Question:

I was looking through some of your options today and I came across your store and I thought it was a great idea. Since I am pretty new to this whole sell online thing I was wondering what would be the best way to setup the store and promote it for selling products. I thought it might be great on a blog but I am going to have to look into see if it can be added to one. If you have any ideas for me I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Brian

Answer:

When most people start working with Clickbank they often think about starting a Clickbank Mall. That's where I started. I tell people that malls are fine, but you need to use them the right way. They should never be used as a solo site, in my opinion. That doesn't mean they can't be, and that doesn't mean people haven't been successful with just malls. But Brian has the right idea above. He wants to combine a mall with a blog. That's a good application. He'll have fresh, original blog content which will help him get good search rankings and the mall which will be monetized with his aff ID.

I would explain your mall to visitors. Let them know they can perform different keyword searches to find different digital products. Instruct your users on how to use it and let them know how they'll benefit. It's also a good idea to make your site centered around a niche. It can be a broad or micro-niche, I would trend more toward broad if the mall is how you plan to make your money.  Example: Marketing & Ads, which is a Clickbank category.

There are many other ways to use a mall, but to keep this answer simple, make your Clickbank Mall a facet of a more comprehensive site.

As the the second part of the question... 'how to promote it?'... that's a big question I can't answer in one blog. Keep reading this blog and over time I'll do my best to give different tactics.

UPDATE:

Q: I like your idea of using mall to add other available digital producs to a niche market. Are you suggesting adding a category for "Digital Products" and just have the section of the mall shown in that category? Or are you saying add a page that has the entire mall in it so they can search for a specific item through the entire mall?

Answer: I would either use the entire mall and tell people to visit that category, or I would use CB Ads and do category or keyword results.


Comment: If your blog is about Make Money At Home or Online Reviews I would think that if you had a tab for a new page that showed only items that were specific about Making Money at home your chances would be better to try and get them to use the mall.

Response: Thanks for the thought. Keep in mind, CB Malls are not our primary focus. We're really about product analysis and search functionality. We see it as a bonus product for our members. Furthermore, I don't like to offer PRECISE advice because I believe there is more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to finding success with Clickbank Malls. I have my ideas and methods, but I worry people won't bring their own creativity to it. I can provide some generalized advice, but experiment for yourself. You may figure out unique ways to promote a mall.

Also, no matter what you do, make a great website with relevant, original content.  That's really the key to success.

We don't advertise our affiliate program for CBengine, but a couple times a week I'm asked about it. It's managed through Clickbank, our hoplink is cbengine. (http://YourID.cbengine.hop.clickbank.net/)  We pay 35%, which is less than a lot of CB products, but this site is expensive to manage. An ebook site is a much cheaper endeavor, so it's more logical to pay 50-75%. We have two payment plans, $39.95 for an annual membership or $97 for a lifetime membership.

I don't have the precise conversion rate, but our refund rate is less than 1%.

Below are some banner ads you can use. If you have any questions contact me here. Thanks in advance to anyone who promotes us!

This is a question from a new Clickbank vendor... I am selling my ebook using clickbank. How can I promote or attract affiliates to sell my product?  This is a great question and I'll try to give a short answer with a couple of tactics.

Read more...

I'm pleased to report that the HealthObesity vendor made suggested changes to her website. My initial review was here:

http://www.cbengine.com/blog/post.cfm/healthobesity-sales-page-review

My only other advice would be to maybe spruce up the design a little, although I'm not a stickler when it comes to graphics. I think easily navigable content is where 80% of the focus should go, but it's something to consider.

Here are the Google search results for free sales page templates. There are some nice ones out there:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1ACAW_ENUS318&q=Free+sales+page+templates&aq=f

I'd also drop the pop-up and replace with a slide-in. Google will ban Adwords advertisers from advertising your site if you have a pop-up ad.  Next I would test your sales page with Adwords. Buy some ads, see how it does. If you don't get sales, keep retooling your presentation until you do. Again, study the most successful sites in your niche and learn from them. They're doing something right.

If anybody else has advice for this vendor site, please post it in the comments. Congrats to vendor for taking the time to better her site. Great attitude!

A CBengine member and Clickbank publisher asked me to review her sales page for the blog. First, I need to say how impressed I am with this publisher asking for feedback and having the courage to let me post the review on the blog. It’s refreshing when publishers want to work to improve their sites. So give a big round of applause.

Creating effective landing pages is good for all of us (affiliates and vendors) for the simple reason that a quality landing page will produce more sales.

On to the review... The site is Health Obesity.

First of all, the biggest problem I see is that the website is trying to be a publisher site and an affiliate site. You’ll notice the publisher has Commission Junction affiliate links running down the right hand column. This is a big no-no and will kill a publisher site for the reason that Clickbank affiliates are not going to spend time and money sending traffic to a site with outgoing affiliate links. We don’t want to help you sell OTHER products you’re affiliating. Also, it will hurt sales because all these link choices will distract prospective buyers. If a potential buyer is given too many directions to go, i.e. presented with a pageful of links, they often don’t go anywhere. They’re paralyzed with confusion and usually click the X on their browser and go elsewhere. Keep your site simple. One sales page and an order button at the bottom, maybe a few order buttons sprinkled throughout the copy. Give the buyer one choice, buy or don’t buy. That’s it.

So, in conclusion, pick one kind of website, publisher or affiliate, and don’t add confusion by straddling the fence.

Second, Health Obesity has multiple ways to order, Clickbank and PayPal. If you want Clickbank affiliates to promote your site you should only offer payment through Clickbank. No pay by mail or phone or through another payment processor. Those sales can not be properly tracked and affiliates will lose commissions. Most affiliates check to see if publisher is only offering payment through Clickbank before promoting the product, so you’ll likely turn away 90% of prospective affiliates from promoting your site just with this one mistake. And it’s redundant to offer payment through PayPal anyway as Clickbank already accepts PayPal through their system.

Next issue: Sales page offers the affiliate program too conspicuously. It’s right below the order button. This can lead to prospective buyers coming to the site and seeing they can save money on products by signing up for the affiliate program and purchasing it through their own id therefore bypassing the affiliate who sent them to the site in the first place. It’s okay to advertise an affiliate program, but it should be buried way down in the footer where seasoned affiliates know to look.

If you’re going to take the time to create an affiliate page, make a full page with content: banner ads, keywords, articles and some explanation of WHY affiliates should promote this product. Health Obesity only has a link to the hoplink generator which doesn’t appear to be working correctly.

Lastly, while the page copy is well-written, I think it’s too scientific and needs to have more emotional hooks built in to increase sales. Some rough examples of emotional hooks… Have more energy… Feel better about yourself… Attract the opposite sex with your new figure… Improve your health… your self-esteem… feel vibrant again. Etc. etc.

I would take an overall more emotional approach to the entire site.

Also, in the copy there is talk about ‘kids and obesity’… I can’t tell if this product is targeted toward kids or adults? So the focus of the copy has problems. If this is a program for kids then I would focus my approach on that, making my target, obviously, the parents of children. I might even change the name of the site to something like WeightLossForKids.com.

And one last thing, I would make a killer attention grabbing title at the top of the site and add a few testimonials from satisfied clients.

Here are several effective sales pages to study:

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

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

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

Again, congrats to this publisher for trying to make her site better and if she takes my advice I will post another blog showing the improvements she’s made.