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Questions about Running Clickbank-Type Offers (11)

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Hi Guys,

I’m a newbie thinking about making a pivot.

For the past couple of months I have been trying to make pop traffic work, with little success. I believe that my lack of success is due to three factors:

1. Targeting on pop is extremely limited.

Due to the untargeted nature of pop traffic, pretty much the only offers you can promote with it are CPA offers such as sweepstakes and app installs. And even then the conversion rates suck. While you can use a landing page to boost conversion rates, creating them tends to require a lot of design and technical tricks as opposed to copywriting. Which brings me to my second problem:

2. Pop landing pages tend to be more a function of design than of copywriting.

Every pop landing page I’ve seen tends to be sparse on copy, instead relying on a combination of page design and scripts to persuade buyers. While this would be great for someone who comes from a coding background, I find it difficult as someone who does not have much of a foundation in coding, and who would much prefer to focus on traditional copywriting techniques. I highly doubt that Gary Halbert or Claude Hopkins would have been successful in pop due to the high amount of technical wizardry involved and the comparatively little focus on sales copy. Which brings me to my final problem:

3. Pop traffic tends to skew very blackhat.

I don’t have an ethical problem with running blackhat, but it is so confusing, mostly because it is constantly changing. The rules of long-form copywriting, however, were first codified nearly a century ago, and have changed little since. To me, traditional copywriting sounds like the smarter way to go, as you don’t have to constantly make little tweaks to your landing page to eek out every last conversion possible.

Because of these reasons, I have thought about pivoting to running Clickbank products, as well as similar products from other affiliate networks. My reasoning is simple:

• Clickbank products tend to be more niche products, making them more suitable for running on targeted traffic sources such as Facebook, and therefore leading to higher conversion rates, as you can target exactly the kind of people who would be interested in your offer.

• Landing pages for Clickbank offers tend to use traditional copywriting methods instead of page design and scripts to persuade buyers. I believe that this is mostly due to the nature of the products themselves. If you look at the products that Gary Halbert promoted back in the day, such as these four, you will notice that many of them are similar to the products that are available on Clickbank. Since Halbert-style copywriting is more my speed than building script-laden landing pages, I believe that Clickbank offers are a better fit for my marketing style. Also, due to the emphasis on copywriting, ads and landing pages for Clickbank products tend to be more whitehat than ads for pop, allowing you to focus on crafting a solid sales message rather than tweaking your landing pages to conform to the latest blackhat craze.

What I would like to ask you guys is how to go about promoting Clickbank-style offers as opposed to CPA offers. I would really appreciate it if you could answer the following questions for me:

1. What paid traffic sources do Clickbank offers work well on?

The first things that come to my mind are Facebook and AdWords, but I know those networks aren’t considered the best for newbies. Are there any other networks I could run these types of offers on, or should I just get good at one of the aforementioned traffic sources?

1. Are there any good training programs you could recommend for running these types of offers?

I tried Clickbank University, but I found the affiliate section to be a little sparse on information. Does anyone know of any good training programs or resources that focus on Clickbank marketing, or on marketing on one of the major traffic sources for Clickbank offers?

1. Do you have any insider tips for running Clickbank offers? Is there anything you could tell me that you learned from your own experience? I would love to hear what you have to say.

1. Is there anywhere on this forum that I can repost this thread to get more specific information?

I couldn’t find an area dedicated specifically to Clickbank, but if there are any places you could recommend I would love to hear about them.

Thank you all in advance for your answers. I appreciate everything that you guys are doing to help new affiliates succeed in this space.

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I agree with you on what you said about pop traffic. It's certainly not getting easier. However, it's still the easiest type of traffic to learn for newbies. And for anyone willing to work hard, 2-3 figure profit days are quite attainable in a short time.

But I'm always encouraging newbies to expand to other traffic types. For CB products, I've only ever promoted those on GDN and free search engine traffic. Bing is another favorite for affiliates running CB products. FB can certainly work also:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ickbank-offers

Native is also a great source for clickbank products - particularly, on Revcontent and MGID, based on a quick search on Adplexity Native:



I've also tried pushing male enhancement type ebooks on adult traffic sources, but during my brief dabble, didn't find success. (But then, just because I haven't done enough testing, doesn't mean it can't work.)

As for conversion flow - here are a few you can try:

-Sending traffic directly to the CB sales page.

-Sending traffic to your landing page / pre-sell page before sending them further to the CB page.

-Some CB products have lead-capture pages you can send visitors to. After they opt-in, they will get autoresponder emails that contain your aff link, so that if a purchase results you'll get the commission.

-You can of course do the lead capture yourself, either using your own opt-in page (offering some sort of lead magnet - there are lots of PLR/MMR ebooks you can get for cheap, or you can make one yourself, or even offer an autoresponder series with high-quality content), or capture the lead directly through FB lead-gen camps. I heard that google adwords has started providing this option now too.

Then you can push the CB product and any other relevant products via email, push notifications (if you implement that to your landing page / opt-in page), and/or FB chat bots (again, if you get them to subscribe). This is the most time-consuming method, but then you'll own the traffic and sell to prospects again and again to maximize LTV.

In terms of monetizing from free search traffic, I've had much success with review sites back in the day. Not sure how well those will work now, but basically I'd have a big comparison chart on the homepage showcasing 5-10 products, star-ratings on some important product attributes (effectiveness, price etc. - product-specific), and a final ranking showing the most profitable product at the top (you may not actually KNOW which product will be the most profitable before sending actual traffic - it may require testing a few ranking orders). Then each product is further linked to a detailed review page with - you guessed it - a detailed review on the product. I'd also have an opt-in form on the sidebar to get people to opt-in to get a freebie (usually plr ebook on relevant topic), then get the autoresponder to send them a series containing a mix of useful content (tips and tricks and advice and other good info) and sales pitches to the top 3 products.

Another site format I've used very successfully - again, back in the day - was really simple wordpress blogs with 3-5 "posts" on it detailing a story written in the first-person, to address the main pain points and describe how the product was able to solve which problem in the end. Those sites only took less than a day to make and converted well.

These 2 previous ideas - review sites and wordpress story sites - I'm not recommending for paid traffic because I have no idea how well they would work. They worked well with free traffic 8-12 years ago - no idea how they would work now. I haven't done SEO in a long time. It's a thousand times harder now compared to a decade ago.

Hope that helps! I'm going to move this thread to the Affiliate Marketing section to get more eyeballs and hopefully more advice.



Amy

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Thank you very much for your response. I have been following your 40-day tutorial for some time, but have had extreme difficulty finding profitable offers.

Do you agree with my premise that Clickbank offers are more suitable than pop for those who want to do traditional, long-form copy? Note that by "traditional copy" I am not referring to website content marketing/SEO, which is a relatively new concept in marketing (mid-to-late 90's), but to the sales letters that were pioneered back in the direct mail days by people like Halbert and Hopkins, and have continued well into the Internet era. I know that these types of letters were common in the SEO days, but I want to know if they could work on paid traffic landing pages as well.

I don't want to mess with content marketing or SEO because I feel that they are incompatible with my personality. I do not know enough about any particular niche to blog about it, and I do not enjoy writing blog posts. In addition, I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having my name or face online (I don't even have a personal social media account, I am so uncomfortable with it), which seems to be the antithesis of most people who do SEO, who tend to use blogs or email lists where their brand and image are a key part of the marketing. Not to mention the fact that SEO in the post-Penguin and post-Panda world basically amounts to throwing shit at the wall and waiting months for something to stick. I've already wasted two months of my life at Wealthy Affiliate before coming to the realization that content marketing and SEO aren't my style.

The reason I am so hellbent on traditional copywriting, as opposed to using scripts or blackhat methods, is the fact that it has been proven to work, and has changed very little in past decades. The history of great copywriters, from Hopkins to Ogilvy to Caples to Halbert to Whitman, spans nearly a century, and all of them tend to agree on nearly everything. This is quite different from the blackhat camp, where there are often fierce disagreements over techniques based on the experience of individual marketers, and oftentimes it is nearly impossible to reach a consensus as techniques are constantly being made obsolete by changes in regulations and traffic source TOS's. I would much rather stick to what's proven and spend my time actually marketing as opposed to constantly fighting with my traffic sources and competing affiliates for conversions.

Do you think I should copy this thread to the Copywriting section, as well as the sections on Facebook, AdWords, Native, and E-Mailing, to see what people in those sections have to say? At this point I'm really trying to figure out how to go about this, as there appears to be no STM guides or other resources that answer all of my questions. The only training program I have found other than Clickbank University that specifically focuses on Clickbank costs $2500, which is way out of my budget for educational materials. It looks like I'm really going to have to hack my education in this case.

Thank you again for your detailed response. I am looking forward to anything else you might have to offer to help me in this journey.

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Also, do you think CB offers can still work on the stricter traffic sources like Facebook and AdWords despite the somewhat shady nature of the offers? I know these TS's tend to be tough on affiliates in general, but are especially hard when they catch a whiff of anything even remotely shady. Is it just a matter of carefully selecting offers, and avoiding niches that are especially prone to scams (i.e. make money online)?

How strict do the native traffic sources tend to be on these types of things? It seems that every time I visit a site that uses native, they tend to be littered with scammy-looking ads that boast National Enquirer-style headlines and images. Are they really more lenient, or is this just another example of marketers using blackhat techniques to fool their TS's into running their near-obvious scams?

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Are you stuck at the direct-linking stage? If so, please move onto landing pages immediately! See this post for more details:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Major-Overhaul


I would definitely agree with you on that. Pop traffic is interruption marketing, not to mention offers are broad/generic because the audience is broad. Therefore few people would give the lander enough attention to read long copy.

But when you have a niche product that you can push on a specific audience, you can make better use of your creativity when it comes to copy.

There are exceptions for sure, but generally speaking, the above should be accurate for the most part.


Agree with you on that point also.

Blackhat campaigns also need good copy to succeed - but I'm assuming you're talking about wanting to write copy for legitimate products promoted using non-misleading angles.


There are legit offers on CB - just calculate the refund rate for each product before choosing one to promote. I would never promote a product that had over 20% refund rate. Preferably under 10% or even 5%.

As for how strict FB and Adwords are on CB products: Like I've mentioned, I've never run CB offers on FB, and the last time I ran them on Adwords was close to 10 years ago. So I'm not sure what the state of things are now. Please do a search on this forum on "clickbank+adwords" and "clickbank+fb" or "clickbank+facebook" and read some of the post from this year and maybe the latter part of last year to see if you can gain more insight, and of course you can start threads in the FB and Adwords forum sections to see if experts in those area can shed some light.

(I AM relatively sure that if the product is legit, and if you use a landing page and refrain from using misleading angles, it should be OK to run on adwords and facebook. But I would recommend checking with people that actually run CB on these sources.)


Some native sources are more lenient than others - revcontent for example is where many newbies start from.

By scammy-looking ads are you referring to the banners or landers?

If banners, the ones you see on spy tools (such as Adplexity Native) should be the ones that were approved by the traffic source, because it's difficult to cloak banners (if even possible; this is traffic source dependent AFAIK, haven't done it myself).

As for landers, some of those people may be cloaking. The best way to find out is to either ask the traffic source before setting up the campaign, or to just submit campaigns with different levels of shadiness/aggressiveness and see which one(s) get approved/rejected.


Lastly: If you really enjoy writing, it may be worth considering creating your own clickbank product yourself. See what the most popular products are, read them all, note down the pros and cons, do additional research to make yours even better. That way you keep 100% of the profits, and will be able to afford to bid higher for traffic.




Amy

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How do you go about this? Does Clickbank offer a tool for this, or do they publish this information in the product listings?


I actually hate writing for the most part. But I think copywriting's cool because you're using psychology to convince people to buy. It's my style of selling, grabbing your prospect by the horns and pulling them through all four stages of AIDA in one go, as opposed to trying to build a relationship with your prospect and hoping they'll buy something later on down the road.

Another reason I prefer copywriting to coding is because I absolutely despise coding. I recently dropped out of my college programming major, and that was such a bad experience that I really don't want to have to rely on coding. I'm okay with doing basic HTML and CSS, but I don't want coding to be what takes up most of my time. It's depressing.

Maybe I'll create a Clickbank product sometime in the future, but to do it I'll have to outsource most of the product creation. Not only because I don't like writing content (except for copy), but also because I don't know enough about any subject to write authoritatively about it.

I guess if I got really good at marketing I could create a product based on that, but I've always felt that there's a major conflict of interest whenever you begin selling products that are supposed to teach others how to do what you reportedly do for a living. It brings to mind that old proverb, "those who can't, teach".

If I were to become really successful, and go public about my success, I'd want people to know that I actually make my living by marketing, and not by selling educational materials. It would be nice to see someone honest in the field for a change.

I do have one idea for a business model for an educational product about affiliate marketing though. It would bolster prospect's trust in the product as well as give customers a more flexible payment option. I don't want to share it on the public forum for obvious reasons, but I would be more than happy to PM it to you if you are by any chance interested in hearing about it.

I will do that. But like I've said in previous posts on this thread, in many ways I feel like pop isn't my style because it leans more on programming than on copywriting.

My big problem with writing copy for pop offers, especially Mobidea offers, is how superficial they can be. Oftentimes, the offer pages provide little information on the offers themselves, and Mobidea listings don't come with offer descriptions. In addition, because the offers are mostly mindless entertainment, it's extremely hard to come up with any kind of user need that might be addressed by the offer, and because they're so similar and generic, Unique Selling Propositions are virtually nonexistent.

I've read Ca$hvertising nearly five times, and Scientific Advertising about six, and it's nearly impossible to apply any information from either of those books to pop offers. In the case of video and gaming offers, I don't see how they satisfy the Life-Force 8 criteria that makes people want to buy. I guess they might satisfy LF8 #1 (survival, enjoyment of life, life extension), but if your offer only appeals to one of the LF8, that's a pretty weak selling point.

Compare the LF8 appeal of a gaming or video offer to the LF8 appeal of a weight loss offer, for instance. Like I've said, gaming and videos only appeal to LF8 #1, but let's see how many LF8's a weight loss offer appeals to:

LF8 #1: Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension

No doubt a weight loss product appeals to this. One of the major reasons people want to lose weight is to be healthier and to live longer. Our weight-loss offer is already giving our pop offer a run for its money.

LF8 #2: Enjoyment of food and beverages

This can easily factor into a person's decision to buy a certain weight-loss product. One of the niche's major pain points is having to give up their favorite foods, or having to eat unappetizing food in order to lose weight. It's weight loss 2, pop 1.

LF8 #3: Freedom from fear, pain and danger

Another strong contender. People want to lose weight to avoid pain and health problems, and people don't want to experience pain while they're working to lose weight. 3-1.

LF8 #4: Sexual companionship

This one's obvious. Playing a phone game might not make you sexier, but losing weight sure will. 4-1.

LF8 #5: Comfortable living conditions

This appeal might not be as strong as the others, but you could work with it. I'll give it half a point. 4.5-1.

LF8 #6: To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses

Social pressure is another reason why people want to lose weight, especially if they believe it will win the appeal of their friends. 5.5-1.

LF8 #7: Care and protection of loved ones

Of course you want to lose weight so you can spend more time with your family and be there for the big events, as well as making sure your family members are healthy too. 6.5-1.

LF8 #8: Social approval

See my comment regarding LF8 #6, which is similar. 7.5-1.

Final Score:

Gaming and Videos: 1

Weight Loss: 7.5

This is why I'm having so much trouble writing copy for pop offers. There's just no LF8 appeal in them, meaning that you have to rely on scripts and other design elements of your landing page to be successful. Combine that with the interrupting nature of pop, and it is extremely difficult to sell your prospect on your offer.

Like I said before, I don't think Gary Halbert, Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, or any of the other pioneers of direct response marketing would have done well in pop. In fact, I think Gary Halbert once wrote a newsletter where he mentioned how much he hated pop-up ads. While he was referring to desktop ads, I believe he would have hated mobile pops just as much.

I'll give it a try though. I'll see what I can do. I'm just not sure how far I can go in pop with copy alone. I think I need to be searching for more copywriting-friendly traffic sources and verticals in order to truly succeed.

Thanks for everything. I know we've only been talking for a couple of days, but I feel like you've already helped me a lot, and that's just what I need right now. Someone I can talk marketing with. Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to respond to my posts, even if they tend to get a little rambling.

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Google's your friend. I used to have my own calculator that I've made in excel but that was years ago. Here's one I just found:

http://cbhelper.com/refund-calculator.html


Actually, building a funnel on the backend to convert your list again and again is the best way to maximize the life-time value of each person on your list. But then even that can be outsourced.


I respect that very much and I agree that too many people that are selling courses don't actually have experience.

However, I wasn't really thinking about internet marketing. There are so many categories on Clickbank. And don't underestimate the value of taking the time to do proper research for the benefit of your target audience - having all the practical information on a specific topic in one place can be valuable in itself. And most information is out there on the net. It just takes time and patience and the ability to filter out the garbage and organize the rest in a coherent manner. And all this can be outsourced as well.

It's good that you know what you don't want - that way you focus on doing what you like to do and get good at it.


Yes please! And please update this thread to let me know after you've PM'ed so I'd know to check.


In agreement 100% there! And your Gaming and Video vs. Weight-loss using LF8 is amusing and educational.


Wait wait wait - were you under the impression that I was encouraging you to test good copy on pop?

If so, then I must not have expressed myself very clearly. I agree that pop is almost all about using misleading tactics to convert a broad audience. And because it's non-targeted interruption marketing, few people would bother reading a long sales letter. That was why I brought up native, FB and adwords as more suitable places to promote CB products.

Just want to make sure we don't have any misunderstanding here! Apologies if I wasn't being clear in my previous post.


Ha! Rambling...do you know the feeling of writing a post and then clicking on the "POST" button only to see the "you've exceeded the character limit of 20,xxx characters for a single post, please shorten your post and try again"? Happened to me quite a few times already.

I enjoy these discussions. This is why the forums are so addicting - because of these types of discussions that further my thinking and learning as well.

Please feel free to continue the discussion, and/or to update us on your plans.



Amy

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I just sent the PM. It should be in your inbox. Please update this thread once you've read it so I'll know to check for your response.

But you're still doing mostly copywriting, right? Sending your list sales letters about products, like you would with an ecommerce store? I'm fine with writing sales letters, I just don't want to do content marketing. I think what I was trying to say in my last post was that I am fascinated by the idea of writing to persuade, but I hate writing just to inform.

Thanks. It's nice to know that I'm understanding the concepts.

Not at all. I was just trying to emphasize my point that pop plays by a different rulebook than direct-response marketing. Before coming to this forum I believed that good copy was crucial to any campaign, due to the fact that so many affiliate bloggers emphasize the importance of it, but after being on this forum for a while I now realize that that's not the case when it comes to pop.

I've actually been moving along through your newbie tutorial, and I have just finished optimizing some landing pages for speed. I'm finding that I am starting to get more comfortable with pop, and I am excited about launching my first campaign with landing pages tomorrow. I would still like to get into ClickBank and some other more traditional marketing methods sometime in the near future, but I would like to make some money in pop before I commit to anything else. Like you said in your first post on this thread, it's still the easiest type of traffic to learn for newbies. I'd like to prove myself by reaching 2-3 figures a day in pop and then moving on to more difficult strategies. It would provide me with some much-needed cash as well as give me the confidence to move forward in my affiliate marketing career.

Thanks again. I'm looking forward to what you have to say.

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Hi Smitty - thanks for the PM. Just replied - apologies for the delay - been quite sick for a few days now.

Pop is mostly about being misleading/aggressive, ripping popular landing pages, testing lots of offers, blacklisting placements that don't convert, and having access to lots of traffic networks to scale to.

Then it would just be a matter of constantly testing widely and scaling the promising campaigns as quickly as possible to as many traffic networks as possible. Controlling costs by testing efficiently is important as well.

It's not rocket science, but is a lot of work and the returns aren't outstanding (unless you put a team together and make sure of automation as much as possible). Perfect for newbies - but I'd suggest to move onto something else once you know what you're doing. For the same amount of effort, chances you can reap more profits elsewhere.




Amy

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Hi Amy,

I'm so sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you are feeling better. I will post a reply to your PM within the next couple of days. There are some points you brought up that I would like to address.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm having some trouble with my pop campaigns right now. If you don't mind, I would appreciate it if you could look over this thread, and provide any suggestions you might happen to have. I've been following your 40-day tutorial, and I've moved on to the landing page section like you suggested, but I've yet to have any conversions, despite having over 8,000 impressions per offer and CTR's as high as 55%.

In your response to my introduction you suggested that I might want to start with ecommerce instead of pop. Do you think I should just drop my pop campaigns and move on to ecom? It seems that whatever I do I just can't get pop to work for me. Whether it's my personality or just bad luck, nothing seems to work. Based on the conversations we've had on this forum, do you think I might be more suitable for ecom than pop?

Thanks again for all you have done to help me. I'm really struggling at this point, and it's nice having someone in my corner to give me advice.

Recently I've been thinking that what I need is one-on-one training from an experienced mentor. Do you anywhere I could find such a mentor? Do you know anyone on this forum who might be interested in doing some kind of JV with me, where I exchange a portion of my profits for their training? I feel like trying to go it alone is not working out for me. I need a coach.

Thanks again. You've been a big help these past couple of weeks.

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Thanks I'm feeling much better! It's good to get sick once in a while just to get some of the bad stuff out of the system.

Regarding ecom vs. pop: It really depends on what YOU feel like doing, but if I were you I would choose ecom over pop (and I have actually!) With pop you can make quick money, but it's never going to be a consistent stream of income unless you promote offers that have residual commissions (such as casino offers or adult cam offers). And competition isn't getting lighter for pop - not that it's getting easier for ecom but at least with ecom if you take the time to go beyond the arbitrage or dropshipping model and niche out, there's still lots of room for profits to grow. Also, with ecom you'd be building an asset: A customers list that you can monetize on the backend. Whereas with pop it would be harder to do as your audience would be broad. So in the end it would be easier to build an asset with ecom that you can sell later on.

Also, it's hard to feel a sense of purpose or accomplishment when you run pop, because the majority of offers that convert on pop traffic are part scams at best, or if the offers themselves aren't scams, the advertising angles required to make them convert well enough to beat out competition need to be aggressive/misleading. Whereas with ecom, you can focus on building a good reputation for your store or brand to build a loyal following. You can provide real value.

If you have the time though, you can choose to do both. You can typically get up and running with pop and scale bigger in a shorter time than with an ecom store (unless you REALLY know what you're doing or have an ecom expert coaching you). You can probably achieve short-term gains of xx-xxx/day in profits with pop within a couple/few months if you put in consistent effort.

So - pros and cons. Listen to your heart and FEEL your way to what you want to do.

There are some members that offer coaching in pop if you're wanting to explore that route. You can do a search on this forum to see if you can find them.

And of course you can continue to update your follow-along - I'll provide help to the best of my ability.

Another alternative: iStack Training which is a branch of the company behind STM, offers first-rate training courses. Scroll to the bottom of the following page to see a list of courses under "Products":

https://istacktraining.com/

Also - I've written a post on how to mentor yourself here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post323443

Have fun! I'll take a look at your pop follow-along now.



Amy

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