The following is the business model I use to make thousands of dollars every week with Clickbank. I encourage you to read though the whole thing because this model works and has been proven over and over by myself and many other affiliate marketers.
Although I’ll be showing you how to make money with Clickbank, this model can be applied to any other affiliate network or product (even a blog). I just happen to like Clickbank because information is one of the easiest products to sell over the Internet with very little overhead costs.
Have A Plan
Most budding Internet Marketers getting into the business do what I call ‘hit and run’ affiliate marketing. It’s the model they’re all familiar with because it’s the one they hear about the most. The hit and run marketing steps goes something like this.
1. Select a Clickbank (or any affiliate) product to promote
2. Send some traffic
3. Sale
4. Next
Sure, I know a few of affiliate marketers who spend £5K a day to make £10K. It sounds great doesn’t it? The main problem with this model is there are not many affiliate marketers who have a lot of capital to start off with let alone £5k to invest. More importantly, those who are making a profit using this method are leaving a ton of money on the table.
Spending money on advertising to get one customer that you will never see again is one of the dumbest business move you can make. That’s the equivalent of a retail outlet taking out a fron page spread on a national newspaper to have those customers buy one item and then never visit the store again. They’d go under in less than six months if that’s the case!
Another problem with the hit and run model is it’s not very stable. You have to keep spending money on advertising or the sales stop. You risk the chance of Google slapping your landing page because of a low quality score, you may run out of money tweaking the ads/keywords/landing pages, competition can drive up bids to the point where you can’t make a profit, the advertiser may pull the offer, etc.
A Business Without Repeat Customers Is NOT A Business
Think about it. How successful would Coca Cola be if everyone bought just one can? It’ll be Coca who? after a short while wouldn’t it?
Too many people think of Internet marketing as a game. It’s not. It’s a real business and real businesses are built on repeat customers. A restaurant can’t survive with first time customers only neither can the Apple Store, or any retail store. Every business you can think of would go under in a few months if their customers purchased just the once and never visit again.
If someone buys one Apple product, then they are likely to buy another product from Apple (iPhone 5 anyone?) The same thing holds true for affiliate marketing. If someone buys a Clickbank product from you, there’re likely to buy another one. But that will NEVER happen if all you do is hit and run marketing because you’ll never see that person again.
Repeat after me: “Repeat business is the key…”
And here’s the biggie: It’s infinitely easier and cheaper to market to a repeat customer than it is to acquire a new one.
Let’s think about this from mathematical point of view. If you had 100 customers and you make £50 per sale, then you’ve made £5,000 right?
So if we want to get more money we could go with step one, and we could simply double the amount of customers from 100 to 200 so we now have 200 customers each making us £50 per sale.
So we now make £10,000 pounds. That’s pretty easy to figure out, and this is where most people focus.
Now here’s the problem.
This is the LEAST profitable way to grow your business believe it or not, and the reason why is because of customer acquisition costs.
In fact, the average business spend seven times more in marketing cost to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. When you’re running this model what you are in fact doing is spending that 7X more money to acquire a customer for SOMEONE ELSE! Can you see now why most hit and run affiliate marketers don’t make money?
A Clickbank Model That Works
My Clickbank business model is more complex than the hit and run model. But the amount of extra cash you will make far outweighs the bit of exrtra work you need to do.
Ready? – Take note!
1. Choose a few Clickbank producs to promote
2. Create a free eBook about the niche to give away
3. Create a landing page offering the free eBook
4. Send traffic to the squeeze page
5. Capture the lead coming to the landing page
6. Use an email auto responder with the Clickbank products
7. Now watch the money rack up in your Clickbank account
The main difference between my model and the hit and run model is I’m building a customer base. Instead of sending leads directly to the Clickbank landing page to buy the product and never see them again, I send them to my squeeze page to capture their emails so I can market products to them for weeks, months and years to come. This is a far more powerful marketing method.
The Money Is In A Responsive List
I’ve said many times before but it bears repeating. The money really is in the list. Look at all the really big affiliate marketers. Guys like Frank Kern, John Reese, Shoemoney, etc. They all have huge mailing lists. And because they have huge lists, they don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands per month on advertising. John Reese refers to his list as his ATM. He just goes to it whenever he needs to make a withdraw.
If you want to become a big Clickbank affiliate marketer (or blogger), you absolutely need an email list. That is your customer base. Without one, you’ll just be another wannabe marketer working for peanuts. Work smarter and not harder.
Step 1 – Choose a Series of Clickbank Products
The first step to making money from Clickbank is to decide on the niche you want to target. Ideally, the niche should be a niche that you have knowledge of and a passion for. If that’s not the case then you’ll find it a chore and if it’s a chore – you won’t do it.
The Clickbank Marketplace list thousands of products for you to promote. You can sort search results based on commission, sales, popularity and a bunch of other criteria. I like to get a copy of the product before deciding on whether to promote it. You can either email the advertiser for a copy or buy it from them and then refund it if you don’t want to promote it. All Clickbank products are covered by a 60 day money back policy.
Step 2 – Create a Free eBook
The best way to make people give you their email address is to offer them something they find valuable for free. This is where the eBook comes in. You can write it yourself or hire someone from somewhere like Elance.com to write it. If you’re really cheap, you can use a PLR eBook. They’re just like PLR articles but in eBook size. Personally, I recommend you write it yourself or hire out the writing. The quality of PLR leaves a lot to be desired.
The free eBook doesn’t have to be very big, 20 to 60 pages should do, but it does need to cover the same niche as the Clickbank products you plan to promote. This is why I said you should have a knowledge of the niche you plan to deal in.
Step 3 – Create a Landing Page To Promote your eBook
A squeeze page is a special kind of squeeze page that is created solely to act as an opt in for information – primarily email addresses – from potential subscribers. When people visit my blog, I want them to subscribe to my email list. However, because there is so much to see and read, the number of sign ups isn’t as high as it could be. By creating a separate squeeze page, the email sign up rate can skyrocket. While I can capture maybe 5% of people visiting my blog, I have seen squeeze pages with conversion rate has high as 60%!
The easiest way to create a squeeze page is with Squeeze Theme by Unique Blog Designs. Squeeze Theme is powered by WordPress and will allow you to create custom squeeze pages in minutes..
To use Squeeze Theme, all you need to do is choose the theme you want to run, add the text, photo or video, your Aweber email codes and let Squeeze Theme do the rest. Before Squeeze Theme came along, I had a designer do all my squeeze pages. Now, Squeeze Theme does it for me in just a few minutes.
Step 4 – Send Traffic To The Squeeze Page
Once the squeeze page has been created, you need to send traffic to it. The quickest way to do that is to use pay per click or pay per view advertising. However, that’s also the most expensive way. There are tons of lower cost or free methods for traffic generation. A little creatively can go a long way.
Try to think outside the box when it comes to traffic building. Instead of using PPC to send traffic to your squeeze page, set up a contest to give away three prizes (worthy of winning of course). Let’s use iPads as an example; Two iPads will go to the top two affiliates who send the most referrals. However, the the 3rd iPad will be awarded to a random affiliate on a draw based on one entry per referral. By referring a friend to download your eBook, they earn an entry. Refer two friends and they earn two entries and so on.
The three iPads will cost about £1,200. Not cheap but not out of the budget for someone who wants to build a real affiliate marketing business. I’ve collected over 10,000 names using this contest method and I recommend you try it too. If 100,000 names are worth £1 million a year, 10,000 names would be worth £100,000 a year. That’s not a bad return on £1,200!
Step 5 – Capture The Lead
Lead capturing is the most important part of affiliate marketing. Your business is built around your list. Anything you can do to increase its size means more money for you.
While a squeeze page maybe the best way to get someone to give you his email address, you still need a system to handle and host the list. My recommended email service is Aweber. I’ve been using them for years and they are by far the best in the business. Aweber works seamlessly with Squeeze Theme and its web interface allows you to access it from any computer, anywhere in the world.
Aweber offers a $1 trial account for all new customers. The account is just like a normal Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. It’s a great way to test drive Aweber to see what it can do for you. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you find that email marketing is not for you, contact Aweber within 30 days and they’ll give you the $1 back.
Step 6 – Deploy Auto Responders
Auto responders are emails that go out at a set date and interval. When someone subscribes to my blog, they are sent a series of pre-written emails. These emails are design to do three things.
1. Build a relationship with the subscriber
2. Promote my blog and brand
3. Recommend products and services that help solve the reader’s problem
Setting up the auto responder is extremely easy and is no different than sending out a normal email. If you’re using Aweber, all you have to do is click “Follow Up” in the Message tab. This will allow you to create a follow up message to be sent to your new subscriber at a later date. Aweber allows you to set up an unlimited number of auto responders.
This is also known as a sales funnel. The first few emails helps build your relationship with the subscriber. Later emails in the funnel are used to promote the Clickbank products. This setup works far better than any hit and run system. It’s very rare your prospect will buy on the first visit or email – even if you are the most badass of badasses of marketing. They need to be hit over and over again. This is where the auto responder comes in. The sooner you set it up, the faster you’ll be in the money.
Step 7 – Watch The Money Rack Up In The Clickbank Account
This step is optional but I really enjoy it 
You now have the formula to a make massive amounts of money with Clickbank (or any other affiliate network). It takes more work than the hit and run model but the payoffs are much higher.
I hope you enjoy this post and I hope it opened your eyes to what it really takes to make money with Clickbank.
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