My Beginner's Journey on Clickbank

[kralcx]

I've been doing a lot of research and have come to the conclusion that throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks is not the best way to make money with Clickbank (or anything else for that matter); so I'm going to use a system. My initial thoughts were Bing PPC to Clickbank. I'm going to expand that a little bit.

I'm going to get a domain and web hosting. I'll structure my web site (using the RankXL method by Chris Lee) with a silo type structure. For example: Category 1, Pillar Post 1-2, Inner Post 1-5. The Pillar Posts will be categorized on the home page, the Pillar Posts will connect to the Inner Posts, and the Inner Posts will connect to each other. I'll throw Adsense on the Pillar Posts. Over time I should get some SEO traffic to my posts and maybe make a few bucks of Adsense.

Each Inner Post will be a well written article leading to a Landing Page with a Lead Magnet (most likely an e-Book). Landing Page leads to a Thank You Page. Thank You Page leads to a Clickbank Sales Page.

Anybody who gets the Lead Magnet will be placed in a 3 to 7 step email auto responder. Each step in the auto responder is another opportunity for me to get them to the Clickbank Sales Page.

(Using a method from Authority Hacker) I'll use Facebook Ads to send traffic to my Inner Posts. Anyone on Facebook that saw my Inner Post but not my Landing Page, I'll retarget in another campaign to my Landing Page. I can also use Bing PPC, Google PPC, and 7search to send traffic to my Inner Page. I can also use Native Ads or Publisher Ads to send traffic to my Inner Page. I'm even considering Youtube traffic to my Inner Page.

Then just rinse and repeat. Another Inner Page, another Landing Page, another Clickbank product.

This journey will be lots of work (until I get everything down to a science) and lots to learn. Starting this journey will help me keep track of what I'm doing, keep me accountable, and hopefully help somebody else along the way.

Wish me luck.

 

[Marc]

A few thoughts to your plans:

- Forget this "Rank XL" method or howsoever it's called - that doesn't work on smart SE-algorithms like the one of Google. Either you are able to deliver quality and outstanding content, or you better go for a whiskey in a bar. SEs don't rank you because of a special "structure" on your site, they will only rank you for quality content which results in a good user experience.

- Don't send your prospectives a 7-sequence mail - they will move you to the spam folder. 1 confirmation email as double opt-in and 1 or 2 product related information mails - that's it. People simply have enough of these daily mails

- Send people from your - what you call - "Inner Posts" (a kind of microsites, I suppose) directly to your offer page and leave the lander away. If people have to click 5-times from one site to another until they finally get to see what they are looking for, they will leave your funnel and your site completely - that's the reality in our fast paced media era

 

[game333]

A few thoughts to your plans:

- Forget this "Rank XL" method or howsoever it's called - this BS doesn't work on smart SE-algorithms like the one of Google. Either you are able to deliver quality and outstanding content, or you better go for a whiskey in a bar. SE don't rank you because of a special "structure" on your site, they will only rank you for quality content which results in a good user experience.

- Don't send your prospectives a 7-sequence mail - they will move you to the spam folder. 1 confirmation email as double opt-in and 1 or 2 product related information mails - that's it. People simply have enough of these daily crap mails

- Send people from your - what you call - "Inner Posts" (a kind of microsites, I suppose) directly to your offer page and leave the lander away. If people have to click 5-times from one site to another until they finally get to see what they are looking for, they will leave your funnel and your site completely - that's the reality in our fast paced media era

Marc, you shouldn't burst one balloon that directly, people will feel pain! Twist around with your words. xD

Like what Marc said, your strategy is a bit fancy, keep it simple, complex make thing worst from my experience.

 

[Marc]

... Twist around with your words. xD

Ah come on @game333, you know I'm getting old
my movements are simply no more as smooth

 

[kralcx]

@Marc
Thanks for following along. The RankXL method is based on quality articles; its not trying to trick Google. My email autoresponder will warm up the client as I move them along the funnel. If I was promoting a product using PPC I would send them directly to a landing page. If I'm looking to add people to my list I'll move them along more slowly before the pitch.

@game333
Thanks for following along. I think this will work, but I won't know until I try.

Today I spent some time searching for a Clickbank product to promote. I looked at clckbankmarketplace.com and cbtrends.com. They were okay. I tried CBEngine, signed up for the week trial offer, it looked good. But in the end I found using clickbank itself with the advanced search worked best for me. I ended up finding around 10 products in my niche that met my criteria. A few of the things that are important to me are the vendor's affiliate resource page in addition to their advertisements. Then I looked at the vendor's history with Clickbank over a long period of time using CBEngine. Since CBEngine is under $30 for a one time price, I'll most likely pay for it when my trial is over.

I'll narrow my choice down to one tomorrow.

 

[abele]

Totally agree! Throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks is not the best way to make money with Clickbank.
Wish you luck!

 

[kralcx]

@abele
Thanks for the words of encouragement.

I narrowed it down to one item to sell to start from Clickbank. That's not exactly true this particular vendor has 14 different products to sell all in the same niche. This should keep me busy. I love the fact this vendor has put a lot of effort into helping his affiliates with marketing materials. As a newbie that's important to me.

I used ispionage and similarweb to research vendor's websites, but it was hit or miss for me. Maybe the pro version would have given me better information, but for my purposes it didn't help me that much. I would still recommend to anyone to check it out; it may be useful to you.

I lucked out today. I got an email from namecheap telling me about domains for .48 cents a year. I got a nice one for $5.58 for 5 years plus whois free for the first year. I couldn't pass this deal up and the timing was perfect.

So that's it for now. The plan is to keep this as a part time gig no weekends. So I'll be back at on Monday.

 

[kralcx]

Didn't get as much done today as I'd have liked; a little under the weather. However I got my 2000 plus word article today which I'll link to my home page. I found a nice article and needed it rewritten. I outsourced it to Natasha Nixon; I was very impressed with the service. I found one minor typo but otherwise it was as if a college educated native English speaker wrote it. Turn around time was 2 days; I plan on using them again in the near future.

As I said in my last post I already got the domain, now I have to decide on hosting. I already have a VPS so I'll use that. I want my site to be fast; very fast. The popular choice would be wordpress, however it has a lot of bloat and seems like overkill to me. To keep the site fast with wordpress would mean I'd need to upgrade my VPS, which I don't want to do. So instead of wordpress I've choosen a flat file CMS called Grav. The reason why a flat file CMS is so much faster than wordpress is because no database is involved. It's as if the CMS was a static html site.

I added serverpilot to my ubuntu VPS. Connected cloudflare to my domain. Then uploaded Grav; easy peasy. Now I just have to learn Grav to style everything to my liking...

 

[Judecd23]

Good luck, @kralcx I'm looking forward to your updates.

 

[kralcx]

@Judecd23
Thanks; I plan on updating often (it'll keep me accountable )

Once again I didn't get as much work done today as I would have liked. This time my Adobe Dreamweaver stopped working (it's a legit copy). I wound up having to uninstall all my Adobe programs, reboot, and then reinstall all the programs again. Big time; time waster.

Anyways, I changed my mind regarding GravCMS. It is too buggy for my taste. I could get things to work, but I had to force them to work. Not good enough for me. Since I won't have too many articles or posts and won't need to update that often; I decided on static html pages. I found a great template with various pages, posts, buttons, etc.. It was perfect for my needs and will be even faster than a flat-file CMS. Speed is important to me.

Had time to change some images (Pixabay is a great place to find free images to use). Update the code (make it as SEO friendly as possible). Make a decent looking logo in photoshop (if I do say so myself). Install Google Analytics, connect google webmaster tools and bing webmaster tools.

Getting work done takes time. However its like pushing a boulder; its difficult at first, than it gets easier. The important thing is I have a vision for where I'm going. I'm laying the foundation for this to reap long term rewards. Being consistent is key. I'll be back at it tomorrow.

 

[kralcx]

Everything is coming along nicely. A little slow for my liking, but its a learning process. I have to keep reminding myself its a marathon not a sprint; being consistent is key. I got my home page looking good. Filled it out with some miscellaneous images and posts to make it look more seasoned than it actually is. My first pillar post is done and styled perfectly. I got the Google adsense in there and remembered to add a privacy page to my site (Google and Facebook both want this). The pillar post has a table of contents and additional resource box, like wikipedia, for better search engine optimization.

I found a great site, called Share Link Generator, which makes it easy for me to code the links so others can share my articles on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google plus, email, and Linkedin.

I started and finished my Facebook page today as well. Profile pic, cover image, go it connected to my Business Manager account, uploaded a long list of bad words for page moderation, etc.. I even figured out how to download videos from another page in my niche. Just remove 'www' in the url and replace it with 'm'. This makes Facebook think your on a mobile site and then just right click and download the video (smile). I got about 90 images and videos which I started scheduling on my page. That will last me for about 3 months. I'll need that page in the near future when I start using Facebook to drive traffic to my site.

Tomorrow I'll get to work on my article.

 

[azgold]

Awesome pace and work ethic, @kralcx! Love your drive and determination. You're obviously not afraid of learning and hard work.

Good luck, I'll be following your journey.

 

[kralcx]

@azgold
Thank you for the kind words. I'm determined to succeed on this one!

Didn't have much time today, but I did get a few things done. Got my home page indexed thru IndexKings, IMTalk, and GSA url redirect pro.

Now I'm at the point where I have to open up my checkbook a little bit. I outsourced another article to Natasha Nixon (she did a great job on my last rewrite). I got a 3 month membership to IDPLR; it has lots of plr and video material which I'll use for lead magnets and bonuses. I didn't realize until after I made the purchase that I screwed myself by not using my Clickbank affiliate link to make the purchase. Could have saved myself about twenty dollars. Oh well...live and learn. I don't want to go thru the hassle of a refund and buy again. I'll just make sure to remember 3 months from now when I have to renew. I also got a membership to Landing Page Monkey. Got a monthly membership to Clickmagick and got an annual membership to AW Pro Tools.

I don't normal get annual memberships, but the savings from annual to monthly with AW Pro Tools was too much to pass up on. I'm already using AWeber. With the email funnel I plan on using, for this one Clickbank vendor that has many different products, I need a way to take subscribers from one list to another list, to another list, etc.. AWeber doesn't do this, but AW Pro Tools does. It also integrates nicely with Facebook Lead Ads; which I'll be using in the near future.

Between all the PLR material, Landing Page Monkey, Clickmagick, and AW Pro Tools; I have a slight learning curve ahead of me. I normal get one thing at a time, but all these tools go together. So I might as well jump into the deep end feet first.

 

[kralcx]

I've been off for a few days, but I was back at it today. I received the article from Natasha Nixon and customized it for my website. The page looks great with nice CTA (call to action) buttons on it. When I was in the middle of coding and optimizing images my computer shut down. Probably need an upgrade; too many applications open at once. Luckily my IDE uses autosave, so I didn't loose any work I had done coding. However it did make me think about best practices.

So I spent some time (several hours) learning git. So now I can make changes using various branches like Development or Features before merging them into the Master Branch. Using Source Tree all my files get uploaded to BitBucket; so I shouldn't have to worrry about loosing any of my hard work again. There is no cost involved with my set up either; just time to learn how it works.

That's it for today, tomorrow I'll learn clickmagick and hopefully make a landing page.

 

[Semangat45]

good journey, I'm also in the path of pursue clickbank success but not yet there, still figure out the best method and take full action on ward, I will take note on your journey my friend

 

[kralcx]

@Semangat45
Best of luck to you in your clickbank journey; cheers to the both of us.

I spent many hours today trying to wrap my mind around ClickMagick. It is much more involved than I initially thought. I can see now see why some internet marketers do so much better than others; it's a numbers game. If you're in to numbers, it can be rather addictive. I learned a lot reading the FAQs and watching the videos at ClickMagick. Still not sure about everything, but I have a decent understanding to get started. I have to change my links in my posts and emails to make sure they get tracked properly.

I was able to set up a custom domain (this is require for email and Facebook). I was also able to link my ClickBank with ClickMagick. ClickMagick should be able to track affiliate sales. That is an eye openner to me; I didn't even know that was possible. ClickMagick also has some really cool features like being able to content lock a sign up form on a ClickBank sales page.

That's it for today, back at it again tomorrow.

 

[here4themoney]

Thanks for sharing your journey, this info will help me and others.

 

[kralcx]

@here4themoney
I really hope I'm able to help others; I want us all to be successful.

I took several days for the holiday here in America, but I was back at it today. I finished all seven emails and loaded them into my autoresponder. Tested everything to make sure there were no problems. I also made sure all of the links go thru clickmagick for tracking purposes. On a side note using my own domain rather than clickbank's domain makes a big difference on the AWeber spam score. Using a clickbank domain link in an email will probably get that email sent directly to the spam folder.

I than found a great lead magnet to use with my landing page. This particular PLR has more than what I was expecting. For example ebook, videos, banners, mindmap, articles, email swipes, graphics, sales videos, and more. I just hope this lead magnet doesn't wind up being better than the product I'm selling as an affiliate (smile). I'll try to make use of some of the videos and graphics when advertising on Facebook. I'll also see if I can use some of the videos to draw traffic to my website from youtube. I have a lot to work with here.

I finally got around to reading and watching everything to learn how to use Landing Page Monkey. I have an understanding of it now. Tomorrow I should be able to put together a nice Landing Page and Thank you page.

 

[Gurpreet Dhillon]

Following You.
Keep Updating.

 

[kralcx]

@Gurpreet Dhillon
Thanks for following

I was using Landing Page Monkey yesterday to set up my landing page. I can make good landing pages with it particularly with a video background. However I had my heart set on a certain design; which I couldn't do with Landing Page Monkey. So I spent the day and made a responsive landing page and a responsive thank you page to my liking. It took a lot of time, however I can use it over and over again as a template for future use. I'll still use Landing Page Monkey, because I do think the video backgrounds can be useful and once you learn the software you can make landing pages very quickly. Time is money, however since I'm in the learning stage I don't expect to move to quickly.

I got the landing page, lead magnet (ebook), and thank you page uploaded to the server. I tested all the links and customized the links using Clickmagick. (I can tell once traffic comes in; I'll still have a lot to learn with clickmagick). The only thing I wasn't able to do was test my auto-responder system, because AWeber was having server problems at the time.

I've finally got around to watching the resources on AW Pro Tools. Then next I'll study up on setting up a facebook campaign to finally start driving some traffic.