Driving the Customers to Clickbank

Clickbank is a great marketplace and it's worth the work and small expense to get your digital product out there because of the huge exposure it can get to a very large army of affiliates. But just putting your product into the market and letting it go at that to wait for the affiliates to do their job not only doesn’t seem to be enough, there is a lot more you can do to make the sales of your Clickbank entries take off.  So its just smart business to find the best internet marketing techniques that will pay the most rewards in terms of sales through Clickbank.

Learning to advertise your Clickbank affiliate is just as much a big priority as it was to learn to market your website or products you sell there via internet marketing methods.  And how to be a success marketing on the internet is something that is changing all the time as the internet changes and evolves.  It’s a living place and each year we have to stay on top of what works to bring the customers in.  And in our case we adapt that knowledge to specifically promote our Clickbank campaigns combines the power of Clickbank with your own marketing talents for that one two punch to wealth.

When you add Clickbank to your marketing plan, you have put a powerful resource in your corner.  But because you are now listing on what is hands down the largest internet marketplace in the world, its best to go back and evaluate your entire internet marketing plan in light of what you are doing on Clickbank.  That is because when you were driving customers to your web site to make a sale, it was pretty much a one customer at a time approach to sales which takes a long time to see real progress.  But since there are over 150,000 affiliates on Clickbank, the more you do to make your product successful and drive customers to Clickbank, the more you can see the return on that investment come by in multiples of hundreds or thousands.

It's not a bad idea to approach your internet marketing research from square one looking for advice and tools that are focused specifically on how to use your web site to create traffic to your Clickbank products.  If the person behind a web site that is promoting training or tools in marketing for Clickbank knows their stuff, they can take your sales to the next level.  As with anything else, networking with your friends who also are learning the ropes of internet marketing in a Clickbank environment is a great way to sort out the good tools and experts from those who are not going to benefit your business.  

In fact, if you are already involved in affiliate marketing directly with other internet merchants, you can pick their brains about Clickbank training and tools for moving product through that market place.  That same body of affiliates may be your first Clickbank representatives because they know the good of your product line and they will want to see your efforts to drive traffic their way work out well.

When you first learned internet marketing before you stepped into the Clickbank world, it took some work, some false starts and some real life experiences before you got good at it.  This is natural and sadly your early internet marketing programs are not as successful until you get an understanding for what really drives traffic and what doesn’t.  But you are not alone in your objectives or your desires to learn to become an expert internet marketer and make the top ranks of sellers on Clickbank.  And while those who have real world knowledge and advice to offer to help you get over your learning curve to become a Clickbank big money affiliate are probably selling that knowledge, maybe even through Clickbank, if that knowledge comes from real experience with the marketplace and grounded in both success and failure in Clickbank internet marketing efforts, you can learn a lot from the trial and error of others.

But be sure the source you are taking advantage of is credible in that way before you plop down your hard earned money to get your moneys worth in knowledge that will more than pay you back for the work you are doing to learn to market on Clickbank. http://Bankofebook.com

Clickbank Refunds and What You Can Do About It

The internet is not the only place that refunds is an issue to a retailer.  From the perspective of the internet merchant, customer satisfaction is of the highest priority.  Because competition for customer loyalty is fierce, you know that keeping repeat customers coming back is the fastest and best way to long term financial success in sales.  So offering an iron clan refund guarantee if the customer is not satisfied sends a message to the consumer that their happiness is top priority to you and that they can shop with you in confidence.

As customers, we like to know that there is a return or refund policy in place.  We come to expect that when we get home with a product that it will be to our satisfaction of the store will stand behind the product and give us a refund no questions asked.  Sadly even outside the internet, refund fraud happens all the time.  People bring back stolen merchandise for refund to exchange what they took for money.  There are so many scams like this that one solution the non-internet retail world has turned to is store credits so the money never leaves the store. 

Within the world of Clickbank marketing, we are faced with a similar dilemma.  Except because our products are digital, the problem is compounded significantly.  Clickbank offers an iron clad refund guarantee.  But unlike more wary merchants, there is no "store credit" to protect store funds.  And because both Clickbank merchants and affiliates must abide by the policies of the marketplace, if Clickbank gives a refund, so do you. 

The problem is there really is no such thing as a "return" when it comes to a digital product.  Because you download the product to the customer, once they have a digital copy, they have it and there is no way to make sure they are not keeping it.  And that little quirk of digital sales means that the Clickbank policy is pretty much open season for internet thieves and shoplifters if they chose to buy and download products, cash in on the policy and just keep getting their money back. 

While Clickbank is working to solve this problem, we need to know what we can do until it is solved to cut down on Clickbank refunds taking profits out of our accounts which we very much deserve to keep.  The first line of defense, of course, is legitimate refunds because of customer dissatisfaction.  Put extra work and effort into putting onto Clickbank only products of the highest quality so there is little room for complaint.  That is part of it.  But the other part is making sure customer perception of the product is accurate.

On the internet, overselling a product is almost a way of life.  We all seem to turn into infomercial merchants and we sometimes give the impression our product might be something it isn't.  So go back to your web site and specifically your sales language.  It's ok to use good marketing language on those pages.  But be sure you are telling the customer the truth so there is no reason for them to have a case to say that you sold them something that was not up to what was claimed.  Have others read your marketing copy and get to know the product so they can confirm that what is being sold is what the customer gets.

By building strong customer relationships and building a community of repeat customers, you are more secure not to have to give refunds constantly.  It's an old adage of business but the best defense against lost business is satisfying the customer.  Other than that we can only trust that Clickbank will eventually solve the problem and just keep on selling and doing the best we can. http://Bankofebook.com

Clickbank is About More than Just the Stuff

Most of us think of Clickbank as a service dedicated entirely to digital products. A digital product by definition is a something you sell.  It might be an e-book about anything from children's stories to an analysis of clinical depression to a guidebook to how to play a great game of golf.  It might be a software package that makes life easier or a really cool game you invented.  But by definition, it is "something".  Which means that in that context, Clickbank is all about the stuff.

One of ClickBank's rules of living for merchants lines up with the product only approach to the marketplace because you are expected to deliver the product within 24 hours of payment and preferably immediately by download.  The method of delivery might vary.  It can be by download, by email or by directing the customer to a membership site to download the product.  Clickbank doesn’t get into the details as long as the customer gets his product inside of the time window.

While the variety of predicts that can be sold through the Clickbank marketplace is unlimited, Clickbank does not have any provision for selling services using their terrific marketplace tools.  That 24 hour rule which is entirely reasonable for a digital product is really problematic if the nature of your internet business is a service you provide, even if the outcome is a product.   A service is delivered based on a lot of variables that the merchant cannot necessarily dictate.  Some services are continuous with periodic payments either based on milestones or on deliverables.  In either case, a specified delivery date is questionable and to limit that time frame to 24 hours virtually out of the question.

So many merchants have found ways to take advantage of the excellent marketplace infrastructure and the merchant account services of Clickbank to do business with clients that work within the 24 hour product delivery restriction.  A good example is ghostwriting.  A customer can contact a merchant using ClickBank's communication resources to make arrangements for the creation of a series of articles.  But the actual "product" would not be created within the Clickbank merchandising system until the product is complete and ready for delivery.  Then the customer and buy the product which is an outcome of the service and use Clickbank's systems to work with the ghostwriter.

Whether you organize your service to be moved through Clickbank in advance or after you complete the service, the key is for the price to be well understood before logging the project into Clickbank.  This is healthy for the business relationship between seller and buyer and keeps your nose clean with Clickbank as well.  It might take some work to convert your hourly billed service into a fixed price product.  But simply focus on the outcome.  So if you work by the hour to produce a requirements document for a project, you can set the fixed price when the project is near the end and you set up the payment vehicle as a Clickbank digital service.

Also keep in mind that Clickbank expects to see delivery.  Your service may have consisted of a series of 15 phone calls where you offer expert guidance and advance in your field of expertise.  So to create a deliverable, keep your notes per session and prepare a summary at the end that captures the results of your sessions as well as your conclusions and you can "sell" that to your client for the price of the total consulting charges for the 15 sessions. 

It really just takes some creativity and ability to not just think outside the box to work within the Clickbank box to offer your services as a digital product.  But as an internet entrepreneur, being innovative is second nature to you. http://Bankofebook.com

Clickbank Alternatives

In a lot of areas of technology, there is a dominant player.  We know about how Microsoft pretty much dominates every aspect of PC technology.  There are smaller companies that dominate application areas to like Adobe for PDF file or Photoshop for photo editing.  And when it comes to the internet and online marketplaces, the dominant power there is no doubt Clickbank.    But it's good to know what alternatives are out there for comparison purposes.  And possibly the biggest real threat to the dominance of Clickbank is a site called PayDotCom. 

Each of these fine alternatives has things to offer and some drawbacks too.  But it is worth knowing what to look for so you can make an intelligent decision.  There is just no question that Clickbank dominates the field for good reasons.    Clickbank is far and away the largest affiliate marketplace in the world.  So by putting your product on Clickbank, you could potentially see it picked up for over 150,000 affiliates if they notice you.  That is quite a sales army to cash in on.

An added benefit of utilizing Clickbank that makes it stand out versus PayDotCom is you can get this army of affiliates to sell your products far and wide and you don’t have to pay them a dime.  That is handled by the commission system which means you only see any money go to the ones that are successful and its part of the financial structure of the site.  That’s a brilliant way to organize their service and it has paid off for Clickbank and for the rest of us beautifully.

A few of the policy decisions Clickbank has made are not so brilliant and put them in the negative side of the evaluation.  The policy that is beneficial to Clickbank customers but causes a lot of problems is their iron clan refund policy.  This is an outstanding customer relationship approach because it sends the message that Clickbank stand behind the products sold on the service.  But in a world such as Clickbank's where the entire transaction and all products are digital, it pretty much leaves an open door to thieves and shoplifters who download products and then file for refund without explanation.

PayDotCom is an alterative to Clickbank that has not been able to capture as much of the market.  The commissions issue may be one reason their growth is slower.    Because Clickbank pays the affiliates and keeps that burden off of the merchants who come to the marketplace, the transactions are clean and more merchants feel freedom to participate in Clickbank.  And then because Clickbank has become the premier marketplace for digital products, more affiliates want to be involved which only continues to add to the momentum of the site to dominate this market.

From the other side of the transaction, when a merchant wants to put a product into a marketplace and then go through the support steps of linking to it from a web site and adding keyword optimized articles to drive traffic to the products, that merchant wants to know the largest affiliate base is out there to take it from there and really get that product into broad distribution and sales.  There simply is no better way to do that than to go with Clickbank. 

In a way, Clickbank succeeds by its success.  And even though PayDotCom is a viable alternative, it's difficult to capture enough market to interest merchants and affiliates to switch.   And until Clickbank makes some major mistake, which they probably wont do, that situation is probably not going to change. http://Bankofebook.com

A Little Bragging Goes a Long Way

Its one thing to have a great product and it's quite another to make sure customers know about it.  And that principle is even more vitally true when you list your product on the Clickbank marketplace.  There are literally tens of thousands of products available for affiliates to pick up and sell within Clickbank.   And even though there are over 150,000 affiliates, that is a huge marketing environment.

The literature about Clickbank would give you the impression that all you have to do is set up your account on Clickbank and get your digital product out there into the Clickbank market and, presto, you will see massive sales by the weekend.  But if it was that easy, there would be millions of people on Clickbank.  The laws of economics still prevail and this is a marketplace so even after you get your product out there, there are some basic things you must be prepared to do.

For one thing, to make it in any marketplace and Clickbank is no exception, you have to offer a product that gives value to the consumer.  For one thing, one of the most notorious problems in Clickbank is also one of its strongest customer service features which is the iron clad money back guarantee.  So the one thing you can do to keep that well known Clickbank issue from taking away the good sales you do get is to make sure your product is rock solid quality and that the customer gets more than he expects from the purchase.

Another very basic principle of marketing but its worth bring back up here because it is even more applicable in the virtual marketplace of Clickbank is originality.  For your product to stand out, it has to have something to offer the customer that nobody else offers.  That can be tough because the categories of digital products, which are all that Clickbank sells, are somewhat limited.  You cannot sell a product that requires a physical delivery.  It must be entirely digital which means you are talking about ebooks, digital music, online courses and software and games for the most part.

Clickbank does a good job of providing a categorization system so people looking for types of product can get to it and then for a special kind of product in your niche can find you.  But even with that, you are going to be "on the shelf" with a lot of other products that look and seem very much like your product.  Finding a way to make your product unique and one that touches a need in the consumer that nobody else touches is the goal of any business.  So look at the competition even when you are designing your product and long before you put it out there into the Clickbank to find that "hook" that will make the affiliate pick up your product rather than others like it and for customers want to buy it for its unique twist as well.

But even if you have the most unique and highly needed product there is, its not going anywhere unless you shout about it.  A little bragging goes a lot way in the word of marketing and on the internet, getting attention to your Clickbank product calls for a lot of bragging.  It starts with your product name and the marketing description you use to make the product shout out right from the Clickbank marketplace product pages.

Make sure the uniqueness of your product is highlighted in the title and every aspect of your description and marketing of the product.  Never stop thinking of ways to promote your product.  By making sure the world knows how great it is, you are also make sure that more people get to use it and your Clickbank sales are rewarding and profitable for you. http://Bankofebook.com