Have I got this right?

Hi all, I've spent the last few days reading around the affiliate section of the site, in particular the Clickbank section. I'm looking to get started as an affiliate, and who knows, maybe one day as a vendor. I am hoping someone can just give me some confirmation that I'm heading in the right direction!

So once you've settled on your product, there are several options for you....

1) Build a blog on your niche, offer something for free to get users to submit their emails, then market a paid product to the list.
2) Build a blog on your niche and at the end of the posts post your hoplink, bypassing the need for a list.
3) Submit Youtube videos, and link in the description to either your blog or hoplink.
4) Submit articles to the article directories (eg Ezine) with a link to your blog or hoplinkat the bottom.
5) Use social media to get traffic to your blog or hoplink.

My understanding is that for options 1) and 2) you can increase traffic with SEO or perhaps PPC. I will definitely be creating a blog, but I was unsure if building a list is the way to gofor a newbie, or whether to include the hoplink at the bottom of good posts.

Is there a 'bible' for selling through Clickbank that anyone could recommend in the downloads section. I had a look but didn't find anything with good reviews (mostly WSO rubbish) or very outdated. Any recommendations would be awesome!

1) Yes. A lot of vendors offer you free ebooks to get your list started with your hoplink embedded all over the place. They also have follow up email swipes and I suggest you rewrite these some to your style. As for thank you pages and other pages you will set up, sign up for a free email address and join some lists in your niche and see where their sales funnel takes you for ideas.

2) You can put links in the post too but main goal should be build a list. Aweber has $1 month trial then $19/month. I never used free but some companies supposedly don't like affiliates so can wipe out your list in the blink of an eye. In marketing best to buy your own stuff like hosting, domains, autoresponder service etc. than use free services for blogs or whatnot.

3) Yeah this works but YT is tricky. Link to your own site and set up real email address like [email protected]. This is for 1 account then set up free email addresses for other accounts. Don't link to your site on these videos but use watermark in video. Linking to same site will link all accounts together and if 1 account goes down, others tied to it will go too. Use proxies or upload from public wifi (McDOnalds, Starbucks etc.. Also use CCLEANER and Firefox has extension called Better Privacy to delete LSO cookies which aren't removed from cookie removal. Google or search BHW to find out more about covering tracks with these tools and YT in general.

4) Articles don't rank as well as they did so this is an old method. Starting new site wouldn't be a bad idea to get some natural links to it though to top 2 or 3. Don't focus a whole lot of time on article marketing. But do some because even if these sites trickle in just 4 or 5 visitors a day, it adds up. Especially if building a list.

5) Yes plenty of info on BHW here on that. Just remember don't be a douchebag and just promote your own site.

I found a good WSO on FB (some good ideas you could put your own spin on too.) will try to dig the link up for you.

EDIT: Found it. http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ds/484726-get-wso-facebook-fanpage-thief.html

6) Don't worry about getting it right, just get it started then search for answers when you hit a roadblock.

There's different theories on e-mailing people after giving them a free product...

You should probably setup a sequence of e-mails you send them and only try to sell the product on the end of sequence (5-10 e-mails perhaps). This builds trust and credibility.

Mike, thanks for your response, very thorough. I have my own hosting and can build wordpress blogs pretty easily, so will look into selecting a product and purchasing a domain.

Rather than focusing on creating many smaller sites focusing on a different product, I have decided I'd rather try to build up a larger blog in my chosen niche. I was going to start making every 10 or 20th post a review for a program I was plugging from CB, but I'm concerned it might be too transparent that I'm trying to sell my visitors the products (particularly if I promote the same products to my list). By only having 5-10% of my site as reviews, and the rest as quality content, hopefully this will not be too much of an issue. Are these sort of figures reasonable or would you wait more/less before promoting a different affiliate program too?

mhatter, I was wondering about the best way to do what you've said. Obviously you want your blog to be full of high quality posts to build your list. But then you need to send some high quality material to your list to entice them to buy when you sell to them. I guess this is something I will have to work out through experience!

If your focus is building and retaining the list it is good to send them to your posts (called push button traffic). This encourages comments, people sharing your content on social sites as well. If it is quality content then do that.

What I do for reviews is make a page. Have a Preferred Products or whatever page and have at least 3 excerpts, like 1st 50 or so words of your review then link to full review page w/ keep reading or whatever you choose. Clickbank is usually better when you presell them anyways. Don't make any mention of the review but throughout your posts you can direct link to your review page. Also link out to other posts on your site (try to keep them in same category as much as you can) wiki, news and info sites regularly through your content too so they're used to seeing links.