Clickbank Affiliate Program
The Clickbank affiliate program is one that lends itself to freedom, motivation, and financial gain. For many it is nothing but a dream. For some though, the work pays off in the end, especially when the money comes in automatically week after week. So how do you get started? I’ve written on this topic before, but let me be clear about it again. Any affiliate program you join will take work and dedication. Do not sign up to anything if you don’t feel you have the patience to see it through.
Do not be mis-guided either. Affiliate marketing is a great way to work from home. Why do so many people fail? Why are there so many expectations of a world that owes you instant money when it comes to the internet? It is because of the culture we live in. So now that you know what the problem is, you can avoid it and be ahead of the crowd. How do you work from home online? You have to create a plan of the income level you need. This is called reverse engineering.
Let’s say that you wanted to make an extra $1,000 per month online. This comes to roughly $33 a day. Depending on the products you are promoting, this would be normally be 1-2 sales per day of net profit. (A lot of products tend to pay between $15-$29.) Is it a hard task? Not really, but it will require some thought and focus. In order to achieve this success, you have to start asking yourself some basic questions.
What kinds of markets can bring you this kind of income? What are people interested in? What do people buy online and will most likely continue to purchase? Marketing is pretty straightforward once you have the facts down. Most of your work is planning and research. The actual “selling” is only a tiny part of the equation. If you want to make it online, you need to think “outside the net”. The human race has a long history of what works and doesn’t work, especially when it comes to the types of evergreen products being promoted today.
People have feelings and emotions, this is why dating is such a huge market. People also want to become self-independent. This is why “work from home” products are also immensely popular. Learn to think like a customer and you will begin to see the true power that “search” can hold for you.
How To Place Clickbank Hoplinks – A Tutorial
So you finally have made the plunge into affiliate marketing. You are dead set on working at home, no matter what it takes. You just want to tell your boss goodbye and you won’t stop at anything until you hit that goal. Well that’s all swell and sweet, but you need to be bringing in some cash first. Your first plan of action should be to join up with affiliate networks such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, AzoogleAds, and more. These are the “top dogs” of the scene right now. Other ones of interest include LinkShare, PayDotCom, PrimaryAds, and others.
This tutorial is a simple one, but quite useful for those of you who have never used Clickbank. Get ready to discover how to place Clickbank hoplinks onto your webpage. The hoplink system is the bread and butter of any affiliate marketer using Clickbank. Without this, you will not earn a dime. A hoplink, is a link created, specifically for your affiliate account, which in turn will credit you with commissions, if any visitors go through your link and end up buying a product. Excited yet? Ok let’s begin.
First things first – you need to have an account with Clickbank. If you do not have an account with them, get one here. The signup process is rather easy (check out a tutorial here)and you should be all set in no time. Once you have an account, you then should proceed to login. You can also create an affiliate link without logging in if you choose.
Click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of your screen and proceed to browse to any category of products. Under each product listing, you will see a link called “Create Hoplink”. When you click that, you get a screen that looks like this. All you do now is enter your nickname into the one box and click the “Create” button. You will then see your personalized affiliate link.
You can now copy and paste this link into your web design program, or link from your website to your hoplink. When someone ends up buying a product, you will make the commission. This is how Clickbank works and it works very well.
Clickbank Hoplink Shield
Ok, so being a full time affiliate marketer has its perks and downsides. What do you think about Clickbank’s new so called Hoplink Shield? Is it actually worth its salt? They say it decodes your affiliate link to prevent the common person from seeing your ID, yet at the same time they give the option to decode a link? What gives?
You can check out the new tool here.
They claim it keeps the promotional efforts of affiliates in tact and anonymous, but your affiliate code still has to show on the order form. So essentially what we have here, is a “worthless” tool. I put worthless in quotes, because it does serve a basic purpose which I touch on in a minute.
Does it really make that big of a difference if someone views your hoplink from within your article page or on the order form? Besides, there are plenty of scripts one can use, such as the php header redirection in order to properly mask affiliate links.
Which leads us to the whole topic of masking affiliate links. Does it work better for you? In my opinion, the only thing it helps with is making your site more professional to the untrained eye of a customer. Instead of your link being in the “hoplink” format, you could php redirect in the “site.com/directory/” format. This of course, raises credibility and helps with the people who scan down to that lower left side of the screen (status bar).
Now don’t get me wrong. On first glance, the tool isn’t bad. It will help people who do not know how to re-direct a link or hide it from looking “salesy”. Where is the option to completely remove the affiliate id from the order form though? This could be done with a hidden variable perhaps. That alone may even help with sales. With the rising popularity of affiliate marketing in today’s society, more and more people are beginning to understand what it is. This of course, causes some to feel like a marketer is ripping them off. End result? No purchase if they know it is an affiliate link.
Now of course this isn’t the case for everyone, but I can assure you that this happens a lot. Have you ever cleared your cache and bought through your own affiliate link before? Hmm…
PS: I like the new design over the old one. For some reason it looks a bit more “sleek”.
Is Clickbank A Scam
A lot of people who are new to online marketing seem to think for one reason or another that Clickbank is a scam. So this brings up the question is clickbank a scam or not? Depending on your past experiences with affiliate programs or what you saw and what you have seen on the internet in relation to making money, these factors will play a major role in what you think affiliate directories really are all about. Are they trustworthy or are they honest? Are they able to provide you with useful products that you can sell and so forth?
In regards to the question is Clickbank a scam, no it certainly is not. I earn my full time living with some of the products that Clickbank offers. There are litterally thousands of products that you can browse through and start promoting. Clickbank is actually one of the better programs on the market today for beginners who are starting out and who are new to internet marketing in general. I think the problem with asking is Clickbank a scam or not, comes from the quality that stems from some of the products which are on Clickbank. There are a lot of products on there that are simply garbage, pure garbage, and because of this a lot of people think that the entire directory as a whole is a scam or is not worth their time and energy. This isn’t the case because there are a lot of quality products on there as well so it’s really up to the individual to find them.
So the next time somebody asks you whether or not Clickbank is a scam, hopefully based on your positive experience with them, you can reassure them that their directory is well worth your time. After all, it is within their best interests to pay affiliates. They only make money when their affiliates make money. Why would a company cheat out their only source of income? When you begin to think about the other side of the coin, you can clearly see that these myths of “this scam” and “that scam” are all a bunch of nonsense perpetrated by someone who had a lousy experience and probably lost money on their advertising campaign.
Remember, you never want to trust someone who has a negative attitude. When you combine a negative attitude with trying to start a business you have a recipe for disaster. There are far too many people all over discussion boards and forums on the internet who are bashing this program or saying everything is a scam, including Clickbank. Don’t listen to these people. They aren’t going anywhere and are not successful. Follow in the footsteps of people who have a positive mental attitude and are willing to help you get started with your own internet business.
