Since not long ago we talked about Fiverr and how to make money by using it, today I decided to approach a more affiliate-friendly way to make money online…ClickBank way. ClickBank is the heaven of internet affiliates and also one of the most profitable marketplaces for vendors as well. Working as an affiliate gives you freedom to promote whatever product you might enjoy using, but being a vendor is not bad either. In fact, some of the top earners on ClickBank make 7 figures by selling their own products. Personally I’ve been amazed to see 70-80k in revenue every month for some of the most popular members out there.
These are not just bla-bla stories, ClickBank is one of the most serious services out there so you have to treat it as well if you want to fully benefit from using it. Serious people have managed to build real wealth using ClickBank and you can do so too.
Like I said earlier, on ClickBank you have 3 options:

1. Become an Affiliate

2. Become a Vendor

3. Combine them

No matter what path you choose, you should know that impressive revenues can be made, but keep in mind that you have to dedicate your time and efforts to this job. We are not talking here about a secret recipe for making money in just seconds. Clickbank is serious job and you must treat it like that.

How to succeed as an affiliate

As affiliate for CB you are your own boss and therefore you can control either or not you want to promote a product or not. Nobody can force you to do something and you don’t have to create your product. Basically, what you do as an affiliate is to promote other’s work and get a serious commission from it.
On ClickBank commissions range from 20 to 75% so for an expensive product you can get quite some serious income. People usually tend to promote products with greatest gravity (number of sales) but in fact they don’t actually realize about the competition on that product. Of course, if you find a product in time is great and you can generate profits with a small amount of effort, but if not…

5 Secrets that will help you succeed as an affiliate marketer

In fact these are not actual secrets, but more as reminders for affiliate marketers out there. You should know that in order to succeed these are must apply techniques. Affiliate marketing can bring you great benefits, but everything comes with a great price:

1. Believe in what you sell

This is not a rule that applies on ClickBank only, is like the general marketer rule. Once you buy a product and like it, then you know more about it, you know what are the upsides and the downsides of using that product. Since ClickBank is specialized on selling ebooks, I really recommend you to read those ebooks before you start promoting them and be honest about your thoughts.

2. Keep in mind that you sell to people not to machines

Like I said earlier, most of the products on ClickBank are virtual and they are mostly books or online goods, but that doesn’t mean you should treat your possible clients as machines too. Personally I recommend taking each product separately and write reviews, help people understand how to use the product and why they should buy it. Put yourself in their place and see if you would give money to yourself for how you present the product.

3. Start with a solid plan

Real job requires your full attention and also great organization. Build up a plan before you start promoting any product! Many marketers choose to work on micro-niches which usually means less competition and better chances to succeed. If you believe you can handle a great competition, then you can opt-in for a more popular product, but I must say that you need lots of patience and dedication in order to succeed.
Also, if you really want your plan to succeed, you need to know that SEO plays a very important role for your success just because is the best way to drive targeted traffic (unless you can afford paying for advertising). Therefore you need to start working at:

• advanced keyword research for your niche
• getting a proper domain name for your campaign
• build useful content around the subject you choose (blogging, article writing)

Or use advertising to drive clients

• use PPC programs like Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising
• use image banner ads from sites like BuySellAds

If you go with image banner ads, then you should keep in mind that your ads should be extremely appealing because you need to attract attention so that you get more clicks. In my opinion, even if PPC might be more expensive, I believe that it pays-off in the end!

4. Be Professional

Nobody wants to buy from a non-professional pity seller so you might want to be careful about the image you choose to show. First of all, being professional online, besides using proper language and real marketing strategies means you have:

• a domain name (eg: www.yourcompany.com, www.productreview.com)
• a paid hosting (eg: HostGator, BlueHost)
• a serious email address (eg: office@companyname.com)
• a neat, organized design for your website (thing about the user experience by making everything easy and accessible)

5. Be Persistent

The world, the technological world is a very competitive field and that means new and innovative ways appear everyday so you have to beat your competition by becoming better and better everyday. Try to be consistent and update your content frequently, give people reasons to come to you and not to your competition. Also, we live in a social media powered online so you need to be active on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter…if you do it right, than you will see they are your best friends in this “journey”.

How to Succeed as a Vendor

If you are new in the online marketing field, I really recommend you start as an affiliate just to become familiar with the way things go around. If you believe you are ready though, then you can create your own product and submit it to approval at CB team.

What you really need to become a vendor

Unlike being an affiliate marketer, as a vendor you need to make some sacrifices including time sacrifice, money sacrifice or if you already have some serious money to spend you can find out a shortcut. Is kind of a difficult situation because you can trade time for money, but you can’t trade money for time…

The I Have Time Way

If you are willing to sacrifice some of your spare time and you are a skilled one, then you should:

1. Start Building a Product

The product usually is an eBook or a software product created to help people build things, make money, get healthy, fitness products or software to make things much more easy for the clients. If you are not the programmer type, then I most definitely recommend you start building an eBook. It’s quite simple and you can approach any kind of subject, but the ones mentioned bellow are most popular.
What you need…

• Research…lots of it!
• Good writing skills
• A text editor like Microsoft Office (or something to help you create a PRO PDF file)

2. Submit the product to ClickBank

So…you have created the flawless product and you are ready to proceed to the next step? Great! ClickBank is always more than happy to receive your submissions, but you have to know that in order to get approved, your product has to meet up their quality guidelines and besides you have to pay an activation fee of $49,95. The application process is quite simple and it shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes. To apply click here!

3. Promote the product

This is the fun part! You will love it because it’s what actually brings you money. If you start a good campaign you can see result right away and if you plan a viral factor, then the word will spread faster than you might imagine.
Among the most used ways to promote your products are

• Building an Email List

Even nowadays emails are extremely valuable for marketers and you have to exploit this opportunity. To build a serious list you need to sign up for a free email auto-responder service like Mail-Chimp or a premium one like AWeber. Both of them are excellent for managing your email list!

• Create Buzz Before The Actual Launch

Marketers usually offer a free trial, a free copy of a similar product or something to make people subscribe to their actual product. Start offering the product to trusting people around, people who can provide you with testimonials.

• SEO and SMO

Even if you have planned a great email strategy and generated enough buzz around the product, you still need to consider search engines and social media marketing. These are extremely powerful for your business and you have to focus on them all along.

The I Have Money Way

Easy as always, all you have to do is to pay someone to do your job. There are many competent people to do so even if you choose to create an eBook or a software application. You will be surprised to see that in fact you don’t need to be rich to get a great job done fast and secure.
Outsourcing is what you need!

Pay to create

If you need a programmer, then a website like eLance, GetACoder or Freelancer.com can help you find out the right guy. Craigslist and Guru.com are probably the best places were to find really comprehensive help for your eBook. For $1k-$2k you can get a full comprehensive ebook with resell rights and pretty much everything you might need.

Pay to Promote

Just like for affiliate marketing, you need to work with advertising companies like Google Adwords and Facebook. If you skipped previous text, just take a look at affiliate promotion to see what I mean.

Succeed by Working as Affiliate and Vendor

If you’ve ever bought a product of a ClickBank member, then you probably seen that there in the landing page is a subscription form where they say you get something for free. Usually they talk about a free ebook, free sample of their actual product or that’s just the way to sign up. Well…when you enter the email address there, you actually subscribe for getting scheduled affiliate offers from these vendors. This way they sell their actual product and at the same time, they recommend you one of their favorite ClickBank product.
This might look a bit exhausting, but is most definitely the best way to make money with ClickBank. Diversification has always brought great benefits so if I have to recommend a way, then this is definitely the one.