How I made my first $400 check from Clickbank
I used to have a scan of it somewhere. To me it was amazing that is was this easy to make money online. I had been working construction and it’s about the same check I would get for working in the Phoenix heat for 40 hours a week. Yes, I know. The checks the gurus like to show with six figures would have been nicer. But it’s time to get real. Most of them had been doing it a long time and had a network of sites or advertising systems built that would keep the money coming in 24/7. The "secrets" they were selling in their ebooks had already been used to death and, if not, would soon be. A whole new army of newbie affiliates flooding the system, making Google work quicker at fixing their algorithm, because many of the secret ebooks you see are tutorials on how to be a spammer.
I had a little site called Profit-Ware that I used to promote the software and ebook I wrote for Ebay. I had spent a lot of time doing SEO and coding by hand to build the site. Everything was HTML, no code. I wrote articles and sent them to directories. I submitted my software and ebook to sites all around the web, but about the only way I monetized the site was through the sale of my software, Hotbid. It scraped either categories or search results and sorted the resulting auctions by the amount of bids they received. It also did analysis of the keywords in the auctions titles. It sold, but not well. Much better software was out there. Mine was just cheaper.
I gave up on that idea eventually and decided to get into affiliate marketing. I tried Clickbank first. I wanted a CB mall type site, but figured one would look exactly like another, so I wrote my own to have a different footprint than those available for purchase. I was just learning PHP and the first stupid version I wrote took the Clickbank marketplace and rewrote it on the fly without caching. Not a good choice.
I had never used stats on my site yet and had no idea the site had been ranked so high due to the SEO work I wasn’t really tracking. The first two weeks I made $400. Three months later, my check every two weeks was right around $3000. It was amazing and the bug had bit me.
I know you’re saying," I can’t write PHP" or "This is too complicated for me." This is not the case. A site like I created above is not sustainable. Eventually, other people build a better site. So I am not even suggesting that. And anyway, once I get everything in a simple package, I will be giving a Clickbank mall type site away for free. Maybe even one that intermingles with PayDotCom since they both have similiar products.
I have learned a lot about affiliate marketing since then. There are hundreds of ways to sell products from simple to complex. I hope to have a nice mix of methods available on this site, from those suited to newbies to concepts I haven’t even tried yet myself. So stay tuned…
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Thank you for this information. I found you from your Squidoo site. I am going to keep reading your information on Affiliate Programs and Clickbank.
Yes, I hope to get some guidance from readers, so I know when I am getting too complicated or need to slow down. This site is not quite yet to the place I want it, but I am depending on readers to make it better.
Too many people charge for this information. I learned most of it for free. Instead of having to hunt and read everything I could find, I figured I could give everyone a shortcut.
Because if you really want to make money doing this, you will.
I really like the new look of your site, the info you are sharing with us is nice. I used to check out your mall from time to time and now you have changed the site completely, the look and feel is much easier on the eyes and much less complex than the mall-type you had setup.
By chance, could you give us the script you use on your pages (the ones that all have a frameset with your affiliate link under the frame) or did you purchase that one from one of the mall type sites?
I will eventually be giving just about everything I have used away including a query grabbing script.
It gets the query from search engine hits, saves to the database and then uses the id for the Clickbank tracking id. This way you can track ROI down to keywords when using Adwords.
I wrote all the scripts for this site, but am getting away from it. Too much work. I like API’s now. Much easier.
And this blog will be changing as I get to it, so that it will be a more useful site. A blog is not really a good tool for reference and I want this site to become that.
Plus I am tired of being the programmer behind the curtain. Screw it, there is enough ideas for all of us. Plus I hope I create a new army of affiliates that will maybe pay some link love back. And yes, I will be adding dofollow so that all commenters will get rewarded.
Thanks.
Personal question, but how well did your mall site do.. Was it worth the time invested in making it that big? I had one a while back, but after about 4 or 5 months of only a few sales a week I gave up on it, there are just too many new products being introduced to try to keep up…
I was literally dumbfounded at trying to get all those different categories and sites listed in a fashion that looked good, let alone stand out from all the other clickbank mall sites that all have the same exact words and phrases on them.
I don’t think clickbank malls are worth the time or money to invest in, if you are gonna make one, build it from scratch and use your own wording, otherwise it will just get stuck in the google sandbox with the rest of them.