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If you have questions about the ClickBank Gravity Score, we’ve put together some answers that take the mystery out of the cryptic metric.

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Pop quiz time! The term “gravity score” refers to… Roger Ebert’s review of the Oscar-winning film, Gravity starring Sandra Bullock 

a) A metric used in beer making 
b) A metric used to measure offers in the ClickBank Affiliate Marketplace 
c) A score used to rate the performance of rock climbers (high gravity = bad, low gravity = good)
d) None of the above
e) Other
f) Just get to the dang point 

Okay, okay. The correct answer is C. Gravity score is a metric used to measure offers in the ClickBank Affiliate Marketplace. 

However, if you’re unfamiliar with ClickBank, any of these could sound plausible. Even if you are familiar with ClickBank, you just might not quite understand what the metric is and that is a-okay. Today we’re going to shed some light on the mysterious gravity score and get some expert advice on how to read and understand it.

The History of the Gravity Score

Gravity score is a metric unique to ClickBank that is based on an algorithm that was built to rank offers in a way that is agnostic from revenue. This is helpful because there are elements that make an offer attractive to affiliates that aren’t solely based on revenue–like competition, commission rate, and average earnings per sale. Gravity score identifies, with an arbitrary numeral value that has no cap, affiliate success. 

Two Offers, Two Different Gravity Scores 

So, for example, let’s say there are two offers: 

Offer A has a score of 360 and Offer B has a score of 349. This means that affiliates who promote Offer A are making more sales than the affiliate who promote Offer B. This information is helpful to affiliates who are searching for offers because, in theory, they wouldn’t want to promote something that isn’t sellable. 

However, a high gravity score doesn’t mean that an offer is the best choice to promote. Offers with high Gravity scores are likely promoted by many affiliates and competing with affiliates who likely have large ad budgets can be difficult (and discouraging) for affiliates just starting out.

According to Thomas McMahon, the reason these offers have lower gravity score truly has to do with one part of the puzzle: 

“Why are they so far down in the Marketplace… on page five with a gravity score of 71 compared to 300? Well, it just means that less affiliates have picked them up, but they’re still running big volumes because big affiliates have promoted them… it just means they’re less exposed to a big chunk of affiliates, which actually means they might convert better for you because they’ve had less exposure in the overall market.”

What goes into the calculation? 

Gravity score is calculated on a 12-week rolling cycle with more weight placed on recent sales. “Sales from yesterday count more towards (the score) than sales from last week,” says McMahon. 

Scores will start to dip if sales start to lag, but not in real time. This is why an offer won’t stay at the top forever, but will move down or up the list depending on sales. 

The One Thing to Keep in Mind 

The most important thing to keep in mind when reading the score is that offers even five pages into the list of offers on the ClickBank Affiliate Marketplace are still converting and are still solid selections. A lower score doesn’t mean an offer should be written off from promotion–it only means that an offer above it has more affiliates experiencing success at the same time.      

Want the whole scoop? Listen here to Thomas McMahon break it down. 

Do you want to ignite your digital marketing career? We recommend Spark, the only ClickBank-endorsed education platform. Spark has over 70 videos that harness the power of ClickBank’s two decades of expertise and is the best way to shorten the time between now and your first ClickBank paycheck.Monday, December 7th

The post Demystifying the ClickBank Gravity Score appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

Your average order value tells a story about the health of your offer and its potential. Read on to find out more about how you can improve and increase your AOV numbers.

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Average order value (AOV) is a key metric that all vendors need to pay attention to when monitoring the status of their offer. However, just like conversion rate, it doesn’t tell the whole story. You may have a high conversion rate and an abundance of traffic, but profits may be lagging. If this is the case, you may be interested in learning how to increase the amount of money people are spending on an order. There are a few ways to do this, but first, let’s dive into some definitions and data. 

What is average order value?

Average order value is total revenue divided by number of orders. For example, if your total revenue was 5,000 and you sold 100 orders, that means that–on average–each order was $50.

Of course, keep in mind that this number could be skewed by one or a couple high value orders. Or, inversely, skewed by one or a couple low value orders.

If you have the capabilities, it’s a good idea to look deeper at the data and throw out any outliers that may be pulling the average to one end or the other. Segmenting the data can also help build a more accurate picture of what may be affecting the AOV calculation.

Two Parts of AOV

For direct response marketers, there are often two parts to AOV: the average initial order value, and the total order value. Looking at these two values independently can help sellers figure out where there is potential to increase their revenue. 

ClickBank had a chance to do their own data analysis on top vendors from Q3 of 2020 and discovered that average initial order value plays a critical role in getting order value numbers up.

The insights were shared in the quarterly publication The Rundown Report. According to the report, it may not be prudent for product owners to rely too heavily on their upsell: 

“The best of the best don’t rely on upsells to increase their order value. Instead, they focus on their initial cart value. In fact, the top 10% of ClickBank Top Earners have an average initial order value of $406.52.” 

Click Here to Download the Full Q3 Rundown Report FOR FREE 

An average initial order value that large may seem unrealistic if your top priced product is $75, but take the ratio into perspective: 

The same group that had an average initial order value of $406.52 only relied on upsells for 8.45% of their total AOV. That means for someone with an average total AOV of $50, their average initial AOV would be $48.78.

Don’t Rely on the Upsell

While numbers and spending thresholds vary wildly between industries and niches, for ClickBank data analysts, the big takeaway from the recent data was that the pros and top earners don’t always rely on upsells to increase their AOV. The focus must start with the initial order.

So what are some ways you can take what you learn from your own data analysis and increase your average initial order value? 

Top Five Ways to Increase Average Initial Order Value

Tactic 1: Create or raise your order limit for free shipping. 

These days it seems like everything ships free so it can be nerve wracking to create or raise an order limit for free shipping. But with the right combination or products or an optimized offer funnel, you can effectively move buyers to increase their initial order value to reach that threshold.

One way to make sure you’re increasing average initial order value and not cart abandonment is to make sure strategically priced items are front and center and attractive as an impulse buy. If people are trying to reach a free shipping price threshold, they likely do not have the patience to shop sizes, colors, and cuts to find just the right item to put them over the limit. 

Tactic 2: Consider Your Current Buyers 

Another way to increase your average initial order values is to go back to the basics and do a little more market research. If you have enough data to calculate a meaningful and statistically significant AOV, then you have enough data to figure out who your primary customers are.

With your new insights you can tailor your products or your offer to better fit your current buyers as well as any new buyers you may attract. Market research is a priceless tool that can help you leverage up and coming trends as well as classic marketing tactics that can create and maintain customer loyalty.

Tactic 3: The power of bundling.

Bundling is a powerful tool that, when done right, can make a big impact on your average initial order value. The key to offering an enticing bundle is to communicate the value of the bundle correctly. Take the example Derek Gleason uses in his article, “Product Bundling Strategy: How to Get it Right”: 

Here’s the classic example: A $750-per-night hotel charges $10 for a bottle of water. Consumers feel ripped off. However, that same hotel room for $760 per night including water seems like a reasonable deal.

If you have a product of value that has some “major friction”–as Gleason says–adding into a bundle with the more expensive main item can reduce buyer apprehension. 

This is only one of many bundling tactics. Bundling, like many marketing practices, has deep psychological roots that delve into human behavior. While the science is fascinating, if you don’t have time to read a peer-reviewed paper, it’s wise to consult some experts (or at least their blog posts) when you start offering bundles. 

Tactic 4: Personalized plans.

If you have the capability to add personalization to your offer, then you may have found your golden ticket to increase your average initial order value. 

Eccommerce has largely stripped the buying experience of the intimacy that people might get with a one-on-one in-person sales encounter. You can add a dash of that back in by offering customizable elements to your products or offers flows.

Individualization is the preferred meal of the ego, so the potential to feel special can help your buyers spend a little more. However, if the quality of the personalization feels gimmicky, you risk a poor product experience. 

Like bundling, do a little research when it comes to personalization options and find the one that works best for your product and offer. 

Tactic 5: Focus on brand experience.

The last suggestion on our list is the most important: 

You have to focus on brand experience. From your UX design to your product quality, focusing on brand experience is the only long-lasting tactic to retaining customers who will buy more because they trust your sales process and your product. 

A study by Dimension Data found that 92% of companies who focused on improving customer experience saw a growth in revenue. 

Customer trust starts at the first brand touch. One bad experience can turn a potential or current customer off for a lifetime. By focusing on brand and customer experience–from start to finish–you’ll have people coming back and, over time, you’re guaranteed to see the needle move on your average order value.

Do you want to ignite your digital marketing career? We recommend Spark, the only ClickBank-endorsed education platform. Spark has over 70 videos that harness the power of ClickBank’s two decades of expertise and is the best way to shorten the time between now and your first ClickBank paycheck.

The post Average Order Value: Learning from The 2020 Q3 Rundown Report appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

A customer service visionary gone too soon. CEO of Zappos, Tony Hseih, has died from injuries sustained in a house fire in Connecticut. He was 46.

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Hseih was best known for his leadership of Zappos. He joined the company as CEO in 1999 after co-founder Nick Swinmurn left him a voicemail. Initially skeptical of a company that sells shoes online without customer try-on options, Hseih was ultimately swayed by Swinmurn mentioning that footwear was a 40 billion dollar industry with 5% of that total coming from paper catalogs. Within 10 years of its conception, Zappos had cleared a billion dollars in revenue.

A New Way of Doing Things 

Much of Zappos success is credited to Hseih’s pioneering customer service and company culture methodologies–ideas and skills he perfected during and following his graduation from Harvard in 1995. 

With his computer science degree, Hseih envisioned and developed LinkExchange, one of the first online advertising networks, and Venture Frogs, an investment firm.

Hseih was CEO of Zappos for 21 years and spearheaded company culture changes that would lead Zappos to be voted one of the best places to work by Fortune multiple times. These initiatives included moving the company towards a holacratic way of management. In a holacracy, there are no typical bosses and employees have the autonomy and support to make decisions that would be typically left to management positions.

In a 2017 interview with Guy Raz, host of NPR’s “How I Built This” segment, Hseih talked about how he sees himself in the role of CEO:  

“I’m probably different from a lot of typical CEOs. Imagine a greenhouse, where maybe at a typical company, the CEO might be the strongest and tallest, most charismatic plant that all the other plants strive to one day become. … For me, I really think of my role as more about being the architect of the greenhouse, and then all the plants inside will flourish and thrive on their own.”

A Game-Saving Pivot

This kind of hands off management style was what attracted top talent to Zappos and paved the road for an Amazon acquisition worth 1.2 billion dollars in 2009.

However, the journey to multi-million dollar success was not an easy one. Like most ecommerce companies, Zappos had to survive the dot com crash of 2000. Investments were hard to come by, especially for online shoe retailers. 

“It was pretty much impossible to raise money from anyone. And also, if someone wanted to invest in an internet company, the last thing they wanted to do was invest in an online shoe company…because no one would ever buy shoes online,” said Hseih. 

The game-saving pivot for Zappos would come in the form of an unyielding commitment to customer service and customer experience.

“I think for us a big turning point was really deciding we wanted to build our brand to be about the very best customer service and customer experience. It led us to do a lot of things that would not have made any sense if that wasn’t our north store.” 

A Brand that Stands for Something 

An example of Zappos commitment to customer experience was offering free shipping both ways. According to Hseih, that customer service decision was made with long term brand in mind:

“We would have made more money in the short term during those days but then we wouldn’t have built our brand and reputation… When you want your brand to stand for something or have some sort of purpose, you do things that are kind of nonsensical in some ways and that your competition would never do.”

Being different has always been considered an asset to the Zappos team. One of the questions the hiring team asks potential talent is “How weird are you?”

When it came to being weird, on a scale of one to ten, Hseih considered himself an “8.” He notoriously didn’t have strong feelings for shoes and made daily commitments to challenge his introverted nature by doing things that made him uncomfortable. 

“I’m not passionate about shoes at all. I’m passionate about customer service and company culture, but I can’t say anything about shoes,” said Hseih. 

A Legacy to Remember 

Hseih’s commitment to customer service and company culture changed the way ecommerce interacts with customers and pushed the bounds of what is expected out of an internet retailer. From turning down acquisition offers for fear of diluting Zappos culture, to the publication of his book, “Delivering Happiness,” Hseih remained unwavered in doing things not just different, but better.

“So many people are unhappy at their jobs for various reasons. It could be the work itself, the culture, the lack of autonomy, all of those things are things that we want to hopefully show that there’s a different and better way of not just work, but life.”

The post Remembering Former Zappos CEO Tony Hseih appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

If you’re struggling to feel gratitude right now, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re among good company. Below, find ways you can reshape gratitude to live authentically.

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There’s not a lot to write about 2020 that hasn’t already been said. As we close now on the 11th month, the novelty of coronavirus, social unrest, and environmental catastrophe has given way to something like a collective shrug. Though death surrounds us more than ever, our shared suffering seems to border on monotony.

With one month left to go, we’ve accepted the terms and conditions of the year and become quite adept at pantomiming normal–if normal even remains an option for us. For so many entering this holiday season, “normal” was sharing their table with a loved one who succumbed to the virus.

Yet all around, people fumble with grief, disappointment and hopelessness, then diligently try to turn these heavy stones into a wispy “made for social media” rhetoric of thanks and resiliency.

Don’t get me wrong–the power of positive thinking has been hailed as a life saver. From cancer to unthinkable loss, the masses have touted gratitude and thanksgiving as a way of thriving through times too dark to bear. However, these days, the thankful mindset seems nearly performative in the way we all jump to post heartwarming narratives of how we’ve been able to count our blessings despite the heaps of emotional rubble we’ve emerged from.

It’s almost as if we need to prove that we’re fine lest we be considered weak–or worse, too–negative.

It Starts With Vulnerability

For those who turn to positivity as a means to assimilate, the fear of not conforming to what is now seemingly the consistent rhetoric of social media can cause feelings of shame. Studies have linked shame to larger health issues like depression and anxiety.

According to Dr. Brenee Brown, esteemed author and patron saint of self care, the antidote to shame is empathy.

The quintessential ingredient for empathy? Vulnerability. 

While vulnerability can take a multitude of shapes, it is not always the resilient “phoenix rising from the ashes” narrative we often experience in sales copy, social media posts, and testimonials.

Vulnerability is an honest moment of taking stock. It’s an authentic statement of a shared experience (i.e. “I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through.”) or it’s an admission of not having enough (i.e. “I’m not okay right now.”). Vulnerability is not a plea for charity. It’s a truthful assessment of one’s surroundings and experiences.

Because being vulnerable requires real, authentic, artisan (hand crafted by you, with love) emotions, it’s the perfect place for creativity to fruit.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

Brenne Brown

Vulnerability is an invitation for problem-solving, crowd-sourcing, fundraising, synergy, and collaboration. It is where the ingredients to an authentic meaningful life are harvested. 

So, how can we harness the power of vulnerability in our own stories and during this extraordinarily difficult time to practice gratitude? How can we encourage vulnerability in our interactions with people in our lives and businesses that we interact with only on a computer? 

Below, find 5 ways you can rethink and reframe gratitude this year through vulnerability.  

1. Invite people to feel feelings together.

It goes without saying that 2020 has produced an abundance of feelings of all shapes, sizes, and intensities. One way to connect with gratitude is to set aside time to feel feelings with other people.

This can be especially healing during the holiday times. Talking about what you miss and inviting others to share what they miss as well can be cathartic and meaningful. Grief is often a catalyst for humor and reminiscing about, oh say, that one Thanksgiving when Uncle Ken had to call the fire department not once–but twice–is a good way to feel close to those that you love, even if they aren’t with you.

2. Let friends and coworkers know that you can be a non-judgmental listener.

Oftentimes our friends and coworkers don’t feel like they can share “non-positive” news. Or, if they do, they have to first put a positive spin on it before they can talk about it. One way to practice thanks is to let those who are in our lives know that we’re thankful for them, with no strings attached, and encourage them to share their authentic feelings.   

3. Embrace the power of dark humor.

Sometimes to lighten to the mood or to soften reality, people will use the “it could be worse” tactic. Some crowds get uncomfortable with this kind of humor, but now is a good time to lean in.

The absurdity of tough times can be too heavy to bear without the lightness of laughter so smile at someone’s irreverence or try it out for yourself. 

4. Feel gratitude for your less glamorous feelings.

Are you angry? Disappointed? Devastated by life events that you can’t control? It might feel counterintuitive, but say a quick thanks for these emotions and share them in their fullness. ALL feelings are a part of the wild ride of being a human. Yes, many of them are awful. And those awful ones are not usually the “main stage” emotions. They don’t get as many views or likes as the other “pretty” emotions.

Yet, they are yours and they are important.Rather than fold them into something they’re not, feel them fully and move through them knowing that all emotions have a place in the patchwork quilt of existence and right now you are living as a full authentic human ought to.

5. Take a personal day.

When it comes to feeling gratitude these days, it can be a complicated process. This is not an instance where you have to “fake it until you make it.” Instead, take some time to decide what gratitude looks like for you.

Your emotional health is just as important as your physical and mental health so if you’re feeling burned out from looking on the bright side, take a personal day to rest and recenter. 

In the end, gratitude is not a one-size-fits-all, cookie cutter, “tailored to a news feed” emotion. It is a highly personal acknowledgement of what it means for us, as individuals, to give thanks and bear witness. Gratitude might not always be rosy and bright. It may be a magnificent weight on your back alone, the burden of life, a thing carried because there is no other choice; a thing shared because there is a choice–the choice of community, and the bravery of vulnerability.

  

Are you new to affiliate marketing and seeking quality education and community? We recommend Spark, the only ClickBank-endorsed education platform. Spark has over 70 videos that harness the power of ClickBank’s two decades of expertise and is the best way to shorten the time between now and your first ClickBank paycheck.

The post The New Thankful: How to Feel Gratitude During Tough Times appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

ClickBank has debuted the first and only ClickBank-sponsored education Platform, Spark. Spark is a robust opportunity geared towards affiliate marketers of all levels. Read on to find out more about how Spark can help you learn how to use ClickBank and jumpstart your digital marketing career. 

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While you may run into internet content claiming that affiliate marketing is easy (i.e. “How I made $2,000 in 3 hours with this affiliate marketing trick!”) the truth is, there is a learning curve. While ClickBank has always been candid about the time and effort it takes to earn a living as an affiliate marketer, we also want to acknowledge that it’s not the simplest thing to do on your own. With so much information out there, parsing through it all can be frustrating and overwhelming. 

It Starts With the Learner 

So, a team of ClickBank experts got together and decided to make learning how to use ClickBank more straightforward. According to ClickBank Marketing Manager, Brett Chesney, the idea started with the learner in mind: 

“Even from its earliest inception we wanted to design a growth platform that not only provided students best-in-class training on becoming successful product creators and affiliate marketers, but also gave them the building blocks that are needed before that.

The end result is an all-encompassing training program. We guide you through things like important industry concepts and terms; the psychology behind why direct response marketing works (and will always work!); how to write killer ad copy; and we even get a little zen and explore powerful ways each of us can tap into our own passions to help fuel our future success.”

Build Blocks for a Firm Foundation 

By focusing on the building blocks of affiliate marketing, Spark ensures a strong foundation of best practices for affiliate marketers of all skills levels who want to learn how to use ClickBank. It doesn’t hurt that the education platform is designed, driven, and engineered by ClickBank experts.

ClickBank Director of Content, Taylor Utt, says it the best: 

“The curriculum was designed through a combination of smart minds and proven leaders throughout our industry. Between our marketing and sales teams, compliance and fraud, as well as solopreneurs who have made the journey themselves, we carefully weighed each area of expertise and crafted a curriculum that touches all of the pain points a newcomer might face.”

Get Your First Paycheck Faster

One of the most fundamental things that sets Spark apart from all of the other digital advertising learning resources is that it is rooted in actual education. With the help of adult education experts, the ClickBank team designed courses that teach real skills in a very real way. Taylor chalks it up to the cutting-edge tools Spark offers:   

Spark not only provides the education needed to get started, but supplies marketers with actual tools and strategies that are used in the industry today. Most online education classes talk in terms of hypotheticals or long winded stories. Spark gives marketers the tools and resources needed from day one.”

Just Like Rome… 

Spark definitely wasn’t built in one day. Like all projects worth doing, Spark had to go from inception, to conception, to creation. Even with 22 years of experience, and a team with robust and adept skill sets, getting it all from paper to production didn’t happen without a lot of hard work. For Brett, the process was well worth the experience:  

“Anyone who has ever launched a product at this scale can attest to the sheer amount of moving pieces necessary to create something people will not only find continued value in, but something they’ll want to tell all their friends about. From branding and colors, to editing and content creation, website design, engineering and extensive Q&A… The journey from what was just an idea with a few words on a piece of A4 paper to the experience that it is today was equal parts challenging and equal parts rich and rewarding.”

Who is Spark For? 

Now that the building is done and Spark is on the market… you might be wondering, “Is Spark for me?” The short answer and only answer is: 

Yes. 

Spark is the only ClickBank-endorsed learning platform on the web. You may know some things about digital marketing, but if you truly want to learn how to use ClickBank, Spark is the answer. With new material being added and exclusive access to experts and invite-only webinars, Spark ignites your digital marketing career in a way that other digital marketing educational resources just can’t.

Spark is for anyone who wants to shorten the time between now and their first ClickBank paycheck. With over 70 videos that harness the power of ClickBank’s two decades of expertise in the industry, it’s a living solution that’s worth investing in if you’re serious about making money online. 

Learn How to Use ClickBank… 

… and jumpstart your journey to your first ClickBank paycheck. Get access to Spark, now! 

The post Learn How to Use ClickBank With Spark appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

Free traffic. Everybody wants it. Read on for how to get it, use it, and why “free traffic” is actually a bit of a misnomer.

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If you’re new to affiliate marketing, you may not have the kind of traffic that some veteran affiliates have. Traffic, especially free traffic, is a commodity in the affiliate marketing world. For new affiliates, it’s not always the easiest to procure, however, without it, the truth is, your likelihood of making it as an affiliate is slim. Traffic truly is power. 

We get it though; as a new affiliate, shelling out mad cash for some traffic is intimidating, and not always the safest way to get it. To give you a leg up, we’ve compiled this list of tips and tactics to get free traffic.  

No Such Thing as Free Traffic

So, the unfortunate reality is… there’s no such thing as free traffic. Thomas McMahon, Senior ClickBank Business Development Manager, explains: 

“There’s not going to be a lot of true free traffic anymore. There’s going to have to be some amount of work put in to earn traffic. You might not have to pay money for it, or at least much money, but it’s going to take some sweat equity to gain a traffic source that you can then leverage to make money.”

Three tried and true ways to gain traffic are: 

1. SEO and blog growth
2. Social networking
3. Email list traffic

SEO and Blog Growth 

Focusing on SEO and blog growth will generate an organic source of traffic. While generating organic traffic from Google is not as easy as it was ten years ago, it is still doable–but it takes catering to a niche. And, even then, you’re going to need a website. Plus a lot of time to write blogs. (You can always hire freelance content developers, but the good ones will cost you.)

As you plan for the kind of content you’re going to feature on your website, remember that you’re trying to rank for highly specific keywords. Niche focusing will help you rank faster, however, it may be difficult to pinpoint what kind of keywords you should go for to set yourself apart from the competition.

Tools like Ahrefs, Google Search Console, SEMRush, and KWFinder. Of these four, Google Search Console is the only free one. 

Ahrefs is the most recommended SEO tool and is one of the largest website crawlers, only second to Google.

KWFinder is best for finding long tail keywords that have a lower level of competition. This is a good investment for those who are trying to identify the best niche to gain traction and traffic in. 

Total Cost: $50, or more if you want writers 

Social Networking

After you have a website running with a little bit of content, you can start sharing it via social media. Social media is also an organic traffic source. Some might call it “free,” but this is really where the term “sweat equity” comes in. Nobody is entitled to a following on social media; you have to earn it. Sure, it doesn’t require cash up front, but building a following on LinkedIn or through Facebook Groups is not an overnight task. It takes trust, good content, and patience as you figure out what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. There are plenty of resources out there on how to leverage the power of social networking to build a following. Three of our favorites are: 

1. Giveaways 
2. Relatable content
3. Valuable content 

Total Cost: Free, if you don’t count the hours you’ll spend building a following

Email List Traffic

It would be a drastic oversight if you didn’t use your new website to collect email addresses from your visitors as soon as it was up. This is the first step to building an email list and “earning” free traffic for your promotions. 

One of the best ways you can collect email addresses is through gated content or a subscribe function. 

Gated Content

Gated content is valuable content (like an e-book, a guide, a free download, etc.) that is “behind” a form that requires a visitor’s email address to access the content. If you’re working with a landing page builder like HubSpot, building the functionality behind gated content is relatively easy. Once a visitor gives you their email address, you can start sending them emails with content and promotions. But a word to the wise: these emails have to be good. Like, really good. Otherwise, your email list will dwindle as people unsubscribe. 

Subscribe Function

As you add content to your website, you can give visitors the option to subscribe to your email list to stay up to date on your content and promotions. This is similar to gated content, but you’re not incentivizing visitor’s with any particular piece of content, just your overall content goodness in general. This tactic can be more difficult, however, these users aren’t as likely to unsubscribe after they receive their initial deal. 

More Time Than You Think

Again, this kind of “free traffic” requires hard work, trial and error, and time… more time than you think it will. 

However, according to Thomas, the email list is what you should always be focusing on: 

“If you’re trying to grow organically on your blog or on the social channel, and you’re driving that traffic somewhere to an email list that you’re cultivating, you’re protecting that traffic source and taking it not offline, but you’re harvesting that for something you can continue to monetize and grow wherever you might go. And that way, if you do spin up a new traffic channel eventually, whether it’s another social platform or a new product or a website you’re launching, you have an email list you can now put that in front of and get that much faster traction than you ever did to start with.”

If you use SEO and blog growth and social networking to increase your email list, you’ll create a stable and reliable source of traffic that is a product of your hard work. The age old saying is  unfortunate, but especially true in affiliate marketing…. 

Nothing in this world is free; not even traffic. 

Do you want to ignite your digital marketing career? We recommend Spark, the only ClickBank-endorsed education platform. Spark has over 70 videos that harness the power of ClickBank’s two decades of expertise and is the best way to shorten the time between now and your first ClickBank paycheck.

The post Free Traffic: How to Get It and Use It appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

Choosing a niche for affiliate marketing is a crucial decision that you need to get right from the start, or else all of your hard work might end up being wasted.

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Most people will tell you to find something you’re passionate about, but that can lead you spending months and months of creating content just to realize that niche can’t be monetized.

That’s just one of the things to consider when choosing a niche, and there’s a lot more that goes into it to make sure you’re not wasting your time.

But there’s no need to fret, we’ll cover everything you need to find a winning niche in this article.

Let’s dive right into it!

What To Consider When Choosing A Niche

Choosing a niche is hands down one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as an affiliate marketer.

Since you’ll be creating content and promoting products for one specific industry, it should be something you know and like, or else, you’ll end up burning out!

On top of that, a niche will also determine how much earning potential there is!

That’s why it’s important for you to make the right decision.

What Types Of Niches Are Good For Affiliate Marketing?

There’s only two types of niches you should look at when you’re just getting started, those being hobbies and evergreen niches.

Hobbies

To start, let’s talk about hobbies. Hobbies are great for affiliate marketing because more often than not, people are willing to spend money on them!

Whether your favorite hobby is golfing, painting, woodworking, or anything else, there’s a bunch of other people in the world just like you.

And to really separate yourself from the competition, you can focus on one sub-niche…

Here’s a few examples of what I mean:

• Instead of focusing on all golfers, you can focus on senior female golfers.
• Rather than focusing on all painters, you can focus on oil painters.
• Instead of focusing on all woodworkers, you can focus on woodcarving.

See why it works so well? You’ll resonate much better with that audience, and they’ll be more likely to buy since your dialed in on helping them.

Evergreen

On the other hand, there’s three core niches that will always be relevant:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships

They’re “evergreen,” meaning they have everlasting appeal. They aren’t based on seasonal trends, they’re based on issues that people will always encounter!

So if you are looking to build a long-term affiliate marketing business, one of these can be a great starting point.

I’d recommend you to niche down a bit, as I showed in the previous section so you can really dominate your niche.

How To Validate Your Niche

Now that you have an industry in mind, how do you know if it’s worth pursuing?

The best way I’ve found is to check Google Trends & Google to see if there are any competitors.

Google Trends

Open up Google Trends, and search for your main topic.

You’ll see a graph pop up, and it’ll show you how that product is trending on Google.

If you see the trend is positive and there are more searches, that’s a good sign. And if you see the trend is negative and there’s less searches, you may want to reconsider.

Here’s an example to help paint the picture!

As you can see, the trend for oil painting (blue) is going down, while the trend for acrylic painting (red) is going up. 

So while oil painting was really popular in the past, it looks like acrylic painting will be more popular in the future!

When an industry is growing like this, there’s opportunity for you to plug in and start earning.

Finding Competitors

Now that you found a niche that’s growing, you can see if there is any competition. 

While too much competition is bad, it’s important to find people in the space getting results, that way you know it’s worth it!

The best way to do this would be to search around keywords related, and see if any affiliate sites come up.

After that, plug the domain names into your favorite SEO tool (Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, or SEMRush), and you can see an estimate of their website’s traffic & revenue. This will give you an idea of whether or not it’s worth pursuing!

Where To Find Affiliate Programs You Can Promote

Lastly, you’ll need to find the right affiliate programs to promote.

One of the biggest affiliate networks in the world, ClickBank, is a great place to start!

With a lot of different niches and vendors, you’re sure to find products worth promoting.

I’ve personally promoted a bunch of different products from their market with success, so I can reassure you that they’re one of the best networks to work with.

And if you’re looking to learn more, check out my guide on building a successful affiliate marketing business here.

The post How To Find The Perfect Niche For Affiliate Marketing appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

(Cue maniacal laughter.)

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Did you feel that? The breeze suddenly became more crisp…

All around, leaves are shuttering as their imminent mortality becomes apparent. Starbucks Baristas everywhere have begun their ritualistic dance to give life to the pumpkin spice gods that they may bring them lattes, cold brews, scones, and more during this season. Decorative gourds have shown up on store shelves, doorsteps, and kitchen counters.

Of course I am talking about the greatest season of year: Autumn. And earlier this week I felt it for the first time as a cold front came in and made my heart skip a beat. Everything about the transition of summer to fall is perfection in my mind and it probably helps that I was born during the heart of the season. One of my favorite things about this amazing time of year is the ghost stories and attention around every thing that scares us the most.

Personally, I love monster stories so it’s fitting that the theme of this post if one of the most famous monster concepts… The Reanimated Corpse.

I love Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” and H.P. Loveraft’s parody “The Reanimator” and since I think most marketers have similar traits to the mad scientist, I want to share with you today the top 4 things to creating a MONSTER launch with affiliates.

Make Sure You Find a Fresh Enough Body (Test Test Test)

One of the running jokes in H.P. Lovecraft’s series The Reanimator is Dr. Herbert West’s growing obsession with finding the most recently deceased bodies he can in hopes they will perfect his experiment to bring people back to life. While this ended up leading to the demise of Dr. West, his commitment to testing is something that I see in the most successful affiliate launches we have had at ClickBank. Specially the testing that occurs BEFORE they push an offer out to affiliates.

While you might feel confident that what you have created is the greatest offer that has ever been given to man, until you start to see clicks actually come to the landing page you don’t really know. I can tell you that this level of confidence has burned me before.

Sometimes the best offers from the best marketers still just don’t work. Or, they don’t work in the way you anticipated. When you scale the offer out to affiliates who are wading in the sea of offers to promote and yours does poorly, your chances at getting them to try again will plummet. You risk the chance of really lowering the ceiling or killing an offer before it ever got a chance to get started.

So, how do you test an offer if you don’t send it to affiliates? Here is the flow that I recommend to my clients.

Always test to your internal list or audience first.

You have the most relationship-equity with this group of leads and buyers that have shown interest in what you are doing. If you can’t get great results from this list, you need to go back to the drawing board with your offer. (Unless you are creating a product in an entirely new vertical. In that case, your internal audience might not work for testing.)

Once you hit some solid benchmarks and the offer looks like a great offer to your audience you can start moving into the next step.

Be Sure You Know Where the Bodies are Buried (Have a Plan)

Dr. West may have found a solution to bring the dead back to life (although not as people…) but that was just the beginning. He had to make sure that he had a detailed plan in place to get the bodies, find a secure location to experiment on them, and that he had the “tools” to eliminate failed experiments.

Having the serum wasn’t enough–just like testing an offer to your own audience, putting it on ClickBank, and expecting traffic is not enough to create a monster offer. You need to identify what traffic sources you want to have, and who you can partner with to test it.

The plan shouldn’t just be to test with a one person and then wait, but a targeted approach in tiers.

For example:

You start with a testing group of maybe 3-4 affiliates that you personally know to test the offer. You will want to set clear performance goals that will be indicators that the offer is a success and make sure both sides understand what they are.

Test, observe the results, optimize the funnel, and test again (sometimes to a different partner).

Once you hit the benchmarks you were looking for (Target EPC, Conversion, CTR, AOV, etc.) you can move to the next stage.

Double the affiliates beyond close relationships, post about it in groups that you are a part of, take it to an event and get some people to try the offer out (if we ever have events again).

Similar to what you did in Stage 1, you need to set clear expectations for what success looks like so you know you can move on to the next stage. Number of affiliates successfully promoting, revenue, stability of your numbers, and other key measurements will indicate if you’re ready to move on.

Once you have that all dialed in and your offer is starting to scale, it’s time to reach out and go after the big whales and “dream people” on your list. The reason for the slow approach is you want to make sure when you push all the traffic your offer is primed to be the most successful it can be. You often times only get one shot with a large list owner or super affiliate. Don’t waste it.

After you have your plan laid out and targets set for each stage, you need to make sure you have the team in place to execute.

Every Mad Scientist Needs His Assistant (Have a team)

While Mary Shelly didn’t write in an assistant for the Dr. Frankenstein it was quickly added to stage and film adaptations. My personal favorite is Igor in Young Frankenstein. H.P. Lovecraft told the story of ReAnimator through Dr. West’s long-time assistant who aided him in his dark dealings…

The important lesson here is that it takes a village to make a monster (or who else will the torture and maim when they are let loose?).

For monster offers on ClickBank you don’t need a village per say, but you do need 4 key roles to be filled by someone on your team (even if they are all the same person). Without these roles being occupied and executed on, your offer will not have the support it needs to reach those monster levels.

1. Project Manager
   You need someone who is going to be able to own the offer and all it’s little projects and tasks to make sure you don’t lose momentum. If you don’t have someone owning the project, executing the plan, it will only go as far as your attention will allow it. (Which, because of TV, isn’t very long for most of us, what was I talking about? Oh yeah Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, what a great series…)

2. Copywriter
You cannot have a great offer without great copywriting. If you are not a trained copywriter and you are looking to write for you own offer I would recommend taking a course on it (Stefan Georgi RMBC method is great). If you can’t do that, you should at least map out the structure of the copy of top offers on ClickBank right now. If you only hired one of these roles this is the one I would pick for you to hire. Get a good copywriter and find a way to pay 5k-20k for copy. I would recommend going to a vetted group like Copy Accelerator and looking for copywriters from there. To learn about how to effectively hire a copywriter, check out this blog.

3. The Tech Guru
You are going to need make sure the customer data coming from ClickBank is integrated with all of your back end systems (ESP, CRM, Fulfillment, advanced tracking, etc.). Many providers have built in integrations with ClickBank which makes the process so much easier, but you will need someone to play this role for your offer regardless.

4. An Affiliate Manager
It is one thing to get someone to run a test or send a single email drop to their list, but to really make an offer grow into a monster that will terrorize all other offers for months and years, you need an affiliate manager. This needs to be the person that not only will reach out and recruit new affiliates but will also grow and develop the existing relationships you have. It isn’t about the first send but the 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th time they mail your offer. Fostering these relationships and grooming them into massive ROI takes time and effort.

As long as these 4 roles are assigned and not being neglected, you are on your way to entrenching your offer in folklore and keeping people looking over their shoulders at night for generations to come.

While your monster offer will keep people watching their backs, you need to make sure that you are always looking far ahead which brings me to number 4…

Maybe we should have made sure it was dead… (Build Out Systems for Scale)

           
Twice in the tales of the Re-Animator, Dr. West goes to discard a body only for it to reanimate later and reap some form of havoc upon people in the cities he was residing at. A little bit of extra prep would have gone a long way like “checking” that it was dead before he walked away and let it become a super strong crazed monster…

This is not too different to someone who builds a killer offer but doesn’t put in place the software or tools to handle it once it starts to scale. Here are a couple things you can do to help.

Own and host your own pages so they can handle the volume you will have not what you currently have. I am a huge ClickFunnels fan, as well as a many other page builders, but they tend to struggle at scale. Not to mention out of the box solutions are always harder to build automation or integrations on. The sooner you can have your own pages, the more prepared you will be for massive scale.

Split testing software should be a day 1 investment and be something that you want to have in place that will scale with more offers, and more data. CBsplit is one of the best I have seen for the top offers on ClickBank. It will give you all the details you want to know when split testing in a single place you can easily digest.

You’re also going to need automated and easily-scalable customer support. The fastest ways to find yourself getting in trouble with returns killing your bottom line and putting your processing at risk is having bad or insufficient customer support. You want to make sure you don’t just handle the request you have right now but you have a process that can easily add more support when your volume increases. Setting up a Zendesk system or working with a customer care agency can help prepare you to scale with ease, instead of with headaches.

And last but not least, you’ll need processing and affiliate reporting that can scale like ClickBank. I know this might feel like a shameless plug, but ClickBank can make scaling with affiliates less painful whether you are just starting out or making 8 figures on a monthly basis. Not having to worry about getting shut down or cash getting held from a bank because a large affiliate drove too much traffic is a big deal. Plus, ClickBank takes care of tax remittance across the world (well, everywhere that we can process… which is most places) and sends tax documents to your affiliates, giving them the assurance that they will be paid on time every single time. Affiliates can trust they will get their money which makes recruiting conversations so much easier.

If you can nail these 4 steps, you are going to be on your path to creating a monster offer and you won’t have to wait for a lighting storm or find freshly deceased bodies. If you’re eager to get started experimenting…er… I mean building an offer, you’ll need to sign up for a ClickBank account first. While you’re at it, get yourself a pumpkin spice latte and enjoy the most wonderful time of the year.

The post 4 Things You Need to Know to Create a Monster Offer for Affiliates from ClickBank’s Own Mad Scientist appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

Email marketing is a tried and true marketing method. But it takes skill to do it right. Read on for the top seven email marketing tips for affiliate marketers.

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Before we jump right in, let’s do a little visualizing. Here, I’ll guide us:

Imagine you’re on a first date. You look nice. Your date looks nice. Your at a fancy restuarant and, before the entree comes out, the other person looks you square in the eye and asks you to marry them.

What would your reaction be?

Maybe something like, “Is this person crazy? Are they going to kill me if I say no? Is this the last time I’ll ever get to have appetizers?”

Is there any chance in the world you would say yes? Likely, not.

Are you wondering how that relates to your affiliate marketing business yet?

They Have to Get to Know You

The chances that you would say YES to this hasty proposal are very, very low. This same concept applies to your affiliate marketing business. It is very rare that a consumer will buy after only one interaction with your brand.

So whats the solution? Just like dating, there’s a tried and true process:

• Build Trust (Show them who you are as a person)
• Get to know the person (Educate and offer value)
• Ask for marriage (Introduce your products)

You need have a system in place to capture your site visitor’s information (email address) and in return you can give them something valuable (eBook, video, or a training course) for free. Then, you can continue to send emails and build trust, offer value, and then introduce your products that you believe will solve your subscriber’s problems.

This marketing strategy is used by almost all of the big names in the affiliate marketing industry because it reliably increases conversions.

“If you are not building your list, you are doing it wrong.”

Unknown

What is email marketing?

According to Wikipedia, “Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.”

If there is one type of marketing that can actually create long terms results, and help you change your life, it is email marketing.

Global email users are set to grow to 4.3 billion users by 2022. That’s half of the world’s population.

Many affiliate marketers are unaware of the tremendous power of effective email marketing to build a long term profitable business. There are a number of challenges new affiliate marketers are likely to face when starting an affiliate marketing business. So, without further ado, here are the top seven tips I use when it comes to email marketing.

The Top 7 Tips for Email Marketing

1. Focus on building trust.
   Many email marketers treat their lists like gold mines. Big mistake!

   Your list is not a collection of email addresses. Behind each email is an individual who trusted you enough to share their information. By focusing on making sales instead of building trust, you will start to lose your subscribers. Effective email marketing is all about building trust and offering value.

2. Focus on building relationships.
   To build a relationship with your subscribers, send emails that show who you are as a person. To most of your subscribers, you are just a name that shows up in their emails. Help them identify your personality by sending the emails. Help them realize that you are a passionate person and you are a person with dreams and goals just like them. Focus on building relationship with your list and good things will happen.
3. Offer value.
   Your primary focus should be on educating your list and offering value. Then, you can introduce the products only once a week. That’s it! Your subscribers did not join your list to get pitched to all the time. You promised a solution to their problems, so give them that. They expect you to sell to them as well, but remember you are a guest in their inboxes, so don’t abuse the welcome. If you want people to join your list and stay subscribed, then send them emails that are relevant and will help them solve the problems they might be facing.
4. Only sell products that you trust.
   If you are promoting spammy, low-quality, affiliate product, you will likely get into compliance trouble and start losing the trust of your audience and subscribers. You wont be making much money with your emails. Be careful about anything you link to because it reflects directly on your reputation.
5. Don’t buy email lists.
   I can’t stress this one enough. Email marketing success relies upon on good open rate, and if you’re sending  people emails whose information you bought, instead of a list of people who gave you their consent, you’ll see extremely low engagement and open rate. Remove all email addresses from your lists that are purchased or rented. Sending emails without consent is considered spamming and you risk getting your list and account shut down by your email service provider.

   Also, familiarize yourself with the GDPR law. It requires permission from everyone in Europe before you can send them emails. rented lists usually do not come with this required consent.

6. Focus on delivering quality.
   Email marketing, when done correctly, is a powerful marketing strategy to deliver your message to your audience and subscribers. But this doesn’t mean that sending more emails will make it effective. It’s about quality, not quantity.

   You will start to lose subscribers if you are sending too many emails to your list contacts and many will mark your emails as spam. This will effect your deliverability and may result in an account shut down. Test and analyze how your audience and subscribers responds to your email sending frequency.

7. Use a professional email address.
   All email marketing service providers strongly recommend that you use a professional email address for your email marketing campaigns. A professional email address uses the same domain name as your website, builds trust, and brand awareness.

   A professional email address makes you looks legitimate. Try something like this:

   yourname@yourbrand.com

Incorporate these seven tips into your email marketing strategy and I promise they won’t do you wrong. I hope they help with your next campaign. I’m confident they will.

Best regards,
Pasha Rana

The post Top 7 Email Marketing Tips for Affiliate Marketers appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank

ClickBank success doesn’t happen overnight. For me, it took determination, patience, and these seven steps.

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I first got into affiliate marketing in 2013. I must admit, I was totally lost at first. Information overload was coming at me from every angle. I was constantly distracted by the “next shiny object” promising to lead me to riches that never came. If you’re in a similar position right now, then the likelihood is that you haven’t yet carved out a strategy that will play to your strengths and work for you.

In this article I’m going to share with you the 7 things I did that helped me find success as a ClickBank affiliate.

These tips are replicable. I’m confident they can also work for you too, if you put in the work.

ClickBank Success In 7 Steps

When you’re building any type of business, it’s important to have a clear goal in mind, and an actionable strategy that can lead you to that goal. Understanding the affiliate marketing game will help you hone in on the areas you need to focus on, and then devise an actionable strategy.

1. Understand The Game of Affiliate Marketing

While there quite a few things a person needs to learn to have good success as an affiliate, overall, it really comes down to mastering 3 key skills:

a). Product
b). Traffic
c). Conversion

Let me break this down for you.

Product:

The skill of being able to find and recognize good products that will convert well. Personally, I’d say this is the easiest of the 3 skills to master. If you haven’t yet got this skill down, I go into it in a bit more detail later in this article.

Traffic:

The skill of being able to drive targeted traffic to the products you are promoting. Out of the 3 skills, this is the most important one for an affiliate marketer to master.

Conversion:

The skill of being able to convince your audience to buy the products in a non-pushy, non-sales way. In my opinion, this is probably the hardest skill to master. Fortunately though, the good news for affiliates is that you don’t need to become a conversion ninja in order to make a very sizable income.

It is mostly the product owner’s job (also known as a vendor), to convert the customer into a buyer once you’ve sent the visitor to the vendor’s landing page.

Basically, if you can recognize a high-converting landing page (skill number 1), and you know how to drive targeted traffic to it (skill number 2), then you stand to make a lot of money as an affiliate marketer.

To simplify conversions (skill number 3) for you as the affiliate, the main thing you need to learn is to talk the product up in a non-salesy way and entice the visitor to click your affiliate link.

Yes, of course, there are quite a few things an affiliate can then learn later to further increase sales, such as crafting an offer, enticing your audience with bonuses, and so forth. However, your main focus in the early days should be bringing the right traffic for the product and getting them to click your link.

If you understand these 3 concepts then it will stand you in good stead for your entire affiliate marketing career and ClickBank success, regardless of what platform you are using, or what products you are promoting.

2. Understand the ClickBank Platform

The second thing that helped my success with ClickBank was to take some time to understand the platform. In my opinion, ClickBank is one of the best affiliate networks out there for both beginner and advanced marketers.

No, I’m not just saying that because I’m writing this article for the ClickBank blog. This is based on my own experience working with ClickBank in both my early and current career as an affiliate marketer.

ClickBank offers a huge range of products across a large range of niches.

What I particularly like about ClickBank is that they host a massive range of digital products. This is great for affiliates because most digital products owners offer high commissions, typically between 50-75% per sale. These product owners are able to do this because they have lower margins to deal with than physical product vendors.

If you also choose to work with this network, then I highly recommend you take some time to familiarize yourself with the platform and understand the ClickBank metrics.

Knowing these metrics will help you to choose better products to promote, and tweak your campaigns to improve your conversions. Ultimately, it will help you to make more money.

3. Choose An Evergreen Niche

When I first got started promoting products, I focused on building small niche sites around a single product.

While this can work, if the product you’re promoting stops converting, or if the vendor slashes your affiliate commissions, or even stops running an affiliate program, then you’ll have to start all over again.

This happened to me more than once. So I focused on working in an evergreen niche. Once I did this, I built an audience and promoted a range of different products.

An evergreen niche is an industry that will most likely always have hungry buyers, no matter if you’re promoting now, or 20 years from now.

Here are some examples of evergreen niches:

• Fitness
• Weight loss
• Online marketing
• Dog training
• Fertility
• Relationships

This is just a very small example of evergreen niches, and there are also new ones created every single year as new trends continue to emerge.

Since most evergreen niches are highly competitive, the trick to break into one is to sub-niche, which basically means to look for a smaller category within one of these broader niches.

For example, back in 2015 I broke into the relationship niche, which is a pretty competitive space. However, I decided to halve my market and focus only on relationship advice for women. Over time, I built a steady, recurring monthly income in the high 4 figures.

Now, 5 years on as I write this article, the competition in that niche has continued to grow. So if I were to try to break into this niche now, I’d look for a sub-niche within a sub-niche to make it even easier for me to get started.

Choosing a niche is hugely important. Since it’s so crucial to your success, but beyond the scope of this article, I want to include a link to a helpful resource you can use for guidance on choosing a profitable niche.

4. Choose Good Products That Convert

As I mentioned earlier, learning how to recognize which products will convert well is a big part of being a successful affiliate.

It’s a skill that you will gain over time. However, the number one thing I did that helped me to acquire this skill is actually thanks to the ClickBank platform.

What I did was I spent time looking at a whole bunch of different offers on the ClickBank marketplace, regardless if they were in my niche or not, or if I had any interest at all in promoting them.

First, I looked for products that had an average to high Gravity rating. Gravity is a unique metric to ClickBank, and it basically tells you how well a product is converting. The higher the Gravity score, the more sales of that product are being made each week.

Secondly, I then spent quite a lot of time analyzing and comparing the landing pages of each of these products. I looked for similarities and made a list of all the elements they had in common.

I also paid attention to the sales copy, whether it was written or spoken in a video. Then, I noted the types of words, phrases and emotive calls to action that were used.

If you do this, it will start to become clear why some products convert, and others don’t.

When you learn to recognize the common elements of a successful landing page, you’ll quickly spot products that have a high chance of converting. This is very useful if you’re also promoting products on other networks that don’t offer helpful metrics like ClickBank.

5. Focus On One Traffic Source (at first)

The next thing I did was to focus on building one traffic source at a time.

When most people get started with affiliate marketing they usually try to promote on a lot of different platforms all at once.

This is a big mistake.

It takes time to establish a traffic source. If you’re trying to market your products on multiple platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and on a blog all at the same time, then you’re going to spread yourself too thin and you won’t gain traction.

Once I realized this, I chose one traffic source that played to my strengths (for me it was blogging), and focused on building an audience on this platform to the point where I was making consistent, regular sales.

After you’ve established a steady and continuous flow of traffic on your chosen platform, then you can start working on building other traffic sources.

To start, choose the one that either plays to your strengths or that you’re most familiar with.

6. Build a List

Building an email list is one of the most important things you can do in your affiliate business.

In the early days I relied on just promoting products directly from my blog. This is fine to start, but as soon as you’ve established some regular traffic, it’s advisable to start building a list.

Once I did this, I started building a relationship with my subscribers, and my chances of making a sale also increased.

This is the one thing I wish I started doing earlier.

7. Engage With Your Audience

Building an email list is great, but if you don’t engage with them, then your list is going to be far less responsive.

In the early days of building my list, I relied on cookie-cutter email swipes that I bought from another affiliate in my niche.

This was a great way to get started, and I made some regular sales by just relying on these email swipes for a while.

However, once I started also writing my own emails and began replying to people on my list when they messaged me, my sales increased considerably.

Final Thoughts

Getting started as an affiliate can be overwhelming if you don’t have a clear direction of where you’re going, and a means to get there.

I wasted quite a bit of time in the early days of my affiliate career trying to figure out a path that would lead to success. However, once I understood and implemented the principles and techniques in this article, I started to have consistent success.

If you’re struggling to gain traction as an affiliate, chances are you may not be implementing one or more of these tips. If you want a more detailed action plan to follow then you may want to also read my strategy blueprint to make money with ClickBank.

With a little focus and a clear plan to follow, you will also be able to build a consistent income online as an affiliate.

The post ClickBank Success: My Journey in 7 Steps appeared first on ClickBank.

Source: clickbank