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Clickbank Vendors

Get Out of the Poorhouse:  Become a Clickbank Publisher

I have watched several Clickbank affiliates “do their time” in the prison of Clickbank affiliate-hood, before wising up and transitioning to becoming a Clickbank Publisher.  In my mind, this is one of the smarter–and really the only–tactics you can take to start making real, autopilot money with infoproducts on Clickbank.

Yes, Clickbank Affiliates Make Serious Money, Too

Before anyone gets upset, it must be said that we acknowledge the fact that Clickbank affiliates can make money.  Serious money.  There is a very good reason why the affiliate system exists: because it is a good system that works for both publishers and for affiliates.

Smart Clickbank affiliates who have good organic search traffic or who know how to work pay per click intelligently can increase the narrow profit margin, and make money for both themselves and for their publishers.

So that is our disclaimer.  But let’s look at the larger dynamic involved in this interplay between three parties: first, the publisher; second, the affiliates; and third, the pay per click ad system, such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing.

The Evil Triad: Caught Between Pay-Per-Click and Publisher

One dilemma that’s affiliates often face is that they are caught in this money-losing triangle.  It is like a vicious cycle that they get trapped in, and find it difficult to escape from: like being caught in a whirlpool.  They keep struggling to get out, but the whirlpool keeps dragging them down.

Here’s how it works.  The affiliate is the go-between, the link between the publisher and the publisher’s profit.  That is why publishers spend so much time drumming up business with affiliates, sending them lots of goodies such as keyword lists, negative keywords, free landing pages, creatives, and all sorts of other products designed to help sell the publisher’s e-books.

So imagine this scenario.  An affiliates spends $30 per day on PPC to advertise a health-related Clickbank product.  If that affiliate is lucky, he is breaking even.  For every $30 he spends on pay per click, he makes a $30 sale.

What is his profit?  Zero.  The next level up is to spend the same $30 on advertising, but make two sales of $30 each per day.  Now his profit is $30.  But what tends to be the norm is the former scenario, especially with new affiliates.  These affiliates are essentially financing the publisher’s advertising: they are giving the publisher of free advertising.  They have made nothing, but the publisher has made money off of it, probably something in the range of $15-$20 per sale.

The cycle goes on and on and on.  The publisher is risking nothing, and stands to gain all.  Google AdWords, of course, is always getting paid.  No matter what gets sold or not sold, Google Adwords always gets paid.

It Gets Worse

Let’s take this one step further.  Let us imagine that you have set up a PPC campaign, directed to a specific Clickbank offer, but you have somehow screwed up your hop link, which credits you with the sale.  Now here is where it gets really nasty.  Again, you’re paying your Google AdWords bill.  Google always gets paid.  You are directing traffic to the publisher.  It doesn’t matter to him if you messed up your hop link; he could care less if you get your affiliate commission.  What he is getting, essentially, is a direct sale.  What I mean by direct sale is as if someone had found his site directly by organic search, bypassing all of the affiliate channels.  Result?  He gets paid, too, just like Google does.

Follow me?

Affiliate Leakage Kills

I call this affiliate leakage.  No matter how hard you try, and there will always be leaks.  Affiliates, at least the successful affiliates, are always vigilant about things like conversion rates, metrics, keeping their links active and updated.  That is the way you can avoid affiliate leakage, by staying on top of it.  Yet, even the lax publisher can stand to make some pretty good money if he has even a small number of affiliates working for him.

The sales just roll in.  That’s why people become publishers.