Make Affiliate Money

I recently found that one of the Forex products I was promoting had suddenly stopped selling the product and instead replaced the Sales Page with an email opt-in page. The Automated Forex Grail was a Forex Expert Advisor which I started promoting late, but still made over $300 in commission until last week.  then the Publisher decided to rip off the hundreds (if not thousands) of affiliates who continued to unwittingly send hops to this site so that he could collect email addresses to exploit later without having to pay clickbank or affiliates commission.

I reported to Clickbank immediately and got this response!

Can you please provide me with more detail as to how you feel the vendor is stripping affiliate commissions? We take these matters very seriously.”

Isn’t it obvious?  Anyway, I explained what I said above about the publisher being able to contact potential customers direct and sell direct.  I then got this response…

“They will be removed from the Marketplace this evening.

Thank you, ”

And they have been removed from the marketplace and hops don’t work, you get this message..

“The target url was invalid. Please contact the publisher to get it fixed.”

So no notification to affiliates, no warning to change your hoplinks, to start promoting something else.  There is a flaw in this process.  All I can suggest is that you regularly check the sales pages for the products you are promoting and if you find anything suspicious let Clickbank know, they will take some action.

I got off lightly, only spent a little bit of money on ppc sending clicks, but one unlucky guy spent $1000 on www.automatedforexgrail.com two days before based on past commission it had made (this was an affiliate site not the official one).  He contacted me asking what he should do, but he is bummed.

I must add that most publishers are legit, some really bad apples get greedy, you just need to keep an eye out for them.

JZ

Popularity: 1% [?]

For those of you also promoting Forex products you may be interested to know that there is an MT4 Trading Platform that pays a CPA (Cost Per Action) of $100  for new people who sign up.  They have their own affiliate program here

They pay by Paypal or wire transfer and for a Paypal payment the threshold is just one sign up at $100.  This is apparently paid monthly.

I am going to promote this on several sites and will consider setting up a landing page for PPC.  There are some great affiliate materials and some great special offers to promote including up to $500 bonus for new sign ups.  Should be easy to promote.  eToro Affiliate Program

This is part of my plan to diversify with different affiliate programs other than Clickbank.  I will soon give a summary and pros and cons of the different programs I am using.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and is looking forward to an exciting and profitable 2009.

JZ

Popularity: 2% [?]

I have been told I must leave my laptop alone for the next two days by my lovely Wife.  I know what is best for me so I will comply!

Seriously, Christmas is important especially if you are lucky enough to have a great family and good friends.

Due to my impending laptop ban I have been working like crazy on a new website which I launched today.  I decided to go back to basics and remember what I did in August to make really good money from Forex.  I have created another Forex review site (I will give details later) and this time I have been able to learn from my mistakes and lessons I have had from other people and forums.

The site is easier to read, has more graphics, good navigation and more importantly has php cloaked affiliate links which look much more professional.

I have removed all TIDs from my hoplinks, so I will not be able to know if the site makes more sales or not, but I have made sure the site has analytics etc from the start so that I can track keywords etc.

I have used a template from www.freewebsitetemplates.com which really do have free templates and they also give the psd file too.  I have learnt a lot about designing with fireworks and CSS during this site creation, every day is a school day!

Anyway, must go.  Laptop is being switched off in T minus 5 minutes!

Merry Christmas Everyone and a Happy New Year.

James

Popularity: 1% [?]

In the last month several new Forex products have been launched on Clickbank, to name a few:

Forex Detector released from the Nichechopper Stable

FAP Turbo release by Marcus Leary (currently No1 on Clickbank and climbing – could top 1000 gravity!)

Forex Boomerang is another one from Norb at Nichechoppers

Pipzu is from DP and Nichechoppers regular “Kinitex”

And it doesn’t stop there, Norb has another big launch planned for next March, not sure why the wait, but what I do know is that with every new Forex product he launches he has learnt from the previous one and the marketing is refined to improve sales.

I have taken a different approach to marketing these new products as one of my main review sites has unfortunately been “sandboxed” by Google, even though it is a PR3 and was No1 for the main keywords it is now in the depths, not to be seen for a few months, I suspect this is due to a high number of links being added over a short period of time, this needs to be the subject of another post so I will leave it there.

With PipZu I have just registered a few review type free blogs, completely BUM style.  FAPTurbo I have bought a nice domain which is being used as a lander, I have been driving traffic here as well as some direct with a hoplink from Adwords, I have made two sales so far from about $20 investment so profit is about $100.  The problem is that Google has done it’s usual adjustments and now clicks on Page 1 cost too much for me.  Still gettting some traffic though so will keep that ticking over.  With Forex Detector I have again bought a good domain as a lander and directing articles there, my ezine article is currently No1 on Google for the name.  One sale this week which was a massive $92 commission.  Let’s hope it sticks and doesn’t get refunded.  Forex Boomerang is the same as Detector, but no sales yet.

The main difference is the way FAPTurbo has blown up at over 700 gravity on CB, this means there is an incredible buzz around and the name is well known, this results in more searches for the name and then clicks via Adwords.  I haven’t tried PPC on the others as there are hardly any searches, I would rather make sales organically from these as it is easier to get on Page 1 with them without paying for it.

I am just wondering if the market is saturated now and the consumers are so confused about all of the outrageous claims of incredible profits and the different price tags etc.  If I was going to buy one of these EAs I really would struggle to know which one to go for.  FAPTurbo could hit 1000 gravity on CB, I wonder if any product has got that high before.  It just shows you how quickly the likes of Commission Blueprint fades from the top spot after all the big email campaigns have stopped!

Popularity: 1% [?]

A quick note tonight as I am still really tired after the long weekend and Weddings!

I had to make a few changes to a couple of my websites tonight as I had noticed some had been dropped by Google completely, I don’t mean just slipped a few pages, I mean not indexed.

One of them is The Forex Brotherhood which was riding high for “forex brotherhood” terms. It was a holding page and list builder during the pre-launch period and the end of August. Then I decided to redirect it with a hoplink to the Forexbrotherhood.com site, so when someone clicks on theforexbrotherhood.com it goes to the official site. I did this using a php redirect script on the index page.

This worked fine for a while and the site still ranked well for my keywords for several weeks giving me lots of hops and a few sales.

Then suddenly Google updated and the robots then found nothing, no meta tags, no content, no keywords etc etc. All of the links I have built obviously still remain, but they mean nothing if google finds nothing on the site. DOH!

I have reverted to a landing page with some keyword rich content and a list builder. Lets hope Google finds it again quickly and I can get back to where I want to be on the SERPS.

So my tip is, do not use php redirect on the index page if you want it to rank in Google, if you just want to use it as a direct link for ezine or adwords etc then fine, but I want search engine traffic too.

This might not be news to a lot of experienced marketers, but if one of you learns something then I am happy enough.

JZ

Popularity: 1% [?]

Forex is a niche lots of experienced Affiliate Marketers shy away from for several reasons. It is considered to be saturated, full of products that are difficult to market and high refund rates.

Forex is the first niche that I started to promote which I would potentially buy in. I have bought a few Make Money Online products, but with Forex Robots and Systems I could see a wide appeal, not only to seasoned traders, but people who are looking to make an easy second income.

I had never heard of Forex until July 2008 when I heard that Norb at Nichechoppers was publishing Forex Robot software, Forex Tracer and Forex Funnel. I read the sales pages and got review copies of them to check they were legit. Norb was more than happy to let me have a review copy. This kind of commitment to supporting Affiliates is what sets him apart from pretty much all other publishers, another key element of Norbs sales pages to date that I like is no opt-in lists, drop in etc and no “please don’t leave, we are desperate to sell you something, you can talk to a real live person” BS that you see on most CB sales pages.

Anyway, these review copies have been key to my success as I have been able to give legitimate reviews of products which I have first hand experience of, I have also done lots of research into the forex market, keeping up to date with trends etc. If you can write as though you are an authority on a subject your conversion rates will improve greatly.

I have 5 Forex related hosted site, but started with just one review site. I managed to get hold of an expired domain with great keywords. I used a format that I have employed in other niches, where I gathered reviews and testimonials from others and displayed them on my site, I also invited others to submit reviews. Millions of people trust review sites such as ciao.com etc and this was the feel I was aiming for.

Whilst I have made significant sales from this site, I have also used direct PPC and also PPC directed to landing pages that I created on Synthasite.com, here you can very easily create free sites. Link to synthasite on side bar. —->

I created articles on ezinearticles.com, hubpages, knol etc and then bookmarked everything with digg.com and propeller.com.

Since mid July 2008 I have taken $4604 in commission from Forex products! Some 16% of that has since been refunded, but for me the effort has been worth the return primarily due to the high commission rates.

An example of one of my sites is www.automatedforex.co.uk which is based on a template I got from another member at nichechoppers. It really was very easy to set up and add my clickbank ID. It is almost plug and play.

So in my opinion, Forex is not too saturated to get stuck in and make great money, the products are in demand and are easy to promote especially if you have tried them out and whilst the refund rate is higher than I would like, the returns to date have definitely been worth it. The future also seems to be bright as the uncertainty of Stocks continues, investors are seeking alternative vehicles.

I hope this gives a bit of inspiration to those who are not sure about either starting with forex or if your are struggling to make it work. Good luck.

James

Popularity: 1% [?]

I have been a clickbank affiliate for 2 years but meeting Clickbank’s 5 sales and different payment methods rules took a while, I was passively selling products via banners on some of my sites.

In January 2008, I stepped up a gear and created a site to specifically promote Clickbank products, this was a site with reviews of Paid Survey programs.  I made a few erratic sales and pretty much spent as much as I earned on Adwords!  I realised that the affiliate commissions per sale were not enough to cover the cost of clicks and the conversion rate.  ie.  if a product was converting 1 in 100 hops and the commission was $23.50, I would make a profit if my clicks costed less than $0.23

Then I stumbled across a new niche which, in general, pays much higher commissions and therefore there was more room for error and higher profits.  That niche was Forex.

I was able to obtain a very good keyword based domain which I could use to review Forex products in the same way that I did with Paid Surveys.  Within days I was indexed by Google and thanks to a few hundred backlinks the site was ranking top 5 for the keywords in the domain.

The Eureka Moment was on Monday 21st July 2008 when I logged into Clickbank to see this picture….

Popularity: 1% [?]