Since getting some good affiliates over at clickbank, I have had a few requests to make it so that the “?hop=” isn’t shown at the end of the link. Affiliates will want this to not be displayed since it shows their ID. So instead of having yourdomain.com/?hop=cbid, you want it to just be yourdomain.com.
How do you make it so that the ID isn’t shown? It’s really simple. Just make the salespage index.php, and use this code:
Obviously, this is just a 301 redirect that is set to happen if there is the “hop=” in the link. And offer.html will just be your normal salespage.
Although this product has nothing to do with internet marketing, no matter WHAT you sell, go ahead and do this. You’ll find that your affiliates will definitely like you for it.
I don’t know if that’s a good title, but I just got to test out a new script (virtual smart agent) that basically comes up with a chat window whenever someone tries to leave your site. At $197 this is NOT cheap, at all — and I know that a lot of people would find it annoying. But the results so far with this have been awesome and that’s all that matters
Look at the $37.00 payments received. All those come directly from using VSA, because I basically offer ten bucks off to anyone that tries to leave. These are rescued sales that obviously never would have happened without the help of VSA.
This product usually does up to around $500/day in sales, with no help from affiliates, and with zero advertising costs. I’m waiting for clickbank to approve it and when I start recruiting affiliates and that’s when this thing is really going to take off. Anyways, you can see above how the product has almost paid for itself in ONE DAY. In one month, that’s a 3,000% ROI. And of course the more traffic you get and the more you make, the more it adds to your bottom line.
I have a feeling this works particularly well here because the product I’m using it with has nothing to do with IM. If you are marketing b2b, then I doubt this would be so effective. But in a consumer market it is obvious that this really works well.
As for the VSA itself, I really have no other requests for it to do. This is really an awesome product that does everything you can think of. Right now I am split testing agent pictures (it does it for you) and playing around with different opening messages. It even let’s you add opt-in code to the chat window which is pretty cool.
You can pick VSA up at http://www.virtualsmartagent.com. That is not an affiliate link, and I’m not affiliated with the product at all. But I am recommending it here just because this is such a well made product.
There was a post on the warrior forum today about this guy with a video who has got over 40 million views on youtube already. The interesting thing is the URL in the description box is actually an affiliate link to a clickbank product on how to play the guitar. (I wonder how much he is making from those 40 million views? )
Apparently the uploader isn’t actually the guy playing in the video, but regardless, this is still an awesome guitar riff. Not that I normally have any interest in guitar music.
If you make any kind of software or infoproduct (even if it is just simple promotional stuff that takes 20 minutes to make) then the place you really want to get accepted at is upload.com. It varies a lot, but oftentimes, download.com will bring in more downloads for your program than every other software directory on the internet combined. Other times, the promosoft submission will get you more downloads. But you ALWAYS want to get listed in download.com because of its huge traffic numbers.
… So how do you maximize your chances of getting listed? I can tell you after doing 200+ submissions to them a lot of it is luck. You can still get junk accepted, depending on the mood of the person who reviews your stuff at the time. I’ve seen people submit stuff full of spyware (zango/waverevenue) that gets listed. Other times if the editor is being tight you can have even really good programs declined.
Anyways here’s a few things that in my experience have got a much higher acceptance rate:
1) Put several programs under the one profile - don’t make new accounts for each new submission! Unless you are submitting stuff full of crap then there is no need to anyway. If you already have a couple of programs you have submitted and are listed under one account, the editor is much more likely to accept another program under that account. I have one account with 10 successful programs under it; and I doubt each would have been accepted if they were under different profiles.
2) Make a special upload.com version. When I use HTML executable, I make the title something like [program name] - download.com verison, or something similar. You can also mention upload.com/download.com in the start page. It only takes like 1 minute more to customize it like this. For some reason, the editors always seem more reluctant to decline your program if it looks like you made a customized version for them.
3) Leave notes for the editor. Just say something, anything, it doesn’t matter. Usually I just tell them how I made a special version for upload.com and how this version has less ads/promotional stuff than the normal version.
4) Make an install process. There are many programs that let you make install files, some are free, but the better ones are paid. I generally just make it put an icon for the program on the desktop and an entry in the start menu. This will make your program look still more legitimate and only takes a couple of minutes. I generally use Install Station for this.
5) Make a company website with information about your program. This one is important. If the upload.com editor is unsure about something, a lot of the time they will take a quick look at your site. If you have a blank page as your company site, they are almost always going to decline you. Upload.com wants to accept people who they think are serious software companies; so don’t skip this step.
For anyone bitching about how upload.com is too strict, or how it’s too hard to get accepted etc. just go through some of the things above. Software submission stuff still works but only if you do it properly.
Because I do so many software submissions that promote affiliate products I have looked at a lot of ebook/HTML compilers that can take html code and turn it into a .exe file. After trying basically all of them I can say the best one hands down is HTML Executable (<– non affiliate link).
This thing is so much better than other html compilers I’ve tried it’s not even funny. It lets you customize basically everything, including the icon, details, company, splash page, and even let’s you use your own scripting. The best part is support for your own skins, so you can make each of your programs look totally different.
If you often need to make .exe programs to submit via promosoft then this is the program you need to get.
I recently just lost over $800 in commissions from a world of warcraft gold selling company (I have an affiliate pitch site in that market) after they changed around their entire affiliate program and didn’t seem to feel responsible for paying their affiliates. It is ironic that my affiliate links to their site are still active, yet I can’t actually login to my account.
The site I have basically promotes WoW Guides/Gold Sellers side by side, and I promote 4 different gold providers. So far only 1 has paid through paypal. Although I have no idea what the game is even about, I like marketing WoW stuff because the market is so insanely lucrative. So it’s interesting that these companies don’t mind screwing over their affiliates.
I have heard stuff like this happening before with CPA companies (eg. if you’re generating worthless leads or incentivizing people to join), but in this case I wasn’t doing anything blackhat. Advertising networks and ppi companies are similar. You don’t want to promote them too heavily until you get your first payment and you know for sure they pay.
From the merchant/vendor side, here is why you want to setup your affiliate program with a trusted company like clickbank:
Affiliates will promote you more because they KNOW they’ll get a cheque
Affiliates are more likely to promote because they don’t have to go through your signup process
You’ll get more exposure from affiliates browsing the marketplace
You’re not responsible for technical stuff with your affiliate program
From an affiliate standpoint, I would much rather promote something I find off clickbank/paydotcom/shareasale etc. than sign up to someones private affiliate program, wait to be accepted, look for my affiliate link, and then wait to see if I get paid. This is why as a merchant you will likely get way more affiliates if you go with a trusted affiliate company, rather than having your own in-house program.
Bottom line? Don’t manage your affiliate program yourself unless you are totally serious. And as an affiliate, don’t promote a private affiliate program too heavily until you are sure they pay.
If you don’t already know, promosoft is basically a tool that automatically submits your software to around 800 software directories like softpedia, freedownloadscenter and so on. You can create something really basic and then use promosoft to submit it to all the directories in its database, and typically get a decent number of downloads in the next few weeks. Plus, you get a lot of one way links from software directories linking back to your site once they list your application.
When I tried this on my existing sites, this has worked really well. So when I made a brand new site (it’s about 4 days old right now) as a side project — it’s a minisite in a certain non-IM niche – I decided to make a few basic applications related to that niche, host them on the new site, and submit them with promosoft.
Somehow (I have no idea why) this seems to have completely f-ed up my Google rankings. Here’s a screenshot (scaled down again)…
That’s how my rank for a certain keyword changed in only a couple of days. The brand new site was on the second page, and then almost overnight, it’s gone all the way down to the ninth page. The same thing has happened with other keywords the site was ranked for.
Here’s what’s wierd — the only thing I have really done to promote this site is through promosoft submissions. The only links pointing to the site are one way links from software directories ranging from PR1 up to around PR7. This is OFFPAGE optimization. There is no content on the new site that would get it penalised by google as it is all unique, and I don’t link to any dodgy sites.
I know google will discard your links if they see it as spammy or un-natural, but the general rule is anything a competitor can do to your site won’t screw you over with google. In this case, anyone could use promosoft to mass submit the pad file on my site to hundreds of software directories, and have them link back to my site. So there is obviously something I’m missing here.
I’m not too worried because I only put about 5 hours worth of work into building the site and doing the promosoft submissions, but this is still pretty annoying because I have no idea why this is going on. It has to be something to do with the fact that the links are being seen as spammy by Google. Still, since it’s offpage, I didn’t think that would have so much of an impact. Either that or I’m just completely missing something.
But anyway, if you’re ever scared about some brand new competitor in your market, maybe you should try doing a few promosoft submissions linking to their site. Just kidding.
I just got to pick up a rebranded version of this really useful tool, which lets build keyword lists, see the number of searches for each keyword, and give the amount of competition for that keyword in Google/MSN/Yahoo. This is a huge time saver when it comes to looking at the profitability of a niche and what keywords you need to target.
(In fact, the only other thing I know of that does this is Niche Inspector which is $100+)
Because I have it with rebranded rights, like with every other piece of software, I have given it away free. Here’s the direct download link:
I would say this is worth at least $27 and that’s an underestimate if anything, because there is no other free software that even comes close to this. I would sell it except I’m kinda busy with more important projects. You can go ahead now and download the software free, and that comes with resale rights so you can give it to anyone you want.
I was reading the NittyGrittyMarketing sales page and saw it mentioned how google actually has a free multivariant split test script, free for adwords advertisers. Even though I completely hate adwords — I have found way better sources of advertising – I went to take a look at the script because I’m interested in doing some multivariant testing for disablespyware.com to get the page to convert the best it can.
I have to say, this thing is pretty f-ing impressive. What’s surprising is that few people are even using it (I think its still in beta now). Until now, if you wanted to do multivariant testing, which is where you test several elements of a page all at the same time, you would need to get something like Muvar 2007 which is around $300. Google’s multivariant testing script is very easy to install (I set up a test in about 5 minutes) and works really well, even though its given away free.
Combined with google analytics, this is a really powerful thing to play with on your site. Even though adwords PPC is ridiculously overpriced and full of click fraud for advertisers, Google has definitely put together some great free resources for webmasters. They also have a basic A/B split testing script although I haven’t checked that out yet.
If you don’t already have Google’s multivariant split tester, this is what you need to do…
Sign up for an adwords advertiser (adwords.google.com)
When you login, go to the “Campaign Management” tab and the “Website Optimizer” subtab
Pick the multivariant tester and insert the code on your page
From there on, you just need to pick what parts of your page you want to test. I recommend for a new site you make, install the script, and test everything — then send a bunch of cheap junk traffic to your site. From there you can test what’s actually working and start making a lot of money once you start marketing your site and getting quality traffic.
Since launching Disable Spyware 2007 (www.DisableSpyware.com) and submitting it to hundreds of various software directories, the traffic is really picking up after only a few days. Here’s my stats so far…
It was the 12th October when I used PromoSoft to submit the trial version to 800 software directories (around 55-60% of which were successful), and so the 200 uniques that day was just from software directories looking at the PAD file on my server. Same thing goes for the 13th as that was when I did a second submission.
The real traffic I was getting on the 14th/15th is from a combination of my own advertising, a tiny amount of viral traffic (I’m using tell a friend marketing) and general WOM, emailing my list and also from various software directories who have now listed the trial version. According to Google Analytics the average time spent on the site is 11 seconds which is relatively very high. Also, the traffic for the 16th (today) is just for the first few hours so the total traffic for today should stay at around 6-7k uniques.
The kind of advertising I’m using here is really untargeted and pretty controversial for some people, so I’m not going to talk about how this traffic was really generated. But hey, since I’m selling legit anti-spyware software that provides a real value, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it … and anyone with spyware/adware on their PC WILL benefit from downloading the trial version of the software — this isn’t a junk product but something that definitely can help people.
My server records indicate the file DisableSpyware2007.msi has been downloaded over 500 times already (the traffic I’m getting is around 1/10th as effective as Adwords traffic and about 1/30th as expensive), although I’ve made only a handful of sales so far. The real exposure comes from when download.com and softpedia.com list the trial version on their sites, and once the WOM/viral traffic effect starts to kick in. That’s because I have my site so it redirects to a tell a friend form when they download from my site, as well as a link in the software that takes the visitor to my newsletter/tell a friend page.
The kind of advertising I’m using is getting me far better results than adwords ever would. Because the traffic is mostly untargeted, I’m getting advertising for really cheap, but it still converts because I have such a general offer. Actually, if you have a general offer I would definitely NEVER use adwords. There are simply much better sources of advertising — and you don’t have to worry about getting google slapped and having your minimum bid at $13/click like what often happens with adwords.
Like I said, the real exposure (I’m talking about thousands of downloads a week) comes from the major software directories like download.com. Unfortunately I have to wait about 15 days for it to be listed there as I don’t have a credit card to pay for 5 day/1 day business processing. But once I get listed on download or softpedia, that’s when this thing is going to really kick off a lot. The traffic is already coming in but I’m not going to get the real traffic until I get major authority sites listing it.
Oh yeah, if you haven’t already downloaded the trial version, you can download it here:
