My Slow, Deliberate Progression to $700/week with Youtube + Clickbank

Hey Guys! I've recently had great success in local lead gen and building an authority site, so I'd like to test my skills with clickbank now. I started off using youtube to get leads, which gave me starter cash to reinvest 20% of my profits into building my main money site.

Then I outsourced SEO, local search and continued to scale up youtube on my own.

I'll admit, for the first 6 months I had no clue what I was doing. But eventually I learned how to streamline my funnels, and get things done for cheap. I currently make about $1000-$1,500 a week locally, and my goal with youtube + clickbank is $100/day or $700/week.

This is going to take a lot of work, I'm prepared for it, and I did actually start 2 months ago. But all I did was make a few videos, throw some links at them and forget about them.

When I realized I made $170, I thought "hmm, maybe I have a knack for this".

Then I got another sale yesterday which was awesome.

ANYWAY, this is the game plan.

1) Niche Selection.

To compensate for picking a weak niche, and wasting time ranking videos that there is not traffic for (I learned this the hard way using geotargeted videos for long tail keywords) I'm going to be targeting products with a gravity between 100-250. I will be picking niches I already know a lot about, and don't honestly care about the competition. Slow and steady always wins the race, and I'm a very patient person.

2) The Offer / Video aka "The Hardest Part".

I think most newbies make a major mistake, by not focusing on how they position the offer, or their call to action. Youtube is a haven for spammers and scammers. People have now developed a 6th sense when watching any video they see. So you have to address rebutals at every opportunity you can. You need to be highly critical of anything you promote. Look at rotten tomatoes and how they review videos. They gained a lot of credibility just by being CRITICAL.

My videos are about 80% a tutorial or crash course. With 20% being random "unplanned" reviews (that are actually planned). I'd say 15% of my random reviews, are highly critical and negative. Like "this product sucked for xxxx reasons". Then 5% being the actual product I'm targeting. And I WILL criticize that product. But the few benefits I mention are meticulously planted, and very powerful.

The call to action on the video I made today was something like: "If you visit his site, do yourself a favor and ignore his stupid video. I hate when people put these cheesy sales videos on their site. Plus, the video is long, and the book is 100xs better, so if you want to save time, just get the book " (when the sales video is actually really well done lol)

But the point is, if someone hates the sales video, they still have a reason to buy the book.
And if they like the sales video, they're DEFINITELY getting the book.

With youtube, the MORE time you "waste" positioning the offer properly, the MORE time you SAVE making more videos that don't convert.

3) Keyword Research (this is a bit different than niche selection imo)

This is after my niche is selected and the video is done.

I try to stay away from product review keywords. I understand they convert, but I'm looking for backdoor keywords with a lot more traffic. I usually start by plugging my most generic keyword into GKT. I will also use uber suggest and scrapebox SOMETIMES to find more keywords. Most of the time I don't. I just check off "exact" and look for keywords with the highest search and lowest amount of competition. I do about 8 low-med comp keywords and 2 high comp keywords.

Remember, you can have a competitive niche and still find low competition keywords. Which is why I prefer high competition niches in the first place.

4) Maximizing Exposure With Minimum Time Investment

This is a long process to explain, but actually takes very little time to do.

I never try to rank 1 video for more than 2-3 keywords. I see lots of other guys doing this, and with local lead gen, I had more luck using more videos than trying to rank 1 video for a bunch of keywords. This is also the same with my website. Its just faster and easier to do imo.

Once I have a quality video made up (these are well scripted voice overs I do on my own), I remix the images around.

NOW, don't get the wrong idea. Videos with spinning images and background music are CRAP.

However, thats not really what I'm doing. This is nothing like animoto type videos. The money here is in the script. It doesn't actually matter what the images do imo. If the script is compelling, people will listen, and they will take action.

SO, I take that 1 version/video in power director, and shorten the outro/cta graphic by 1 second. Then I quickly spin the images around manually, and rerender a new video.

I do this 9 times, so I wind up with 10 high quality, "unique" videos, all with different thumbnails.

This allows me to target more keywords, and it greatly diminishes the chances of your videos getting taken down. I know at least for local lead gen, I'm YET to have 1 video taken down.

5) Ranking / Pushing The Videos To Page 1

This is another crucial stage. However, its actually really simple if you know what you're doing.

I never really care about ranking #1 in youtube, all I care about is getting my video somewhere on page 1 of google.
Again, I've tested this locally, and I realize how important this is. All my videos on page 1 of google are the ones that convert.
The ones that aren't, I don't track, I don't care about. They are the "runts" of the litter. Or they hit page 1 at some point and showed no value, so I give up to focus on keywords that do convert. This always happens, I always expect it. Just another reason why its important to target lots of keywords for every 1 niche you target.

As far as views/likes/subs, I invested about $300 over the last year just to find the guy I use. He is dirt cheap, and very effective.

However, his gig is NOT instantaneous. For $5, it takes 2 months just to complete. Throughout this time, I batch videos in scrapebox and drip feed links the entire time. My goal is to mimic a viral campaign. Some videos hit page 1 fast, others take a month or 2 to show. Again this is for local lead gen (where the method was born & refined), so I'll be doing the same thing for clickbank. There is a lot more I'll say about this later.

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Right now I've selected 5 niches.
I have the videos finished for 3, so I have 2 left.
Afterwards I'll spin and render each video 10 times.
I already have my lists built with scrapebox. A few hundred thousand urls between all of them.

Only 1 video is uploaded at this point, no spun versions yet. I just wanted to get a headstart.

Then I have an older video from 2 months ago which has made me a little over $200. That video will be getting reoptimized, and pushed for bigger keywords. I was in a rush back then but am fixing it now. I also have 2 other versions of that video I'll be uploading.

My first goal is to get all the videos and spun versions done.

Then I will begin working in batches. I'll upload 10 videos for my first niche, and will order the view/like/sub gig ONLY for my most competitive keywords. Not every video is getting the views/likes. This is because I've ranked impressive terms before just with backlinks. So weaker keywords will just get backlinked. Not to mention I have 25 accounts I can use for social proof on those videos.

Then I'll batch another 10,
then another,

and so on.

My goal is $100 a day, however, it would be better to focus on $700/week since clickbank sales are too random.

I do not actually believe I'll reach this goal with 53 videos between 5 niches. I may have to repeat the entire process which I'm fine with. I just am not experienced enough with clickbank to know.

Either way, I'll update this thread on an irregular basis, since I tend to work in cycles. Its very unlikely you'll see anything terribly exciting happen for a month or so. But I'll still be doing updates.

WISH ME LUCK!!!!!!!!!!

Good luck, sounds like you know what your doing, and will reach this goal easier than sliding down a hill on a wet jellyfish.

I'll have to look into animoto, sounds cool.

Subbed.

Sounds like a solid plan! I look forward to seeing you reach your goal..

Can you share your source that ranks your videos or are you trying to keep that one a secret

Good luck OP! Show us how clickbank is made!

Subbed -

Ok, finished video #4 yesterday.

Working on video #5 today. Very likely won't finish it till tommorow. Then the next day I'll get all the spinning done.
Then a couple days minimum to render out all the versions.

I reoptimized the 1 video thats been converting, and threw 10,000 links at it yesterday.
In a few days I'll target relevant high pr AA blogs.

I always let the links index on their own, and today only 87 showed up, but that number will continue to climb everyday.

I prefer that my link velocity starts off slow, explodes around week 3, then I taper it down around weeks 4-6.
Then a couple weeks after that my view/like/sub gig will come to an end (which doesn't even start till tommorow).

Only good news for today, is that 1 video has already jumped from page 7 to page 5.
Once the gig starts, and I get more aggressive with the backlinks, it should move up fairy fast.

Then hopefully by week 3-4, I can push it onto page 1 of google.

I also started a vicious arguement in the comments section for conversions (with myself obviously).

What I do is log in through different accounts, and criticize the hell out of the product, for very specific reasons.

Then I come in as the owner of the video, and "own" all the people criticizing the product. I basically do this not just for conversions, but because it minimizes any potential criticisms in the future. And I always leave my comments open, otherwise it looks shady and people won't trust you. If you master this process of overcoming powerful rebutalls, you automatically quell the objections that your traffic might have. It also brings attention to the product in the first place, since my video only talks about it briefly (I spend more time trying to position myself like an expert and randomly criticizing other products).

Also, about which fiver gig I use. Not this soon, and definitely not in the open. I find when people are handed things on a silver platter, they don't respect the sources, how valuable they are, and decide to share them with the entire world.

Its the same thing with my SEO guy.

If you wanna talk about getting things done, I'll help you out. But fact is, that 1 source is probably the last thing you need to know right now. Fact is, you can get A LOT done without it. The first thing you should be working on is how to write a good script. You don't need graphics lessons, you don't need anything fancy or expensive. You don't need after effects tutorials. All you need is a brain, a basic editor, and a basic understanding of psychology.

I just always see marketers focused on backlinks or views... rather than converting content.
Cause trust me, its easy to rank videos once you know how. But consistently making converting content... that is NOT easy. Even with a degree in psych, I still find that the hardest part.

Also, at the risk of sounding like a pompous prick, I have to reiterate, I'm still a clickbank newb myself.

I do feel I have a slight advantage, because of my experience in local lead gen. But please don't assume I know everything. Don't assume I know anything actually. I don't. There are people on here who are already crushing clickbank, and would love to crush me too. Just the fact I do my own scripts/copy shows how much of a newb I am.

Anybody with half a brain invests good money to have that stuff outsourced.

But I promise you, I'm a nothing with a strong half a brain... and a strong passion for learning.

Anyway, got to get back to work, I see scrapebox just harvested me 108,259 new urls.

-SB

Hey would you be willing to upload a watermarked example video?
I'm interested in the style your talking about for your video, but don't quite get exactly what you mean.
I'd like to be able to see an example of something you use, but don't want to intrude on your privacy.

And best of luck!

Sure, give me a few days and I'll try to give you guys a better example of what I mean.

This might make more sense, but the videos are more like "podcasts" that are uploaded to youtube.

And I'm not doing direct selling, but take away selling.

Say I was trying to sell a trick photography ebook.

I'd make a 3-4 minute video.

I might start the audio with something completely natural, that builds trust -

Like -

Hey Guys,

Bob Smith here.

I post on a lot of online photography forums, I help a lot of people out, and have been practicing trick photography for the last 7 years.

I'm making this video to help people, who wanna learn how to make their own incredible pictures.

One thing I can tell you for certain... its not as easy as it sounds. Well... I shouldn't really say that. It's actually not hard at all to do (I like going back and forth like this so it doesn't sound scripted, and so it confuses people about my true intentions to sell them something). But I wasted my time trying to learn programs, or techniques, that were either too hard... or total bs. So I'm making a short tutorial to refine my 7 years of experience, into something that can help my friends, and anyone else who wants to learn this stuff (again, I'm intentionally trying to sound casual and like I don't care who watches the video).

The first program I tried to use was photoshop. A lot of people know about this program. Photoshop is a GREAT program for doing special fxs. It is also very expensive. You can see here this was the last photo I did on photoshop, after 3 years of using the program (if this was me, right now I'd show a butchered photograph, or something that does NOT impress people - they'll subconsciously feel like "3 years... and this is all he learned!").

Then I'll go on saying good things about photoshop, but overall I'll be sure that people FEEL overwhelmed about it. So on one hand it sounds objective, on another hand, its intentionally manufactured to keep people AWAY from photoshop.

Afterwards, I'd repeat the same process for something different.

I might review a book this time instead. And I'll read some Amazon reviews to help me really quick.

I might even say more good things this time, but overall, I'll still manufacturer the review, so it turns people off. I will try to make it sound like I like the program or book, but I drop a few key opinions, that ruins the entire product. Things that don't seem so big when I say them, but have a big effect in the listeners mind.

Like "This book was incredible, had a lot of awesome advice about trick photography... but if you find yourself confused by the subject matter, or feel like its too complicated... don't blame me for it".

Don't forget, as I'm doing these reviews, I try to inject cool little facts and information, just so I can sound like I really know what I'm talking about. Like I might just go on a quick tangent about the "xxx light effect" and how its cool for doing "xxx type pictures".

Again, just so it sounds authentic, informative, & unscripted.

Then I will review the final product last.

This time, I use an opposite type of approach. I try to say some bad things about the product, that aren't actually bad at all.
Things that actually build value for my target market. This is what I consider "take away selling".

If I'm targeting newbie photographers, I might say something like,

"Next we have the trick photography ebook.

Now, this book is no holy grail on trick photography. In fact, you might feel a little humiliated... just by how simple they make it for you. When I first read this book... let me tell you, boy was I angry! I had spent $100, and 3 weeks, on a professional photoshop tutorial.... to learn how to do xxxxx photographs..... which this book taught me how to do in 5 minutes! I wanted to call the author up at home just so I could scream at him!!!" (lol)

But I think you get the point. As cheesy as this sounds written out, if its said SERIOUSLY with conviction, people will have no idea that you're trying to sell them something. But they will feel powerfully attracted to what you're talking about.

Take away selling is a bit of an art. Its definitely not that easy to explain.

You might also "overqualify" people, like you're telling them "this book is not for xxx types of people", when you know before hand that xxxx is NOT your target market anyway. But you KNOW it makes the product seem more exclusive, and builds a ton of value.

You see this a lot for SEO services.

Like "this service is not for people who expect page 1 rankings in 1 week".

Its a bit insulting, but its another form of take away selling, that works really well. People sense that you're pushing them away, but they feel more attracted to what you're talking about.

Anyway, I gotta get back to work, and will try to post better examples later. But hopefully you understand what I mean now.

-SB

Dude, you write some really long posts. Almost as if you were on some ADD meds. Either way, outstanding work so far. Glad to see you making some money.

Best of luck to you.

Yep I do. =]

Not sure if its ADD but I'm a very SLOW learner. So if I don't explain things in specific detail, I feel like I'm wasting my time with 2-3 sentence posts.

Either way, thanks for the kind words.

-SB

SpiderBlast said:

Yep I do. =]

Not sure if its ADD but I'm a very SLOW learner. So if I don't explain things in specific detail, I feel like I'm wasting my time with 2-3 sentence posts.
-SB

Click to expand...

Me too haha. I'm also the type who will read the whole post of others :]
I really like how much thought and effort you have put into disarming your potential customers. Sounds like you really focus avoiding people simply going "ugh another gd SEO EXPERT video, bye".

Personally, since for the moment I've had the most success on youtube with game and programming related videos, i'll focus on tutorials and trying to sell books or something.

Looking forward to hear more on this thread.

"I just always see marketers focused on backlinks or views... rather than converting content.
Cause trust me, its easy to rank videos once you know how. But consistently making converting content... that is NOT easy. Even with a degree in psych, I still find that the hardest part."

Excellent point.

lol, nothing goes better with IM than a cup of coffee and a some dexedrine :kev:. I like the post man, keep up the good work.

Ok let me do a quick update.

I'm going to delay video #5 for a few days since its the 1 niche I don't know a thing about, and I'm wasting too much time trying to research the niche and finish the video.

So far, videos 1-4 are finished.

I will start spinning and rendering them today. So hopefully I can get around 40 versions rendered out within the next 2 days (rendering takes forever).

My original converting video is starting to pick up views from the gig, and the title is optimized for the specific keyword I'm after. So far its moved from page 7 to page 5, now up to the top of page 2 (of YT).

After the blast I did yesterday, and the views that are being drip fed, I expect to see it on page 1 soon. It might even move to page 1 of google without anymore links, so I'm gonna hold off with backlinks for a few days. Then we'll see how it does. I have tons of links that will be getting indexed everyday, so its just a matter of patience right now.

I also uploaded 2 more videos, these are in the same niche that is converting right now.

They are both optimized for low competition searches (500-800/month on google).
My goal with these 2, is to rocket them up the SERPS as fast as possible. My competition for these videos isn't even marketers, but regular folks in xxx niche. Most of the marketers in this niche are back on page 2 or beyond (which is ironic). Because all they do is spam youtube and they don't take the time to actually rank their videos.

So my "competitors" aren't even competitors. These videos just have lots of views, but very weak backlink profiles. Not to mention, the titles aren't even optimized right.

Anyway, I'm feeling really confident about my approach.

In another week, I'm expecting to have about 53 quality videos uploaded, optimized, and I'll probably drop about $50-$100 bucks on my view/like/sub gig.

Then I'll start batching videos 10 at a time (10 per niche), and using my lists to do some aggressive backlinking.

Again, this will be a SLOW progression before the sales start rolling in. It will take at least 1 month before anything significant starts to happen. But right now I can't see this method failing. I'll wind up with so many converting videos on page 1 of google, for so many different keywords, I'm bound to get a few hundred hops a day. The key right now is just consistent optimization, research, and staying focused.

-SB

Good luck on your journey

Are you using only 1 YT account per niche or do you split your 10 videos some other way?

Yep, 1 account for every 10 videos / niche.

Wow congrats on all the money that you have made so far. This is great. I am happy for you. Keep up the good work and continue to earn.

Hey guys,

I'm updating this thread to tell people there's been a change of priorities.

Although I WILL continue to update slowly, I will be adding a separate CPA journal in 3-5 days. And I'm changing my priorities to focus about 75% on CPA and 25% on clickbank.

For now, I got my second video in position 1, this one for a much larger keyword (7,500 searches/month) and my hops just shot up from 8-12 hops a day, to 20-30 hops (no new sales yet).

I will continue to rank a new video for clickbank maybe once a week, but I'll be focusing a lot more on CPA for the time being.

I will be keeping my clickbank method mostly whitehat (I'll still be spamming/boosting vids) but my CPA method will be black as this forum.

This way I have 2 stable long term funnels (local lead gen/clickbank) then a throw away funnel for CPA.

Anyway, I'll continue to update every few days, but don't be surprised when you see a second CPA thread.

Thanks! - SB

ps. I realize I can add CPA to this thread, but I'd rather keep them seperate.
pss. Anyone who's paying attention to my niche thread, that will be finished soon.