at 10%, compared to 2% if you don’t collect emails.

Forum marketing
Forum marketing is not a good promotion methods for some markets. Before register and post, please read the forum rules. I strongly recommend that you check whether that forum has marketing and advertising section or not. For example like WSO at Warrior Forum and Buy, Sell and Trade section at Digital Point forum. If that forum doesn’t have any of these, then it is not worth of your time. Plus, some forum allows signature, while some don’t. While you are prohibited to promote directly in the message board (i.e. forum spamming).

Offline promotion
This could be a good promotion method if you utilize it properly. To use this type of promotion, you need your own domain name, which is easy to remember. Then, create a proper, effective advertisement based on your product. Make sure you are using the right channel for advertising. For example, if you are selling something related to cell phone, then your ads must appear on magazines related to phone and technology. The same goes when you are going to use television. Display your ads only at times when most of your target audience watch TV.

Anyway, offline promotion is an advanced method. Unless if you are a big brand, I don’t recommend offline promotion. It is less efficient, with poor result compared to online promotion. Download this guide and learn step-by-step methods about online marketing.

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.

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How to choose quality products to promote

By referring to APS: Unlike Clickbank where you can determine quality products according to gravity and popularity, Paydotcom doesn’t have such feature. Alternatively, they provide APS (Affiliate Power Score). The higher APS, the better that product is. APS is calculated on a daily basis and it depends on a number of factors such as the number of sales, total refunds, and affiliate earnings with special emphasis put on the number of unique affiliates making sales over the last 150 days with recent transactions having more relevance.

By using forum: Usually, if the product is good, you’ll find lots of positive reviews at related forums. Use Google, search for relevant forums in that market, and find out what other people say about particular products.

By referring to Clickbank gravity. Search at Clickbank marketplace for eBook in the same topic and watch for the gravity. If the gravity is 1 or higher, that is a good topic to start. Otherwise, all products in that topic has gravity lower than 1, avoid it. Probably not many people search for that topic, which leads to lower sales.

Buy the product itself: This is the best choice, but it requires money. Buy the product, see the quality whether it is good or bad.

By using Alexa: Alexa (alexa.com) provides website traffic information. Enter any URL and Alexa will return a traffic result. Website with the highest traffic on the net will be ranked 1, while the second highest will get rank 2 and so on. Think about it this way: A great products will be promoted by lots of affiliates and get consistent traffic. Hence, a website at Paydotcom marketplace which is ranked top 100,000 would probably sell q good, quality product.

Does Alexa method 100% reliable? Well, not quite. Because the rank is calculated only if visitors who visit certain sites, have Alexa toolbar installed. Otherwise, no matter how much traffic the website gets, if all visitors don’t have Alexa toolbar installed, it won’t be ranked top 100,000.

The best way to promote Paydotcom products

Email marketing. Email marketing, in my opinion, is and will always be the best method to promote informational products. Unlike software programs like antivirus, where users can download, try and finally buy, people who’s going to buy eBooks can’t try or see what’s inside. The best way is by keep following up, give them a picture of what’s inside the product. To grow a list of subscribers, you need an autoresponder service. My favorite autoresponder is Aweber. Then, to send traffic and get lots of subscribers, you need to participate in forums, use PPC ads, or write articles. These are benefits of using email marketing:

• Higher conversion rate. On average, marketers who collect visitor’s email will get 10% conversion rate. Otherwise, conversion rate for normal website is 2% of less.
• Lifetime customers. Collect a visitor’s email, and he will be your customers, possibly for lifetime. The more traffic and subscribers you have, the more money you will make.
• Viral traffic. Some subscribers might forward your follow up messages to their friends, spreading the word, and increase traffic to your website.

Article marketing. To get good ranking with SEO techniques could be a daunting task for beginners. There are lots of things you need to learn, some jargons and more work to do. Article marketing is a good source of traffic and a great alternative to SEO. There are lots of directories where you can post articles for free. My favorite is Ezine Articles. The rules might be strict, but once you are getting used to it, posting articles to this directory would be no problem.

Clickbank or Paydotcom?

Which one should be your choice? Clickbank or Paydotcom? Well, it depends. Personally, I think Paydotcom has more advantages compared to Clickbank.

• No need to wait for months to receive checks. Payments are made instantly after one month via Paypal. Getting paid by check is a problem for non-US affiliates, especially to those who use paid traffic as promotional method.
• If you are selling something, the startup cost is zero. You’ll be charged only when someone buy your products. Totally risk-free. Unlike Clickbank and 2Checkout, where you need to pay $49 initial fee. Could be an issue for some vendors, since they already invest thousand dollars to publish the eBook and need to invest again for traffic and autoresponder.
• No commission theft problems since affiliate can’t buy from his own link. Should an affiliate trying to do so, commission will default to the vendor. This is a good thing for both affiliates and vendors. Vendors, especially those who pay 75% commission won’t lose money to affiliates. While affiliates won’t get their commission stolen. Commission theft is a big problem for Clickbank affiliates these days, especially when comes to make money online products.
  

If there is one problem with Paydotcom, probably due to less marketers using this network. For affiliates, eBook in certain topics is not available here, which means you have no choice but to use Clickbank. For vendors, you will get more affiliates promoting your product, if you use Clickbank compared to Paydotcom.

Click here to download free guide. Learn step-by-step system about online marketing.

• If you are using Clickbank, commission theft become so rampant that sometimes you could hardly gain commission from each traffic.
• When you send promotional email to your list, you don’t want them to see ugly links that prevent them from clicking on it.
• You also don’t want your promotional email to fall into spam folder.
• Lots of article directories like Ezine Articles or Hubpages don’t allow affiliate links to reduce spam articles and maintain their quality in the eye of search engines.

Below are common methods that people always use to cloak or hide affiliate links.

Method 1: By using Tiny URL
To use this method, you can simply log on to http://tinyurl.com , enter your affiliate link in the box and you are ready to go. This method is just to avoid visitors recognize your link each time they hover the mouse. However, they can easily found that you gain commission as a Clickbank affiliate once they click on the link and see the address bar. For example like productwebsite.com/index.php?hop=yourclickbankid.

However, I found that some Clickbank merchants already eliminate this ugly hop issue.

This method is useful to cloak a link when sending promotional emails, or to be inserted into your website.

Method 2: By using iframe
This method requires you to have your own domain and hosting. Your visitors will see yourwebsite.com/product, in the address bar, instead of
productwebsite.com/index.php?hop=yourclickbankid.

To use this method, copy the following code to notepad, and replace the YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-HERE with your real affiliate link. PRODUCT NAME HERE with the product name you are promoting.

<html>
<head><title>PRODUCT NAME HERE.</title></head>
<frameset border="0">
<frame src="YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-HERE" frameborder="no">
<noframes>
Sorry, it appears you are using a Web browser thatdoes not support frames.
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

Save the notepad file into a .html file. For example cloak.html. Then, upload this file to your server. When someone click on the link, he will see yourwebsite.com/cloak.html. See example.

However, when people see the page source, (Press Ctrl + U for Firefox), they will able to see your affiliate link. 80% visitors won’t do this anyway, unless if they already know this method.

This method is useful when you are including affiliate link in

• promotional emails.
• your website
• the articles and bio box when you submit articles to Ezine Articles or Hubpages. These websites don’t allow affiliate links, but they allow you to include your website links which is directed to affiliate link.

Method 3: Paid method using Affiliate Cloner
This is by using a paid program called Affiliate Cloner. This program overcome all above problems. However, total price is $49.90, quite high for a program which I don’t think important. If you can’t afford it or want to save your money, then don’t buy. This is actually not really needed.

By using Affiliate Cloner, people who click your links won’t be able to detect whether it is an affiliate link or not. They can’t find your affiliate id anywhere in the page source or the address bar. This is example of link which I hide using Affiliate Cloner.

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• Most new marketers, including me back then start internet business by reading eBooks and at the same time lots of famous eBooks sold by experts like Ewen Chia, Mike Filsaime, Chris X and Andrew Fox are based on affiliate marketing with Clickbank.
• Clickbank is one of the largest, oldest network with over 100,000 affiliates. So many affiliates, so many people talk about it, making Clickbank is known better than other network like RegNow.
• Easy to start and easy to sell. You can register within minutes and start making money.
• The number one payment processor for eBook sellers after Paypal.

How to start selling products at Clickbank

These are a few tips on how to make money as Clickbank affiliates:

• Focus on just one traffic strategy per month. Don’t rush and try lots of them at once.
• Forum marketing does work, but it will generate passive income.
• If you want consistent income, with at least one sale or more per day, you should focus on search engine traffic only.
• Increase the sales rate of your visitors by growing your mailing list. If you don’t collect visitor’s email, 98% of them will leave your website without buying anything. However, if you collect emails, at least 10% of them will convert into customers. Even better, they might buy from you for lifetime.
• Most of Clickbank products are not worth having, to be honest. Which is why, I strongly recommend that you buy the product itself before recommending to others. If you don’t like it, request for refund.
• Clickbank gravity might be a good indicator of quality product. High gravity means lots of unique affiliates able to sell the products in the past eight weeks.

Other factors you might want to consider
Despite what you might read in lots of eBook, Clickbank might not a good way to make money. It depends on the product. I found that lots of quality internet marketing products are not necessarily sold via Clickbank. For example like Seven Figure Code from Mike Filsaime, IM Niche Formula – these products are sold via Paydotcom, a competitor to Clickbank. While membership sites like Niche Profit Classroom and Wealthy Affiliate have their own affiliate program.

These are reasons why Clickbank sucks:

• You need to wait months before enjoying your hard earned cash. Especially if you are living outside USA where the only payment method is check. Pretty tough if you use pay-per-click as promotion strategy.
• Read their affiliate FAQs properly. To receive your check, not only your earnings must reach the minimum $10, but also the sales must be from five different credit cards, with at least one Mastercard and another one is VISA and none of the five are from Paypal.
• Most people know about Clickbank affiliate program. Especially when promoting internet marketing related products. So, instead of buying from your link, they prefer to click their own affiliate link and get rebate from it.
• The refund rate is high, even for product with high gravity. Of course, you might think that selling expensive products, which the price is over $100 could make you lots of money, but think again. What if the buyer ask for refund within 30 days? The higher product price, the more chances customers would ask for refund.

How to counter these problems
These are some suggestions. It won’t eliminate all above problems but at least you can reduce them:

• If you are living in the certain countries, use direct deposit as payment method, instead of check.
• Avoid promoting internet marketing related products, especially if you use pay-per-click. Usually link hijacking would happen if the buyer is also an affiliate. Otherwise he won’t notice.
• Avoid promoting internet marketing products using paid traffic. Especially for product name keywords. Commission theft tends to be higher in this niche compared to health and fitness and hobbies.
• Give the buyer a reason why he must buy from your link. For example, offer them special bonus in exchange for their purchase.
• Cloak your affiliate link. There are lots of ways to do this. The most common is by using iframe techniques. When people click your link, they will see http://yourwebsite.com/recommends instead of http://productname.com/?hop=yournickname.

Click here to download free Clickbank guide. No sign up required.