Everyone knows that the key to making sales with Clickbank products is to write product reviews, landing pages, comparison landing pages, or pre-sell pages.

Latest Screen Shots - Not Bad

Each of these pages offers a different benefit. However, the main idea is that you still need to see the product before you can write a believable review.

How do you go about doing it? Do you really need to purchase every single product that you review? The short answer is…no. So then, how do you write a review without actually seeing the product?

Starting out, I wrote reviews without seeing the product. It worked.

However, one day I contacted a vendor who’s product I was promoting, just to ask them a question about their product.

A few email messages later, they sent me a copy of their product. I was extremely excited to get a free copy of the product. Sure, I felt special. But that was when I realized the power of being an affiliate.

Vendors need us just as much as we need them. However, at that moment, I did not think to ask vendors for a review copy of their product. I just went on and depended on vendors to send me a review copy as I promoted a product.

Not anymore. I’m much more proactive about my business. In fact, just this past week I’ve contacted at least 10 vendors, and was able to get review copies of 8 products.

A good vendor will be happy to send you a review copy, or at least a sample of their product. But, there are some things you must keep in mind:

Tip #1: It Helps If You Have a Website

The moment vendors see my website, they know I mean business. They see all the product images on the sidebar. They browse through all the in-depth product reviews I write.

Vendors Know I Mean Business

They can see this site gets traffic. If they want to double check, they just go onto Alexa.com and check my traffic rank. But, you don’t necessarily need a high-traffic website to get free review copies.

If you don’t wish to spend $110 per year on hosting and domain name (which comes out to less than $10 a month), then you can use a free blogger.com blog.

However, any business is an investment. And I’d rather you spend your money on setting up a decent looking blog rather than on PPC. I still haven’t conquered PPC marketing, and I’ve been doing this longer than you (I’m guessing).

Tip #2: Be Nice and Be Honest

Don’t send out an email and say, “May I please have a copy of your product?” On the flip side, don’t say, “It would be really nice of you to please, maybe, if possible, but you don’t really have to send me a review copy.”

Be professional, but be honest. If you’re a beginner, say that you’re just starting out and you want their product to be one of the first products you promote.

I just Think this Image is Cool

Here is a sample email template for individuals who already have a few products on their website:

Hi (Vendor Name),

- (Your Name)

Here is a sample email template for individuals who have no products on their website:

Hi (Vendor Name),

#3: Look for Brand New Products

There’s a four-month window you should be familiar with: 1 month before the product is launched, and 3 months after the product is launched. Three months after a product is launched, there is very little guarantee that the product will be able to give you sales.

Open the Window at the Right Time, and You could be Looking at the Solution to all your Financial Problems

This is the biggest mistake newbies make. They try and sell products with a high gravity. Yes, high gravity means that lots of affiliates are making sales of the product.

But high gravity also means that it’s been around for a while. Very few vendors are able to get 100+ gravity within a few weeks. So, keep a look out for brand new products.

This is also the time when vendors start looking for affiliates. They want lots of affiliates sending traffic to their site 1 month before the product is actually launched.

You really shouldn’t start promoting a product that’s not going to be released for another 3 months because if you send traffic to the website, and the vendor is capturing emails, then you have 60 days to make a sale, or else it won’t be credited to you.

1 month before is the best time, since the buzz about the product will be at it’s peak. On launch day, you can easily grab 5-10 sales for a high end product, or 20-30 for a lower end product.

There are three ways to seek out new products:

Method #1: Instant Affiliate Accelerator

Antone Roundy has a product called the Instant Affiliate Accelerator. The product helps you perform a lot of affiliate marketing tasks such as delivering bonuses and creating squeeze pages.

But, the product didn’t really work for me, so I canceled my membership. However, they kept me on their newsletter. Antone’s weekly newsletter is a great resource to find new products.

He focuses on four types of products:

#1 – Rising Stars

Reminds you of Kindergarten

These are products that have seen a boost in their sales, gravity, and are offering high commissions. They also see low returns. Usually, these are the products that have just experienced a huge launch.  This is where you want to choose most of your products from.

#2 – Falling Rocks

These are the products that are doing poorly in the Clickbank marketplace. Their commissions are not that good, sales are plummeting, and refund rates are rising. It’s not uncommon to see a product a rising star one week, and a falling rock the next. If a product you’re promoting is on the Falling Rocks list, abandon immediately!

#3 – Dinosaur Killers

These are the products you want to avoid like the plague! The focus is mostly on refund rates. The market has clearly rejected the product, and if you’re promoting them, it’ll damage your reputation.

#4 – New Products

This is just a list of brand new products. This is where you will most likely find a product that is about to be launched. Most of the new products are still in the testing phase.

I’ve also found vendors of new products are the most difficult to convince to give away a free version of their product. This is because for most this is their first product, and they are not seasoned Internet marketers yet.

Method #2: CBengine

If you do not want to sign up for Instant Affiliate Accelerator (I think there’s a 14-day free trial), then you can simply use the myriad of free Clickbank – tracking websites such as CBengine.

Is this your Goal? Then do your Research!

These websites will give you listings of brand new products, and specific information about the product. Frankly, I don’t use the websites too much, so I can not tell you how best to use them.

However, I thought I’d mention them.

Method #3: Relationships with Vendors

I advise you to get on the mailing list of as many vendors in your niche as possible. Now, I’m not talking about their affiliate newsletters. I’m talking about their customer newsletters.

Most good vendors will have an op-tin form on the front page of their site. Get on that newsletter. This is because most vendors stick together, and you can get a sense of an upcoming product launch if all of a sudden you’re getting emails from a vendor promoting someone else’s product.

In addition, some of the vendors who’s products you’re currently promoting will eventually create a new product in the future. If they know you by first name, and if you’re making them at least 3-5 sales per week (very doable), then they’ll most likely contact you and inform you of an upcoming launch.

There are more than enough methods here to 1) help you choose the right products and 2) to get your hands on a review copy of the product you’re promoting.

Getting a review copy will also help you make a better decision on what products you want to spend more time promoting. I feel kind of guilty not promoting a product once I have a review copy (unless the product is an absolute piece of junk, in which case the vendor should be punished for being so lazy/sinister (whatever you want to call it)).

Can you Imagine this Lady Writing a Fitness eBook?

But on a side note if you come across a product that you do not agree with 100%, then write a review of it, put it on your site, and let it sit there. If the vendor asks you why your sales are low (which they won’t, ever), then you can just say you’re trying your best.

Of course, this strategy is only useful for people who have a guilty conscience. If you don’t care, then you don’t care. Sometimes not caring is better for your business.

For more Clickbank Marketing Tips, check out my free eBook, The 2 Grand Per Month Clickbank Formula (click here).

Lets take a look at this weeks stats:

It was a pretty rough week. The day started out with me being under $100. And all of a sudden, I get 4 sales in a day! It’s incredible. Yesterday I made a decision that I’m going to focus solely on SEO.

I’ll be using the SEO tool that Kieran and J provide in their 9-5 Annhialation program. Even though they have some great tips in there, for now I’ll be using just that tool.

The goal is to build up to around 3700 hits a day. I want a large majority of that to come from Search. Once I get up to that number, I’ll decide what to do.

I believe that the main reason why I did the $100 for today was that I posted 15 posts yesterday, and 15 posts today using keywords I found through the SEO tool.

It works. Yesterday I had 849 hits to the blog. Today I have 870 hits to the blog. There’s still an hour and a half left in the day. Anything can happen.

Plus, I had 4 sales today. Incredible. Just incredible.

Will keep you guys posted. Specifically, I will tell you how long it takes me to hit 3700 hits. Today was the second day of me making that goal.

More traffic does equal more sales, as long as you already have well-converting products on your site.

Sales update:

So sales are certainly back up. I added a new product to line up of products. It seems as though every time I add a new product, I get another boost of sales.

Automated sales still does not seem very possible through my site at this point. I purchased a new product called 9-5 Annhilation. It features two methods – the Harvester method and Monster method.

Harvester is all about short-term goals. Monster is about building a long term, sustainable business. Their keyword tool is outstanding (although a bit slow).

Authors Kieran and J also have a great forum with a respectable community. Hope to learn a lot from them in the coming months.

The harvester method is all about setting up quick, small website around a single product. I like the idea, but I want to expand it perhaps create a string of “satellite” sites which link back to my main site.

These sites would help me attract highly targeted prospective customers for products that are already doing good on my site. So I’ll try to start 3 such websites by the end of the week.

I’m looking forward to an upcoming promo for a vendor. I was able to grab one sale when he was doing the promo to just his list. I was already cookied.

Anyways, it’s a $297 product where he’s offering a $100 discount for 3 days, with the option to split the payments. With 75% commission, that would be about $145 split over two months.

I’m shooting for around 20 sales during the promo. So that would give me a solid $2900 spread out over two months. I’ve been building up my own list for that particular product for a while now.

All I have to do is promote it heavily during the promo.

I’m starting to get into doing more audio interviews on my blog. However, the most recent one I published, I had a problem with the podcasting.

I have a mac, so I edited the interview using audacity. I figured out how to convert the file from .wav to .mp3. However, i still was unable to host the interview as a podcast.

I had to direct link to the interview.

Perhaps the file is too large. If anyone has done audio interviews, can you please tell me the best way to publish them on your blog?

Thanks, until next time!