100,000 Impressions, 70% Click Through and Yet, No Sales

Yeah, I know it’s frustrating! You could be banging your head against the wall thinking what went wrong. Was it your landing page? The merchant sales page? Or the traffic that you drove to your site was not targeted enough?

Now the answer is very subjective and there are plenty of possibilities. Perhaps, each of it counts and contributed to the total failure of your campaign. It will take volume of pages to explain each component and how to tweak it. So, I will not. Basically there’s no secret and no short cut. You just need to tweak, test and analyze.

• Test – just make some changes here and there to your site and to try out new ways of driving traffic that you have not done before.
• Analyze – You don’t really need complicated software or scripts. Install Google Analytics and StatCounter to your site. Those pretty much give you enough info and idea on what changes you ought to make to bring in more and more traffic, conversion and sales.
• Tweak – made those changes that you feel will improve the performance and rinse and repeat the process with your next campaign.

Okay, this is not what I intended to tell in this post actually. In fact, what I wanted to show you today that could be one of the reason why you are having such poor conversion rate is because, you have chosen the wrong product!

Here is a detailed discussion on choosing the right affiliate product for promotion that I did some time ago..

But, that again wasn’t main point today. Sorry, I tried not to be long winded but that is an inborn traits that I could hardly control. Now, if you are promoting affiliate products from Clickbank especially, what you must do is not just to locate the products from the Clickbank marketplace. Even if you’re using paid service like CBengine is not enough. Let me show you why.

Remarks: All screen capture shown was correct at the time of this writing. Nothing has been added, edited or changed but simply screenshots made during the findings.

Disclaimer: There is no intention to defame the vendor or to delude or to confuse the public by making fake or false statement whatsoever. All examples quoted on this post are meant for reference purpose only and “as is” basis with no liability whatsoever to the author and NetBizSimplified.com. By reading this post, readers agreed that no claims will be made against the author and NetBizSimplified.com and further agreed to make their own findings and due diligence before making any decision.

Example # 1

Now, if you type in “Private label products” in the search box at Clickbank marketplace, here’s one of the product being listed there.

And what you will need to do next is to copy and paste the vendor id and make a search in CBengine. The same product was listed as well…

It’s a very good product to promote with recurring commission. In fact, I promoted this for some time but that was before the change that I am about to show you. Now let’s have a look at the order page…

Do you notice that?! They are processing the payment via 2CheckOut and not Clickbank! Yeah, in other words, don’t you ever expect to get commission even if the conversion rate is good. The reason? Well, that’s obvious – the vendor is using another payment processor to process orders.

Example # 2

I have come across many similar vendors on Clickbank. Some will place two order buttons on the sales page where one goes through Clickbank and the other through 2CheckOut. In that instance, your chances of getting paid have been immediately reduced to 50%.

Okay, here’s one example. Type in “auto hits machine” in the search box at Clickbank marketplace and you will find this in the first result page.

Now, let’s have a look at the order page. You will see 2 order links on the page.  If you’re an affiliate promoting this, then you’ll be lucky if the buyer clicks on the 2nd link to make the purchase which will be processed through Clickbank and you’ll get your share. But if he clicks on the Paypal button, then you’re doomed.

Yeah, I know that Clickbank has integrated with Paypal in some way. But look at this…

You’ll be brought directly to Paypal. Now, if the order was processed through Clickbank, visitors will be given the option to pay directly by credit card or with Paypal and the page should look as follow…

And if visitor clicks on the Paypal button on this page, he will be brought to Paypal to login into his Paypal account to process the payment with the Clickbank heading at the top which will look like below:

Example # 3

No, it’s not only vendors in the “internet marketing” or “business to business” category that are doing this. Here’s another example in the “Pet” category. See that? It can be found on Clickbank marketplace and …

… also in CBengine. Wow! 75% commission must be alluring to affiliate. But if you do not make proper testing prior to promoting this, then all your effort will be wasted.

Now let’s check out the order page …

Only one order button. So, what’s wrong? Because the order was processed directly by Paypal and never pass through Clickbank.

So, be very very careful when selecting an affiliate product to promote. There are many things that you must pay attention to. Other less serious “tricks” that vendor uses are to direct your hop link to a lead capture page. Now, some of them do credit you when a purchase was made as your affiliate id will still be embed in his autoresponder series. But, don’t be shock that some don’t.

And we have always heard about affiliate hijacking and cookie stuffing. Do you know that these black hat methods are done by some of the vendors themselves?

These could also be the reason why super affiliates only promote products from certain vendors and highly competitive niches. If you are an affiliate marketer who prefers Clickbank over other payment processors simply because you think that you’ll get paid for sure, you’re wrong. It wasn’t Clickbank fault, but vendors.

They never realize the power of affiliates.

Okay, that’s all for today. So, do proper research before you start promoting an affiliate product especially if you are gonna use paid methods to drive traffic to the product.

Cheers!

Waken