The old ClickBank Elite is no more. Enter the new ClickBank Elite!. The new CB Elite version 1.47 has three notable features:
1. Enhanced Search and Sort functions for finding exceptional products to promote
2. CB Ads for monetizing traffic and,
3. Link Cloaking for stopping commission theft.
Details
1. New CB Elite search and sort functions let you download a copy of the Clickbank product list database (1.5 meg zipped, 7.4 meg unzipped) and store your copy for future use. Once unzipped and loaded you can sort by categories, subcategories or all. Sort and select on any of 7 factors: gravity, popularity, $/sale, % commission, Title, description and % referred. You can specify maximum or minimum values, or range of values you want. From the main screen you can easily click off from a product to a new web page to see the landing site, check the CBTrends graphs, check the popularity ranges in all categories and subcategories or get a hoplink. Full analytical control by mouse-click from one control point. When finished just close the window and go to the next item. Very convenient.
CB Elite now incorporates popular Affiliate Project X searches for Leach, Workhorse or Rising Star, as well as new product searches.
My personal observation was that having all these CB Elite features in one place at the same time saved me about 60% to 70% of the time necessary to find and check out a product. Also, because it was fast and you did not have to go away to open another window to see another aspect, it was easier to keep focussed on the product at hand until I finished analyzing and classifying it.
CB Elite is a very good tool for empowering Affiliate Marketers to check out and compare products fast.
2. New CB Elite lets you sort out whatever grouping of products you want and set them up for Google AdWords style ads (CB Ads)! This gives you a new way to monetize the traffic at your websites. To use the CB Ads feature of ClickBank Elite you first input your hoplink. Then let's say, for example, that you have a niche site dealing with golf. You run a search on All Categories, with keyword "golf", minimum popularity 10; the search yields 1 product. O.K. You repeat with min. popularity 100; you get 10 products. You try 500, you get 49 products. O.K. That'll work! You pick your adblock style (ClickBank Elite gives you eight layouts to choose from). There are strip blocks (728x90, 600x90) tower blocks (160x600, 120x600) and 4 more square/rectangular choices. You pick 600x90, specify border color blue, print color black, background white, link color dark red, etc., choose between PHP or javascript format and hit "Create Adblock Code". Bingo! ClickBank Elite gives you a new CB Ads file with everything in it!
Upload the newly created CB Ads file to a folder on your website, set up the script markers and put them on your webpages where you want the ads to appear and upload the revised pages. Then visit the site to make sure that everything is working O.K. The ads appear, selected at random from our database of 49, changing with each page change. The visitor sees different ads everywhere, advertising different products that have to do with golf. Click on any ad and you are taken to the vendor's site using your hoplink that you input when you started. Bingo! Clickbank Elite has given you a new way to monetize site traffic.
There is no conflict between ClickBank Elite's CB Ads and your Google Adsense ads. While CB Ads look like Google Adsense ads, they are not contextual in nature so there is generally no problem using a mixture of CB Ads and Adsense ads on the same webpage.
Your link for your CB Ads is cloaked, to inhibit commission theft, which brings us to CB Elite's third feature.
3. CB Elite lets you cloak your affiliate links to each product. This can be done for any link you input to be cloaked and is done automatically for all the products offered on your CB Ads.
The CB Elite program uses the frame method so that when the visitor arrives at the vendor's website, the url in the "go to" window is still that of the site where he was when he clicked. To the visitor it appears that he is still on the same site. He is, of course, but he is seeing the distant site through a frame of that same site. It's not foolproof (nothing is) but it certainly makes it much harder and thus less likely that the one who clicked buys without paying your commission or manages to steal it leaving you with nothing for your work and trouble.
This is useful for more than just avoiding commission theft. It gets around the Google "one-ad-per-domain" rule, since the traditional hoplink does not appear (just a bunch of unintelligible code). This helps you by avoiding bidding conflicts with other affiliates using uncloaked hoplink ads to the same vendor. Also, to set up a cloaked link you copy the code that CB Elite gives you to a page to be mounted on your site. This is an index page which can be used as any other page on your website to add keywords in the Title and desciption to improve your SEO.
Using the ClickBank Elite cloaking feature saves me 70-80% of the time that it used to take me to cloak my links manually.
On the negative side, on my system the auto download for the CllickBank marketplace feed did not work. However it is easy enough to download the CB feed directly, unzip it and put it in the proper folder. Maybe the auto download feature of ClickBank Elite works on other systems that don't have three different zip programs like mine does.
Also, the only drawback I see to ClickBank Elite's CB Ads is that, although they look fine, the text was written to sell to affiliate marketers, not to ultimate consumers. Many ads come out emphasizing high conversion rates and/or 50 - 75% commission rates... hardly the thing you want to show to possible buyers. Perhaps a workaround could be done for that.
In summary, altogether ClickBank Elite is a very useful tool and it fills a distinct need vacuum. It should do very well. I recommend it.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Clickbank Vs Ebay
Since the launch of Amazon.com in 1995, the number of affiliate marketing programs offered on the internet has grown enormously. Although Amazon.com was one of the pioneers with their affiliate program, other affiliate providers such as eBay and Clickbank now arguably offer a more diverse and profitable affiliate program.
The eBay Affiliate Program
Put simply, eBay launched their affiliate program to obtain more targeted traffic to their site. Originally many webmasters used the eBay affiliate program simply to make additional revenue from their existing web site. This has changed recently with an advancement in the quality of RSS feeds leading to a number of different affiliate store scripts flooding the market. These affiliate store scripts have created a new phenomenon where new eBay affiliates establish an affiliate store as the primary purpose of their web site and then add relevant content. EBay affiliates are now creating web sites that are established primarily to make affiliate commissions and not necessarily to provide useful and relevant content for the visitor.
My eBay Affiliate Store
I have an interest in golf and established my own eBay affiliate golf store called davesgolfstore.com using an eBay affiliate store script called Build A Niche Store. I provide my own web site content and have a direct feed of products from eBay. Every product listed on eBay under the golf category is displayed on my site in real time. When somebody clicks on a set of golf clubs listed on my site they are taken directly to eBay. If they place a successful bid I receive a commission from eBay ranging from 20-65% of eBays income. When I refer a new customer to eBay who makes a successful bid I receive a commission up to $24. The one downside of being an eBay affiliate is that you rely heavily on generating organic traffic from top listings on the search engines. The average commission I receive per sale is between $1-2. These commissions are quite small and it makes it difficult to use other traffic generating methods such as pay per click advertising. Given the search engines constantly update their page ranking algorithms, the inherent risk is it becomes difficult to generate consistent traffic as you rely heavily on organic searches.
Clickbank Affiliate Program
Clickbank offers an affiliate program that is primarily associated with promoting digital products that are predominantly ebooks. Similar to eBay, ClickBank has a diverse range of products to promote over a number of different categories across a range of interests and hobbies. The primary difference between Clickbank and eBay relates to the commissions paid per sale. Clickbank affiliates can earn between 25% to 75% per sale price while eBay commissions are based solely on eBay's revenue per sale and not the total sale price of the item. The majority of eBooks available on Clickbank are "How To" type ebooks. Historically these types of ebooks sell in high volumes and suit the internet given buyers generally have instant download access to the ebook they purchase. Given the digital nature of Clickbank products , promotion does involve providing more content rich web sites as potential buyers generally require more information before they make a purchase. Buyers take a different approach to eBay where generally the majority of goods purchased are still "hard goods" and most buyers already have an understanding of what they are purchasing.
Clickbank or eBay - You Decide?
There are more resources online when it comes to making money on Clickbank as opposed to making money with eBay affiliate marketing. Wealthy Affiliate.com is one of the more popular making money with Clickbank resources available on the internet while Build A Niche Store is now commonly used amongst eBay affiliate marketers. If you are willing to provide a content rich site, promoting Clickbank products can be very profitable given the higher commissions received where as eBay affiliate marketing is more suitable for those who don't necessarily wish to develop content rich sites and prefer to promote traditional type "hard goods".
Running a web site that is established primarily to make affiliate commissions is some what a floored concept. A web site should be created for the purpose of providing relevant and useful content to the visitor, and then relevant affiliate and non affiliate links can be provided to the visitor to help them further with their search.
The eBay Affiliate Program
Put simply, eBay launched their affiliate program to obtain more targeted traffic to their site. Originally many webmasters used the eBay affiliate program simply to make additional revenue from their existing web site. This has changed recently with an advancement in the quality of RSS feeds leading to a number of different affiliate store scripts flooding the market. These affiliate store scripts have created a new phenomenon where new eBay affiliates establish an affiliate store as the primary purpose of their web site and then add relevant content. EBay affiliates are now creating web sites that are established primarily to make affiliate commissions and not necessarily to provide useful and relevant content for the visitor.
My eBay Affiliate Store
I have an interest in golf and established my own eBay affiliate golf store called davesgolfstore.com using an eBay affiliate store script called Build A Niche Store. I provide my own web site content and have a direct feed of products from eBay. Every product listed on eBay under the golf category is displayed on my site in real time. When somebody clicks on a set of golf clubs listed on my site they are taken directly to eBay. If they place a successful bid I receive a commission from eBay ranging from 20-65% of eBays income. When I refer a new customer to eBay who makes a successful bid I receive a commission up to $24. The one downside of being an eBay affiliate is that you rely heavily on generating organic traffic from top listings on the search engines. The average commission I receive per sale is between $1-2. These commissions are quite small and it makes it difficult to use other traffic generating methods such as pay per click advertising. Given the search engines constantly update their page ranking algorithms, the inherent risk is it becomes difficult to generate consistent traffic as you rely heavily on organic searches.
Clickbank Affiliate Program
Clickbank offers an affiliate program that is primarily associated with promoting digital products that are predominantly ebooks. Similar to eBay, ClickBank has a diverse range of products to promote over a number of different categories across a range of interests and hobbies. The primary difference between Clickbank and eBay relates to the commissions paid per sale. Clickbank affiliates can earn between 25% to 75% per sale price while eBay commissions are based solely on eBay's revenue per sale and not the total sale price of the item. The majority of eBooks available on Clickbank are "How To" type ebooks. Historically these types of ebooks sell in high volumes and suit the internet given buyers generally have instant download access to the ebook they purchase. Given the digital nature of Clickbank products , promotion does involve providing more content rich web sites as potential buyers generally require more information before they make a purchase. Buyers take a different approach to eBay where generally the majority of goods purchased are still "hard goods" and most buyers already have an understanding of what they are purchasing.
Clickbank or eBay - You Decide?
There are more resources online when it comes to making money on Clickbank as opposed to making money with eBay affiliate marketing. Wealthy Affiliate.com is one of the more popular making money with Clickbank resources available on the internet while Build A Niche Store is now commonly used amongst eBay affiliate marketers. If you are willing to provide a content rich site, promoting Clickbank products can be very profitable given the higher commissions received where as eBay affiliate marketing is more suitable for those who don't necessarily wish to develop content rich sites and prefer to promote traditional type "hard goods".
Running a web site that is established primarily to make affiliate commissions is some what a floored concept. A web site should be created for the purpose of providing relevant and useful content to the visitor, and then relevant affiliate and non affiliate links can be provided to the visitor to help them further with their search.
ClickBank and PayPal Theft
If you are using ClickBank or PayPal to sell your products, it is almost a certainty that dishonest thieves are stealing your products. And along with your products, they are taking something else. They are stealing your profits. And they are not using sophisticated techniques; they are using techniques that are much, much simpler. How are they doing it? I think that you will be surprised when you learn how it is being done.
They are doing a simple search on a search engine. I won't mention the name of the search engine because I don't want to make the problem worse. But unfortunately, some search engines disregard the "no index, no follow" tags. Even if you have them properly formatted on your site, these search engines disregard them and index your site anyway.
And the sad thing is, you probably aren't even aware that this is happening. To determine if it is happening to your products, install a good counter on every page of your website and track which pages your visitors are using. If you see people going to your download pages when no sale took place, you are being robbed. These thieves are stealing your profits!
There are a number of techniques that you can use to prevent this. One of the best solutions is to use software to block anyone who has not paid first. This solution is recommended by many of the large payment processors.
Do you want to learn how to make money? Get my new ebook and start making money online!
They are doing a simple search on a search engine. I won't mention the name of the search engine because I don't want to make the problem worse. But unfortunately, some search engines disregard the "no index, no follow" tags. Even if you have them properly formatted on your site, these search engines disregard them and index your site anyway.
And the sad thing is, you probably aren't even aware that this is happening. To determine if it is happening to your products, install a good counter on every page of your website and track which pages your visitors are using. If you see people going to your download pages when no sale took place, you are being robbed. These thieves are stealing your profits!
There are a number of techniques that you can use to prevent this. One of the best solutions is to use software to block anyone who has not paid first. This solution is recommended by many of the large payment processors.
Do you want to learn how to make money? Get my new ebook and start making money online!
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