Gurpreet Dhillon
Active Member
Keep going my friend.
My Beginner's Journey on Clickbank
- Thread starter kralcx
- Start date
kralcx
Member
Over the past few days I got caught up in 'shiny object syndrome'. Something caught my eye and became fixated with it. I was studying up on Facebook Lead Ads when I saw an ad for software that is suppose to get all the emails from Facebook pages and groups. I thought to myself I got to get that. A huge targeted list of emails. I got the software, tried the software, and was ultimately disappointed by the software. It technically worked, but it wasn't production ready as far as I am concerned. The video shows scraping a Facebook page for 3 hours and getting over 150K emails. I got 6K emails (2432 unique) in 9 hours. Even with a 1 Gbps VPS (I tested it on a 70 Mbps machine) the amount of emails I would get wouldn't be worth it to me. The software had other problems as well; it constantly needed to be turned on and off again (not good for automation). So I asked for a refund yesterday and as of today they said I will get one (the software had a 14 day money back guarantee).
Not one who likes to give up I think I may have found an even better alternative. I saw a video from loopline about letting Google do the heavy lifting for you and scrape the meta data. I did a quick test and it seems promising. Scrapebox makes it easy to get targeted meta data and then with a push of a button you get all the emails. I'm strongly considering trying this. I already have scrapebox. However to do it right I would need a VPS for it and reverse proxies. Another VPS (most likely) for the email software and there would be some cost involved for using a SMTP server (either 3rd party or my own box). I'll let you know if I try it.
I played around with Facebook today and got a Lead Ads up and running. So many rules with Facebook. First my image was the wrong size, than it had too much text on it. Then when it came time to write the ad, you're so limited in how much you can write. Frustrating! Finally got that done. It was approved rather quickly. Started with $5 a day. Over the next few days I'll learn the numbers behind everything. I also got my Lead Ads account connected directly to my auto responder using AW Pro Tools. This way the email leads go directly into my auto responder, rather than having to do it manually.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up and have a few email leads (smile)...
Not one who likes to give up I think I may have found an even better alternative. I saw a video from loopline about letting Google do the heavy lifting for you and scrape the meta data. I did a quick test and it seems promising. Scrapebox makes it easy to get targeted meta data and then with a push of a button you get all the emails. I'm strongly considering trying this. I already have scrapebox. However to do it right I would need a VPS for it and reverse proxies. Another VPS (most likely) for the email software and there would be some cost involved for using a SMTP server (either 3rd party or my own box). I'll let you know if I try it.
I played around with Facebook today and got a Lead Ads up and running. So many rules with Facebook. First my image was the wrong size, than it had too much text on it. Then when it came time to write the ad, you're so limited in how much you can write. Frustrating! Finally got that done. It was approved rather quickly. Started with $5 a day. Over the next few days I'll learn the numbers behind everything. I also got my Lead Ads account connected directly to my auto responder using AW Pro Tools. This way the email leads go directly into my auto responder, rather than having to do it manually.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up and have a few email leads (smile)...
kralcx
Member
@azgold
You are so right; I have to keep my eyes on the prize. Stay focused!
I checked my subscribers today and I got 5. I thought not bad (since I have nothing else to compare it too). I went to AWeber to dig further and I see that I actually had 20 people sign up, but AWeber was requiring a double opt-in, even though I had set it to single opt-in. The problem was because it was coming from Facebook and I had to ask for permission to make it single opt-in (even though it was already set at single opt-in). Okay no biggie so I start to write an nice email to AWeber asking for permission. As I'm writing my email I check my thank you page just to make sure everything is okay. It isn't! The clickbank vendor, whom I'm marketing, took down his landing page! WTF!
So now I got people on my email list and I'm trying to sell them a product they can't buy! I'm so pissed right now I don't know what to do?
First thing I'll do is pause my Facebook Lead Ad. Second I'm going to try and pause my auto responder. Third I'm going to contact this vendor and ask WTF is going on!?
Nobody said affiliate marketing was easy, but I wasn't expecting this.
BTW
For the life of me I don't understand how, but I actually made 1 sale today on clickbank
You are so right; I have to keep my eyes on the prize. Stay focused!
I checked my subscribers today and I got 5. I thought not bad (since I have nothing else to compare it too). I went to AWeber to dig further and I see that I actually had 20 people sign up, but AWeber was requiring a double opt-in, even though I had set it to single opt-in. The problem was because it was coming from Facebook and I had to ask for permission to make it single opt-in (even though it was already set at single opt-in). Okay no biggie so I start to write an nice email to AWeber asking for permission. As I'm writing my email I check my thank you page just to make sure everything is okay. It isn't! The clickbank vendor, whom I'm marketing, took down his landing page! WTF!
So now I got people on my email list and I'm trying to sell them a product they can't buy! I'm so pissed right now I don't know what to do?
First thing I'll do is pause my Facebook Lead Ad. Second I'm going to try and pause my auto responder. Third I'm going to contact this vendor and ask WTF is going on!?
Nobody said affiliate marketing was easy, but I wasn't expecting this.
BTW
For the life of me I don't understand how, but I actually made 1 sale today on clickbank
kralcx
Member
I shut down my old autoresponder and added a new 4 email autoresponder today. Hooked it up with all the tracking links from Clickmagick. I was able to use my same Facebook Lead Ad; I just had to change the link. Sometimes something which you would think would be simple, takes forever to figure out in Facebook Business Manager. I had to close the old connection and get a new connection from FB Lead Ads to AWeber using AW Pro Tools. I got approved (very quickly) by AWeber for single opt-in from FB Lead Ads. I was very surprised at the difference single opt-in makes. I lost almost 75% of my sign ups because of double opt-in.
I also ordered a 500 page article from Natasha Nixon, since I'm marketing a new product now. I'm actually proud of myself getting everything done in a day. I'm starting to get into a groove.
Hopefully there won't be any crazy surprises like last time. So I can finally get some real data and see if my funnel is working or not? Keeping my finger crossed (smile)...
I also ordered a 500 page article from Natasha Nixon, since I'm marketing a new product now. I'm actually proud of myself getting everything done in a day. I'm starting to get into a groove.
Hopefully there won't be any crazy surprises like last time. So I can finally get some real data and see if my funnel is working or not? Keeping my finger crossed (smile)...
This can happen with CPA offers, too. Campaigns get paused or expire suddenly. I've had this experience with CB but it was CB who pulled the vendor. I still don't know what happened but they weren't allowing the vendor in their marketplace anymore.
Awesome, congrats! A little something for everything you've been going through.
You've been going like crazy! Fantastic drive, work ethic and determination!
Just one?
Great to see such dedication keep it up!
kralcx
Member
@azgold
Silly me; I meant fingers btw thanks for the words of encouragement!
@Evan_Forsyth
thanks for following along
When it rains it pours! When I was putting everything together for a new campaign my computer died. And it died before I had a chance to upload the new article and landing page to my website. Then I lost the files when I tried to do a hard disk to hard disk transfer. Oh well life moves forward, even if it is not the way we planned it. My internet marketing motto is too, "Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome".
I have no one to blame but myself. My computer was acting weird the last couple months and I ignored the warning signs. When I become "Affiliate Marketing Rich"; I'll keep two brand new desktops and two brand new laptops at all times.
This set me back almost a week while I waited for new computer parts to do a rebuild. The only thing good to come out of this was I was forced to seriously upgrade my computer.
I did look at my Facebook data from my previous short lived campaign (only 3 days). Everything looked good: .37 cents cost per lead, 68 optins, 30% CTR (from my thank you page to sales page), and a Facebook relevance score of 8.
Yet, according to ClickMagick there were only 43 optins and more alarmingly 74% (or 28) were from tier 3 countries. My Facebook Lead Ads were only targeted at a few tier 1 countries.
I don't know who is telling the truth, but my money is on ClickMagick and not Facebook. I'll do another (next time longer) campaign to get a better idea of what is really going on?
I also realized I should have been using sub-ids in ClickMagick. It will be a lot less work for me with so many emails.
Until next time...
Silly me; I meant fingers
btw thanks for the words of encouragement!@Evan_Forsyth
thanks for following along
When it rains it pours! When I was putting everything together for a new campaign my computer died. And it died before I had a chance to upload the new article and landing page to my website. Then I lost the files when I tried to do a hard disk to hard disk transfer. Oh well life moves forward, even if it is not the way we planned it. My internet marketing motto is too, "Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome".
I have no one to blame but myself. My computer was acting weird the last couple months and I ignored the warning signs. When I become "Affiliate Marketing Rich"; I'll keep two brand new desktops and two brand new laptops at all times.
This set me back almost a week while I waited for new computer parts to do a rebuild. The only thing good to come out of this was I was forced to seriously upgrade my computer.
I did look at my Facebook data from my previous short lived campaign (only 3 days). Everything looked good: .37 cents cost per lead, 68 optins, 30% CTR (from my thank you page to sales page), and a Facebook relevance score of 8.
Yet, according to ClickMagick there were only 43 optins and more alarmingly 74% (or 28) were from tier 3 countries. My Facebook Lead Ads were only targeted at a few tier 1 countries.
I don't know who is telling the truth, but my money is on ClickMagick and not Facebook. I'll do another (next time longer) campaign to get a better idea of what is really going on?
I also realized I should have been using sub-ids in ClickMagick. It will be a lot less work for me with so many emails.
Until next time...
kralcx
Member
So I set up some more Facebook Ads. I had them run for 5 days at $5 a day each. Just trying to get a feel for Facebook and if it's something I should pursue to try and get Clickbank sales.
I did 3 ads total. One to my article or pre-sell page. Another to my landing page; and another using Facebook Lead Ads.
Facebook Lead Ads gets the email address on Facebook then it's up to you to place the address into your autoresponder. I do this automatically using AW Pro Tools. According to FB I got 38 leads costing me $22.50 or .59 cents a lead. I got lots of social engagement but no sales (I don't care about the social engagement). Now checking this with ClickMagick I get a close, but different story. I got 8 clicks from bots all connected to Facebook. I got 29 real clicks but only 26 unique. Of the 26 uniques 2 were from countries that I did not target. So the reality is I got 24 leads costing me $22.50 or .94 cents a lead. .35 cents difference is a big difference; especially if I was to scale! The other puzzling thing is both my positive and negative feedback was high, however my relevance score is 8. I checked online about this and this happens to a lot of people. Facebook tries to justify this, but it makes little sense to me?
My ad to my pre-sell page was using FB CTW (click to website). According to FB I got 105 clicks costing me $22.90 or .22 cents a lead. ClickMagick once again was more informative. 14 bots all connected to Facebook. 108 real clicks with 107 unique, however 10 were from countries I didn't target. Also 12% of the clicks were from mobile when I was targeting desktop (I'm not so upset about that one). So all in all I did even better than FB said. If I don't mind the mobile clicks; I got 107 clicks for .21 cents a lead. However depending on your situation 12% of clicks coming from a platform you didn't target could be a big deal! Once again I had a positive and negative feedback that was high; even though I had a relevance score of 10. That makes no sense to me? The other thing I learned is that all but one of the clicks came from the News Feed, so targeting the Right Column was a waste of time.
My other ad targeting my Landing Page I used WC (website conversions). I should have used CTW instead because I didn't get any good stats from FB to compare with ClickMagick. However according to ClickMagick each click cost me about .20 cents. And once again both positive and negative feedback scores were high, even though my relevance score was 10?
I've read that ppc from the search engines is better for clickbank because you can get buyer ready traffic that way. Facebook users have to be warmed up before buying. My traffic sample size is small and I got no sales, but I tend to think this is true. I have 40 subscribers in my autoresponder so I now have time to warm them up and try to make sales. However, to make this work via email I need much bigger numbers to work with. It would be cost prohibitive for me to do that via Facebook. I'll try some email marketing strategies to scale the bigger numbers that I need to really try clickbank using autoresponders. I also might try ppc from Bing to get ready to buy traffic next time instead of using Facebook.
I'm not saying that using Facebook ads to generate clickbank sales can't work. I'm just saying for me and my present budget constraints I'm going to try a different approach.
I did 3 ads total. One to my article or pre-sell page. Another to my landing page; and another using Facebook Lead Ads.
Facebook Lead Ads gets the email address on Facebook then it's up to you to place the address into your autoresponder. I do this automatically using AW Pro Tools. According to FB I got 38 leads costing me $22.50 or .59 cents a lead. I got lots of social engagement but no sales (I don't care about the social engagement). Now checking this with ClickMagick I get a close, but different story. I got 8 clicks from bots all connected to Facebook. I got 29 real clicks but only 26 unique. Of the 26 uniques 2 were from countries that I did not target. So the reality is I got 24 leads costing me $22.50 or .94 cents a lead. .35 cents difference is a big difference; especially if I was to scale! The other puzzling thing is both my positive and negative feedback was high, however my relevance score is 8. I checked online about this and this happens to a lot of people. Facebook tries to justify this, but it makes little sense to me?
My ad to my pre-sell page was using FB CTW (click to website). According to FB I got 105 clicks costing me $22.90 or .22 cents a lead. ClickMagick once again was more informative. 14 bots all connected to Facebook. 108 real clicks with 107 unique, however 10 were from countries I didn't target. Also 12% of the clicks were from mobile when I was targeting desktop (I'm not so upset about that one). So all in all I did even better than FB said. If I don't mind the mobile clicks; I got 107 clicks for .21 cents a lead. However depending on your situation 12% of clicks coming from a platform you didn't target could be a big deal! Once again I had a positive and negative feedback that was high; even though I had a relevance score of 10. That makes no sense to me? The other thing I learned is that all but one of the clicks came from the News Feed, so targeting the Right Column was a waste of time.
My other ad targeting my Landing Page I used WC (website conversions). I should have used CTW instead because I didn't get any good stats from FB to compare with ClickMagick. However according to ClickMagick each click cost me about .20 cents. And once again both positive and negative feedback scores were high, even though my relevance score was 10?
I've read that ppc from the search engines is better for clickbank because you can get buyer ready traffic that way. Facebook users have to be warmed up before buying. My traffic sample size is small and I got no sales, but I tend to think this is true. I have 40 subscribers in my autoresponder so I now have time to warm them up and try to make sales. However, to make this work via email I need much bigger numbers to work with. It would be cost prohibitive for me to do that via Facebook. I'll try some email marketing strategies to scale the bigger numbers that I need to really try clickbank using autoresponders. I also might try ppc from Bing to get ready to buy traffic next time instead of using Facebook.
I'm not saying that using Facebook ads to generate clickbank sales can't work. I'm just saying for me and my present budget constraints I'm going to try a different approach.
jeffro89
Member
Watching your journey closely as it was a toss between Maxbounty and Clickbank for me and MB won on my early CPA journey. FB seem to throwing up sum crazy stats tho, how on earth you get clicks from Tier's you havent even targete i do not know. Seems expensive as well, Did you watch any vids on FB ads? or you already had prior knowledge. I am to start with Bing as its cheaper traffic..
kralcx
Member
I should make a correction to what I stated above. Regarding my pre-sale page using FB CTW (click to website). If I take into account 10 clicks were from countries I didn't target and 13 clicks were mobile (which I also didn't target). That really means I got 84 clicks (107-10-13) for .27 cents a lead. Once again .05 cents (.27-.22) a lead difference will add up especially if I was to scale!
@jeffro89
Thanks for following along.
Without a 3rd party to verify the stats Facebook gives you; you'll have no choice but to trust what Facebook tells you. So far I have had nothing but good experiences using ClickMagick. Yes, I watched several videos on Facebook Ads: for example; 6 Figure Facebook Forumula and Dan Henry Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs. None of the videos I watched were Clickbank specific. The key is your Facebook costs vs how much you'll make with clickbank (or whichever platform you choose to use). In other words epc (earnings per click) - cpc (cost per click).
I'm not saying Facebook ads won't work with clickbank. Just that for me, right now with my current budget, I didn't like what I was seeing. I'm going to try a different approach next; probably Bing and / or email marketing.
@jeffro89
Thanks for following along.
Without a 3rd party to verify the stats Facebook gives you; you'll have no choice but to trust what Facebook tells you. So far I have had nothing but good experiences using ClickMagick. Yes, I watched several videos on Facebook Ads: for example; 6 Figure Facebook Forumula and Dan Henry Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs. None of the videos I watched were Clickbank specific. The key is your Facebook costs vs how much you'll make with clickbank (or whichever platform you choose to use). In other words epc (earnings per click) - cpc (cost per click).
I'm not saying Facebook ads won't work with clickbank. Just that for me, right now with my current budget, I didn't like what I was seeing. I'm going to try a different approach next; probably Bing and / or email marketing.
kralcx
Member
@azgold
I never even thought about asking for a refund; so I did a little research and found out that there are many complaints of fake clicks and bot traffic. Facebook says it will do it's own investigation (the fox guarding the hen house) and reimburse if it finds any wrong doing. In other words I wouldn't hold out hope for Facebook to do the right thing.
I've since learned that Facebook's terms of service forbid third-party verification of its clicks. So the moral of the story is buyer beware!
I never even thought about asking for a refund; so I did a little research and found out that there are many complaints of fake clicks and bot traffic. Facebook says it will do it's own investigation (the fox guarding the hen house) and reimburse if it finds any wrong doing. In other words I wouldn't hold out hope for Facebook to do the right thing.
I've since learned that Facebook's terms of service forbid third-party verification of its clicks. So the moral of the story is buyer beware!
Just skimmed that article....wow. Seems FB is above the law. You're probably right about them not reimbursing you but sorry to hear it.
Buyer beware is a good thing to keep in mind, no matter where you're investing. Or at least, as much sensible caution as possible. Might be a good reason to do small test runs with a new platform.
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