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.

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.

It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on my Clickbank stats. But that’s because the numbers haven’t been very good. Here are the numbers for the past few weeks:

As you can see, there’s been a dramatic improvement in my sales for the past two weeks. It has to do with a brand new website I started,WorkoutWithouyWeights.net (WWW). On WWW, I promote only one product: Bodyweight Blueprint for Fat Loss (BBFL).

BBFL is a $77 product. Yes, I know. Never would I have thought that you can sell a $77 digital product online. But you can, and the product converts better than a lot of my lower end products. Just take a glance at these stats:

Bodyweight Blueprint for Fat Loss ($77)

Average $ per sale: $48.44
Hops per order: 1/86
Hops need to get $200 = 355

Gladiator Body Workout ($27 for basic, $47 for combo)

Average $ per sale: $20.52
Hops per order: 1/67
Hops need to get $200 = 653

Average Joe Workout ($6)

Average $ per sale: $3.41
Hops per order: 1/58
Hops need to get $200 = 3402

Workout Without Weights ($19.95 for basic, $47 for combo)

Average $ per sale: $8.90
Hops per order: 1/169
Hops need to get $200 =3798

So, right off the bat we see that BBFL converts better than Workout Without Weights. Both are bodyweight training products, but Workout Without Weights costs $57.05 less thanBBFL. And my chunk of commission is much bigger for BBFL than Workout Without Weights, hence I need to send less traffic to BBFL’s sales page in order to reach  my target income.

As you can see, last week I was extremely close to reaching my target income. If I stick to the plan, I should be able to hit it this week.

Why I stopped Working on Shah Training

Two weeks ago I realized the biggest fault with Shah Training: too much stuff going on. I was trying to promote almost 10 different products, plus build up a mailing list. It was just too many things. Hence, I experimented with creating a single site with just one page and one product.

Simple, and to the point. I’m sending traffic through ezine articles, primarily. However, I’m not 100% sure if the sales are coming from ezine articles readers. I’m also sending traffic through PPC. Here’s the main difference between PPC and EzineArticles: Targeted Traffic

You can create campaigns where the traffic is extremely targeted to the kind of market that you want with PPC. So far, I’ve only had a few clicks from PPC to my site. So I’m not spending a whole lot of money on PPC overall. But, on days were I turn PPC off, I have absolutely no sales.

So for this week, I need to design some sort of experiment that will really help me understand where the traffic is coming from that are converting into sales. The reason this is important to know is because I am now spending $97 per month as anezinearticles premium member.

That means that my articles get approved faster, hence sending me more traffic to my site. But if the traffic isn’t converting, then I’m just wasting my time and money.

I want to thank everyone for their help and support. Here are some goals ‘m working towards:

# Get 100 email subscribers in a day – currently doing 20-30
# Make $100 in a day – average daily income is around $20. The most I’ve made in a day is $88
# Make $400 in a week -Most I’ve made in a week is $241

Whats been working for me:

- Create email list
- Send out emails with product recommendations at bottom of post

Things I been working on that are starting to work:

- PPC marketing of a product with best conversion rate. – There is a product that I no longer carry on my site, however I noticed a sale yesterday from PPC alone. I have yet to look at the hop data, but I think it took around 20 hops to make a sale for around $8. So if I’m spending 5 cents per click, thats $1 in PPC. My profit is $7. Not bad. Better off spending money on a low-commission, high converting product, then a high commission, low-converting product.

- We’ll see what happens with this

Things I did that did not work and won’t be working on again:

- Writing ezine articles and sending traffic to a landing page. Apparently I suck at writing landing pages. I sent a lot of traffic to these landing pages, but did not get many sales. Actually, for one product I recieved one sale out of 200 hops. Not good.

So, these were just some thoughts – things that are working for me, etc. I hope to achieve that $400 per week mark soon, but of course I feel I need to be able to grab at least 100 subscribers per day, and finally reach a point where i can make $100 per day before I reach that ultimate weekly goal.

Once again thanks for everyone’s help!

Most of my sales are coming from my mailing list. I’m really great at writing blog posts, then incorporating a call to action to get people to purchase a product.

However, I feel that the SEO traffic I’m getting is a missed opportunity and so I should at least try to either grab some emails or make some sales through SEO traffic.

I want to try to make some sales before I test out grabbing emails. Right now, I’m growing my mailing list through article marketing. My squeeze page right now has a 21.9% conversion rate.

So, here’s my current landing page: http://shahtraining.com/

Here’s my squeeze page for the opt in list: http://shahtraining.com/get-your-fre…orkout-manual/

Opt-in squeeze page will naturally convert better because of I’m giving away something for free. So, here are some questions i HAVE:

1) Should I keep the landing page as is right now?
2) Should I change the landing page and use the same format as the opt-in page?
3) Should I place the opt-in list as my front landing page, hence focus on just collecting emails?

Thank you for all the great advice I been getting recently. Any ideas would be appreciated.