Selling on Clickbank

littleman · January 13, 2011, 07:41:21 PM

I have this affiliate <=> PPC toolset which I am hoping to market soon. At the old Core we had a thread about marketing on CB and it seems like it has lots of potential. Yet I have some concerns.

For one, it looks like there is a LOT of competition, and to stand out you need a slick presentation. Most of the top products I've seen have video and websites that look like they've been well crafted to SELL, SELL, SELL. My tools are designed for independent PPC Aff types who are usually reasonably intellegant and know the space somewhat. Someone like that may not respond well to a hard-sell website. The model for this product is subscription, not a one time sell. I am hoping to attract people who know enough or could learn enough to benefit from the tools. So, I don't want to push them as a "get rich quick" scheme.

ergophobe · January 13, 2011, 10:57:55 PM

>>Someone like that may not respond well to a hard-sell website.

I have not been able to sell much of anything of CB, so take these comments with that hefty serving of salt... I have actually bought one (two?) things off CB. The one I remember anyway was actually a beginner's PPC training product some years ago. It was not sold as a get rich quick thing, but it was very hard sell and, honestly, it was quite good for the price.

So as for your premise, I'm not at all convinced. I've heard countless copywriters say that in every test they do, long copy outpulls short copy, both online and in direct marketing. And there's the old saw that writing at a sixth-grade level outpulls more sophisticated writing, even for products that pitch doctors, lawyers and professors.

I expect that what your audience is averse to is not hard sell, but bullshit. If you make claims that do not sound credible, they will mistrust you. So your challenge is to build trust, and then to sell hard.

Building trust will probably work best with long copy, firing on all guns: demos, testimonials, screenshots, money back guarantees, $1 trial, and the whole hard sell rigamarole.

Again, just an off the cuff opinion in an area where I have next to no experience, so maybe utterly wrong. But that's my best guess based on watching some people who do huge business on CB (mostly fitness, so perhaps a bit different).

jimbanks · March 08, 2011, 12:51:37 AM

I've spent quite a bit of time with some of the bigger hitters on CB.

It's very much a cartel where they all promote each others offers to their respective lists.

They plan their launches so as not to step on each others toes and there tends to be a launch sequence that they tend to go through.

There is division as to what works best, long sales copy always did, but now it seems like the high quality video's are doing much better.

But if it's long vs. short copy then long will always win the day. It's the standard 18 point Verdana headlines with tons of income proof (much of which is actually fake).

Most of the time there are one or two downsells - so someone exiting will be offered say $10 off, and then another $10 off, possibly a OTO (one time offer), and then if they do buy there is usually a couple of upsells.

If you can get someone to underwrite your launch you should be fine, other than that it's a hard slog. That person underwriting can let you know short vs. long vs. video etc...

littleman · March 08, 2011, 05:18:19 AM

Thanks Jim, it is good to know what I am up against with my shoestring budget.

ergophobe · March 08, 2011, 05:20:20 PM

littleman - you should probably go find some products that might have a similar audience, and sign up for the newsletter and affiliate program. A lot of these guys have affiliate areas with "resources" that will give you sales auto-responder sequences and a lot of their marketing materials. Some will give you keyword lists that they suggest, banner ad creatives and more. If it's someone who does a lot of testing (and the good ones do tons of conversion testing), it gives you an idea of what's working for them.

I'm on a few of these lists in the fitness area and I've learned a lot from watching what they do. Half these guys are muscleheads who sound like Rocky, but they're as crafty and market-savvy as Stalone. And like Jim says, it often feels like a circle jerk where they just pimp each other's products in round robin, actually making more money off the 75% commission on the buddy's product than on the 25% they keep on their own sales.

There's one that I think is a good analog to you. Most people are selling information (ebooks), but he's selling a tool (software).

They all say "the money is in the list". Many of them provide affiliates with a free report that can be rebranded (aff links embedded in the report). Most of them are offering e-books, so they can't give away too much info in their free report.

But this one guy has sports training software and his "free report" is actually an excellent 85-page book. I'm reworking a modest site (3000 unique visitors per month) to offer this and get people on an autoresponder series. We'll see how it goes, but I put it up as just a straight download link on one page and it's already gotten some downloads and clickthroughs to CB for the product. This despite the fact that because his ebook is actually good, it links out all over the place and doesn't do a great job of keeping the reader in the sales funnel.

It seems like you could turn out a solid, informative ebook on affiliate marketing with a lot of the examples built around your tool. Get some rebranding software and make the rebranded report available to affiliates.

If you want to go the extra mile, you would also write eight emails that are an "affiliate marketing mini-course" and you make that available to your affiliates so they have a plug and play autoresponder series, where the prospect gives an email in return for the rebranded ebook, and then gets thrown into the auto-responder series. Then on your site, you have the "advanced aff mini-course"

I've heard one of these guys say that he puts his tips in a 52-week autoresponder rotation and just reruns them in a loop and after 10 years not a single person has said "Hey I've seen this before" because 1) people have short memories and 2) email newsletters have a low open rate and 3) he culls outdated content

littleman · March 09, 2011, 03:29:04 AM

Ergophobe, that's good stuff, much to consider.

ergophobe · March 09, 2011, 05:38:44 AM

All theory... I'm building my first Clickbank-oriented site (affiliate not my product) with the full auto-responder, free giveaway and all that junk.

We'll see, I spent three full days building the existing crappy site, have 3000 visitors per month on the domain and it's not making a penny, so I figure it's time to drink the kool aid and see what shakes out.

jimbanks · March 10, 2011, 12:06:46 AM

Most of the ebook related products are frankenstein monsters of PLR articles.

If you want to know how to fake Clickbank earnings, watch this video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxWVCp_WI1A

Genius!

ergophobe · March 30, 2011, 07:13:57 PM

Thanks Jason. I was curious about that. Now I just need to decide what to fake!

So far my CB experiment is an utter failure - launched 10 days ago. After a week my 1090 visitors and 1495 page views resulted in zero conversions. I know those are small traffic numbers, but still.... at only 0.1% I would have made one sale!

I haven't got the whole auto-responder, reviews and long pages going - this is just content with banners at this point. I might keep at it just as an experiment and see what happens if I do the whole treatment discussed above.

Lots of reasons I suspect (attracting general readers not buys, banner blindness, niche that targets young males who probably don't want to spend on an e-book).