Aint nothin worth having that is free....and traffic is one thing that is worth having. It will depend on your keywords and how good you are at keyword research etc.
For me the basic idea of clickbank is to find something I can sell and make money on. Some people make a fine living only being an affiliate, but these are guys who are much better with adwords etc then I am (and I'm not bad at it). My thing is that if I can make a little bit of money and see strong sales as an affiliate, I'm going to create my own product in that market. Clickbank gives me lots of opportunites to do small tests and see what people are interested in. My thinking is this, in terms of making my own product. If I can turn a profit while only getting 50 to 60% of the sale, imagine what I can do getting 100% of it. That's always my goal with any clickbank product I promote, that it will be successful and worth me spending the time to create my own version of the product down the line. I like to have about 45 to 60 days of data before I start this process. Again my approach with clickbank is different then what most people teach..in fact I've bought a ton of courses on making money from clickbank and never seen someone advocate the approach I use. Like I said most people either make their own product and might do some affiliate marketing for related products, or they just work as affiliates and thats it. Both approaches work and can be profitable..but I like mine more
Remember what I wrote about Gross and Net? If you don't remember shame on you...go refresh your memory here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=149703&perpage=6&pagenumber=15 Ok, so let's have a look at my "Victims of Chex Systems" site. As I said each customer is worth about $99 to me and I make about 9 sales a week. Here are the actuals. I've had the site up for 14 months...In the last 12 months I have $47,540 in sales total. My costs to produce those sales (and the site) has been $21,900, so the money in my pocket from the product is $25,640. I'm pretty happy with that because I spent about 20 hours of my life total on this business. Right now I'm not sure where I'm going to go with this particular business because I have an offer from someone (a legit offer) to buy it from me for $95,000, and given that I've had over $800,000 in medical bills this year I could use $95,000 in cash. This is my second most profitable site. I have 11 others (not including affiliate promotions) that make me anything from $2000 a year to $31,000, with the average being just over $12K . Nothing that is lighting the world on fire..but it's all repeatable and I enjoy it alot....I like psychology..selling...markeitng stuff..thats how I originally got interested in the stock market in the first place.
One apology I'd like to make quick: I realize that alot of the order in this stuff has gotten jumbled up. I've jumped ahead, then back, then ahead then back. This is the first time I've ever taught this type of stuff in this particular format.....so it's something of a learning curve for me. So far though the responce seems very positive...108 views to the first video from 74 different people. If you do like what I'm doing and think it could help a friend or family member please pass it on.
I like everything you have shared with us and look foward to your posts. Perhaps toward the end you can list what we need to do in order (1. set up Clickbank acct. 2. establish host site, etc.) for dummies like me. I do have someone in mind to share this with and appreciate your efforts. It's a good project to learn and work on in the winter months.
<b>Know Who Buys Your Stuff </b> So lets say your all hyped up, jazzed up and ready to go. You have gone to Host Gator and reserved your brand new website http://www.buymyshit.com. You have a killer idea for a product. I'm just gonna use as an example my digital ebook and video course on the coming change to digital TV. I'm going to go ahead and use this example because it's been a pretty good little niche for me, but it's obviously just about played itself out. When I created the course I need to figure out who is my crowd? In this case the vast majority of my buyers are going to be senior's on a fixxed budget who do not live in major metropolitan areas. In other words bingo players from Fargo. Now I have to consider this throught the entire process. I have to make a site that they feel comfortable using. That means nothing fancy, big letters and buttons and did I mention nothing fancy. I talk about things that they can identify with. I had my dad's uncle record the video for me, because everyone likes to deal with someone who is "just like me", and so I figured they would be much more pleased with my retired farmer 88 year old Uncle John then some young wipper snapper like me. I did a lot of advertising on site's that focus on grandkids, bingo, "old time stories" etc. Had I created a fancy site with the latest flash, fancy ass videos etc I'd have never gotten a sale. First of all the majority of them are, almost by default, on dial up if they are even on the net. Second it just intemidates the majority of them. You have to keep in mind that if you are dealing with a person who is more or less afraid of technology but realizes they have to confront it for the time being (tooth ache anyone!). A lot of old men's wive's have told them that if their programs get interupted it's gonna be their asses on the line, and so they are pretty motivated to get the info and have it in an easy to use and understand format. So I'm not in a great conclussion writting mood right now, and I've not outlined this little ditty of a post b4 I wrote it..so that's gonna be all for now. Again questions and comments are not only welcome but wanted, in fact needed. Thank you. Brandon
Brandon, How do these people pay you? Cash or money order through the snail mail? Somehow the dots aren't connecting for me on this market segment. Thanks BTW, Very nice plate of meat and potatoes.
Payment was a difficult issue. At first I just took credit cards (not very good demographic research I know) and as you can imagine I did not have a ton of sales. Most people can get ahold of their mom's credit card or something along those lines, so that's still accounts for about 1/3 of my orders. The majority though pay with money orders and then when I get the check they get the email giving them the dowload link for the list of banks and the letter. Most of the money though is made from affiliates, I've actually thought of just giving it away for free because my backend on it is so good that I've wondered how much better I'd do, esp since I already pay affiliates more then I charge for the ebook anyway..right now I'm trying not to think too hard about the business coz I'm hoping to have it sold the middle of next month .