A few noob questions/starting with CB

Hello,

After trying some things I decided to start with Clickbank. It seems to me one of the best ways to earn money for a beginner.
My situation is: I already have an account and I have a good experience with HTML/JS/Css. I am planning to start using a landing page or squeeze page and promote it using Adsense and/or other Advertising networks.
My idea is to pay for traffic up to the limit where I can break even, so I can see if it works and I can get some more experience. Example: if I can earn 30 bucks selling one product, that's how much I am going to invest at the beginning. I am going to use keywords related to my product but that are not too competitive/expensive. If I don't sell jack, I will stop and re-evaluate the situation.

My questions are:

1) Is it possible to convert without using a "middle" page to promote the products? I guess it is, although I know that using a "middle" page/review page about the product/niche is better in the long term, but if I just want to test my ideas, it is a good option? I am thinking about a landing page presenting the offer/product and maybe two or three pages with more info.

2) When I decide to promote a product, do I need to take the user from my page to the vendor informational/BS/selling page? Or can my user go from my page direct to the payment page without going to the vendor page? I mean, I'm going to push a long text about how good the product is and how my dear user will completely change his life after he buys it. They won't want to have to read all this things again before showing me the money.

3) I'm assuming the vendor will provide me with a few texts, banners and maybe a video. Is it correct? Am I allowed to change it as I want in order to make my selling page unique? Also, do the vendor usually provide me with some templates to start with/get some ideas?

Thanks everyone, and I appreciate if you can get me any additional advice.

1) It's possible to convert without a middle page but you'll get the best conversions with a landing page. I would still suggest using a landing page.
2) You would be better off just having the user go from your page to the vendor's website.
3) Yes, most of them will have different landing pages and banners for you. It depends on the vendor. Just ask them, every vendor is different.

Oh, maybe I wasn't very clear.
My idea is to setup a landing page where I would tell the user about the benefits of the product and offer him to buy it.
If he decides to buy, he would then go direct to clickbank payment page to make the purchase. Then me and the vendor would split the sale according to the terms, and the vendor will be responsible for delivering the product, offer support, etc.
What I want is to have control over the sale. I don't want to just recommend it to my users and redirect them to the vendor sales page. I want them to go make the purchase direct from my page, like I was a reseller.
Is it possible to do or I am understanding wrong about how affiliates work?

Yes it's definately possible One of the things that you will encounter are by using a direct checkout page is you may lose the cookies tracking I believe if the user revisits your site, it's a little bit more to it than what I'm saying but basically believe that's how it goes.

you need a middle page to convert as munch as possible. if you cannot make a good one pay someone.

NotAJohnDoe said:

Oh, maybe I wasn't very clear.
My idea is to setup a landing page where I would tell the user about the benefits of the product and offer him to buy it.
If he decides to buy, he would then go direct to clickbank payment page to make the purchase. Then me and the vendor would split the sale according to the terms, and the vendor will be responsible for delivering the product, offer support, etc.
What I want is to have control over the sale. I don't want to just recommend it to my users and redirect them to the vendor sales page. I want them to go make the purchase direct from my page, like I was a reseller.
Is it possible to do or I am understanding wrong about how affiliates work?

Click to expand...

You would just be better off directing visitors to the vendor's website. One issue could be cookie tracking which you possibly could lose sales.

3ushman

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes

Freddyjames said:

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes

Click to expand...

#2 is wrong. You can get a link from the vendor to send your customer directly to the payment page...BUT if you do this your landing page better be awesome.
Vendors spend thousand of dollars getting professional sales copy and split test on a daily basis to get there conversions as high as possible.

Your main mission with a landing page is to soft sell the customer about the product and get them to click on affiliate link which in turn sends them to the
vendor page for the hard sell.

rjd1265 said:

#2 is wrong. You can get a link from the vendor to send your customer directly to the payment page...BUT if you do this your landing page better be awesome.
Vendors spend thousand of dollars getting professional sales copy and split test on a daily basis to get there conversions as high as possible.

Your main mission with a landing page is to soft sell the customer about the product and get them to click on affiliate link which in turn sends them to the
vendor page for the hard sell.

Click to expand...

I actually did not know that, thanks.

As you said though, there is no point in sending visitors straight to a payment page, unless the vendors' sales page is rubbish and has a low conversion rate - in which case, their product will probably be crap too and your refunds will be high.

Also, don't just think that because a sales page follows the old shit-through-the-snake method, with a long page full of testimonials and blah blah, that it won't convert and will be crap. We spent almost 5 months split-testing my first Clickbank product and tried many different sales pages, including an all-singing-all-dancing VSL - the long shit-through-the-snake sales page out-converted them all.

There is a reason many sales pages on Clickbank follow the same method; The method works.

I agree that those ugly vendor pages are used because it works, but I have two reasons to use my own:

1) Most of sales pages translated to my language (portuguese) have a lot of bad content, not limited to grammar mistakes. For example, one vendor that I am looking at sells a system to earn money filling surveys on internet. On his page he tells that he became unemployed after his job moved to china, and tries to make the user relate to this story saying something like "you probably know what I am talking about, this certainly has happened to you or some of your friends". Well, probably no one has ever lost a job in Brazil because the factory moved to China. It's a situation that someone from US or other countries can relate, but not brazilian people.I can change this to "because the auto factory I worked own fired most part of the people" or something like this.

2) I may be wrong, but if I follow the traditional method (a pre-sale page with some information that sends the user to the vendor page) I will need to do a lot more work. I mean, with my own sale page I can create just two or three pages and buy traffic from Adsense. With a pre-sale page I will need to work on much more content, posts, etc, to convince my user that I am not just trying to send them there to buy the product.

So I decided to create my own sale page, using a similar design that the vendor uses. I will just adapt the content to the reality of my country and add a couple more pages so Google won't complaint about my site. As this vendor I choose is ok with sending the user direct to the order page, I won't have problem with him. I will also collect user's email myself and them promote more products later. And I will use Adsense to bring traffic. Let's see what happens....

You can either use a gateway page or simply an optin page.

Email Marketing is a much better option rather than losing the potential for passive profits.

I find the best conversions with a review page. Works wonders. And you should try upselling too at your thank you page. Offer a supposed discount on another product that you're promoting.