An Affiliate Link is bascially a website address like www.createyourfirstdomain.com however affiliate links include information about who is responsible for that link, most importantly you, the affiliate. If a customer clicks on a link you’ve posted and ends up buying the product you end up getting credit for the sale and receiving a commission. The affiliate link lets the website owner know who to reward for promoting his product.
Let’s talk about Clickbank links, since they seem to be the easiest to promote for the beginner. You will need a Clickbank ID when you register. It’s up to you what ID you create. You will use that ID from clickbank no matter how many affiliate products you decide to promote. There are two ways to create personalized Affiliate Links…at clickbank an affiliate link is known as a Hoplink.
The most common way is to create your Hoplink automatically using the Clickbank Marketplace. When you have found the product you want to promote, just click the ‘Promote’ button to the right of the product listing and it will generate your personal Hoplink. Then you can copy the Hoplink address by highlighting it and pushing the “Ctrl” button and “c” button on your keyboard. Now, put your mouse in a blank .txt notepad file and hold Ctrl and “v” together. This will “paste” what you just copied into your new notes file. Now you can save the file on your desktop. You can copy the Hoplink address and paste it anywhere you want to promote the product!
My Clickbank ID is 4045863. So, an example of a clickbank Hoplink for me would be: http://4045863.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net <<<this is not a genuine link, just an example. If you decide to create your link manually to make the HopLink work, you just replace VENDOR with the vendor’s ClickBank nickname. Some ClickBank vendors will have their nickname listed on their product website if they have a page for affiliates.
As a final note! Be sure to TEST THE HOPLINK so you’ll be comissioned for every sale you make! To test your HopLink to make sure it’s working correctly, you can either enter your HopLink directly into your browser’s address bar and hit Enter, or click on your HopLink directly if you’ve already posted it somewhere online. Once you’re on the vendor’s website, click their Buy Now button so you’re taken to the ClickBank order form. If you scroll to the bottom of the order form, you should see [affiliate=yournickname]. Mine would look like [affiliate=4045863].
This post is basically for the Newbie. The person who wants to start making money online and you have no idea where to start or what to do. It really does come down to 6 Simple Steps – This post is going to describe Step 1 – Finding a Product
1. Find a Product to Promote – Being an Affiliate can be a wonderful experience! There is no customer service, no inventory and no shipping of products involve. None of that to deal with. You are simply using a coded link that will send people to the personal or company that DOES have to deal with all of the things I mentioned above. If someone you referred to the site or person buys, you make a sale!
That’s all there is to it.
There is no such thing as THE PERFECT PRODUCT to promote. I am unconcerned with WHAT you promote as I just want to show you HOW to promote it.
You can choose to promote a product from Clickbank or anything you want – you just have to sign up to be an affiliate for whichever company you chose and get your affiliate link (it’s usually free to be an affiliate for most companies).
Let me use an example. For instance, if there is a hobby that you love, and you know a lot about it. There may be an affiliate program that you can join and get paid to promote it. However, for most of you, I recommend starting by promoting products from Clickbank.
ClickBank is the largest provider of digital products in the world. Publishers from all over the world list their eBooks on Clickbank to sell them and then people like you choose to promote them by being an affiliate.
Once you sign up for a free affiliate account with Clickbank (easy to do), you are qualified to promote any of their thousands and thousands of products. Once you’re a seasoned affiliate, you may wish to promote ALL of their products!
The commissions are HUGE. We’re talking, 50%… 60% … even 75% commission for a sale. This is the best part to their huge variety of digital products. And Clickbank pays like clockwork once you start making sales.
Now let’s talk about how to find that product on Clickbank you want to start with. Your first affiliate products! The easiest way is to use the “Marketplace” feature on their website. Some people like to use a site called cb-analytics.com. Go ahead and check out the site. There is a lot of stuff going on there. At the top are 3 lists of products that are grouped by different metrics of something Clickbank calls “gravity”. You’ll see Top Gravity, Top Gravity Gain, Total Top Gravity. Gravity is how Clickbank presents the popularity of a product.
If one unique affiliate sells ONE copy of their product in the last 8 weeks, that product is awarded ONE gravity point. If one unique affiliate sells ONE HUNDRED copies of their product in the last 8 weeks, that product is still only awarded ONE gravity point. So, for example, if a product has a gravity of 250, that simply means that 250 unique affiliates have made at least ONE sale of that product in the last 8 weeks.
Gravity can tell you 2 important things:
1. How well other affiliates are converting that product into a sale, and
2. How many other affiliates you are going to be competing with in making a sale.
I try to promote products that have a gravity of at least 32, but I stay away from products that are being promoted by HUNDREDS of affiliates as your sales will likely be less because of the competition. So if you’re a beginning/newbie…stay away from the HUGE gravity numbers. Those are more than likely being promoted by what we Super Affiliates. The seasoned, know-every-trick-in-the-book affiliates that are hard to compete with.
I’ll write about Step 2 – Getting Your Affiliate Link!
