Well for the penis enlargement site you'd pretty pretty silly not to use a pen name IMHO. That is a very common thing on the internet and as long as the name does not try to cash in on someone's trademark the law says you can call yourself Richard Dickson if you wanted for the penis site, and there is nothing wrong with that....however if you call yourself richard dickson that's gonna piss me off coz I'm already using it In other areas, especially when the product is my own, then I'm generally Brandon Fredrickson, but that's for the business where I am trying to brand myself..so that would be in Trading Education and Internet Marketing. However, even in the trading field I have not always used Brandon Fredrickson...for example I created a forex product this summer that sold pretty well on Clickbank (about 3000 sales) and I did not use my "real" name. In that case I didnt use my real name because it was a pretty cheap product (not the quality, the price) and I try not to compete based upon price as I think it's generally a crappy way to make yourself stand out. I guess as a general rule this applies for me. If the product is mine, my name is going to be on it in 99% of the cases. If the product is someone elses and I'm just the affiliate then it will depend. Like if I was going to tell you hey you should check out Deron Wagner's stuff or Ivica's stuff, then that comes from me as it relates to trading and I will be me, Brandon Fredrickson. However, if I'm just selling something and it's not a business I'm really for anything except to make the money then I probably wont be. I've been Dick, Angie, David, Dean, Lucas, Amy and Mr X. I liked being Mr X, the international man of mystery..that was cool!!!! Those names serve several purposes, privacy for one. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is only so much money in a program. Each clickbank product is only going to sell so many units and since most people are not going to do all the research and work it takes to be successful then most people are not going to be successful. However, if you start to be known as a pretty good clickbank seller then whats going to happen is that pretty soon everyone is simply going to be looking around and saying...oh what is Richard Dickson promoting, he is a superaffiliate and very successful. Then the next thing you know there are 100 other affiliates trying to buy the same damn keywords you want for the same product that you are trying to sell and then your screwed. Products can become too big on clickbank to successfully promote, so if your good at it your not going to talk too much or too often about the exact products your promoting. Hope this helps a bit.
I'm going to be putting up a video today on signing up for and using Aweber. This is going to be slightly out of sequence of how I wanted to go (it's a little early for most of ya), but my brother, who just got out of the Army after 14 years, is getting going on this and this is where he is at. So, I'm just going to make the video for him and share it with all of you. Brandon
I was not impressed at first with the Clickbank products either. Like many probably did, I checked out the investment products and saw the adds to learn forex and get rich in no time which as we know is not that easy. But I went back later and looked at some other things related to hobbies I have and found some stuff that I actually liked. I imagine you could get get your feet wet with that type of product if the ratios work and go from there.
Hey Brandon, I've gotta say, you've really shed some light on this subject. I now seriously look at the web as completely different entity. I've noticed just how many of those websites are just vehicles for making money. Especially the incestuous thing you were talking about. It all makes sense. I'm actually a bit bummed out to see what it has become. Oh well... Hey hurry up with the next video would ya! I'm itch'in for a sale! "Get out there - you got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?"
You are exactly right Boss. For all of us here on EliteTrader I want to encourage you in the strongest possible way to <b>avoid the investment products on clickbank!</b> Do not promote them,<b>PERIOD!</b> This actually has nothing to do with the quality of the products or how much money you could make promoting them. There are in fact a few very good Investment products available on clickbank. Not only that but the Forex products are by far the most lucrative ones there. I have read that while there are only a couple dozen active forex programs at any given time in the market place, the forex products make up nearly 1/5th of all affiliate commissions paid. I don't have this info first hand, but I do believe it based upon what I have seen a number of my friends doing. However, here is the problem with forex and investment products, at least for me. I have too much experience and way too many biases. Those bias strongly effected my ability to market the products, and that is your job as an affiliate, simply to find a need and offer people a solution to that need. Given my experience as a trader and vendor I had (wrongly it turned out) assumed that selling forex products would be a snap for me, that I could make a kadrillion dollars in no time flat. Nothing could have been further from the truth. As a clickbank seller I have made decent money with investment products, that is to say allowing others to sell my wares, but as an affiliate myself I simply have found myself flushing my money down the toilet when I try to sell the forex and investment products. And again this has nothing to do with those not being lucrative products for sellers, because they are by far the best selling and biggest paying products on clickbank. Sadly though with experience also comes strong bias, and so while many of my friends make the easy money selling forex products (my friend Russ gets a nearly 6 to 1 return on his investment promoting forex products), I simply can't make money at it. My friend Dave, who has been a trader for almost 20 years and was involved in trading education for about six years got interested in what I was doing a few months ago. As I was explaining it to him he said "Oh my god, that's almost like an arbitrage, I mean your buying the traffic cheap and just reselling it more expensive at the same time..that's cool" and so he was interested in looking into it. He made the logical (at least it seemed logical to him and I when we both made it) to sell trading related products and came to the same conclusion, that he simply had too many feelings and opinions about the product to be an effective <b>marketer</b>. In the end Dave become modestly successful selling clickbank products, making about $150/$200 per day, but he is a pretty successful trader (making about 500-700K per year) and so he decided that he would rather have that time to spend with his family then on another business. It at least made me feel better though to see that I wasnt the only idiot on the planet who couldnt make money with the forex products, which a lot of my clickbank friends think of as money from the sky. Brandon
I've been asking around for suggestions on other places to host your websites. The two places that I have mentioned earlier are two companies that I myself have used and have been happy with..host gator and floathosting. A couple of my friends are using a company called midphaseweb, which they are very happy with and it only costs $8.00 per month for the domain. Next site I get I'm going to go ahead and try them out, but I do have good recommendations of the company already so I wanted to pass it along.
Up until last Oct, I used "domainspricedright" to built host/web site for several years. I was unfamiliar with this area of computing and most importantly, when I did buy something, I didn't want to have to change to another company if I expanded. The web site was easy to build using templates of various types (fill in the blanks), add images, hyperlinks, etc, changes and updates to web pages were instantly published to the web. The company had zero downtime that I was aware of. I would work on the site at night or in the morning and if I had any questions, the calls were always answered professionally 24/7. When I first purchased this site, they told me I could fill out the app on line, I said no, let's do it in person, that was fine with them. They walked me through every product I needed, no pressure, with explanations on everything. It is simple to use, the hardest part was organizing the layout on paper.
this isn;t an easy business..... considering i use to be an adsense arbitreuer i never liked arbing products ( i arbed diff source of traffic to higher paying keywords, funneliing etc.) , its very shortterm money with a lot of competition especially if you don't make your own product and imagination intense . i doubt 3% of the people on et can even think of a good ad title let alone a script. i've know quite a few internet get rich on the internet marketers, whawt they write is extremely good, espically the one where the guy teaches a 13 year old thai boy to make money on the internet. he's sales pitch was "this peasant 13 year old from a 3rd world nation is making $200 a day, You can do it too!" In the end its all bullshit but extremely funny and drawing. --------- all the get rich on the net marketers made very little money from the actuasl product selling, cause 50% of $29.95, after commissions, don't pay enough for 15 cents per click converting @ 200-300 clicks. ($30-45 per lead) while you are only getting paid $13, minus processing fees. Adword marketing use to be in very profitable mode, when there were no click bid mininums, like Overture aka goto, or adwords, use to be able to bid on mass keywords @ 5 cents or less The profit margin was very good back in 2003-05, If the margin was good, I'd still be in that business. I believe that is why you are dissemanting this info now, its a low margin/high work opportunity these days. -------- Goes to show how <b>late</b> people are to the party/rally 3-5-7 years too late to this business.