Is ClickBank Scamming Affiliates?
April 22, 2009 by Matt · Leave a Comment
I am not making accusations here, but I am reporting what I have found. There are a lot of accusations floating around about ClickBank shaving and/or stealing affiliate commissions. While I am not a big affiliate of ClickBank, I have noticed that my sales have completely stopped. Does that mean CickBank is scamming? No, but some of the arguments and claims being made on some of the most popular forums leaves me wondering if they might be scamming.
Personally I do not accuse ClickBank of scamming, but when I take a look at my personal stats I do see an issue. I have 3 sites promoting ClickBank products that have a ranking on Google of #1 – #5 for their respective keywords and used to generate a couple hundred dollars per week. Over the past few months my rankings have stayed the same, but my commissions steadily decreased to nothing and have been nil for the last five weeks. Does this mean ClickBank is scamming? No, but if they are not scamming, they have a serious tracking issue that is getting ignored and ignoring the issue is just as bad as stealing in my opinion. So what should an affiliate do? I would only push ClickBank organically and stop all advertising for ClickBank products until the problem is identified and corrected. No sense in spending money if you are not 100% sure you are gonna get paid.
Affiliate Marketing With Out a Website
December 9, 2008 by Matt · Leave a Comment
Affiliate marketing is an easy home business to start and has a small to moderate learning curve to get you started. As an affiliate, you will promote products through your website and earn a set amount for generating a lead or you will receive a percentage of the sale for promoting the product. But what do you do if you do not have a website or do not feel like you have the technical qualities to build one? You are still able to take part in one of the easiest ways to make money online. Here is how to get started.
Step One – Pick Your Topic or Niche
What are you passionate about? What are you good at? Answering these questions will be the easiest way for you to find your niche or topics. It will be easy for you to write articles about something you are good at or have a passion about.
Step Two – Pick Your Affiliate Product
Once you have chosen your niche, find affiliate programs that have products related to that niche. ClickBank is recommended for this plan, because they do not verify whether or not you have a web site.
Step Three – Write Articles
Research your topic and write 5 articles for your niche. Make sure to include your affiliate program link in the article and in the author’s biography at the end of your article.
Step Four – Promote Your Product
Create an account at Squidoo and create a lense with one of the articles. After completing your Squidoo lense, create blogger.com and wordpress.com blogs. Post an article on each blog. The fourth and fifth articles need to be posted at ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. Last, submit a free ad at usfreeads.com promoting your product. Once your articles have been posted and you have a free ad, start linking the sites together. Add a link to the article posted at ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and the ad at usfreeads.com to each of the blogs and the Squidoo lense. Once you have linked the articles and the ad, link the blogs and Squidoo lense together. Once you have all sites linked together, go to Ping-O-Matic and ping each blog, article and the lense.
Step Six – Rinse and Repeat!
Once you have your first niche completed, start the process over with a new niche. Aim to get three to four different niches completed.
Once you have completed your niches, you should aim to post one article per day per niche and rotate them between the blogs and ezinearticles.com. Writing quality articles will help visitors find your sites and click your affiliate links.
You Can Still Make Money Online With Yahoo Answers
July 20, 2008 by Matt · Leave a Comment
Yahoo Answers is one of the largest and most popular social networking sites around. Answers attracts visitors seeking specific solutions to specific problems. While this has been played for a while, this is still a very simple and effective way for you to make money online. Think about it, this is 100% targeted traffic for your offer(s). People need a solution to a specific problem and you have that solution. Now before I continue, you should know that Answers does not allow advertising of any kind, so you have to be smart about it or you will get your account banned or your IP blocked.
What do I mean about being smart? Simple, do not answer a question with a simple answer and a link or answer a question you know nothing about. Your answer will more than likely be flagged as abuse and your account is gone. Answer questions that you know something about and put some thought and research (if needed) into your answer. Your answer as well as the link should be a solution to the problem. You should work to make yourself an expert in your niche(s).
So how do you get started. Simple, create an account and start answering questions. I have also put together some tips and tricks below to help make you a little more successful.
- Open more than 1 account. I open 2 accounts per niche. This allows you to ask, answer and vote on your own answers for each niche you are targeting.
- Sign up for the RSS feed of each niche your answering. This will give you an automated update of all new questions asked right to your desk top.
- Send the affiliate links through a sub-domain of your domain. This will help you monitor traffic so you know what is converting and what is not.
- Try to target high paying niches such as credit, mortgage, insurance, weight loss, etc.
- Once again, make sure your question and the link provided provides a solution for the question being answered. Do not just drop links with a stupid answer or you will not be in business long.
As you can see, this is a really simple way for you to make money online and done right can provide you a decent income.
Good luck
Matt
Clicksor.com Review
November 24, 2007 by Matt · Leave a Comment
I am always looking for alternative revenue sources for my site. After doing some research for Adsense alternatives, I decided to give Clicksor a try. I ran ads for 1 month on a banking related site and this is what I found.
- The small pool of Clicksor advertisers consist mainly of arbitrage, gambling and porn type sites. Ads served are irrelevant to the content of the site and take to long to load.
- The revenue per click is extremely low (1-3 cents) and the CTR is less than 1%.
- The publisher account area is very basic and there is no opportunity for advanced research.
- Support was not responsive to my original or 3 follow up emails concerning the adult/gambling ad removal.
- The worst part of my month long trial is that Clicksor tried to drop spyware and trojans on my computer.
My recommendation is that you avoid Clicksor.com. If you are looking for an alternative revenue source try Neverblue ads for some great converting cost per action programs.
Are Merchants Stealing Your Affiliate Commission
November 15, 2007 by Matt · Leave a Comment
As an affiliate marketer, your affiliate commission is your life blood. Whether you are in it as a part time business or full time, your time is money.
When you mention affiliate commission theft, the normal response would be to blame zango.com, spyware, scumware, other affiliates and even anti spyware programs. No one seems to notice that there is an ongoing trend by some merchants that is costing you money. While the merchants may not be doing things to purposely steal your commission, the popular tactics below are costing you money and should be avoided.
- Phone Numbers On Banner Ads – Your visitor ends up calling and places the order over the phone. Unless there is a way to track the phone order, your money is gone.
- Live Chat - this seems harmless, but this can be a huge problem. If you drive a visitor to the merchant and a chat window pops up offering coupons or discount codes, you have lost the sale. While most of the live chat programs offer outstanding tracking, if there is not a tracking code in place to track affiliates the sale goes to the merchant.
- Squeeze Pages – these are extremely popular among Click Bank merchants. When your visitor arrives at the merchants site, they are directed to enter their name and email to get a free report or e-book. Once the lead is captured, you have lost the commission and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product. Either way, your sale is gone.
- Newsletters – Another popular tactic by Click Bank merchants. You send the visitor and a few seconds after they hit the landing page, a slide in offer for a newsletter comes across the screen. Your visitor signs up for the news letter and they are immediately taken to another page or the landing page refreshes. Once the lead has been captured by the merchant, your commission is gone and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product.
The list above is not all inclusive and there are other tactics that are being used. Before promoting a merchant, visit their site. Do you notice anything that is a leak? Do they have live chat? Do they have an phone number displayed on their site? After the visit, send an email to the merchants affiliate manager and ask about the problems you have noticed. Do they have a way to track sales that are directed to chat? Do they have a way to track phone orders? If they have procedures in place, you are good to go. If not, simply move on! I am not a big fan of Click Bank, but if you are promoting Click Bank products you need to make sure that you are not sending visitors to a squeeze page or a page that is immediately shown a newsletter offer. Remember that once the lead is captured by the merchant, your sale is gone.
Matt
