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	<title>Internet Marketing with Josh Spaulding &#187; Affiliate Marketing</title>
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	<link>http://www.ethicalim.com</link>
	<description>Making Money through Ethical Internet Marketing.</description>
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		<title>Do Review Sites Make Any Money?</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/do-review-sites-make-any-money/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/do-review-sites-make-any-money/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:44:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=1285</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The short answer to that question is yes. And if you&#8217;ve been doing the product review thing for affiliate profits for a while this post will be pretty basic to you. But I know there are many people out there, whether they&#8217;ve been online for a while now or just getting started, who haven&#8217;t ever [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.ethicalim.com/images/thumbsdown.jpg" alt="review sites" /><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.ethicalim.com/images/thumbsup.jpg" alt="product review site do they work?" />The short answer to that question is yes. And if you&#8217;ve been doing the product review thing for affiliate profits for a while this post will be pretty basic to you. But I know there are many people out there, whether they&#8217;ve been online for a while now or just getting started, who haven&#8217;t ever put up a review site so this is for them.</p>
<p>For years review sites just really weren&#8217;t my &#8220;thing.&#8221; Sure I wrote reviews every now and then when I came across a product I really liked or disliked, but I never put up a site dedicated to one or more products until recently.</p>
<p>That is until a few months ago when I put up my first site dedicated to reviews of three main services in one niche. The site and niche in particular I won&#8217;t reveal because it&#8217;s in an adult niche (not porn!) but it&#8217;s doing well I felt there is alot of value to share regarding the process.</p>
<p>The average commission I get is a monthly recurring $12 (some higher some lower) and I&#8217;ve earned a total of $765.79 in approximately 3 months or so since I started the site.</p>
<p>While nice, $765 isn&#8217;t anything spectacular but the work I put into this in order to earn that is. So what did I do?</p>
<p>I found a nice looking review site template that focuses on three services (top rated, second best rated and third.) I wrote out a review for all three. I made the top rated review 100% positive, while the 2nd and 3rd showed a few flaws, but still sound really good.</p>
<p>The front page of the site shows a summary of each review in order from 1st to 3rd with direct links to the sites (affiliate links.) At the bottom of the page a write out a short, 2 sentence paragraph that links to each of the 3 full reviews using their respective anchor text (red shoe review) so each review page gets search engine love.</p>
<p>As far as the site goes that&#8217;s it. Next I wrote a handful of articles and submitted them to the top article directories. I targeted some laser targeted keywords in the actual titles of the articles to get direct traffic, then I used anchor text to link to the site in the signature of the articles.</p>
<p>I submitted a few articles every week for a month and a half or so. My site now ranks for &#8220;service review&#8221; (obviously &#8220;service&#8221; is each service) for each of the 3 services in Google.</p>
<p>So in total I have spend maybe 5 hours on this entire site and it has earned $765 and I earn more each and every month!</p>
<p>So are review sites worth it? You be the judge <img src='http://www.ethicalim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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		<title>My Lead is Worth More Than Your Lead</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/my-lead-is-worth-more-than-your-lead/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/my-lead-is-worth-more-than-your-lead/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:59:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Offline Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=1275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In my last post I mentioned the fact that I&#8217;m about to start a new Indianapolis Internet Marketing Company for Small Businesses. In the process of getting it all set up, thinking of what exactly we&#8217;re going to offer and how we&#8217;re going to offer it, I&#8217;ve been obviously thinking non-stop about the whole idea [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.ethicalim.com/images/leads.jpg" alt="the value of leads" />In my last post I mentioned the fact that I&#8217;m about to start a new <a href="http://www.boostwebmarketing.co/">Indianapolis Internet Marketing</a> Company for Small Businesses. In the process of getting it all set up, thinking of what exactly we&#8217;re going to offer and how we&#8217;re going to offer it, I&#8217;ve been obviously thinking non-stop about the whole idea of offering Internet Marketing services to offline businesses.</p>
<p>One thing has entered my find and not left. Something that in 6 years of doing this stuff I have never really TRULY realized for some reason, although it&#8217;s a very obvious reality.</p>
<p>And that is this: Building and promoting our own websites, ebooks, apps, mailing lists etc. can be very profitable and for some including myself it has been. But when you think about it, we&#8217;re making other people much more money than we&#8217;re making ourselves!</p>
<p>What I mean by that is there is a big learning curve to it all and in many cases the amount of money we earn per transaction (click, sale, lead, etc.) is minimal.</p>
<p>Now imagine if just ONE transaction, instead of being worth $5, $20 or $100 was worth $50, $200 or even $1,000 or more! What would just ONE lead be worth to you? ALOT, right? Well, I have news for you, there are ALOT of small businesses out there that value a single lead at hundreds, even THOUSANDS of dollars. Yes, just a single targeted lead. How much do you think these businesses are willing to pay for just one lead? how about 2? How about 10 every month?</p>
<p>See where I&#8217;m getting at? You can put up a niche site about home loans and make $1-$5 per Adsense click. You may even find a good affiliate program that pays something really nice like $50 or even $100 per sale/lead. But by eliminating Adsense and affiliate marketing completely you can work directly with Realtors (for example) and literally multiply your income! I know Realtor make alot of money. It&#8217;s not uncommon for a Realtor to earn $3,000+ on an average, middle class home sale. And there are MANY more professions that value a lead in the hundreds, even thousands.</p>
<p>I won&#8217;t get into how to go about getting the leads because there are several different ways (selling leads, offering a complete service etc.) and I&#8217;m just getting started with the whole concept myself. </p>
<p>What I really want to get across is the enormous value here.</p>
<p>If you have enough knowledge to put up a site, target a long-tail (low competition) keyword and make a few bucks a month with adsense, then you have the knowledge to do the EXACT same thing and make 10, 20 100 times more money by sending those leads to local businesses in one way or another.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been doing it for years and I didn&#8217;t even realize it. I sell advertising on many of my sites and in most cases I&#8217;m simply using my website&#8217;s rankings/presence to drive leads directly to them. Some of these people have been paying for these ads for YEARS and I bet they&#8217;re making a killing off of me, which means I undervalued these leads because instead of thinking about what THEY will make off of them, I was thinking about what I typically make from those ad spots. BIG mistake! </p>
<p>So it comes down to this: In many cases even fairly basic Internet Marketing knowledge can earn a small business a great deal more money than it can earn you!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not saying everyone should run out and start an Internet marketing service. But I am saying everyone should think about the entire concept and understand the extreme value that is out that in many forms! Just remember, in most cases one targeted lead is worth much more to a small business owner in that niche than it is to you as an affiliate marketer.</p>
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		<title>WARNING: Link Cloakers are Costing you Aff. Commissions! (IE8 Cookie problem)</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/warning-link-cloakers-are-costing-you-aff-commissions-ie8-cookie-problem/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/warning-link-cloakers-are-costing-you-aff-commissions-ie8-cookie-problem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:29:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=1107</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few days ago I released my new link cloaker, which is the only cloaker on the market that I know of, which beats the IE8 cookie problem. I&#8217;ve received ALOT of very positive feedback from users and many affiliate marketers are already seeing increased commissions after user CleverCloaker. Actually, they are probably generating the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.ethicalim.com/images/ie8-blocking-cookies.jpg" alt="cloaker problem with ie8" />A few days ago I released my new <a href="http://www.clevercloaker.com/">link cloaker</a>, which is the only cloaker on the market that I know of, which beats the IE8 cookie problem. </p>
<p>I&#8217;ve received ALOT of very positive feedback from users and many affiliate marketers are already seeing increased commissions after user CleverCloaker. Actually, they are probably generating the SAME amount of commissions as before, but NOW they&#8217;re getting proper credit for them all.</p>
<p>However, I&#8217;m also getting one question over and over again. A question that I should have answered in the beginning, but didn&#8217;t. That question is basically: </p>
<p><strong>What exactly is the problem with Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and affiliate cookies?</strong></p>
<p>The problem actually started with IE6, when Microsoft decided to start implementing P3P policy measures. However, with IE6 many cloakers were able to overcome the issue, so few commissions were lost. </p>
<p>With Firefox, Safari, Chrome and most other browsers cloakers still work just fine, but the problem is that something like 80% or more of all browser usage comes from IE! So chances are, at least 80% of the people clicking on your affiliate links are using IE and most of them are using IE8.</p>
<p>With IE8 came more strict P3P standards, which made it virtually impossible to get an affiliate cookie set from a cloaked link on a user&#8217;s system if the end user is using IE8. </p>
<p>Most affiliate link cloakers available today use different techniques to get affiliate cookies to work, but with IE8 they just don&#8217;t work. From 1px X 1px images trying to set the cookie to frames and iframes, cookies just aren&#8217;t set. Even using the recommended P3P Policy and compact headers, which although gave little success in IE7, just don’t seem to help with IE8.</p>
<p>In our testing SOME cloakers did effectively set cookies for SOME affiliate links, depending on the affiliate network etc. Some defeat one or two of the P3P measures, but none defeat ALL of them meaning that some claokers will effectively set a cookie for, say ClickBank for example, but not for, say HostGator for example. That is until now!</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.clevercloaker.com/">CleverCloaker</a></strong> is the ONLY affiliate link cloaker on the market today, that I know of (until others copy it, which won&#8217;t take long) that effectively set every affiliate cookie we tried during testing (and we tested it with all of the major affiliate networks.)</p>
<p>So whether you use CleverCloaker to cloak your affiliate links or not, I hope you take this post VERY seriously if you are currently using a Cloaker, because chances are you&#8217;re LOSING COMMISSIONS AS I TYPE THIS!</p>
<p>If you would like to give CleverCloaker a try, just visit <a href="http://www.CleverCloaker.com/"><strong>http://www.CleverCloaker.com/</strong></a> (It&#8217;s FREE)</p>
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		<title>How to Run a Flexible, Successful Affiliate Program</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/how-to-run-a-flexible-successful-affiliate-program/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/how-to-run-a-flexible-successful-affiliate-program/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:42:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=854</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you offer a product or service it&#8217;s almost a given these days that you need an affiliate program. If you have a product and don&#8217;t have an affiliate program, you&#8217;re simply leaving money on the table. But if you offer an affiliate program that isn&#8217;t flexible and can&#8217;t be tailored to your affiliate&#8217;s needs, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://ez-onlinemoney.com/images/handingmoney.jpg" alt="affiliate program tips" />If you offer a product or service it&#8217;s almost a given these days that you need an affiliate program. If you have a product and don&#8217;t have an affiliate program, you&#8217;re simply leaving money on the table. But if you offer an affiliate program that isn&#8217;t flexible and can&#8217;t be tailored to your affiliate&#8217;s needs, you&#8217;re also leaving alot of money on the table both directly and indirectly!</p>
<p>An affiliate is someone who promotes your product and earns you money with little to no effort on your part. With that being said it&#8217;s simply irresponsible (or arrogant depending on who you are) NOT to help each and every affiliate <em>and potential affiliate</em> with anything and everything you can possibly help them with!</p>
<p>Unless of course you just don&#8217;t need the money and believe it or not, some people don&#8217;t seem to need a few thousand extra dollars because I&#8217;ve actually had a product owner deny a very simple affiliate request&#8230; they turned down:</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> Thousands of dollars directly from the promo and tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars indirectly.<br />
<strong>2.</strong> A strong future partner in their network.<br />
<strong>3.</strong> Potentially thousands of new leads to their list, as strong partners always send people their way.</p>
<p>and more.</p>
<p>And what did I do when they turned me down? I said &#8220;OK, no problem, have a good one, bye.&#8221; then I went and found another good product created by someone who was willing to accept my small request&#8230; someone who takes care of their affiliates.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s what this blog post is about. How to run a flexible affiliate program. But it could have easily been titled &#8220;How to Take Care of your Affiliates&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>So a Potential Affiliate Contacts you&#8230;</strong></p>
<p>(I should start off by saying the options I use are certainly not the ONLY options! They are simply what I&#8217;ve used effectively. I&#8217;m sure there are many more options that work just as well and I&#8217;m sure some that work even better)</p>
<p>If you have a product you WILL have potential affiliates contact you. Many times the first thing they will ask for is a review copy&#8230; fine, nothing wrong with that. BUT SOME people are just looking for a freebie! So how do you know if it&#8217;s a legitimate affiliate or a freebie seeker? Easy, do a Google search!</p>
<p>If Jeremiah Josanovic (made up name) asks for a review copy I do a Google search for Jeremiah Josanovic. I&#8217;m looking for anything and everything about this guy. If I don&#8217;t find much, and/or what I do find is extremely low quality I&#8217;ll reply VERY RESPECTFULLY and let Jeremiah know that I appreciate his interest in my product and I appreciate any and all promotions he can do for it, but at this time I am not providing review copies.</p>
<p>If what I find on Jeremiah is quality stuff and it seems like he may have a reach in my niche I&#8217;ll gladly send over a review copy. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to do this research, if that!</p>
<p>From that point on, once I determine that it is indeed a legitimate affiliate I do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING (within reason) I can possibly do for that affiliate because I know he is going to make me money!</p>
<p><strong>Common Affiliate Requests and how to Deal with them</strong></p>
<p>The following are requests that I have frequently received from affiliates and/or frequently asked as an affiliate for one reason or another. Unless it&#8217;s a very odd request or requires a great deal of time on my part I&#8217;m not concerned why they ask. My only concern is to make them happy!</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> A special page &#8211; Many affiliates like to have their own special page for their promotion. There could be many reasons for this. Whatever the reason, there is NO reason why you shouldn&#8217;t go ahead and set one up for them. Simply create a new directory for them and copy and paste the sales page code, done&#8230; that easy!</p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> A discount &#8211; I&#8217;m one of the many affiliates who likes to help out my list by working out a special discount for them. It increases conversions, which in many cases will actually make the affiliate AND VENDOR more money than if there wasn&#8217;t a discount. This is another no-brainer. If a legitimate affiliate asks for a discount GIVE THEM ONE! How? There are several ways to do this, but I use one of the following options, depending on which one is preferred by the affiliate:</p>
<p>a) If you use Clickbank you can easily set up another product in your account. This does not cost you anything! Just set up another product, which is actually the same product but at a discounted price, then restrict it from appearing in the marketplace (in the settings when you set it up.) All done!</p>
<p>b) If you TRUST the affiliate or the affiliate trusts you, you can set up a PayPal buy now button and either the vendor or the affiliate can accept all payments. Once the promotion is complete (I like to give it at least 7 days) you can generate a PDF report from within PayPal, which will serve as proof of sales numbers. This is the easiest option and I&#8217;ve done it several times, but there obviously needs to be trust between the two of you!</p>
<p>c) If you like the PayPal option, but the trust isn&#8217;t quite there, you can use software like JV Rotator. JV Rotator is a very simple tool. It rotates the buy now button after each purchase to the next partner. So if I&#8217;m the vendor and your the affiliate and we&#8217;re doing 50/50 we&#8217;ll insert your PayPal email and my PayPal email into the script and it will show your buy now button first, then after a sale is made it will show mine until another is made and so on.</p>
<p>If we want to do another percentage, say 75% we insert your email 3 times and mine once. After 3 sales are completed to you my buy now button will appear until another is made, then back to you and so on.</p>
<p>d) Another option is to set up a separate page and put the product up on <a href="http://paydotcom.net/?affiliate=257669" rel="nofollow">PayDotCom</a> and just like the special on ClickBank, set it to not appear in the marketplace.</p>
<p>These are all very quick and easy ways to set up a discount. It may take a little longer the first time you do each, but once you learn the process you&#8217;ll be able to replicate them in minutes and it&#8217;s well worth it to take care of your affiliates who are going to make you lots of money!</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> A different Payment Processor/Affiliate Network &#8211; If an affiliate wants to bypass your payment processor and/or affiliate network, of course you don&#8217;t have to redo your entire system. Leave it in place and think outside the box. Many people, including myself, will not promote clickbank products in the Internet Marketing niche (for example) due to affiliate commission theft. Some people would say &#8220;something is better than nothing&#8221; and I suppose that would be true if there was only one good product out there, but the fact is there isn&#8217;t. If an affiliate requests an alternative to ClickBank and you don&#8217;t provide one they&#8217;ll just move on and promote a different product, so &#8220;Something is better than nothing&#8221; certainly doesn&#8217;t apply here!</p>
<p>So if your product is sold via ClickBank and a legitimate affiliate requests an alternative option, what do you do? It&#8217;s very simple and takes about 10 minutes on your part. Only 10 minutes to take care of an affiliate and insure he or she gets the commissions they deserve!</p>
<p>You simply create a separate, special page for them, then you do exactly the same thing as I explained in 2b, 2c and 2d (above.) Very simple! Of course you pick one of the 3.</p>
<p>Those are the 3 most common affiliate requests I receive and request myself as an affiliate. Hopefully this post will help you understand affiliate requests a big more.</p>
<p>Before I close out this post I want to go over the differences between Clickbank and PayDotCom, as I&#8217;ve received alot of requests to do so. I am both a vendor and affiliate for products on Clickbank and PayDotCom. Here is a quick run down. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/clickbank-explained-affiliate-vendor-pros-and-cons/">Pros and Cons of ClickBank</a> &#8211; Explained in my previous blog post. Just click the link.</p>
<p><strong>Pros and Cons of PayDotCom</strong> &#8211; PayDotCom is much like Clickbank. It&#8217;s strictly electronic products and it takes care of almost everything for you. However, Clickbank processes payments themselves whereas PayDotCom goes through PayPal, which isn&#8217;t necessary a bad thing.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s say Jon is the vendor and Joe is the affiliate. Joe does a promo. Each full sale goes straight to Jon&#8217;s PayPal account (the vendor.) At the beginning of the month Jon sends Joe&#8217;s (the affiliate) cut to his PayPal account. This works out perfectly when the vendor and affiliate keep in touch and trust one another. BUT some people don&#8217;t get their affiliate commissions because there are some dishonest vendors out there. There are also some honest vendors who just don&#8217;t know how it&#8217;s supposed to work and/or just simply forget to pay their affiliates.</p>
<p>In other words, with Clickbank the affiliate get paid directly from Clickbank and it&#8217;s always on time. With PayDotCom it&#8217;s up the vendor as to when you get paid.</p>
<p>But with ClickBank affiliates can order through their own link. Whereas PayDotCom affiliates cannot order through their own link! Also with ClickBank refunds are processed automatically to everyone who requests them. With PayDotCom the vendor has to approve them, which reduces the amount of freebie seekers who game the system. As for affiliates, you&#8217;ll get MANY more low to moderate exposure affiliates with ClickBank&#8217;s Marketplace, whereas you will get very few affiliates through PayDotCom&#8217;s marketplace. BUT many super affiliates will no longer promote Clickbank products and they WILL promote PayDotCom products.</p>
<p>So as you can see, there are several pros and cons to both.</p>
<p>If you sell products as a vendor or affiliate, I hope this post has been helpful. I know I had to learn the hard way how to do all of this stuff, so I hope this post prevents at least one person from having to spend all of that time and effort learning the hard way how to do these things.</p>
<p>img credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shirleytwofeathers/" rel="nofollow">Shirley Two Feathers</a></p>
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		<title>Clickbank Explained &#8211; Affiliate &amp; Vendor Pros and Cons</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/clickbank-explained-affiliate-vendor-pros-and-cons/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/clickbank-explained-affiliate-vendor-pros-and-cons/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 13:35:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=820</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(I am both an affiliate and a vendor with Clickbank (CB) and have been for several years. I receive payments from them twice a month, every month and have been for years, so I do have a great deal of experience dealing with the company.) Clickbank is by far the largest marketplace for digital goods. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://ez-onlinemoney.com/images/Thief.jpg" alt="commission theft" /><em>(I am both an affiliate and a vendor with Clickbank (CB) and have been for several years. I receive payments from them twice a month, every month and have been for years, so I do have a great deal of experience dealing with the company.)</em></p>
<p>Clickbank is by far the largest marketplace for digital goods. If you&#8217;re looking for an ebook or report on any given subject, chances are you&#8217;ll find it in the clickbank marketplace. Clickbank definitely has it&#8217;s pros, but it certainly has it cons too!</p>
<p>This post will address both the pros and cons of using Clickbank, both as a vendor (product owner) and an affiliate.</p>
<p><strong>Pros and Cons to Clickbank as a Vendor</strong> &#8211; The huge volume of affiliates who regularly monitor the marketplace is obviously the #1 benefit to Clickbank as a vendor. It IS Clickbank&#8217;s USP to vendors and without it there would be far less products at Clickbank. Clickbank also takes care of everything for you. </p>
<p>No need for affiliate software, no need for a payment processor, they do it all for you, which makes the entire process &#8220;seamless&#8221; and easy for the vendor.</p>
<p>As a vendor, there are very few cons, 3 actually. However, 2 of the 3 only apply to vendors who are selling Internet Marketing related products and although the 3rd is worse with Internet Marekting products, it&#8217;s kind of a pro AND a con. </p>
<p>The first 2 issues stem from one main problem &#8212; customers who have a Clickbank account can order products through their own affiliate link (hoplink.) Not only is it technically possible, Clickbank states in their TOS that it is allowed to do so as long as the account was not created for that sole purpose.</p>
<p>So why does that cause a problem for the vendor? It reduces your chances of super affiliates promoting your product for one. You&#8217;ll always have affiliates promoting it when it&#8217;s in the marketplace, well almost always, but many Super affiliates will pass it by because they know that they&#8217;re going to lose a good chunk of commissions. </p>
<p>And of course it reduces the income from your product(s) when your customers are taking an affiliate commission, even though they aren&#8217;t an affiliate.</p>
<p>The third issue is refunds. I said it&#8217;s a Pro and a Con because it&#8217;s obviously a good idea to make your customers happy! If someone is not pleased with your product they have a RIGHT to get their money back as far as I&#8217;m concerned. </p>
<p>I COMPLETELY agree with that! I&#8217;ve actually turned refunds into future sales because of how I treated refund requests! Alot of people are impressed when they&#8217;re actually treated right when requesting a refund!</p>
<p>However, just like issue 1 and 2, it is abused to an extent. The problem, which is a benefit too (weird isn&#8217;t it?) is that refunds are EXTREMELY easy to get with Clickbank. In other words, if you want one you get one and when you&#8217;re dealing with an ebook that basically means you get the product for free, which means anyone can get any product in Clickbank for free with the exception of software that can be locked after refunded.</p>
<p>I have 2 products on Clickbank right now. One has been in the marketplace for nearly 2 years now. I&#8217;ve had several big names promote that product. </p>
<p>All but one of them requested that I create a special page for them to bypass Clickbank They wanted the commissions they deserved and I completely understood that and set them up right away. Those few promotions resulted in multiple thousands of dollars earned by myself and the affiliates, but Clickbank was bypassed altogether!</p>
<p>BUT did they find my product in the Clickbank marketplace? I&#8217;m not sure, I didn&#8217;t ask although I should have. So, I may not have gotten those affiliates if it weren&#8217;t for CB, who knows.</p>
<p>* remember, these cons are specific to the Internet Marketing niche. They do not exist in other niches because those customers do not know about the Clickbank &#8220;loophole.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Pros and Cons to Clickbank as an Affiliate</strong> &#8211; As an affiliate to a Clickbank Product there are several pros and one BIG con. We&#8217;ll start with the pros. It&#8217;s EASY to promote a Clickbank product. You search the marketplace and click a button where you can insert your Clickbank ID. You now have your link and you can begin to promote the product right away.</p>
<p>Commissions are usually VERY high. Some are as high as 75%! That&#8217;s CRAZY compared to most physical products, which are normally 10% or less. In many cases a Clickbank affiliate will earn more per sale than the actual vendor&#8230; that can be very enticing to an affiliate!</p>
<p>Payments are frequent and on time once you reach the threshold. But in order to TRY and prevent people from ordering through their own link, Clickbank will not pay you until you have something like 5 orders with 5 different Credit Card numbers. However, this only pisses off legitimate affiliates and doesn&#8217;t stop people from ordering through their own link.</p>
<p>As an affiliate the only con is what we&#8217;ve already discussed &#8211; Commission hijacking. Only one con, but it&#8217;s a BIG one! I personally will not promote a clickbank product because of it. If I REALLY like the product and I think it will REALLY help my clients I&#8217;ll request a special page for the promotion, but I won&#8217;t go through Clickbank!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not alone, I know of several others with big lists who do the same thing and that&#8217;s just from the network of people I deal with. I guarantee we&#8217;re not alone! </p>
<p><strong>A Workaround</strong></p>
<p>As an affiliate, one way to decrease the number of customers who order through their own link (taking your earned commission) is to offer a valuable bonus to those who order through your link. Since you make it clear that they must order through your link and you verify, they will be forced to order through your hoplink if they want the bonus.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve done this in the past and it certainly helped, but I still lost several commissions that I deserved as an affiliate.</p>
<p>What about link cloakers? A link cloaker isn&#8217;t going to help you at all with Clickbank commission theft. The customer simply needs to know whether or not the product is going through Clickbank, which they know once they reach the order form. From then all they have to do is find the product&#8217;s affiliate page and generate their hoplink.</p>
<p>So there you go. This turned out to be an extremely long post, which is not normal for me, but I believe I&#8217;ve gone over every one of the pros and cons of Clickbank. I hope it has helped clear up some confusion for you. In my next post I&#8217;ll be going over how to run a flexible affiliate program, including how to set up specials for your affiliates and what options you have for payment processing.</p>
<p>image credit: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/72388119@N00/">michaelmolenda</a></p>
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		<title>Should you Monetize your Site with Adsense or Affiliate Programs?</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/should-you-monetize-your-site-with-adsense-or-affiliate-programs/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/should-you-monetize-your-site-with-adsense-or-affiliate-programs/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:46:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/?p=287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A member of my Private Forum recently asked the question &#8220;How do you decide whether to use Adsense, affiliate programs or both on a site.&#8221; Most of the questions asked by my forum members stay behind closed doors, only for the members, but I thought this one was a great topic for discussion here at [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.ethicalim.com/images/money.jpg" alt="adsense or affiliate programs" />A member of my Private Forum recently asked the question &#8220;How do you decide whether to use Adsense, affiliate programs or both on a site.&#8221; Most of the questions asked by my forum members stay behind closed doors, only for the members, but I thought this one was a great topic for discussion here at the blog.</p>
<p>This is a popular question on blogs and forums and the answers always vary from &#8220;Adsense is a waste of good traffic&#8221; to &#8220;Adsense is GREAT.&#8221;</p>
<p>The truth is that there is no definitive answer. You simply have to test it out and see for yourself which is the more profitable monetization model for each of your sites. Each and every site is different and just about every site has different visitor demographics etc.</p>
<p><strong>Here are a few examples of what I mean.</strong></p>
<p>This very blog does much better with highly targeted Affiliate Programs (keep in mind this is just an example. The purpose of this blog isn&#8217;t to be a direct money maker) than it does with Adsense. A few months back I did a little testing with Adsense. The blog earned something like $10 in one week with well-positioned Google ads. This week alone the blog has generated several sales to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=792556">Joel Comm&#8217;s Adsense Secrets</a>, which equals much more than the $10 Adsense generated. (ironic huh <img src='http://www.ethicalim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' />  )</p>
<p><strong>I believe the reason for this is because:</strong><br />
<strong>1.</strong> The affiliate program is highly targeted to this blog.<br />
<strong>2.</strong> This blog is targeting other marketers, who also use Adsense (we are accustomed to ignoring adsense ads)</p>
<p>If this blog were not marketing related, I&#8217;m sure the adsense adverts would have converted much better, but then again, I would need to test to find out for sure.</p>
<p>However, most of my mini-sites do much better with adsense, while a handful of them do better with affiliate programs and some do well with both adsense and affiliate programs.</p>
<p>The argument is often made that to lose a visitor for pennies through Adsense is to leave money on the table (would have made more if it were an affiliate link.) In some cases this is very true, but in other cases that $0.40 click is more than you would have earned without adsense.</p>
<p>Many markets are full of people who aren&#8217;t necessarily buyers (for instance.) They&#8217;re looking for quick, relevant information, which makes adsense ideal. They find a site, but it doesn&#8217;t have quite what they&#8217;re looking for, so they click a Google ad, which has a listing that is more relevant. The advertiser gets the visitor, the publisher get a few cents (sometimes a few dollars) and Google gets their cut&#8230; everyone wins.</p>
<p>In this situation if that Google ad were replaced with an affiliate banner or otherwise, no one would have won&#8230; the visitor isn&#8217;t looking to buy.</p>
<p>On the other hand some markets are full of buyers like weight loss. In most cases a relevant affiliate program is going to outperform google ads, but you should still test it out first.</p>
<p>So, if I haven&#8217;t already made it clear enough, it&#8217;s all about testing. Test, test then test some more. While you&#8217;re testing, remember that not all affiliate offers perform the same. In some cases adsense will perform better than an affiliate offer, but that doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean adsense will outperform all affiliate offers.</p>
<p>Be sure to test accurately. Use <a href="http://www.ethicalim.com/ppc-advertising/increase-your-adsense-income-through-section-targeting/">section targeting</a> to ensure your adsense adverts are 100% targeted and test out a few different affiliate offers before making your decision.</p>
<p>After a few weeks to a month of testing you should know which is better for your site(s.)</p>
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		<title>The Death of ClickBank</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/the-death-of-clickbank/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/the-death-of-clickbank/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:14:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate networks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clickbank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paydotcom]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/the-death-of-clickbank/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(UPDATE: This post is aged and I&#8217;ll admit, I was off base here. These issues will not ruin them because most of CB&#8217;s sales come from non-Internet marketing products and these problems don&#8217;t exist in markets where the customers (non-IM) aren&#8217;t familiar with the policies. So, these are issues if you&#8217;re promoting Internet Marketing related [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>(<strong>UPDATE:</strong> This post is aged and I&#8217;ll admit, I was off base here. These issues will not ruin them because most of CB&#8217;s sales come from non-Internet marketing products and these problems don&#8217;t exist in markets where the customers (non-IM) aren&#8217;t familiar with the policies. So, these are issues if you&#8217;re promoting Internet Marketing related products, but it&#8217;s a non-issue for those promoting products outside of the IM niche&#8230; take this post with a grain of salt)</p>
<p>I haven&#8217;t heard &#8220;The DEATH of &#8220;insert technique/service&#8221; for a while, so why not start one of my own <img src='http://www.ethicalim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' />  I realize this post will be somewhat controversial with other product owners who sell through ClickBank, as they don&#8217;t want people to know about ClickBanks horrible way of doing business, but it has to be said.</p>
<p>ClickBank has 2 HUGE problems, which I&#8217;ll get to in a minute, and this is coming from someone who earned 5 figures in the last 6 months selling a few products in their marketplace, so I&#8217;m very familiar with it all.</p>
<p>First, I don&#8217;t mean to be the guy who &#8220;bites the hand that feeds him.&#8221; ClickBank doesn&#8217;t feed my family, I DO! I do realize this is somewhat hypocritacle as well, as I&#8217;m still going through ClickBank for many of my products, but that will soon change and this really needs to be said.</p>
<p><strong>ClickBanks 2 MAJOR Problems that will eventually Ruin Them</strong><br />
<strong><br />
1:</strong> They allow customers to purchase products through their own &#8220;hop link.&#8221; When I say &#8220;allow&#8221; I don&#8217;t mean you can get away with it, I mean they SAY you CAN do it in their TOS! That&#8217;s not too big of a deal to me as a publisher, but what about my affiliates who are literally getting ripped off? It&#8217;s dumb for me to say this, but I&#8217;m going to anyway. If you promote my product or any other product in CB&#8217;s market place , 90% of the people you refer are just going to clear their cookies and order through their own hoplink, STEALING the sale from you!</p>
<p><strong>2:</strong> They process refunds for any reason whatsoever without going through the publisher. It&#8217;s a good thing to offer refunds. I have no problem processing refunds. BUT when the process is so extremely easy it <strong>invites</strong> refunds. Look, you can go to ClickBank right now, order any product you want, wait for the receipt to come, forward back to them requesting a refund and you just got that electronic product for absolutely free!!</p>
<p>I know #2 is something that I shouldn&#8217;t be spreading all over the net, but it&#8217;s Bulls*** and hopefully instead of inviting more freebie seekers to the marketplace I persuade a few people to get away from ClickBank!</p>
<p>You may think that it&#8217;s not that big of a deal because most people are honest and don&#8217;t take advantage of the system. YEAH, RIGHT!! Let me give you an example. I&#8217;ve offered discounts to my article marketing report through PayPal and other services, which overall equals just about the same number of sales I&#8217;ve made through CB. The difference? The refund rate on CB is 10% (pathetic) The refund rate of all others UNDER 1%!!</p>
<p>Many of the refund requests I get are made within minutes of purchase. In other words, they don&#8217;t even open the damn file before they request a refund. They know they can get if for free so they do.</p>
<p>It really is a flawed system. Affiliates who work their butts off are being ripped off everyday and product creators like myself are losing money at the same time.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jonathanleger.com/">Jonathan Leger</a> recently turned me on to PayDotCom (created by Mike Filsaime) and it&#8217;s actually a very good alternative to CB.</p>
<p>As product creators and affiliates we need to get away from ClickBank and their horrible business model. If you&#8217;re a product owner and/or an affiliate do yourself a favor and help build PayDotCom instead of supporting CB and it&#8217;s horrible policies.</p>
<p>I am an affiliate of <a href="http://www.paydotcom.com">PayDotCom</a>, but to avoid giving the impression I&#8217;m just trying to make a few bucks I haven&#8217;t inserted any affiliate links in this post!</p>
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		<title>A Sneaky Money Maker for Bum Marketers</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/a-sneaky-money-maker-for-bum-marketers/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/a-sneaky-money-maker-for-bum-marketers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:04:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bum marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/a-sneaky-money-maker-for-bum-marketers/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been promoting Associated Content (AC) for several months now. I&#8217;m actually their #2 referrer. I always saw it as an easy way for newbies to make money online without a large learning curve and I think I was correct in that assumption, as 90% of those who I refer publish content there. Many have [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been promoting Associated Content (AC) for several months now. I&#8217;m actually their #2 referrer. I always saw it as an easy way for newbies to make money online without a large learning curve and I think I was correct in that assumption, as 90% of those who I refer publish content there. Many have already published hundreds of articles. What I didn&#8217;t realize was the fact that it can be a bigger money maker than I originally thought. More on that in a minute. First I&#8217;ll explain what AC is.</p>
<p>AC is pretty much an article directory, but it&#8217;s not your average article directory. The difference between AC and EzineArticles for example is AC actually directly pays you for your articles. You <a href="http://www.e-articles.info/">submit an article</a>, wait a few days and they send you an offer. The offer is usually $6-$9 and the articles don&#8217;t have to be unique. You have the option of submitting your articles with exclusive rights or non-exclusive. Exclusive rights meaning they will own the rights and you can&#8217;t do anything with it. Non-exclusive meaning you still own it, your just letting them publish it. </p>
<p>The downfall is that you cannot insert a signature at the end, which is the main purpose of submitting to sites like EzineArticles. But, this is where the &#8220;sneaky&#8221; money maker comes in. (also as far as I know they are still only paying U.S. residents for content <img src='http://www.ethicalim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif' alt=':(' class='wp-smiley' />  non-U.S. residents can still submit content using the following technique though.)</p>
<p>AC has been accepting articles that contain affiliate links! That wouldn&#8217;t be all that exciting if it were just any site, but it&#8217;s not! I&#8217;ve been seeing AC articles on the front page for more and more competitive keywords. I don&#8217;t know if this is allowed or not (Their TOS is a mile long) but I know they&#8217;re accepting them so why not give it a shot.</p>
<p>Not too bad of a deal. Get paid for the article and then make affiliate sells for eternity. Just go to http://www.associatedcontent.com/ and sign up. It&#8217;s free and I highly recommend it.</p>
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		<title>iWebTool Announces New Affiliate Program</title>
		<link>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/iwebtool-announces-new-affiliate-program/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/iwebtool-announces-new-affiliate-program/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:58:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Josh Spaulding</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ethicalim.com/affiliate-marketing/iwebtool-announces-new-affiliate-program/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For the past few years I&#8217;ve been using the web tools and services provided by iWebTool for several reasons. These guys have been running a top-notch site for quite some time. I&#8217;ve heard them mentioned several times on forums etc., but I&#8217;m really surprised they aren&#8217;t mentioned more often in the IM community. They run [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" img border="0" src="http://www.iwebtool.com/images/top_sites/120x240.gif" alt="Link Exchange"/> For the past few years I&#8217;ve been using the <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/">web tools</a> and services provided by <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/">iWebTool</a> for several reasons. These guys have been running a top-notch site for quite some time. I&#8217;ve heard them mentioned several times on forums etc., but I&#8217;m really surprised they aren&#8217;t mentioned more often in the IM community.</p>
<p>They run one of the best <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/directory/">General Web Directories</a> on the net; a very useful <a href="http://news.iwebtool.com/">Internet News service</a> (great for blogging and article ideas); an extremely valuable <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/articles/">Article Directory</a>; an active <a href="http://talk.iwebtool.com/">Discussion Forum</a> and now they&#8217;re launching a brand new <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/advertise/affiliate/">Affiliate Program</a> that pays 30% commission for every sale.</p>
<p>Their affiliate program pays upon request from the affiliate via PayPal and the minimum payout is $100.</p>
<p>If you target the Internet Marketing community, the new iWebTool affiliate program is one you really really should try out. This place is a treasure trove for online marketers and your viewers will most likely eat it up.</p>
<p>It can be hard to find good affiliate programs to convert in the IM niche. Every new product that the &#8220;gurus&#8221; come out with is sent out to everyone and their brother so when you promote it, 99% of your viewers have already seen it. Then theres the good products created by John Doe that noone knows. Sure, it&#8217;s a good product but noone has ever heard of this guy and they&#8217;ve seen hundreds of sales pages stating the same thing.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s what makes the iWebTool Affiliate Program unique. It&#8217;s not just another product. It&#8217;s a Website composed of all kinds of goodies that marketers and webmasters love.</p>
<p>If you want to recommend a legit, useful service to your readers/subscribers/customers, while making 30% commission on their purchase, the new <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/advertise/affiliate/">iWebTool affiliate program</a> will be a great fit!</p>
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