My Clickbank eBook is now available: http://livingchill.com/the-2-grand-per-month-clickbank-formula/

There are three primary aspects to success with any online business: 1) Traffic, 2) Conversions, and 3) Repeat Business. Unfortunately, most affiliate marketers focus too much on conversions. Yes, it’s true that you must absolutely find a product which converts.

However, once you find a product that converts you need to figure out how you’re going to get repeat business from that person, and then find similar individuals to come to your website. Hence, your marketing plan should be structure in the following order: 1) Conversions, 2) Repeat Business, and 3) Traffic.

The second mistake most affiliate marketers make is completely ignoring the concept of repeat business. Repeat business is very vital, and is truly the only way you’ll be able to automate your business and earn passive income.

Most individuals do not realize was true passive income is. I drew a little chart to help you out:

This chart, of course is just hypothetical. But I want you to get the main idea here: As your business grows, you spend less time on it and your revenue gradually grows. So, when you started out at working 40 hours per week, you made around $40 per week, or $1 per hour.

If you set the proper steps in place, then over time you will be able to spend even less on your business, as little as 5 hours, and earn around $240 or $48 per hour. Once again, I just created this chart on the hypothesis that each week you’ll raise your revenue by 50%.

Of course, things don’t work that way.

Passive Income = Passive Traffic + High Conversions + Repeat Business

The first step to passive income is following the right product. This will probably be the most difficult aspect of your business. I was lucky to be able to find a handful of products from beginning that already converted for my site.

In the beginning, don’t worry about how much traffic it takes to convert a product. Just find something that converts, whether it gives you $50 per sale or $5. The best way to go about this is to find multiple products, around 3-5, and promote all of them at the same time.

If you’re using a blog format, as I did, you can simply write 10 articles for each product, post them on your blog, and see what happens. Underneath each post, link out to the product, and place a tracking code so you know which article converted the sale for you.

You’ll generate traffic through SEO primarily. But you can also send social media, ppc, forum, and referral traffic to your website.

Once you get a single sale, stick to that product. Look at your clickbank stats and see how many hops it took you to convert that product. For example, lets assume that it took 200 hops for you to convert a particular product.

This means that 200 people saw the product’s sales page, but only 1 person decided to buy. This means that the conversion rate is .5%. Your goal now is to get that conversion rate up to 1%. The first step is to create a landing page.

Go back and locate the initial article that converted the sale. Convert this into a landing page. Here’s an example of an article I used to convert sales that I transformed into a landing page: http://shahtraining.com/hundred-bodyweight-exercises/

As you can see, this landing page doesn’t follow the traditional approach of a landing page. But it works, and that’s all that matters. But to convert into a landing page, you’re going to actually have to elaborate on the product just slightly.

Especially if the vendor has some sort of up sell, simply talk about it. Include product features and benefits, but write it such a matter that it becomes a part of the article itself. Hence, it’s not just a random sales pitch.

There’s relevancy there.

Once you’ve done this, go back and change back all the links of all the articles that you published earlier and point them back to your new landing page. Now you suddenly have 25-50 articles pointing back to your landing page.

This will help improve the SEO of that particular page, hence generating even more valuable content to your landing page. Over the next few weeks see how many sales you make from page. Each week, measure your conversion rate.

If after a week, if you’re not at 1% conversions, then make little tweaks in the page to improve conversion. Here are some ideas:

• Adding video
• Adding testimonials
• Elaborating on one aspect of the product
• If it’s an eBook, copy and paste the table and contents
• Elaborate on one specific benefit

Remember, your landing page should try to get the prospect excited about the product. Hence, they’re already in “buy mode” when they get to the vendors page.

There you go. I’ve just provided you with a blueprint of how to get you first few clickbank sales. Now go do it!

Next time, we’ll go deeper into the idea of getting the income more passive.

There are very few guides out there that do a good job of teaching affiliate marketing. Most are sites used to sell other affiliate products. And even most affiliate products are pure BS. They don’t reveal all those little tips and tricks that REALLY make a difference in your work.

Lets start with the first lesson: Landing pages. Landing pages are absolutely crucial to making affiliate sales. I learned this out too late. I thought that I could just send traffic straight to a vendor’s site and that would be fine.

This is a huge newbie mistake. This is because a vendor has no idea where the traffic is coming from. They’ve created their landing page based on the source of traffic that THEY’RE focusing on. For example, the majority of vendors have their own PPC campaigns that they have tweaked to match up with their landing pages.

There are really only a few affiliates that tweak their landing pages to make it easy for an affiliate to sell a product. But even then, it’s important to create your own page, whether it’s a pres-ell or review page, that basically “fills in the gap” between the potential customer and the vendor’s landing page.

For example, lets take a look at a recent landing page that has converted for me. This landing page has only been up for a few days and has a conversion rate of 1:28. This means that out of every 28 people that click to the vendors page through this landing page buy the product.

However, how many people actually click through to the landing page? According to my google analytics, 73 people landed on the page, and 28 of those people clicked out. This means that the page has a 38% click through rate, with a 3.6% sales rate (sales/#click through).

We can also just simplify and say that 1 out of 73 people that land on the page buy the product, or 1.7%. Which is still good. So, if I want to make 5 sales a day, I need to send 365 people to that page. Since I know that the landing page converts, I’m just focusing primarily on sending traffic.

We’ll talk about traffic generation another time. Lets delve deeper into why the landing page works.

To begin, here’s a screen shot of the page above the fold:

As I’m writing this, I’m also analyzing my own landing page. So, this helps you, and me. Take good notes!

Well, first of all in terms of good things, we have a video there. People love videos. Most people will click on the video right away and start watching. Is it a good video? Yes it’s a good video. I picked out the best video I could find by the vendor of the product I’m promoting and placed it so it can be viewed right above the fold.

All that text above the video is just introducing the product. And at the end of the paragraph I say, “Here’s a sample workout.” I’m giving people a taste of what to expect before I send them off to the vendors site.

Here’s a few things that I could change:

• “Truth About Abs” on side bar is distracting. I could get rid of the side bar on this page.
• I can also see if there’s a way to shorten the header, so that the page starts earlier. Meaning even more room above the fold.
• Finally the “Get Leaner, Stronger, Bigger…” is too scrunched up. I don’t even know if I need that.

Lets look at what the page looks like after changing the headline and getting rid of the side bar:

I like it! I might even be able to break up that beginning paragraph so it makes it easier to read. I won’t take another screen shot of that. Now, underneath the video, you see, “Click here for more information.” Instead of having one link at the bottom, it’s a good idea of have at least three links spaced out through out the landing page that links back to the vendor.

I saw a lot of vendors do the same, at it works! After watching the video, a prospect that be instantly interested in the product and go straight to the vendors site. Or, they can continue reading the review. One thing I want to experiment with is to see if I would get any sales just by having the video there.

Nothing else, just the video. In that case I can’t call the page a “review.” I would literally have to say something like, “Click here for a free Workout.”

Anyways, lets see what the next part of the page looks like:

So, you see a lot of text here. There are three things I want to you to notice:

“Why Should You Purchase Bodyweight Exercise Revolution”

That’s what prospects want to talk about. Talk about the benefits. Share you personal experience. Compare it to the other products. Since people coming to my site know that I review a lot of different products, they trust me to tell them what differentiates this from any other bodyweight product out there.

One tip when choosing which product to promote is promote something that’s truly unique. Don’t promote a copy cat product because it’ll be tough to convince prospects why it’s better than any other product out there (because it’s really not). And price doesn’t matter.

Just because something is cheaper doesn’t mean they’ll buy it. This is the section where you should spend the most amount of time on. Drafts, drafts drafts. But still keep it short, to the point, and make sure to use lots of bullet points. I’ve found that bullet points make a page much easier to read.

“Click Here for More Information”

Here we see the link back to the vendor’s page again. But, just in case they’re not convinced, we’ll give them more information:

“What is the 4×7 Progressive Method?”

There you go! This is what makes this product unique. No other product talks about this method. So, take a look at your product, pick out that one thing that really makes it unique. Something that prospects will really care about, and blow it up. Talk about it without actually giving away EXACTLY what it is.

Tough to do, but you can do it!

Ok, so the image is cut off at the top, but it’s a really cool image with the author doing one of the unique exercises I talk about on the landing page. Underneath we see another link back to the vendors page. The last part of the page is “Product Features and Free Bonus.”

Most people start their review/landing page with the features of the product first. That’s not a good idea. This isn’t some Best Buy you’re walking into where you need to compare computer specs and prices. This is one single product, and you’re trying to sell it on an emotional level (what else did you think marketing was?).

So, build it up. Build it up with benefits and unique information that a prospect will care about. Finally, show them what the product actually features, and then the final thing that will help them click that “buy” button is…the bonus. Large corporations and banks do it all the time.

My mom and sister rushed to commerce bank to get free piggy banks when it first opened. Grocery stores, department stores, and retail outlets give out free stuff all the time in exchange for certain purchases made. So why can’t you do the same?

It doesn’t take the long to make a bonus product. If you’re familiar with your niche, you can literally create your own product within a half hour. Mine took 15 minutes. And guess what, it’s good. But, it only makes sense to the prospect if they buy the product.

Hence, the bonus product is NOT a stand alone product. It’s not super detailed. It’s supplement. So, for example if a product features a 12-month fat loss program, you can say, “I’ll give a months worth of free training!.” And all you need to do is follow the same pattern as the 3 months featured in the product, and create a program that’s harder than the previous 3 months.

Of course, with fitness products, you must always place a disclaimer. And be careful. Don’t prescribe anything too crazy. I’ve trained a few people here and there. I’ve also looked at the product myself and tried some of the workouts, so I have a pretty good sense of what the customer just went through for the past few months.

Anyways, make your bonus, good and add one last call to action. Mine is: “Click here to Grab your Copy of Bodyweight Exercise Revolution Today!”

Future Steps:

I’ll leave this landing page the way it is, without making any further changes for a few weeks, until I hit my target of generate 365 hits to to the page. Then I’ll review my conversion rates and see if there’s anything else I can change to improve them (if they in fact need to be improved).

It was fun sharing this with the rest of the world. I know there’s a combination of beginners, intermediates, and advanced affiliate marketers reading this. So, if you have any question or comments, please feel free to leave them below.

CB-analytics and similar sites are great research tools, but at the end of the day to choose the right product you need to be an expert in your niche.

If you know about your niche, then you can easily spot a BS product just by reading the sales page.

Hop data is updated every hour. However, the analytics are not 100% accurate. You will see some crazy numbers sometimes.

But overall, I think the CB hoplinks system is trustworthy. I’ve usually seen crazy numbers when I attach a tracking code to the hop link.

If you’re getting a 100 hits to a landing page, either from article marketing, or ppc, but only a few people are actually clicking out to your product, then you need to change your landing page.

But you’re getting people to click out to the vendor’s page, but still do not see sales, then your landing page is fine but your product sucks. In that case switch the product up after around a 100 hops

People are getting really frustrated with all these random clickbank sales patterns. People seem to from making $200 per day, to literally $0 per day. Why is this that case?

Well, there can be a lot of reasons for this, and the economy is certainly one of them. But I personally don’t like to spend too much on the “why.” You see, the “why” is something we can’t usually control:

* Bad economy
* People leaving for holidays
* A niche becoming over saturated

There are probably a ton of reasons WHY patterns are so random. I think it’s more important to look at things you can control. Most non-successful affiliates sit around and wait for something to happen.

I know this because I used to be one of them. You need to literally be a go-getter. You need to be fierce. You need to say – ok OBVIOUSLY, what I was doing isn’t working, so what can I now do differently to jump start my income once again.

It’s a lot like weight loss. I’m talking about this because I’m in the fitness niche, own a well-read blog, and have gone through my own personaltransformation.

On the first week, you lose 5 pounds. Second week, you lose 3 pounds. And then you keep losing 1-2 pounds each week, consistently. Then all of a sudden, you hit a plateau.

The one who fails will be the one who keeps doing the same thing expecting different results (i.e. breaking through a plateau). The one who succeeds is the one who completely changes his approach and pushes himself into a new level of fitness (or marketing, in our case).

That’s how it works in EVERY endeavor that your pursue. So stop complaining and start working!

I seem to see two different sets of marketers on this site: a) People are making consistent sales, and b) People who’s sales are sporadic.

I’m not an expert, but I did some article and PPC marketing, and I must say it’s a lot harder than sending out an email to someone. I see it to be really strange that people are not generating a mailing list. I send out mailings on a daily basis.

Most people get into this because they want “freedom.” I don’t want to work 9-5 and make some other jack**s rich while I toil away at making HIS company successful. No, I want to be successful with my own project.

That’s the first reason. The second reason that I’m personally doing it is because I need a way to finance my lifestyle. There are lots of things that I want to do with my life that will not be possible if I end up in somedead end job.

So here are 2 reasons why your CB sales suck. And I hope this helps people out:

1) You’re not retaining potential clients

Do you really think people buy on the first visit? How many times have you gone to a mall, or store, or looked up a product and said, “Hey! I need this. I’m going to buy it!” Never. I’m not an impulse buyer. I’m really really frugal. But at the same time, I purchase at least one fitness product per month. Why? Because I’m interested in it. Which brings me to my second point -

2) You’re not attracting the right clients

What you want is someone who needs that product. The people that come to my site are people that already workout. I’ve had people buy multiple times from me because I showed them a need through my blogging. I had one guy buy 5 products from me!

So in conclusion, what you need to do is start an opt-in list. Don’t do bum marketing. Instead, write your articles and target keywords that arespecifically for your target market. Make the articles really good so they click on it. The idea is to win their trust as quickly as possible so they sign up to your list.

I had one guy buy from me 2 days after he signed up after my email list. Now that’s how you convert people. Not by sending people to a vendors site and hoping for the best. Yesterday I spent around 6-7 dollars onPPC and didn’t get a single sale.

I realized this morning that I need to what’s working and stop listening to all these people are supposedly experts – but I’m making more sales than they are. I’m officially putting a hold on allppc marketing.

It’s going to be solely about growing my list as quickly as possible with relevant people. Don’t be afraid to send out email everyday. The only people that will unsubscribe are people that will not buy from you.

Hope this helps people out!

I been getting a few questions through the Digital Point Clickbank forum. Here’s one that came in this morning:

Just wondering, are you making good money with adwords ppc ? you mentioned you made 1 sale. Is that good? May I know how do you choose your keyword and any tips for adword

Here was my response:

Not that difficult ****. People make a big deal out of nothing.

All I do is go to the google keyword tool, put in a keyword that relates to my product, then grab all the 50-200 keywords that they suggest and put it into my list.

I make a few ad groups and see what happens. Start with 10 and every day, slowly get rid of the worst performing one untilyou’re left with just 3.

This is when you start testing out the actual ads.

Also, make sure you use the demographic feature. I cut down on the number of countries I was targeting to 13 because that is where i recieved my sales from.

I also made sure that only people between the ages of 25 – 50 clicked on my ads. No one else has money.

The sale I made was good, becuase I only spend $2. I’ve made mistakes and spent $20 to make one sale for a product that gives me $20 commissions. I’ve either broke evven or lost money.

This time, I sold a product that give me $8.90 commssion, so my profit was $7.90. Don’t always go for the high paying products.

Hope this helps.