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Finally! See Which of Your ClickBank Affiliate Programs are Converting and ACTUALLY Making You the Most Money!
Posted in Affiliate Marketing
ClickBank has been a source of endless frustration for so many of us who not only make money online, but actually make a living purely online!
On one hand the ClickBank network offers some of the best converting affiliate products anywhere. So, we all work with them. They also reliably make payouts every 2 weeks, yet another strong point in their favor.
But the major problem until just recently - they refused to show you how much traffic you’ve sent them, so you could never accurately figure out which affiliate products are converting better than others. AAAhhhhh!
So what’s the problem?
While this may not matter much to someone who’s happy to get a $50 ClickBank check every few months, for those of us who bring in several thousand dollars a month from affiliate revenue (from sales of many different affiliate products), optimizing your conversion funnel matters. It matters A LOT.
Can’t you track affiliate conversions yourself?
In short, no. The best you could do was to use OpenAds to track your outgoing clicks for each affiliate product, and then compare that with the actual sales at the end of the month. But that’s error prone.
What you want is to see a per-product breakdown of how many clicks you’ve sent and how many sales you made. THEN you can see what’s actually making you money, so you know where to focus your energy the most. Read: do more of whatever works the best.
So how can you see product conversion stats from ClickBank?
Well, this is a new feature, and it’s buried down deep. But, if you look deep within their reporting tools, and select just the right combination of options (see the image), you’ll get… drumroll please… conversion stats broken down by product! Yeah!!!
Note that currently this is only available for the "by publishers" report, and only for the past 30 days.
And this is what you’ll be seeing… Note how neatly the crucial numbers are computing for you. You see "clicks per order" and how much money you actually made per click. Looking at this graph, can YOU pick out the obvious winner?
While we found it quite by accident while reviewing our top money makers for the past several months, we’re very happy and grateful to see this new feature.
Any great tips to optimize affiliate conversions?
Absolutely. More on this in a future article, but here are some big ones…
- Use OpenAds to split-test ad headlines, and see which attract more clicks to each affiliate products. Every couple of weeks, choose a winner, and add a new contender to "beat the control".
- Use "goals" in Google Analytics to track how well your pre-sale review of the affiliate product is performing. You can see how many clicks to the product sales page you generate, and what your abandonment rate is. You DO pre-sell your affiliate products, don’t you?
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Affiliate Marketing EXPOSED - The Holy Grail of Making Money Online with a Blog
Posted in Affiliate Marketing
Can you Make REAL Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Ah, the mysterious and sometimes black art of affiliate marketing… the well kept secret of the most successful Internet marketers.
Many people have tried and failed to make any money online with affiliate marketing… usually because they give up way too quickly. Fact is, affiliate marketing takes some up front effort to get optimized and working right, but when it’s working, life is very, very good.
Most bloggers only use Google AdSense to monetize their sites. AdSense is a great revenue option, but affiliate marketing can easily bring in double your AdSense revenue, WITHOUT impacting your AdSense earnings.
What’s more, the work you put into developing a good affiliate marketing strategy will pay off for months and years to come. You only do the work once, and it keeps on giving! Now that’s working smarter, not harder.
Passive income, and Blog Monetization Zen.
The best kept secret of affiliate marketing…. Shhhhh!
The biggest secret to successful affiliate marketing is this… It’s all about the pre-sale.
Putting up banners and links will get you some conversions - if you’re lucky. But if that’s your main attempt at affiliate marketing, then it’s a big waste of your time and effort.
People visiting your site (your readers, web visitors) are looking for information. And if you’re doing your job well and putting together great information, then your articles and reviews will be indexed and well ranked by the search engines - making it THAT much easier for these searchers to find your site instead of someone else’s. The more search engine traffic you’re getting, the better.
This is because people WHO ARE MOSTLY READY TO BUY search for reviews and articles about their products of choice. Sometimes they want to see their options for a product category, but often times they just want to justify to themselves why it’s OK to buy that product they really want.
So - they want to see an honest, objective review of a product before they buy it. They want your personal seal of approval. So find great products, provide and honest review with benefits and weaknesses, recommend the product, and offer affiliate links to purchase them.
But what if you don’t like the product you’re recommending? Is that dishonest? Will it still work?
A question plaguing most beginners with affiliate marketing… "Isn’t it dishonest to recommend something you don’t like?"
Of course it’s dishonest to recommend something you don’t actually believe in. And here’s a little secret. If you write a dishonest review, your readers will pick up on that, and they’ll probably move on and NOT buy using your affiliate links.
So here’s a radical solution. Focus on doing reviews and writing articles for products that you LIKE and can actually RECOMMEND. 
Where to find the BEST affiliate products to promote
You know your niche inside and out, don’t you? If not, go back to the drawing board and learn it!
To make thousands of dollars every month in passive income from your blog, your information must be top notch, and for that you have to be an authority on your topic. It’s that simple.
OK, so now that you have an idea about what types of products MIGHT be interesting to your nice, you set out to find the best performing products. No, not just any products… you want to find the ones that are performing well for others, and you start there. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
ClickBank tips and tricks - how to start making money today
ClickBank is a huge marketplace for selling digital products. And it has the easiest to use affiliate program out there. You literally just sign up, search for products to promote by keyword, and get the code to promote them on your site.
You can also see how much you’ll get for every sale, and what percentage of the sale amount that is. Hint - - don’t look for the larger total price, but rather the program that offers you the highest percentage of each sale.
The downside: ClickBank has the worst stats tracking of any affiliate network out there. They don’t show you how many clicks you’ve sent to a product, which can be really frustrating. They only tell you when you’ve made a sale, and how much you made. This approach also doesn’t allow for testing to make sure your links are good. But alas, it’s basically a must for any serious affiliate marketer. So go sign up for ClickBank and find some products to promote.
Commission Junction
Comission Junction is another top affiliate network. It provides great stats for clicks sent, and also gives you great comparative numbers on how much others are really earning for sales across all merchants.
But their products are generally not as juicy as those on ClickBank. Nevertheless, sign up for Comission Junction as well to round out your list of affiliate products, and find yourself some well converting products to try out.
Other affiliate marketing networks and programs
There are some other affiliate networks out there that are worth paying attention to, but it’s very important to not spread yourself too thin. Do your research and find the programs you’ll be focusing on, and go from there.
SharePayNow vs. Clickbank
Another affiliate network similar to ClickBank that’s starting to gain some ground is SharePayNow.
This network is very similar to ClickBank, but unlike ClickBank, it DOES show you how many clicks you’ve sent to a campaign - which is always nice. However, unlike ClickBank, it doesn’t show you which programs in their marketplace are converting and how well. But SharePayNow is definitely worth checking out when you’re choosing products to promote on your site.
AzoogleAds vs. LinkShare - alternate affiliate networks
If you’re looking for some banner ads to check out, you’ll need to find an affiliate program that provides those. AzoogleAds and LinkShare are both large affiliate networks that are worth checking out.
But there’s a big difference, and having dealt with both we’ll be avoiding LinkShare in the future. LinkShare feels like a large, sluggish company, while AzoogleAds is young and on the ball. The AzoogleAds support is great, and you get your own very responsive dedicated account manager that’s actually eager to work with you and help you find well converting campaigns for your site. Wow, imagine that.
Here’s a major difference though - AzoogleAds tends to offer well paying promotions for affiliates, which pay out significantly better than their counterparts on LinkShare.
Check out AzoogleAds and see which of their promotions could work for you.
The Amazon affiliate program
And of course, the most popular affiliate program of all time, the Amazon affiliate program.
For some truly bizarre reason, the Amazon affiliate program is one of the most popular and successful affiliate programs in the history of Internet marketing.
Maybe it’s because it’s downright easy to set up Amazon affiliate links for your site, and start making a little money. More likely, it’s because we all BUY books and other products from Amazon regularly, so we’re comfortable with it. And we know that others buy from Amazon as well.
Here’s the catch though. Amazon pays you roughly 5% of the revenues you generate for them. That is lower than just about ANY website and blog monetization scheme out there.
While it is another monetization option, there are just too many other better options with much higher payouts.
Knowing this, should you still sign up for the Amazon affiliate program?
Yes, you should definitely still sign up for this program. You will eventually either refer to or actually review various books on your website. These books will likely not have direct affiliate options, so the only way to monetize these referrals will be through a quick link to the Amazon product page.
Also, that Amazon affiliate link is a great way to provide your reader more information on the book you’re talking about, and make it easy for your readers to purchase the book.
Amazon also has a really neat feature for affiliates, which creates a dynamic preview of the book when your readers hover their mouse cursor over the book link on your site. All it takes is a tiny JavaScript snippet you’ll get from Amazon.
For an example of the Amazon product preview pop-up, check out this post on AskDanAndJennifer.com answering a reader question about steamy date night DVDs - hover over the DVD titles.
So go ahead and sign up to the Amazon affiliate program as well, but don’t spend a lot of time putting up their banners and other sales tools. Instead, us this as a laser focused way to monetize reviews and references to popular books that you include in your articles.
And suddenly you have ONE MORE revenue source paying you every month…
The eBay affiliate program and AuctionAds
Yeah, the whole "make money with eBay" thing was and still is a great opportunity for some, but it’s become more of a fad. Starting a blog is a solid way to make long term income - just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. Imagine that!
Unlike Amazon, eBay shows some serious lovin’ for it’s affiliates. In fact, in June 2007, eBay nearly doubled it’s affiliate payout amounts. That’s some serious affiliate lovin’.
eBay pays you both a flat reward for each referral you send them (a customer who creates an eBay account and eventually buys something) and also a percentage of the sales generated from the referrals you send them. Now that’s pretty cool.
What’s the best way to add eBay listings to your site and make money?
Until recently, it’s been a challenge to add eBay listings to your site in a visually appealing way, so as to really get your visitors engaged. But AuctionAds makes it very easy to do this, with their easy to customize widgets. You can customize the ad unit on their site, copy the little code snippet, and add it to your site. Done - you’ve got eBay auction ads.
Can you make more money with eBay by using AuctionAds?
YES! The eBay affiliate program is tiered to pay you a lot more money as a high traffic affiliate. So if you have a lot of sales and referrals every month, you make much more PER REFERRAL than someone with just a few sales / referrals per month.
By joining AuctionAds, your commissions are based on the entire AuctionAds member base, not just your own sales. So each referral and sale you generate are compensated as a very high traffic affiliate. Again, this is working smarter, not harder. Sign up for AuctionAds to add eBay auctions to your site - and make money as a high traffic eBay affiliate.
Adult affiliate programs - web cam girls, kinky adult personals, and more… Oh, my!
Wait a minute - is there really money to be made in the adult industry?
Where’ve YOU been? Oh yeah, most definitely. Where there’s demand (as in 50% of all the web traffic today), there’s money to be made.
OK kids, everyone who’s going to be offended here please cover your eyes and skip this section like good boys and girls.
What’s the best adult affiliate program to get started with?
One of the most successful and best paying affiliate programs in "the business" is ClickCash. They’ve been around since the mid 1990’s. Their iFriends site connects people with webcams (a.k.a. cam girls, or "content producers") with web surfers (a.k.a. "consumers"). They provide web cam streams for every possible sexual interest that might have enough consumers who posses credit cards. And they provide a way for many content producers to make a LOT of money from the privacy of their own homes.
ClickCash offers a variety of well converting banners and sites, but some of their best converting sites are Sizzling Cams and Totally Free Cams - WARNING, these are adult sites. Before you click, cover your eyes - and if you’re at work, turn your speakers off!
And get this… you actually make $40 for every FREE signup you send them. These referrals only have to sign up with them and provide a valid credit card, but they’re not charged anything. This person is signing up for a free membership, and they’re asked for their credit card to "verify their age".
Admittedly, getting a credit card is indeed a more accurate way of verifying adulthood than asking your visitors to "click here if you’re over 18".
Anyway, their profit margins are so high, that they will pay you $40 or more (up to $80) per sign-up you send them. And the pay scale is graduated - for more than 5 referrals in a week, you get $45 each, and it goes up to $80 per FREE referral.
Downline referrals
Oh, and if you get other affiliates to sign up, you’ll receive an extra 10% for all the money THEY make. So, you refer your friend who gets 10 conversions next month. That’s $400 for him and $40 for you more than you’re making now. Think of it as a gift for referring your friend to such a successful affiliate program.
So if you’re a little adventurous and open minded, sign up with ClickCash today and start making serious cash from sending FREE signups to ClickCash and iFriends.
But what about adult personals sites, like Adult Friend Finder?
An adult personals site is an excellent complement to promoting ClickCash streaming video sites. Providing more options for your visitors is Always a good thing.
Adult Friend Finder is the most popular adult personals site on the Internet today. What many people don’t realize is that AdultFriendFinder gets more web visitors every day than Match.com, eHarmony, and Yahoo Personals put together. Hmmmm… perhaps there’s money to be made in this niche anyway.
Adult Friend Finder pays between $30 and $85 for EACH paid membership you send them, depending on the promotion they’re running at any given time.
But remember - unlike ClickCash, these visitors need to actually buy something. Regardless, the conversions here are much better than traditional non-adult online dating sites.
Sign up to the Adult Friend Finder affiliate program and give it a try.
Must have affiliate marketing tools
Don’t waste your time and money fumbling around in the dark. You can so easily waste too much of your already scarce time and energy. You should be spending that time laser-focused on doing the things that will MAKE YOU MONEY!
Don’t re-invent the wheel. Find successful affiliate marketers and do what they’re doing!
First, check out the Super Affiliate Handbook. Rosalind Gardner, one of the most successful affiliate marketers in recent years, laid out all the basics on how to really succeed with affiliate marketing in the Super Affiliate Handbook. She goes into great detail about what she did, how she did it, and how you can follow her example. No, it’s not going to show you every step of the way and guarantee your path to amazing riches, but it’ll get you started and on the right path, fast.
Download the Super Affiliate Handbook and get the basics down BEFORE you spend lots of time and money with trial and error.
Then, when you’re ready for advanced affiliate and ClickBank tactics, you’ll want to check out Affiliate Project X. This guide reveals some really well thought out, advanced tactics for making more money on ClickBank, and shows you how to easily figure out what the successful affiliate marketers are doing - so you can do it too! Some people really like it, while others think it’s not so great. We consider it well worth the time to read it, as well as the modest monetary investment. Here’s our recent review of Affiliate Project X.
How to get these guides, and why you should do it
These books are well worth getting, and they’re electronic, so you can actually be scouring them just a few minutes from now.
What’s really great is that you can basically "try" them to see if you like them, so there’s no risk to you. Just because we like them, that doesn’t mean you will. But the great think is that you can download them and make up your own mind. If you don’t feel you got an excellent value, they both offer an immediate no-questions-asked refunds. That’s a major reason we’re very comfortable recommending them both to our friends.
So there’s no reason to put this off. Download Super Affiliate Handbook today.
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Affiliate Project X - Indispensible Guide or Bogus Hype?
Posted in Affiliate Marketing
Most affiliate marketers agree that Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook is THE must-read guide for new affiliate marketers. And we strongly recommend checking it out if you haven’t already.
But when it comes to Affiliate Project X…
There seems to be a serious disconnect between many bloggers and Internet marketers. Some love it, and other say it’s utterly worthless. Wow, it’s unusual to see such a drastic difference in opinion.
Maybe this drastic difference comes from the very salesy and hypey Affiliate Project X website. This article was prompted in part by one of our readers who commented that he finds no value whatsoever in Affiliate Project X, and asked what redeeming value we possibly saw in it.
The short answer is yes, we definitely found it valuable, which is why it’s one of just 2 or 3 affiliate marketing guides that we recommend to our readers.
To take a step back though - Jennifer and I put a LOT of value on always learning and growing. As such, we spend hundreds and thousands of dollars a year on books, guide, programs, and lectures. We’re always absorbing something new. And for those people hoping to make it on their own, and make a good living from their blogs and websites (read: small business), learning is a make it or break it reality.
There is a huge difference between very successful people and those that always seem to fail at everything they attempt.
And that difference is man-made
First and foremost, it’s the can-do attitude that always gives away a truly successful person. Successful people don’t make excuses as to why they can’t do something. They KNOW there’s a way, and they go after it. They also never use the words "someday I’ll do this". "Someday" is the refuge of a person lying to themselves and their friends. We all know someday never comes. Yesterday is just a memory, and tomorrow is a hollow promise. All that is real is TODAY.
The four little words that stop success in its tracks
Your attitude toward the world a huge difference in your life. When I look at something new, I NEVER pick it up saying "I already know this". You know those words… your mind whispers them in your ear every time it’s too lazy to actually think about something.
Rather, embrace it as a challenge to find some new tidbit of information that you’ve been missing. And without fail, you will always learn something new, something that makes you that much more knowledgeable and successful.
Destiny or coincidence?
We believe that you always come upon the information you need, when you need it in life. Call it what you will, but we’ve seen too many instances of this to chalk it up to "coincidence". So when something comes at us, especially when it comes at us from two or three sources in a short time span, it’s generally time to take action.
So back to the question… do we think there’s really any value to Affiliate Project X?
Absolutely. It’s not a huge book, but it gives you the insights of a seasoned veteran. You’ll get a glimpse into how he works his ClickBank affiliate promotions, and how he analyzes and defeats his competition.
Is Affiliate Project X the end-all, be-all dynamite Rosetta Stone that will make money FOR YOU on autopilot while you sit on the couch with your favorite beer watching the game?
Nope. There’s no such thing. But it IS a great stepping stone to becoming a much more successful affiliate marketer - this means you’ll know more tactics that work, so you can employ these to make MORE money while working LESS.
Passive income and the free money myth
Remember, we’re talking about "passive income" here. You write a good article and promote it, and it keeps on bringing in money for years to come. We are NOT talking about "free money", i.e. winning the lottery.
What if you get Affiliate Project X and your worst fears come true - you don’t like it?
Well, you could cry and get mad, or you could do what we would do in that case. Politely ask for your money back.
The funny thing is that we’ve only requested two product refunds, out of all the dozens and dozens of information products we’re always scouring. And in both cases it was only because the sales copy was completely different from what you actually got in the box. Rarely is there a case when you don’t learn something of value.
We recommend Affiliate Project X because we like it, but also it has a full refund guarantee if you’re not happy with it for any reason - for as long as 60 days. Read that again - if you get it and you truly believe you didn’t learn anything of value, you can just ask for your money back - and they will give it to you. It’s that simple.
Next steps
Give Affiliate Project X a try and see what YOU think. If this or any other product doesn’t meet your expectations, then do the right thing - ask for a refund. But we’ll be surprised if you feel that need.
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Blogger Salaries Revealed - How Much Passive Income CAN You Make?
Posted in Make Money Online
Who said bloggers don’t make any money? Some choose to not blog for a living, but many are making a great income, working from home, writing on a topic they’re passionate about. Very cool.
Check out Paula Mooney’s great round-up of the top money-making bloggers
The top few slots are actually people making money online who aren’t bloggers per-se, like Markus Frind who runs the PlentyOfFish.com free online dating site.
But should recognize number 4, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, followed by many other familiar blogger names and faces, like Matt Drudge, Steve Pavlina, ProBlogger Darren Rowse, John Chow, and of course Dan and Jennifer.
So is blogging income Salary or PASSIVE INCOME?
The article talks about blogger salaries, but let’s clear up that definition a bit. Unless someone is paying you to sit there and write blog posts, blogging is passive income.
Salary is when you’re working for a company and they pay you regular wages
You go to work, they pay you. You don’t go to work, they don’t pay you. That’s selling your time for money, hour by hour, for a fixed amount, and with very little freedom.
Blogging is Passive Income, which means you keep making money from work you’ve already done
Basically you do the work once (i.e. write an article) and it keeps making you money for years to come. The more great articles there are on your site, the more traffic you will get, and the more money you will make.
This is a very important distinction for perspective bloggers to understand - because you can make A LOT MORE MONEY with passive income, and it’s A LOT EASIER to make.
It’s a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and count the money you made while you were asleep!
Anyone who hasn’t experienced this is seriously missing out.
A blog is your very own small business, doing something you enjoy
If operated in that way, a blog can be very profitable. The great thing is that with a blog you can really help people by putting out really great content, and you don’t have to try to sell it to them. Rather, you get vendors and advertisers to sponsor your site with ads and so on. What a great deal!
Check out Paula’s Cover of Forbes!
And yes, we’re on it - bottom left.
So, if you’re not on this list yet, what are you waiting for?
No excuses. Here’s How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online - in 10 Easy Steps.
Above all, have fun!
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Text-Link-Ads - Truly Passive Income for Your Blog
Posted in Paid Web Site Advertising
Don’t sit around waiting for advertisers to come to you. People are out there shopping for link ads RIGHT NOW in marketplaces like Text-Link-Ads. If your site isn’t in that directory, then someone else is going to get paid to put links on THEIR site today.
How to get started with Text-Link-Ads in 5 minutes or less
- Go sign up with Text-Link-Ads right now. It’s a short form.
- There’s no real work to do whatsoever. You just fill out a form, install their small code snippet (or activate the WordPress plugin) on your blog, and your site shows up in their marketplace.
- Then the fun begins… Whenever someone purchases an ad for one of our blogs, we get an automated email to approve the ad. We log in to Text-Link-Ads, look at the new link and it’s ad text, and we approve the ad. Whew… time for a break!
THIS definitely qualifies as passive income - talk about Blog Monetization Zen.
What’s the downside? Any gotchas?
Yes, Text-Link-Ads keeps 50% of the link cost as their fee. That’s a little high, but fact is that’s the cost of being in their catalog of links that advertisers go to IN ORDER TO BUY LINKS.
If your cut isn’t enough for you, raise the price until you feel happy about it. If that 50% still bothers you, then get over it and do something about it. Later on, when you get around to it, you can ALSO offer links to advertisers directly for the same price and keep ALL the profits.
But you should have your site in the Text-Link-Ads marketplace, so that people shopping there will see your blog and buy your links. If you’re not there, those happy link shoppers will buy links on another site.
One mistake many people make is to leave a very low price for links on their blogs. Of course, don’t set it too high… just value yourself appropriately as compared to other advertisers in your niche. Remember - if you don’t see your own value, nobody else will!
How much money can I expect to make?
We consistently make over $500 per month from Text-Link-Ads these days, with very little effort. Other bloggers we know make between $100 and $1,500 per month just from Text-Link-Ads. The higher the Google PageRank and Alexa Rank your blog has, the more advertisers will want to buy space on your blog, and the more money you’ll be making.
This is just like real estate. In fact, think of your blog as Virtual Real Estate. And the more you develop it, the more it will be worth.
This means start early, develop the property, and stay the course!
Go sign up with Text-Link-Ads right now. This is a real no-brainer option for blog monetization.
When you complete the short Text-Link-Ads sign up form, they MAY ask you if you’d like to participate in a cool new "beta" program called "In-Links" or something to that effect. What they don’t tell you is that this new program REPLACES the regular Text-Link-Ads program. Just say NO! Some of our friends have tried it and had all kinds of bizarre problems. Keep it old school, skip that new "beta" plan and do the regular Text-Link-Ads program! And let us know how it works out for you.
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