Clickbank Tracking & Cloaking Hoplinks
In the past few weeks I had really weird sales fluctuations, and I thought maybe the problem was in Clickbank’s TID or in cloaking hoplinks. I am sure you have also experienced recent sales drops. So instead of wondering, what was the problem, and I decided to do a little test for few days.
Basically, I removed all the Clickbank tracking ID’s from my hoplinks, and also I decloaked them, meaning no HTML or PHP redirect. Just a simple hoplink. I know it’s quite stupid, because your links look really ugly, and you are not tracking anything, but I thought that I really needed to do this to find out, whether this causes any problems or not.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that Clickbank tracking or the cloaking hoplinks would cause any trouble, and my expectation were true. In 3-4 days time, I received the same amount of targeted traffic and hops as I usually do, but there was no difference in my sales. It could be just a bad period, I guess.
The reason why I’m writing this is to let affiliates and publishers know, that there is nothing wrong with Clickbank tracking or cloaking hoplinks. You can use ID as usual, and cloak your links, if you want. I personally think, that if you are having unusual sales fluctuations, when getting the same amount of traffic, but not making sales, when you normally do, then I’m pretty sure, it’s either Clickbank payment processing issues or it’s lower profit period for your market.
Clickbank is constantly having some problems, that’s the reason why a lot of people have decided to cut their efforts towards this network. If you are one of them, then you might be interested in starting to blog. Blogging is one of the best ways to make money online, and famous Internet marketer, Rob Benwell, has made a step-by-step blueprint for anyone to learn how to start blogging. It’s called Blogging To The Bank 3.0. Check out my review here.
Clickbank’s Low Gravity Products - Are They Good Enough For Promotions?
Recently I’ve been trying to push some low gravity Clickbank products in micro niches, because I thought, if they don’t have much competition, they it will be easier to promote them and make money. Well, everything would be great, if that was true. However, I faced quite a few problems, after testing and tracking my results. So here’s what happened.
First of all, the product, which I’ve chosen to promote didn’t convert. I have sent over 300 perfectly targeted hops to my landing page, and so far I made zero sales. Fortunately, the traffic is completely free, and I didn’t lose any money. Imagine if I was doing PPC, that would kill my wallet. All the traffic came from my articles, and I know it’s laser targeted. So the only reason why I still haven’t received a sale is because of product’s quality.
It’s just simple analyzing. Look, my traffic is targeted, the landing page has good CTR, so the only problem seems to be the actual product. The strange thing is that the sales page of the low gravity product, which I was promoting is pretty nice, and I can’t really understand, why it doesn’t convert. If you want to know the exact gravity of it, then it’s just over 10. It’s a small niche, but it has keywords, which are searched quite often.
Another problem that I faced, was ranking in search engines. Eventhough, that the niche is quite small, the keywords related to the subject are quite competitive. Obviously, you want to target some keyword, which gets at least 15-30 searches a day, even more, because there is really no point of going lower than that. So I had pretty hard time trying to dominate specific keywords.
The lesson, that I learned from here is that low gravity products are at the bottom of the marketplace for a reason. If a product has small gravity and a nice sales page, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve found a goldmine. You really have to be careful, when selecting to promote something, which isn’t a proven seller. So often going for well-known, high gravity products is better, rather than wasting time on a stranger, which you don’t know anything about.
If you are going to test some new products and niches, then SEO is the best thing to do. I would suggest you to have a look at Latif’s Google Snatch 2 guide, because he got some really useful stuff there for both beginners and advanced marketers. Check out my review here.
Clickbank Products - What You Should Promote?
It’s a really broad topic to talk about, but I will try to give you some sort of idea, what kind of Clickbank products you should promote. There are so many different niches and products, that you really have a huge choice. The problem is that people are often confused, whether some niche or some product is going to be profitable or not. However, there is a little secret, that not everyone knows.
I wouldn’t actually call it a secret, but it’s common sense and what I am trying to say is that ANY niche can be profitable and you can make money there. Before you can do that, obviously, there is some work involved, such as finding the right Clickbank product and presenting it for the potential buyers. However, you should understand that you can make money in any niche, whether it’s competitive or not.
Have you ever seen those Clickbank products with gravity like 5 or 10? What do you think about them? Do you think they are crap, and no one buys them? Wrong! You know what you should do? Here’s a quick tip for you. Look, if there is a low gravity product in a competitive niche, then you shouldn’t go for it, because there are other products, which have proven to sell.
However, if there is a low gravity product in some micro, little niche, then that’s a goldmine. You know, sometimes you find a great niche, but there is no Clickbank product for it. If you can make a combination of a good product and a low-competitive niche, then you are going to make some serious money in the long term. Actually you can do the same for more competitive niches, but then it will be the game of finding keywords, which are still untapped. If you are good at it, then you could also try a bit harder markets.
My point here is that anything and everything sells, and it can be profitable. Obviously, I am not saying, that some crappy product with an awful sales page is profitable, but you can always test things out. It may look bad for you, but unless you test it, you don’t know the conversions, do you? Always remember, it’s all about trial and error.
The guide, which I would suggest you to check out about all this stuff is Confessions Of A Lazy Super Affiliate. Basically, it’s all about working smarter, not harder. If that’s what you want to do, then I think you will love this ebook, written by famous Chris Rempel. Click here to read my review of it.
Purchasing Products Through Your Own Affiliate Link On Clickbank
Did you know that if you purchase products on Clickbank through your own affiliate link, you will get banned? No, I am joking. That’s not true. The reason, I started this post is because I still see people around, who are wondering whether it’s allowed to buy stuff from Clickbank using your own link or not. Well, as Clickbank says, the short answer is yes, you can do that. Let me explain.
If you are a regular affiliate, who makes a number of sales a month, and consistently receive payments, you will have no trouble buying products through your own hoplink. For example, usually about 2-3 big launches happen in one month, and let’s say, you want to buy one of those products. So you decide to do it through your own affiliate link to get a commission and, obviously, save money. Go on and do it. It’s safe and nothing will happen. Don’t listen to some guys, who are not even registered with Clickbank and talking without knowing anything.
I got this from Clickbank’s Affiliate FAQ Library. Have a look what they are saying:
Can I purchase products through my own hoplink?
“The short answer is yes, but ClickBank does not condone affiliates using their accounts for this sole purpose. As stated in our Accounting Policy, “ClickBank accounts cannot be used for the sole purpose of collecting rebates or otherwise extending credit to yourself or others.” That is, affiliates should not be using their own hoplinks to purchase products for themselves and then collect a “rebate” check from ClickBank.
Unless an account contains sales from made with 5 or more different credit card numbers, including at least one Visa card, and one MasterCard, our system will not generate a check for that account (even if the balance has met or exceeded the payment preference). PayPal purchases do not count toward the minimum.”
As you can see, no one is going to ban you. Basically, what they want to say is, if you want to purchase a product through your own affiliate link, then you can do it. However, if you do that regularly to increase commissions on your account and receive checks, they won’t send them to you, unless you’ve made sales with 5 or more different credit cards, including one Visa and Mastercard.
That policy would a problem for new affiliates, but as I said, if you are making consistent sales, then you shouldn’t have any problems with that. So if you like some product on Clickbank, and want to save money, then buy it through your own affiliate link. Just make sure you don’t overdo this. I would say 1-3 purchases a month should keep you on the safe side.
If you still haven’t quit your daily job, then check out Day Job Killer. I am sure, it will help you out. Click here to read my review.
-
Subscribe To RSS
-
Top 5 Products
-
Recommended
-
Keyword Tools
-
Best AM Forums
-
-
Sponsors
