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Google have updated their policies for Adsense publishers. 

Jensense also has a nice summary of the changes if you don’t want to play spot the difference.

I touched on choosing which Clickbank affiliate programs to promote in my post Picking Clickbank Products which described how to calculate the refund rate for a product.

I like Clickbank, in spite of the bad press they have been receiving recently in the forums,  and they now account for a large chunk of my income since I switched from Adsense.

I have to admit that when I started looking in their marketplace for products my selection was pretty random.  I searched on a keyword or browsed their categories and picked something related to my blog topic.  My commissions were random as well.  Maybe I would get nothing one day and not very much the next.  By a long and painful process of eliminating non-converting and otherwise dodgy products, my Clickbank commissions slowly started to improve and now I’m very happy with those twice-monthly checks. 

The problem is that it can be difficult to identify the bad products.  I really didn’t know what to look for in the early days.  In the hope that I can save you some of my early failures and frustrations, these are the factors I now consider when looking for a new product:

The Sales Page.  We’ve all gotten used to, and fed up with, then long hype-laden sales pages that are used to sell us a ebook from the latest  self-styled guru.  Why do the internet marketers continue to use them?  Because they work.  These people are professionals.  They make thousands a day from a top-ranking ebook on Clickbank.  So read the sales page.  If you are tempted to buy the product then the sales page is a winner.  If you are muttering ‘what a load of drivel’ halfway down the page, move on.  Your customers certainly will.

Leakage.  Nothing to do with diapers, this is what happens when the reader is diverted to another product or page.  The most obvious thing is Adsense on the sales page.  If you see this run away.  Fast. You aren’t here to make Adsense income for somebody else.  Another potential leakage problem is if it’s possible for the customer to order via another method other than Clickbank.  Look for PayPal buttons or 800 order lines or mail in forms.  You won’t get commission for any of these.  Are there ANY links on the page that send the visitors to another site or another product?

Squeeze Pages.  All the gurus are raving about the list.  The money is in the list they tell us.  So everybody sets up a squeeze page, one that captures your email address before they show you the sales page.  That’s fine but what if the customer doesn’t order directly from the sales page but order from a link in the numerous follow-up email they are destined to receive until the end of time?  Do you still get commission?   Most vendors are very good about this and make sure they redirect email links to the Clickbank order page where, hopefully, your affiliate cookie will still work.  Unless it has expired of course or been overwritten by another affiliate link.  Others are less conscientious.  You can’t tell by looking at the page so you will have to sign up for their email list and wait for the link to test.  Or ask the merchant.  If they don’t reply, move on. 

Stealing.  There’s really no other word for this but a small minority of vendors send visitors to their order page via their own affiliate link.   I wrote to Clickbank about one vendor who was doing this very brazenly.  Clickbank never replied and the vendor is still doing it.  Caveat emptor.  To test this use your own hoplink and go through the sales page to the Clickbank order page.  If you are being credited for the sale, you will see your affiliate ID at the bottom of the screen.

Gravity.  This somewhat mysterious figure that you see on the marketplace listings next to “Grav:”.  According to the marketplace FAQ:

“Gravity: Number of distinct affiliates who earned a commission by referring a paying customer to the publisher’s products. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affiliate paid in the last 8 weeks we add an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last referral, the higher the value added. “

I think this means that the more distinct affiliates earning commission, the higher the gravity.  The higher the gravity the more likely a product is to convert but it also means that you have more competitors also promoting the product. 

Referred Percentage.  Look  at the %refd in the marketplace listings which are the fraction of publisher’s total sales that are referred by affiliates.  I’m cautious if this is 100% which means that the vendor hasn’t sold any products on their own.  If the referred percentage is high and the gravity is low then only a limited number of affiliates are making all the sales.  The may well be a very good reason for this (and probably is) but I like to investigate further when these two figures are unusual.  I’m even more cautious if this is less than 40% which point to a minority of affiliate sales. 

Relevance.  Is the product a good match for your blog or site?  Both subject and level?  If your blog is aimed at marketing experts are you trying to send them to a beginners guide or vice-versa?

Refund Rate.  Calculate the Clickbank refund rate.  The lower the better but never more than 20%.  This is not just to increase your net commissions but as an indicator of a quality product.  If you care about your blog, it’s important to make sure your recommendation is because you genuinely believe the product is a good one - not to make a quick buck.

Purchase.  If you buy the product you will reap rewards far in excess of the cost.  Only by having read the ebook or used the software can you write a genuine review.  It’s apparent from many reviews when the reviewer has not even seen the product.  Just look at the many fake review sites for some examples.  A genuine unbiased review will give you many more sales than a couple of paragraphs of sales hype.  If the commission rate on a product is 60% and you buy through your own link you will only have to make one extra sale to cover the cost of the product.

Just by following these simple guidelines I now rarely have a dud product.
 

I’ve long been a fan of long-tail searches.  These are those searches in Google that may only result in a handful of visitors each but add up to the majority of your traffic.  For example, your intended keyword may be “Bass Fishing” but your visitors will find you using such terms as “green bass fishing lures” or “best bass fishing spots in Texas”.  Each may only get 1 or 2 visitors a month but there are literally millions of such terms being used in Google daily.   These searches make up at least 80% of my traffic.

These will also often convert far better than more general terms for affiliate marketing.  A search for “buy bass lures” is of more value than a search for “bass fishing”. The first has their credit card out and is ready to buy, the second is probably just wondering what a bass looks like.

Up to now it has been difficult to take advantage of these long-tail searches.  You can go through your website logs but the sheer quantity of them will leave your mind reeling.  Enter Hittail.com

“HitTail is a content intelligence service that reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the long tail of your natural search results. We present these terms as suggestions that when acted on will boost the natural search results of your site. It’s simple, easy to use, and the results are immediate.”

Hit Tail, in beta at the moment, sorts through your long-tail searches and gives recommendations on blog topics.  Topics that your readers are already searching for and, more importantly, topics that will likely result in more visitors.

I’ve been using Hit Tail for about a week now on two of my blogs and the results are impressive.  It has given me some great ideas for blog topics.  It’s too early to say if these will result in more traffic but I’m optimistic.

It’s a bit confusing to see how it all works, so watch their demo and read their blog.

I believe it was Robert Allen who once said that the easiest way to make money was to find a school of hungry fish and feed them.  The idea being to find a need amongst the public that isn’t being satisfied. Fill that need to the best of your ability and you will have customers for life.

It can be hard to find those hungry fish with a top-down approach.  Traditional wisdom is to list subjects of interest then drill down and find niches.  For example, you might list your hobbies as:

Fishing
Golf
Reading

You then got to your favorite keyword tool and type in Fishing.  The tool will return a list of keywords and their estimates as to the number of searches per month.  Maybe it returns the following keywords and number of searches:

Fishing             183445
Fly Fishing          56325
Fishing Boat       35399
Fishing Report    21338
Bass Fishing       20101

Still too many searches for a niche subject, so you drill down further with Bass Fishing and it returns:

Florida Bass fishing    2988
Striped Bass Fishing  1727
Bass Fishing Game    1582

If you have decided that around 1500 searches a month on Overture is enough then you check the competition of Google for Bass Fishing Game. 27,000 results returned.  A bit high but it’s good enough and you launch your blog of bass fishing game reviews.  Maybe enough people are interested in your blog, maybe not.  You would probably have to look hard for an affiliate program.

Here’s another approach to choosing a blog subject.

Start by looking for people with problems before you look for the topic.  Go to the same keyword tool and type in “get rid of”.  When I tried this, it returned:

how to get rid of mouse
how to get rid of acne
how to get rid of flea
how to get rid of stretch marks
how to get rid of acne scar
how to get rid of fruit flies
how to get rid of pimples
how to get rid of spyware
how to get rid of cellulite
how to get rid of a hickey
how to get rid of love handles
how to get rid of blackhead
how to get rid of rats
how to get rid of puffy eyes

All with 1500 to 5000 searches a month.  Suddenly you have a list of people with problems.  A school of hungry fish.

“How to get rid of love handles” had 1635 searches on Overture.  The searches from Google will be much higher.  Maybe 20 times as high.  Maybe more, I don’t know.  Google competition was 13,500 results using quotes in the search. 

Thousand of people, I assume mostly women, looking for the solution to a specific problem.  Getting rid of love handles.  This can only increase with new year resolutions.  Maybe you have an interest in weight loss and can research and suggest solutions.  Solve their problem and then send them to a weight loss site with an affiliate program.

Here are some more “problem” words you can use:

How to
How can I
Advice
Review
Best
Eliminate
Fix
Guide
Make 

A few minutes brainstorming and I’m sure you can find dozens more.

I realize this whole choosing a subject thing may be confusing.  A couple of posts ago I was saying that you should only write about your passion.  Now I’m pointing you to making a quick buck by looking for problems.  I guess I see two types of blogs.  One long term, which is your passion, and one short-term to promote an affiliate program.  Or maybe I just need to pay the bills while I write about stuff that really interests me.

With all these live case studies going around it would be remiss of me not to join in.

If there’s any interest, I could demonstrate all the steps to building a profitable blog over a period of a couple of weeks, right from research to the first affiliate commissions.  Maybe something to earn $100 a month or thereabout.  I know this isn’t a lot, but I understand that a lot of people are still lost as to how to make the first commission checks.  Once you’ve made the first few hundred dollars it gets easier.

One thing I would like to do is to use only completely free tools and hosting.  No affiliate links described as “essential tools” here.

Let me know if there’s an interest and what form you would like it to take.  Suggest a blog topic if you like but it will need to be fairly mainsteam so that everybody understands the terminology and keywords.

If you have ever done anything with Adwords, or are thinking about it, there’s an excellent series of posts at Andre Chaperon’s blog.  He’s doing a Clickbank case study of sending Adwords traffic to a landing page to promote a digital product.  There’s as much information in his blog as you will find in all those $97 ebooks.  He’s a bit heavy on the affiliate links in his “recommendations” but there’s still plenty of good stuff there.

Oddly enough, he’s promoting one of the World of Warcraft guides that I’m familiar with.  I don’t actually promote this through Adwords since I get enough organic search engine traffic for this theme on one of my blogs.  Although I hate to rain on his parade, I’m not so sure that he’s making a wise choice of product for a couple of reasons.  One, is that he’s not familiar with the Warcraft market (which he freely admits) and I can already see some glaring problems with his copy.  Stuff that you will only see if you are a Warcraft addict.  This could put off some potential buyers.  The second problem is that he has chosen to promote a product with very stiff competition for the necessary keywords, all revolving around Warcraft Gold.

I hope he does well in spite of these issues, since he clearly knows what he is talking about when it comes to marketing and using Adwords.