Idiotic New Clickbank Fees Structure

Ok, rant time...anyone with sensitive ears should stop reading right now!

Clickbank has just implemented a buttload of strange new fees and it's easily on the top 5 most idiotic, incomprehensible, hurtful and just downright evil things I've ever seen a company do online so far, in my several years of working online for a living. They are outright penalizing both affiliates AND vendors for the stupidity of a small percentage of bad buyers and sellers.

Everything is supposed to be implemented by January and some of the biggest changes will be to charge affiliates and vendors when a customer requests a refund or there is a chargeback. The vendor will be charged a percentage of the retail price as a penalty, which they not only lose the sale, but they are now OUT MORE money because they have to pay the fee on top of losing the sale. Ridiculous!

In theory, this is meant as a way to weed out "bad" vendors with poor products, and we all know that Clickbank is loaded full of shady crap (especially MMO products), but they are going about it ass backwards. First of all, it penalizes the WRONG people. An affiliate shouldn't get dinged because of a vendor problem. Affiliates promote products in good faith, just like Walmart promotes products they don't manufacture themselves. Some are good, some may be bad, but it's not Walmart's fault if there is a product recall because of faulty manufacturing. By the same token, an affiliate shouldn't be faulted if a product they link to turns out to be "bad".

For vendors, it puts the cost of doing business too high and they are unfairly put at the mercy of those buyers who request refunds just because they know they can get a digital product free that way...and there are many unscrupulous buyers who do just that. There are forums full of people who swap stuff they get for free on Clickbank.

Part of these new "quality control guidelines" at Clickbank involve adding star ratings in the marketplace and, right now, color coding to show "risk management". Certain colors mean you're ok, but if you are orange or red it means your account is at risk of termination as being "unacceptable".

In my case, my account shows red, which baffles me completely. I've only had 4-5 refunds in the history of my vendor account and the last 2 were from buyers who simply didn't read what they were buying. My sales page CLEARLY states my product is an ebook delivered in pdf format that is downloaded upon purchase, yet both buyers requested refunds by saying they wanted a physical book. Doesn't anyone read what they are buying anymore? I notice a lot of Fiverr too that buyers order without even reading the description! That's like walking into a store blindfolded and buying anything they pick up!

I understand that refunds are part of any business, but should I be penalized ON TOP OF losing the sale because of an ignorant buyer who doesn't even know what they are buying? It's not my fault! I clearly state what the product is they are getting. It ends up making it not worth doing anymore. Clickbank now charges me a $4 "risk" fee on every sale, and since I generously give my affiliates 75% of the sale, that only leaves me with $1.24 earned. Uh, no thanks.

The final straw comes with the chargeback fee, which is $36-45. Chargebacks suck, but they almost always involve a stolen credit card or hacked Paypal account. Should vendors be on the hook for that? How is that the vendors fault??? So, if I'm only getting $1.24 per sale and I get stuck with even just ONE chargeback, then it has effectively wiped out all my profit for the previous 40 sales. Wow!! Unreal!!!

I can see a lot of vendors leaving Clickbank now because there's no longer any money to be made there, but make sure you research for good alternatives first. Plimus doesn't have nearly the fees, but they still suck because it's not a good place for new vendors. They have a stupid inactivity fee, which means they reward successful vendors, but anyone starting or struggling is left in the dust. Paydotcom is better because they only charge a flat $2 fee and don't gouge you like Clickbank does. Their interface is simpler and you have to pay your affiliates directly, but at least it's beginner friendly, if you need an easy place to start out. Have a look here. I'll be moving one of my other ebooks there soon.

Ok, rant over. Feel free to comment, if you have something to add, as I'm interested in hearing from the experiences of other vendors and affiliates as well. Enjoy your day!

Fiverr Has Some Of The Dumbest Buyers Ever!

Ok, this will be a bit of a rant, but cathartic for me at least, so please hang in there!

I've done fairly well on Fiverr with over $8000 in sales in the past year and for the most part it's been a really great experience. However, even though 99% of the buyers are a pleasure to deal with, the bad ones, on the other hand, tend to be REALLY bad over there. I've written about one experience in this post, but here are a few quick examples of other dumbasses on Fiverr...drum roll please!

- The most common problem seems to be buyers who don't respond after placing an order. It's so common that it's already a dropdown menu option in the support form. At first I thought it was really bizarre that someone would pay for something and then never follow through by giving instructions on what they want done, so I used to cancel the order and issue a refund. Not anymore. Now I just mark it complete with no need to deliver anything...free money for me! Thanks guys!!

- Users who complain to me that their order hasn't started, when they haven't even placed one with me in the first place! I get one of these once in awhile and got one today from a user who complained he never got any visitors to his site, while quoting my "guitar lessons" gig...lol. While I do sell traffic on Fiverr, this dummy had never purchased from me ever. Maybe he thought I was psychic??

- I have a popular gig with almost $2000 in sales that can get overwhelming sometimes, so I state twice in the gig description that the potential buyer must contact me FIRST before ordering, as I may be unable to do it at that time, yet only maybe 20% actually do. I've had to cancel orders many times because of this. C'mon, buyers! Is it really that hard to read and understand a description?

- Those buyers who leave negative feedback without contacting me first to resolve it. In all cases except one it was just a miscommunication or something they did not understand. I have no problem issuing refunds either, but contact me first!

My personal award for the dumbest buyer on Fiverr goes to username "doculeak" though. This idiot placed an order with me for my signups gig, in which I post his link on my GPT site for my members to signup to and I reward them with points for doing so. When the link is placed I give the buyer a test login to my site where they can see that their link has been placed on the member only page without needing to join my site, if they don't want to. Most buyers just need to verify that it's there and don't want to bother joining a site just for that.

My gig description explains exactly that and yet this nimrod posted a negative review within a few minutes of me posting it saying there was no place to login and that it was fake "BS" information that any kid could do! Say what????? He said he couldn't find the login to my site, even though it's CLEARLY posted at the top, like on most websites.

So, I wrote to him pointing out where it is and asking him to remove the negative feedback, as it was just a misunderstanding on his part, but instead he left ANOTHER bad one saying my site is a pay site and it wanted him to pay, which it clearly is not. It's a free to join GPT site. Nothing complicated about that.

He was the only buyer for that gig ever who didn't understand the instructions...the ONLY one out of almost 400 buyers for that one particular gig who couldn't simply find the login and check his link, like everyone else had done. I seriously was floored that anyone could be that idiotic and unreasonable. Nothing he said made any sense at all. I thought it might just be a language barrier, but he appears to understand what English is, and can use the words, so it may be a visual thing where he doesn't understand what he sees. He claims to do SEO work, but he wouldn't be very good at it, if this is any indication. He kinda looks like one of those Jersey Shore douchebags on his profile pic, so maybe he really is just that stupid.

Anyway, rant over. Ahhhh...that felt good! If you are a seller on Fiverr and have any "dumb buyer" stories yourself that you'd like to share, then feel free to comment below. Get it all out...I promise you'll feel better!!

Back To School Hosting Special

It's time to get back to school and get over the slow summer period online (finally!!). I love the warm weather, but not too fond of how many revenue streams seem to dry up as more people are outside and spend less time on their computer. Stay inside people!!! lol

Anyway, to celebrate, Hostgator is offering a 40% discount off their usual hosting prices until August 31st. Simply click here and enter 40off for a coupon code during checkout. Enjoy!

Now to go back outside any enjoy the sunshine. :)

Zeekrewards Is Gone! Finally...

As many of you know by now, the program known as Zeekrewards (and it's offshoots of Zeekler, Got2seconds, Shoppingdaisy, blah, blah...) has finally been shutdown by the government for running a ponzi scheme to the tune of 600 million dollars (reportedly the largest in history because of all the investors involved. My immediate reaction was "YES!!! It's about time!"

I hated that program...indeed, I hate ALL programs where you have to refer others to succeed, as they are all ponzi's to some degree. On Fiverr I have a gig where I sell signups, but I refused to accept any of the "Zeek" sites, or any of that other crap, like Wazzub, Justbeenpaid, ZnZ, etc, that just takes your money and screws you in the end. Sure, they all pay out a bit when you first join to keep you hooked, but overall you are losing, as most affiliates will invest back into the scheme...that's what ponzi creators are hoping you'll do. If it looks like a pyramid, then it will collapse, as Zeek did, as they were reportedly about to fall financially anyway even before the govt stepped in.

The reason why these scams get so many investors (victims) in the first place is because of desperation in tough economic times. People WANT to believe they can get ahead simply by posting a few ads a day. Truth is that it takes a LOT of hard work and dedication to succeed, whether online or offline. I don't make my living online by only doing 30 minutes worth of work a day, like the gurus would lead you to believe can be done. I work hard to get ahead, and so should you.

As I have said many, MANY times before, never EVER let your success depend on others, as you are doomed to fail. All these programs, scams, and schemes designed to get you to recruit others are a total waste of time AND money. Stop recruiting people to build a stupid downline, that only makes the program owner rich, and start building your OWN sites and promote YOUR OWN stuff so that your success or failure is controlled by YOU and not on whether or not your referrals are active or upgrading to a "premium" whatever or any of that other crap. STOP PROMOTING THE PROGRAMS AND SITES OWNED BY OTHER PEOPLE!!!!

There, rant over. I feel sorry for those who have lost 1000's of dollars, but come on! If it looks too good to be true, then IT IS!!! Open your eyes! Read, research, and learn from your mistakes. Then you may actually have a fighting chance to succeed online.

Traffic Buying Guide

While I believe firmly that good SEO efforts provide the best quality traffic you can get online, I also know that many people find it difficult to understand and not everyone can be in the top 10 for their keywords. Sometimes it's just easier to simply buy traffic for a website (I recommend http://www.proexpertstraffic.com/order.html) then it is to wait several months or even years for SEO to pay off. However, it's also been my experience that at least 90% of traffic buyers have no idea what they're doing and are bound to fail without proper preparation. For this reason I have decided to write this short traffic buying guide in an effort to help those still struggling with trying to generate visits to their site.

- Optimize your landing page or squeeze page: Do NOT send paid traffic to a blog or page full of distracting links! In almost all cases, except for a TE or PTC, visitors you pay for will come from some form of redirection or pop advertising, which means that someone looking at another site will be shown YOUR site and you have a mere couple of seconds to grab their attention before they decide to explore further or click out and leave forever. That's the reality.

You don't want that potential customer to be faced with dozens of links first thing and have no idea what your site is about. Use a clean, simple graphic with a bold headline and brief description with a distinct call to action, such as to join a mailing list for a free giveaway, or mention a special discount, etc. Tell the visitor exactly WHY they should explore your site further. You don't need to change your site at all, as you can simply add a page to your existing site that you specifically use for your traffic campaign.

This may sound strange, but try to make your page look somewhat like an ad. People are used to ads on websites, and are generally ok with them, as long as they fit the user experience and have added value. So, for example, if someone is visiting an arcade online because they want to play a game, then they aren't going to be interested in being redirected to your insurance blog, but if you create a landing page of just one game, or theme, with the call to "Click Here To Play Now!" then they are more likely to check it out, as you've gained their attention, even if it looks like an ad to visit another site.

Also, do not use a page or site with automatically playing sound or that has pop ups. It annoys the visitor and makes them click away before they even get chance to read what you have to offer them.

- Use targeted traffic correctly!! - Most people get this one wrong, as it's not always obvious. The average traffic buyer will buy health traffic to a website selling health related products, or dating traffic to a dating site affiliate link, etc, because that seems like the most logical choice. However, online marketing is much different and involves a certain degree of trial and error, as well as proper research.

Did you know that the highest conversion rates for diet products online come from white males over the age of 50? This is because many of them are self-conscious of their midlife "spare tire" and would rather work on it discreetly at home than go to a gym full of fit 20-30 year olds or be seen running around the block with their belly hanging out. So, they order pills online shipped directly to their door.

Therefore, with that demographic as your potential customer, it's your job as the marketer to target the right category most visited by these older males, such as news, politics, golf, etc. Do the research BEFORE starting your campaign!

- Promote a product that is worth the investment! - Here's another one people miss. Purchasing traffic costs money, so obviously you should be promoting a product or service that provides a reasonable ROI (return on investment). By far the most common question people ask before buying traffic is "Is it safe to use with Adsense?" and the answer is it doesn't matter because you shouldn't be using Adsense when buying visits because it doesn't pay enough to be worth it...ever. I don't care if your niche pays $2 per click or whatever it is...most visitors simply won't click third party ads on a redirected site, so the 1 or 2 clicks you MAY get (if you're extremely lucky) simply aren't worth the overall cost of a typical campaign.

What you should be using instead is a high end product with a decent profit margin, so that even if the conversion rate is low, then you still come out ahead. A good example would be using some of the advertisers on Commission Junction that pay $100+ per lead. Pick one with a good conversion rate (high EPC shown in their stats over 3 months AND at least something showing for the past 7 days). Then create a catchy landing page for it and research possible categories and demographics to target.

Once you are ready then buy a small campaign of 5000 or 10000 visitors to test response to your page. If there is no response at first then tweak the page or switch categories until you get a few "bites" and scale it up. For example, if you get 2 leads per 10k, then 100k would give you 10 times that, or 20 leads, more or less. If even just 2 of those "qualify" (most advertisers scrub leads and will find a way not to pay for them...that's life, so just assume it will happen), then you've earned $200+ from a $160 investment for $40+ profit. That's not bad considering many power sellers are scrapping out a living on Ebay at only 3% profit, or others using programs online that only pay out 2% or less.

- Be realistic - This should be a "no brainer", but yet it still needs to be said. Don't expect to make $100 off 5 bucks worth of traffic! It just doesn't work that way. I've seen customers complain that they didn't make a sale from their tiny 1000 visitor campaign to their site stuffed full of random ads, while I have other customers order 100k worth of traffic consistantly month after month because they know how it works and what to do with it. The truly successful sites are the ones getting 1000's of visits per DAY, not 1000 per month.

Small campaigns of under 10k are used for testing purposes only and should not be assumed to bring sales, especially to unoptimized pages. Any sales you may get should be seen as unusual and good luck, but don't expect miracles. Get 5 or 10k to test your page to see how effective it is first, and THEN scale according to your results.

Also, paid traffic typically has a high bounce rate, as it is not organic and only the truly interested visitors will explore your site further, and THOSE people are the ones you should concentrate your efforts on. A 90%+ bounce rate is common, but it's the 5-10% who stay, especially from a large campaign, that will make the difference. A high bounce rate WILL NOT affect your Google ranking in any way, as they only measure the rate from visitors through their own search engine. Outside stats like this have no affect, so don't worry about that and start working on your new customers instead. Plus, it should be a given that anyone buying visitors isn't already doing well in the SE's anyway, or why would they bother?

Bottom Line: Research, optimize, test, tweak, then do the math and scale your efforts accordingly. I personally use an advertiser on CJ that pays $110 per lead that converts at 2-3 per 100,000 visitors. That's $60-170 profit per campaign!

Good luck!!

Google Penguin Update - Duh!

By now tens of 1000's of webmasters all over the internet have noticed their sites getting penalized by the latest Google algorithm change, adorably nicknamed "Penguin". I happen to like penguins, so I wasn't bothered by this one bit. The main target of this change was over-SEO'd sites with too much irrelevant linking (spam) and too many over optimized backlinks.

There is a good analysis of the data right here, but the gist of it is that the majority of sites were hit because more than 60% of the anchor text links to their site was for its main keywords. Well, duh!! I've been saying exactly that about anchor text since way back in 2008!

The lesson to be learned here is, while it IS important to have relevant text backlinks pointing to your site, you shouldn't overdo it. The new rule for 2012 is DO NOT OVER-OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE!!! I actually welcome the change as it helps get rid of sites with poorly written crappy posts that are created solely to manipulate their SEO factors with perfectly placed keywords that make no sense at all.

Let's all hail the Penguin!

Making Money From Free Classified Ads

I know many of you are using free classified ads sites as part of your overall marketing strategy, but have been finding it more difficult lately to produce worthwhile results. The big sites with tons of traffic, like Craigslist, will remove anything that even remotely looks like spam and many internet marketing type ads get flagged and removed in less than 15 minutes, which can be obviously very frustrating.

There are lots of tips on the net about how to avoid getting flagged, or at least keep your ad up longer, such as to word it more naturally, avoid adding links and simply use an autoresponder with your link in the email response. However, as with most things I do online, I'd like to suggest tryng a completely different approach.

What I do instead is post in Backpage with ads selling specific niche products and it works beautifully. Simply grab an affiliate product from Amazon, Clickbank, etc, and write an ad to sell it. Make sure the ad contains the niche product keywords, as an ad page can be SEO'd as well as any webpage, especially if the item is in a microniche with little competition.

Do NOT put an affiliate link in the ad!!! Too many people make this mistake and their ad gets flagged faster than they can count to 10. Instead, link to your own site, either to a product page or review blog post.

The advantage to using Backpage is that they are one of the oldest and largest classified sites online with a lot of traffic, plus they allow a clickable backlink for free AND they allow multiple city listings. Just post your ad as if you had the item physically in front of you, with the description and price, and give the link to your site where it can be purchased (and where your affiliate link is, of course).

If you use the Amazon affiliate program it's easier making money from free classified ads posting than dropshipping and you have a huge inventory of products to choose from. Good luck!