In the Beginning - My Exposure to Affiliate Marketing

I decided to start this blog to record my experiences with online affiliate marketing, specifically with Click Bank. I learned about Click Bank (and a lot of details around online marketing) from a DOT COM seminar held by Ron LeGrand/Global Publishing. One concept they taught was affiliate marketing was an easy way into online marketing with low to no cost and could generate easy revenue. So I wanted to put this to the test.

WHAT DOES CLICK BANK DO?

Simply put, people who have a product to sell but don't want to solely do all the marketing can add their product to Click Bank. Then, people who have no products to see but with ability to market them can go to Click Bank, market someone's product, and earn a commission from each sale. Pretty straight forward.

My experience so far is that the products tend to be information based. So courses, eBooks, audio/video education, etc on many different topics. The general categories they have are:

• Arts & Entertainment
• Betting Systems
• Business / Investing
• Computers / Internet
• Cooking, Food, and Wine
• E-business & E-marketing
• Education
• Employment & Jobs
• Fiction
• Games
• Green Products
• Health & Fitness
• Home & Garden
• Languages
  
• Mobile
• Parenting & Families
• Politics / Current Events
• Reference
• Self-Help
• Software & Services
• Spirituality, New Age, and Alternative Benefits
• Sports
• Travel

The mechanics of the process is easy enough for anyone to follow:

• Find a product you are comfortable to promote
• You will get a special URL for a landing page for the product (they seller/Click Bank will have a professional landing page for the product)
• You will market this URL
• Anytime anyone buys the product from the URL, you make money
• Click Bank will send you a cheque every two weeks (or more) depending on your payout threshold, which can be as low as $10.

HOW DO YOU PROMOTE?

So what is the best way to promote a product? Well, Click Banks provides some general suggestions. They suggest things like:

• Article Marketing
• Niche Sites and Blogs
• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing

They provide a bit of info on these. However, my online marketing experiences thus far is that all of this is easier said then done. You essentially need to match your product to:

• the right target group
• who is motivated to buy
• in sufficient volumes (as you will only get a tiny percentage who buy)

DOES IT WORK?

That is what I plan to find out. I have heard of many people making decent extra income from online sources (one buddy makes $500-$1,000 a month from Google ads on his blog). But I want to see if this sort of marketing will work better.

I put my first Click Bank ad up a few months ago on a web site I have, but really ignored it to date. From that, I made $14. I also started doing some more aggressive marketing (mainly blog commenting) and I have made another $33. Not huge money, but pretty good for no cost and minimal effort. As time goes by, I will update how I am honing my abilities.



MY NEXT STEPS

I plan on learning more about the products I promote. The following are my current list of promotions. (Disclaimer - if you go to these sites and buy the products, I will make money). I plan to buy the Commission Domination product as it is training for how to use Click Bank.

Trick Photography

Digital Wedding Photography

XBOX Repair

Commission Domination

We will see where these go in the next little while. :)