Okay, this is related to my recent post about buying traffic from text ad networks. I promised I'd write more about buying traffic directly from webmasters.

Entertainment webmasters often sell what they call 'plugs' or 'link dumps'. The prices range depending on how much traffic you purchase, but average cost-per-click is .01 and .02. You can't buy a plug to a vendor landing page. You need to send that traffic to a viral video or what's known as a, ahem, 'babe video'. A babe video is nothing more than a non-nude bikini video. Cam girls, etc.. Some of you might morally object to this, and that's perfectly okay, but I'm here to tell you these videos are the largest source of traffic on the web.

So, try this. Set up a free blog, embed a babe video from YouTube or the free video hosting network of your choice. Above and below the video place a big text hoplink for a product of your choosing. Read more in my initial post about how to select products that do well with this demographic. And keep in mind, the video doesn't need to be a babe video, but they get triple the traffic of a comedy viral video.

Find entertainment sites, write and ask how much their plugs cost.

Depending on the product you select, it's very possible to get enough sales to turn a profit. If you find a product that strikes the right chord, you might be suprised by how well you'll do. Most will check out the video and leave, but if your text links are big and enticing, you will pick up clicks.

Ask entertainment webmasters how much traffic on average you'll receive and try to keep the average CPC between .01-.04.

You don't always need to buy plugs. A lot of them sell graphical and text links and it's the cheapest source of traffic I've found. Granted, it's broad and not keyword targeted, but there's a heck of a lot of it and it's cheap. I believe this is a huge, untapped marketing channel for CB marketers. A friend of mine told me I shouldn't be giving this information away, but I want CBengine members to be successful, so there you go.

Another place to hunt for plugs and research traffic buys are on entertainment webmaster forums. This is the best one. Sign up, introduce yourself and start asking webmasters for ad rates.

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Saw this initially on Clickbank.com. MSNBC.com article about affiliate marketing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30601292/

Looks like the mainstream media is picking up what many of us have known a long while. Affiliate marketing is the greatest business on the planet.

As some of you know, in addition to CBengine, I am an entertainment webmaster. I even wrote a how-to e-book about entertainment webmastering: http://www.viralmediacash.com

I used to sell quite a few CB products on my network of entertainment sites. They were usually what I call 'impulse products' with broad appeal (I'll explain in more detail below).

I've tried every form of monetization on my entertainment sites and one of them was selling ads through text ad networks. Because of time restraints, I never tried this, but text ad networks are a source of abundant, dirt cheap traffic and I often wondered if I could buy ads on these networks for CB products and turn a profit.  I've actually seen a few CB affiliates doing this.

I hate to give untested advice, but for those adventurous marketers looking for another potential marketing channel, you may want to experiment with this. I can tell you I have had decent conversion rates off my entertainment traffic, so I know Clickbank affiliate sales can be made this way. It comes down to finding the right product and the right site to advertise on. You're going to need to experiment.   

These networks usually are comprised of entertainment sites and adult sites attracting the 18-35 year old demographic.  So it's wise to find products that appeal to this age group and that have impulse appeal. 

More on impulse appeal from Wikipedia.org:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_purchase

The product should produce an emotional reaction in the user. Products found in the Love & Romance category or Fun & Entertainment category tend to fall under this broad and impulsive umbrella. Even broad appeal 'Make Money' products have potential. Who doesn't want to make more money? 

But look around CBengine yourself. For the adult sites on these networks I would try products like this:

http://www.cbengine.com/res/stat.cfm?v=mwebb

http://www.cbengine.com/res/stat.cfm?v=jasonking2

These are the text ad networks I like. You buy ads on a flat weekly basis. You can select a particular site or purchase a package. There are a lot of these networks, but some are geared to large corporate advertisers and are spendy. I would stay away from those.

http://www.adengage.com/

http://www.etology.com/

http://www.adbrite.com

Adengage is by far my favorite. So, let's take a look at a potentially decent site and ad buy. This one looks like it has promise.

http://www.adengage.com/create_ad.cfm?site_id=9384

.04 cent clicks and most of the traffic is U.S.-based. No offense to other countries, but Canadian, Australian, U.K. and US traffic tends to convert the best. I think it comes down to the residents of these countries having more disposable income.

Another: http://www.adengage.com/create_ad.cfm?site_id=21275

I would try to keep my average CPC under .06 to start and if you're making a profit allow up to .10 clicks.  Anything more than that is too much for broad-based entertainment traffic.

Remember, you're paying by the week so write a KILLER AD. Have a title and description that stands out on the page. Really work at this. Have a hook. An enticement. Pique curiosity. Make the user click the ad so they can satisfy the curiosity you created.  With a good ad it's very possible to get your average Cost-Per-Click down to one or two cents.

If you try this, let me know how you did via the comments on this blog or through my contact page:

You can also contact entertainment webmasters and negotiate custom ads/traffic purchases. I can't link to the site because it's not safe for work, but I once did this for a 'male enhancement' product sold through Clickbank and I turned a modest profit off a one month graphical ad. I will write more in depth about purchasing custom ads on a later blog post.  

Writing articles for EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com is how many people start in this business. There are two approaches. Hammer out hundreds of articles and try to write an article for every keyphrase in your niche. Lots of people do this successfully, but it takes a lot of work and requires almost daily output. It can also be draining and lead to burn out because many shotgun article writers simply repurpose their articles and write the same thing in different ways over and over and over... and over.

But what about writing one KILLER article and spending more time promoting it?  I'm talking about doing research, finding quality information and truly providing an article that is valuable to people. Not just a well-disguised sales letter as most articles are. It doesn't necessarily need to be long, but it should be loaded with useful substance. It should be a great article.

Heck, maybe even consider running the article through a copyediting service or a trusted friend to make sure it's error free and reads smoothly.

Then spend time promoting it on forums, directories, blogs, social bookmarking networks, Myspace, Twitter. Get backlinks to it. Try to to push it to the point where it becomes somewhat viral. Takes on a life of it's own. Ranks high in the search engines. The more popular an article becomes the more popular an article becomes. I know folks that have single articles that earn them 5-10k a year.

I've become a huge fan of this link service. They'll let you buy a hundred backlinks to an article. I bought 100 links the other day to a Myspace profile. I've seen increased results in the search engines. These links are just one facet of a multi-faceted backlink stategy.

http://www.cbengine.com/cbe/web.cfm?hop=pooketss

If you go the killer article route, I'd pick a medium to hot keyphrase and go for it. Ezine articles still tend to rank high, but the ones that do the best have link promotion behind them and provide truly useful information. It's important to make sure all your links don't just come from Web 2.0 social media sites as Google is now devaluing sites with only social media backlinks. You need a diversity of inbound links.

Try the killer article approach and let me know how it goes in the comments.  

Question: Do many people use PLR as products to sell on Clickbank and is there a problem with multiple versions of the same PLR on Clickbank? Answer: I do not have precise stats, but yes, quite a few people purchase resell rights and sell those products via Clickbank.

Answer: I do not have precise stats on how many are selling PLR products via Clickbank, but I believe there are quite a few. As an experiment, I tried PLR selling a year or so ago with key logger software. http://www.cbengine.com/res/stat.cfm?v=spyhead

I believe I spent $400 on purchasing resell rights and while I've made my money back, I have not made enough to recoup the time I spent on website and copy.

The product didn't do that well. I did NOTHING to promote it (part of the experiment) and while the product actually has a high conversion rate and an almost nil return rate, there's nothing very unique (there are others exactly like it on Clickbank.) about it and it's a savagely competitive niche. It was an experiment and I didn't have that high of aspirations for it anyway, so the losses are not that big of a deal to absorb.

There may be PLR products on Clickbank that are selling like hotcakes, but none come to mind.

In my opinion, if you want to succeed as a Clickbank vendor you need to create your own custom product and you need to do it well. Here's the mindset I think more vendors should have. Pretend like you’re going to shop your book/program to New York publishers and that the quality of the information and writing are good enough to be deemed publishable by a major publisher. Work THAT hard on it. And if you can’t, for whatever reason, hire somebody that can. In my opinion, we need higher quality products on Clickbank. Don’t get me wrong, there are some TERRIFIC Clickbank products and the bar is rising. But I think there’s room for improvement and I hope I can inspire folks to take the challenge of excellence.

Quality is good for everyone, vendors, affiliates, Clickbank and customers. A poor quality product doesn’t do anything for anybody, including the person who created it.

We all want to take the path of least resistance and PLR products seem easier, but I’m afraid they’ll never produce the same results of a custom product filling a huge, hungry demand. And maybe, if you’re just looking for extra grocery money, a PLR product is the way to go. My key logger software is enough to buy a couple tanks of gas every month, but not much more than that.

Clickbank is like anything else. You have to work HARD, but the attractive part about it is that once you undergo the hard toil of creating a product and the hard efforts of marketing it (attracting affiliates), quality products will often take on a life of their own, attract more affiliates, snowball, climb higher in SERPS, and, at the juncture, you can relax a little and enjoy the fruits of your labor. And best of all, it beats workin’ 9-to-5.

Matt

P.S. – A better application of PLR products is to use them as BONUSES for your main product.