Should I Use ClickBank or 1ShoppingCart For My Product Launch?

by Alex in Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Product Launch, Referral Marketing

This short article is a response to a question by one of the readers, Peter Davies:

I have looked at Infusion and found it to be too expensive at this point in time. Do you think 1ShoppingCart is a decent enough product or if you are a first time launcher like me would you just use ClickBank?

Well, let’s see.

I personally don’t have a lot of experience with the vendor side of ClickBank. I am going to point out a few things that would work differently for you if you were launching your product with each solution. Also keep in mind that there are many other solutions available. However, both ClickBank and 1ShoppingCart are quite popular so it’s a good idea to compare them.

There are plenty of examples of successful launches done with either one. Either solution can work for you. It will depend on the launch model you chose and on the niche you are launching in.

1. Affiliate Management

I understand you don’t have access to the list of your affiliates from within ClickBank. You can overcome that issue by using some add-on software or by forcing your partners to register on your website first before you tell them how to set up their hop link.

1ShoppingCart has a rather elaborate affiliate management module that allows you to maintain a list of affiliates, set their commission percentages, send them emails, etc.

2. Creative / Template Management

If you use ClickBank, you need to find a way to deliver the email copy, banners, and text ads to your affiliates via your own website or email autoresponder.

1ShoppingCart Affiliate Center allows your affiliate to login and get access to all your campaign creative and template with their tracking links already built in.

3. Commission Tracking

Both ClickBank and 1ShoppingCart rely on cookies for commission tracking, which may not be the most reliable method. There are affiliate tracking solutions (e.g., Nanacast, Post Affiliate Pro, etc) that use both the cookie and the IP address to make sure your affiliates get the commissions they are entitled to.

4. Cookie Prospects For All Products (Not Just The One Being Promoted)

ClickBank will only cookie the prospect for the particular product being advertised by the affiliate. If the prospect decides to buy a different product offered by the same vendor that sale will not trigger the commission for the affiliate who referred that sale.

1ShoppingCart will cookie the prospect for all your products. I think it is only fair that affiliates get paid for all the sales they generate for you (including the products they have not directly promoted to their list).

5. 2-Tier Commissions

1ShoppingCart allows you to set up two levels of commissions. The second tier is for the commission you pay to the affiliates to refer other affiliates to you. The reason you may want this in place is because now you can bring in professional joint venture brokers (like yours truly) who will then, in a short time, connect you with the list you’d otherwise have no access to.

6. Solution Cost and ROI

1ShoppingCart would cost you at least $99/month for the package that has the shopping cart and the affiliate management module. There are no per-transaction fees other than those related to your merchant account.

ClickBank is “free” when you don’t use it but you end up paying a small fee for every transaction. Depending on the volume of sales you are about to generate, ClickBank can actually turn out to be a more expensive solution.

7. Affiliate Network

1ShoppingCart allows you to manage affiliates but doesn’t help new affiliates find you.

ClickBank is one of the oldest and largest affiliate networks around. If your product converts well, you’ll have new affiliates find you on ClickBank and start selling your products without you doing any work to recruit them.

8. Affiliate Payouts

Figuring out how much you owe each affiliate and sending them checks can be quite a hassle 1ShoppingCart and ClickBank address the issue differently. In 1ShoppingCart, you have the PayPal Mass Pay function to pay your affiliates with a click of a button. In ClickBank, you don’t even have to click the button because everything is handled by ClickBank on your behalf (and that is one of their biggest selling features).

9. Market Niche

1ShoppingCart seems to be more popular in the Personal Development / Self Help niche. ClickBank is the de facto standard in Internet marketing. To help your launch go smoothly, you want to give your affiliates a tool they are familiar with.

Hope this information will help you chose the right affiliate management software for your product launch.

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3 Main Phases Of A Product Launch

by Alex in Email Marketing, Internet Marketing

Most product launches have three main phases:

1. The Pre-Launch
2. The Launch
3. The Post-Launch

Let’s look at each phase and what it entails.

The Pre-Launch

The Pre-Launch is typically a 3-7 day period during which the prospects receive a lot of quality information and get excited about the upcoming product launch. The information  they receive during the pre-launch makes them think, “Man, if their free stuff is so good, imagine how great their PAID product must be!”

The paid product, however, is not available yet. Prospects are sent to a squeeze page that asks them to subscribe and receive a series of videos, special reports, and allows them to participate in tele-seminars and webinars.

The purpose of this phase is two-fold: Build a list for the launch and create ANTICIPATION on the part of prospects so that they are ready to pull out their credit card as soon as the product becomes available.

For this phase to have the proper effect on the prospects, you have to give away the best information, tips, tools, and advice you have. This may seem counter-intuitive, however, it’s critical that you do that.

The Launch

The day of the Launch comes and now all these thousands of people are going to rush to the website and get a copy of the product. Those who don’t buy it right away will receive an automated follow-up sequence of emails designed to persuade them to buy.

Usually, this is the phase when affiliates make all or most of their commissions. Holding contests that are based on the number of referrals or the amount of sales helps

The Post-Launch

This is a 1-4 week period after the product launch that allows the product owner to do more virtual seminars and interviews and generate more sales. Many launches skip this step and leave a lot of money on the table.

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Product Launch: Keep Your Hands Away From That Last Cookie!

Product Launch: Keep Your Hands Away From That Last Cookie!

by Alex in Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Product Launch

All the big product launches we get to hear about are done via a network of joint venture partners with large lists.

It is not uncommon for the same subscriber to be on several lists and hence receive emails about the same promotion from several joint venture partners or affiliates at the same time. When a sale happens, the big question becomes, which affiliate is entitled to receive the commission on it: The first one to deliver this offer to the prospect or the last one who sealed the deal and convinced the prospect to take action?

Either approach has positive and negative aspects.

The “first cookie wins” approach allows you to give your major partners an incentive to mail early and to create the momentum for your launch. However, smaller partners who find out about the launch or start promoting it late, will have little if any incentive to participate because a lot of their own subscribers would have been cookied but the larger affiliates. This also invites “black hat” tactics like “cookie stuffing” that some of the less scrupulous affiliates may turn to in order to gain advantage over other partners.

The “last cookie wins” approach seems the most fair. After all, it’s the affiliate that gets the sale who should get paid on it, right? So it is no surprise most affiliate tracking packages work according to this scenario. Obviously, it may be a little harder for you to recruit some of the big list owners as your partners as now they’d have to work harder to make their commission from your launch.

It is also possible to use a combination of the two approaches by using the “last cookie wins” for tracking but recording the affiliate ID along with the contact details for the prospect in your autoresponder. When you send out follow up emails, you can drop in the affiliate code of the original affiliate in the purchase link. In this case it’s the affiliate who generated the lead is the one that ultimately gets paid the commission.

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Product Launch and Affiliate Tracking Software

by Alex in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Product Launch, Referral Marketing

If you plan on launching an information product — be it a course, a membership website, a coaching program, or simply a book — through a network of joint venture partners, one of the more important considerations is the software used for affiliate tracking.

Your most important task is to make sure your affiliates are paid all the commissions they are entitled to. Alas, many software packages are much less than bulletproof when it comes to commission reporting and tracking.

Some shopping carts offer built-in affiliate systems. There are also a number of stand-alone affiliate tracking solutions that are either hosted for you or that you can host yourself.

Here is the list of the most important things to consider when choosing an affiliate solution:

1. Are the referrals tracked only via cookies or are there additional level of assurance like IP tracking?

2. How much control do you have over the way cookies behave? (How soon would they expire? Is it the first cookie or the last cookie that gets the sale?)

3. How many levels of commissions can you pay? (Many launches only pay one level of commissions, however, adding an extra level will allow you to approach joint venture brokers and off-load a lot of JV partner recruiting to them. You may want to stop at two levels as anything more than that and you will be considered a multi-level company with many regulations and restrictions around what you can and cannot do.)

4. Would you be able to set commissions to a different level for individual partners? (You may want to be able to offer some of your key partners a special deal and possibly pay them a higher percentage).

5. Is the reporting function adequate? (Many affiliate programs simply don’t give you much information or the information in the report may be delayed by 24 hours, which is almost eternity in a product launch scenario.)

6. Does it offer you an easy way to host media files (email copy, banners, text links, pre-written tweets, etc) with the affiliate’s link automatically built in?

7. Will it work with your current autoresponder / email marketing system?

8. Will it scale to handle the traffic and the load on the server?

9. Will it allow you to go into the system and manually verify the commissions by matching them to the orders from a particular affiliate? (Blindly trusting the software can be disastrous. Best practices include thorough testing preceding the launch and spot check throughout. Be aware that some affiliate tracking packages will report to you the number but may not give you enough information to know how this number was arrived at, rendering any manual verification impossible.)

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Internet Marketing Lesson: A Sheep, A Duck, And A Rooster

Internet Marketing Lesson: A Sheep, A Duck, And A Rooster

by Alex in A/B Split Testing, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing

A little story for you, which may not seem related to Internet marketing right away. I promise to bring it all home for you in the end.

If I were to say “Montgolfier”, most people would answer that that name belonged to the two brothers who flew the first ever hot air balloon…  and they would be close but not quite correct.

See, Montgolfier did invent the balloon and were the first to build one. However, they weren’t the first passengers on board their invention.

Since up to that point, human beings had never had a chance to become airborne, the effect of the air flight on a living organism was unknown. The Montgolfier were offered criminals as their guinea pigs. They declined. Instead, they picked a sheep, a duck, and a rooster.

Obviously, that story has a happy end. Nowadays, thousands of people get up in the air in airplanes, helicopters, gliders and, of course, hot air balloons. They don’t think twice about it and obviously don’t remember the three little creatures that paved the way to human flight.

What’s the moral of the story, you may ask? And what does it have to do with Internet marketing?

Well, imagine you are creating a new product. You’re excited. You’re so sure it’s going to be a smashing success. The website it up, the shopping cart is ready to take orders. You go ahead and spend a small fortune on the traffic and, to top it off, line up a bunch of JV partners.

The big day arrives. The traffic comes in fast and furious and…

… nothing! Your squeeze page didn’t squeeze and your sales copy didn’t sell. At least not to the extent that would be considered “reasonable”.

The money spent on advertising is gone forever. And so are the partners who vouch to never participate in your lame launches again.

That’s one possible scenario.

Now imagine doing things a bit differently.

You create a product and put together two different versions of the same squeeze page. You set up an A/B Split test and send the traffic to these squeeze pages through a link rotator, which you then promote to a relatively small in-house list (the online equivalent of the Montgolfier’s sheep, duck, and rooster.)

You generate a bunch of clicks, just enough to tell which squeeze page works better (and if it works at all). You pick the better version (“control”) and send it out to all the lists you can get your hands on.

Your affiliate partners come in and start promoting your product too. This time, the conversions are high. Everybody is making money on the upsells and everyone’s happy.

What was the difference?

It’s easy to see: Instead of trying to predict how your squeeze page would weather out in the marketplace, you did a limited test before opening the floodgates to major traffic. A small extra step in planning and testing your campaign can mean the difference between making it and not making it in Internet marketing.

In a few days, one of my JV partners will be sending out my offer to his super-big list. So guess what I’m working on now? Exactly: I’m setting up an A/B Split test for my pages that I will promote to one of my own list. And when the big traffic hits my squeeze page, I will put my best foot forward because I will know which one is, in fact, the best.

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The Easiest, Fastest, Most Overlooked Way To Double Your Pay As an Internet Marketer

by Alex in A/B Split Testing, Copywriting, Internet Marketing

This short article may read like a math lesson. However, its purpose is to simply show you the revenue mechanics of your Internet marketing business and help you get that “pay raise” you’ve been working so hard on for so long.

Every successful Internet marketing business has a way of collecting people’s contact details and adding them to a database. That is usually accomplished with a squeeze page.

I think it is safe to say that having a good squeeze page is critical to “making it” in Internet marketing.

Yet a lot of people don’t test their squeeze pages. They don’t tweak them to squeeze more juice out of the traffic they are getting. They don’t look at their conversion rates.

If you happen to be in that number, I hope to give you enough evidence to make testing your squeeze page a priority.

So let’s begin.

Let’s imagine that your squeeze page is converting at a very respectable 35%. You decide to conduct an experiment and test several headlines. After a series of A/B Split tests you end up with a headline that improves the conversion rate for your squeeze page by 2%.

Next, you change the graphics and the location of your opt in box that results in another improvement of 5%.

You don’t stop there and continue testing. Adding the privacy statement results in another 3% bump.

Excited, you add a testimonial. The one from a male client doesn’t seem to help that much. However, the female version results in another 3% improvement.

These numbers may seem small and insignificant. But let’s add them up.

2% + 5% + 3% + 3% = 13%

(Actually, adding the percentages here is not mathematically correct. I will spare you the calculations but if you were to do the math right you’d end up with 13.62% improvement. Think “compound interest”.)

A 13% improvement may not seem like much. However, let’s look at what’s going on. You page is now converting at (35% + 13%) = 48%. So basically if in the past your squeeze was  converting approximately one out of three clicks into a subscriber, now it converts one out of two.

This additional 13% is in reality a (13 / 35) = 37.14% improvement to your conversions.

Let’s see how this improvement may help your bank account.

With the new squeeze page, every dollar you invest in the advertising of your business goes a whole 37 cents further. You also get 37% more leads from every joint venture. Now the campaigns that were dogs are starting to make you money, while the rest have gone from mildly profitable to wildly lucrative.

Bear with me for a little bit. We are not quite done yet.

Every business operates at a certain profit margin. Traditional “brick-and-mortar” companies may have a profit margin of 3-15%. An Internet business can, in fact, enjoy a much higher one.

Let’s say your profit margin was at 30% before all the testing and the tweaking you’ve done. Now you have just expanded the number of leads, and hence the amount of sales, by 37%.

And the best part, it didn’t cost you anything at all, other that some time, to do that! It is all pure profit.

There is a moral to this story. Here it is:

Every time you don’t find the time to properly test your squeeze page, remember that by taking the shortcut you are accepting a cut in your pay check. And while there is always something to pin your lackluster sales to — bad economy, changing search engine algorithms, too many product launches going on at the same time, or your customers “not spending” — deep down inside, you know that it only takes a quick glance in the mirror to know the real reason.

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A 100-Year Old Trick That Makes You More Money Online

by Alex in A/B Split Testing, Copywriting, Internet Marketing

Even though Internet marketing has only been around for a very short time (at least on the historical scale), the principles that online money-making is based on have been formulated, tested, and perfected over 100 years ago by the direct response marketing industry.

One of the simplest, most powerful, and yet probably one of the most overlooked “tricks” that comes from that time is A/B Split testing. (And it is overlooked, of course, mainly by the rookies. Every successful Internet marketer I know uses it with an almost religious rigor.)

Let’s take a look at what A/B Split testing is all about.

Back in the day, an advertiser would run the same ad in two cities at the same time. The ad in New York would use Headline A and the ad in Boston would use Headline B. The sales numbers would come in and the results would be tracked.

A week later, they would run the same ad again. However this time, the headlines would be reversed: Headline A for Boston and Headline B for New York.

When this experiment is over, the advertiser would know with scientific precision, whiccdh headline generated higher sales numbers. The winning ad would be declared a “control” and  would be subsequently used to attack the national market and build another business empire.

As Internet marketers, we are blessed to have a great variety of tools available to us to help us measure pretty much anything and everything our heart desires. Computers make it easy and inexpensive to do.

Yet so many online business owners still neglect to test much of anything, either due to ignorance, arrogance, or just the lack of proper time management.

Let’s see what can — and should –  be tested in your online business.

First is your “ad”, something that gets you a click. That can be a PPC ad, a banner, or the email copy that your JV partners use to send you referrals.

The next thing would usually be your squeeze page. (Shame on you if you don’t have one.) Just a few tweaks here and there can significantly improve your conversions and result in an almost instant pay raise for you.

As we continue, we need to test the sales page, the offer, all the upsells, and downsells, and, of course, the email follow up sequence.

Here are some of the less obvious ideas to test: How about adding a physical product option (CDs, DVDs, product binders shipped to your customer’s door) and adding direct mail (postcard, greeting cards, and “3d” mail items that grab attention) to your follow up? Many online marketers never think about moving their business partially into the offline, so if you manage to create a campaign that works, you have a potential of create an enormous competitive advantage.

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Driving Email Open Rates

by Alex in Copywriting, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, List Building

There are a number of email marketing metrics a savvy marketer can use to continuously improve the performance of his or her campaigns. I’d like to touch on the factors that impact the open rate of an email marketing campaign.

Whether your email will or will not get opened depends on the time and the day of the week when you are sending it out, how strong the relationship is with the list you have been able to build and, of course, the subject line.

Your autoresponder system should store all the emails you have ever sent out to your list along with the open rates. Note which days and times tend to be better for your list. Once you notice a pattern, start strategically targeting the times that are likely to get you the better opens.

  • The relationship with your list is something that you build over time, before you need to send out a promotional email to your list. It’s a well that you need to dig way before you’re thirsty. That being said, there are still a few things you can do even in a promo piece that will continue the process of building a relationship:
  • Make sure to use the “from” name they will recognize
  • Brand your email messages with the name of the topic you are writing about or the abbreviated name of your newsletter  (put it in the square bracket in the beginning of the subject line.)
  • Work a personal story into the copy or take a short paragraph to tell your list about what’s going on in your life right this moment. (E.g., “I’m just heading out and taking my son to the baseball game but I wanted to make sure you receive this important message”)

As they say, people do business with and refer business to those they know, like, and trust. If you want them to spend their money with you, let them know more about you, get them to like you through your stories and be consistent, and they will very soon will start trusting you.

Now, let’s talk about the subject line.

The subject line is the add for your email and hence all the copywriting principles apply here. Danny Hatch, one of the best copywriters, has identified seven “copy drivers”. They are: fear, greed, guilt, anger, exclusivity, salvation, flattery. Use these in your copy to see more action from your subscribers.

The two types of subject lines that have performed well for me are benefit-centric (“8 Free Special Reports with Resell Rights”) or curiosity-based (“Seen This?”)

You should put as much care into crafting a good subject line as you would into writing a headline for an ad. If you need inspiration to start writing, check out the 100 Greatest Headlines that Jay Abraham has put together.  Some of these could be over 100 years but they still work as well now as they did then.

Treat your Inbox as a gigantic “swipe file”. Read the emails you are getting from other marketers and see which ones you’d be interested to click on and read. Copy / paste the best headlines into a text file and store it on your computer. That will become your personal swipe file and the source of the higher email open rates.

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Internet Marketing Productivity: Taming The Information Overload

by Alex in Internet Marketing, Productivity Tips, Time Management

If you’ve been in the Internet Marketing field (even as a student) for some time, you probably wake up every morning to find several hundred new emails in your Inbox.

One doesn’t need to be a psychic to guess that most of these emails promise instant traffic, loads of subscribers, and untold profits that will be bestowed upon you the moment you click on the link. And on that link you click to watch another video and read another special report. Another hour goes by and you are not any closer to achieving your business goals.

Now, for the record, I’m not knocking email marketing or the products that are being promoted via email. In fact, I sincerely hope you are one of my subscribers and some of the emails in your Inbox have come from me.

The real issue is the “kid at the candy store” syndrome that we all (including yours truly) succumb to so easily. And when we do, not much gets accomplished.

While there are a number of things you can do to eliminate distractions and organize your day, there is one critical step that a lot of people skip.

And that step is making a conscious decision about your Internet Marketing specialty, i.e. the one marketing tactic you are going to master.

As they say, you can do anything but you cannot do everything. You can’t be equally good at SEO, PPC, AdSense, Affiliate Marketing, PLR, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, Safe Lists, Traffic Exchanges, Article Marketing, Video Marketing, Podcasts, CPA, Media Buying, etc, etc, etc.

The moment you get clear about who you are and what you do, you can continue to voraciously consume all the information related to that one topic… and absolutely ignore everything else.

The following questions should help you find your Internet Marketing persona (turn off you cell phone, shut down your instant messenger, close your email and spend the next 20 minutes writing down your answers):

  • Would you rather sell information, software or physical products?
  • Do you think you’d be good at creating concepts and “pontificating” or do you think you’d excel at promoting others?
  • Are you an analytical number-cruncher or an inspired artist?
  • Which traffic method(s) have you had more experience with or would like to get really good at?
  • If someone were to put a gun to your head and make you pick just one traffic method, one money-making approach, and one type of product to sell, which three would would you end up with?

Write down your answers. Read what you’ve written down out loud. Note what it feels like when you hear your voice say it.

If it doesn’t feel all that great, re-do the exercise.

And if it does, congratulations! You have just found the key to personal focus, productivity, and, ultimately, Internet business success.

As from now on, you are going to ignore anything that is not directly related to that “one thing” you have discovered within yourself and defined for yourself. And through this simple action, you will eradicate the information overload, slay the dragon, and sail the ship of your fledgling business out of the swamp and into clear waters.

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List Building Secrets: Top 10 Easy Ways To Build a “Seed” List – Part 2

by Alex in Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, List Building

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series List Building - Seed List

6. Get Paid Search Traffic (PPC, PPV, Content Network, Banners)

Buying search traffic is one of the fastest ways to get the clicks.  If you have some cash to burn, then this may be the right way to test the new market you’re about to enter.

What I like about pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-view (PPV) and other paid traffic methods, is that you can measure the effectiveness of each campaign, each keyword you’re bidding on, and every piece of online ‘real estate’ you advertise on. If you are the analytical type, this may  become your favourite traffic method.

Since you are paying for every click, you need to find a way to immediately monetize this traffic so that you could run a PPC campaign indefinitely at a profit or at least at a break even. This may require a fair bit of fine-tuning, and that’s why you need to have a cash reserve to play this game.

7. Get “Free” Search Traffic (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is a misnomer. You can’t optimize search engine. You can, however, optimize your web pages in a way that search engines will find it and start suggesting it to the people who type in certain search words or phrases in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

SEO is something that takes time to see the results of. If this is new territory for you, then pick another — faster — method of acquiring a seed list.

On the other hand, if you are an SEO expert and have websites that search engines send a lot of traffic to, all you need to do is offer all these people a chance to subscribe to your newsletter in exchange for a special report or other valuable gift.

8. Use Safe Lists and Viral List Builders

A safe list is a special email “club” where each member can send emails to other members. When you join a safe list, you give permission to other members to send you their ads. Don’t expect the leads that you get from a safe list to be quite as responsive as, say SEO traffic. However, you can still successfully market your squeeze page in safe lists.

Viral list builders take the idea of safe lists to the next level and compensate you with traffic credits for referring other marketers into your “downline”.

When you use either safe lists or viral list builders, remember not to sign up with your main email address. You are likely to receive a large amount of promotional emails there. So create a brand-new gmail account and use that instead.

9. Use Traffic Exchanges

A traffic exchange is a network of marketers who receive traffic credits for looking at other people’s websites. Since the users of traffic exchanges get compensated for looking at your squeeze page, your conversion is likely to be rather low. However, you will still be acquiring leads.

If you have children at home, get them to login into your traffic exchange and click on other people’s ads. That will help you build up your credits, and with more credits in your account, you will receive more traffic.

10. Buy Co-Reg Leads

Coreg (also “co-reg” and co-registration) refers to a service that allows you to place your ad on other people’s thank you pages.

The responsiveness of a co-reg list would depend on a lot of factors. Remember that these leads don’t come free. You should expect to pay anywhere from 25c – 50c per lead of good quality. And just like with any other method, run a test and see if these leads are going to respond to your offer and products.

Most of the major autoresponder providers don’t allow you to import a co-reg list anymore without your subscribers re-confirming their subscription. Give preference to those co-reg services that already come with an autoresponder.

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