Many of the products are just books, and many of them are based on resell content. So why don't affiliates just become merchants of the product themselves? (Create their own version of the product?) Just starting to think about doing Clickbank and this is something I keep wondering. I feel like if I knew the answer to this I would understand CB a lot better.
yeah why not. It's up to you, of course.. Some people are just good at selling stuff, while others are good at creating stuff.
thank you for responding... But if you're good at selling rather than creating, why not just pay someone a few thousand to create a competitor to the product you're promoting (even less if it's just resell content) and get 100% rather than 75%? I'm wondering if this isn't the trajectory that most CB superaffiliates eventually take.
Because it's not that easy. There's a ton of work involved - customer support, not to mention the "thousands" spent on getting everything up and running. Many people would rather just take 75% and focus solely on marketing the products, rather than dealing with all the other stuff that comes with it. It really isn't that easy to just snap your fingers and develop a professional product and begin selling it in high volume.
Being a vendor takes guts: 1) You need a high converting sales page 2) you need a product that works 3) you need to show affiliates that it sells before trying to persuade them to come on board 4) you need to deal with customer support 5) you need to battle against competition Being an affiliate is a good way to get yourself established in the market and then release a product. It's easy to just go after the glory, but I know only a handful of people with the knowledge and imagination it takes to be able to make a high-selling site straight away.
Not necessarily. Aff marketing has a lot more competition and is generally a lot more work. Vendor effort peaks just after launch. Once you get a nice product going with some good affiliates, it's just a matter of time before you're able to leave it on autopilot.
Exactly. You need to invest thousands of dollars. Building a product isn't an easy job. Don't think that the buyers are stupid enough to buy low quality products with poor sales pages. You need a significant upfront investment for the ebook/sales page/graphics/affiliate section/dedicated hosting/dlguard/other scripts, and a similar amount later to test, tweak, design things, get affiliates, pay clickbank etc. Not to mention the months all this is gonna take to make a sales page good enough to get as good conversions as the "original" proven product has. Even if you manage to sell some copies of your own product, you will still lose more than that 25% (that you lose as an affiliate) if your conversion rate is worse than the product you can otherwise sell as an affiliate. Think of all this before you decide to make a product. Think of hundreds of clickbank products (if not thousands) that don't manage to even make their first sale. Even if they get a single sale, it is usually their competitor trying to make sure you didn't copied him/her. Now isn't it better to simply gather traffic for a product that is already proven to sell? Still if you are determined to make a product, don't be discouraged by all this. Do what you think you can.
As a newbie it is better to start as an affiliate.After learning and experiencing about online marketing,information marketing,buying process,pre-selling,driving traffic,ppc etc ,you can create your own product. I keep a dream of creating my own ebook and sell it successfully. One thing I realized is that creating my own product and recruiting affiliates is the ultimate success. That is the point you become a true entrepreneur and others are working for you. Sometimes,being an affiliate, I feel as a traffic driving machine What if the price of the product(Eg:$47) is the real problem why people don't buy it.All I can improve is my marketing and pre selling skills but the price remains the same.I could have sold the product for $27 if I was the vendor.That single change may double or triple my conversion rate. It is a great feeling when someone ultimately land on your sales page.You can ask for their name and email in exchange of a free ebook when they exit your page(exit pop up). When I first started as a clickbank affiliate,I felt that all clickbank vendors are some supernatural people.They create high quality products and magical sales letters.Later I realized that most of these products sell only because of the quality of the persuasive sales letter. I hope I can create and sell my ebook successfully soon. Thanks
Well what many people do is they push a product for Clickbank and then if it converts well and they have a lot of traffic they replace the Clickbank product with their own. Also many people collect customer emails, then they market a bunch of stuff to them over time.
See, this is what I thought was happening. Anyone have any experience making the jump from ebook affiliate to ebook sales? And I don't mean taking on affiliates of your own. I mean just selling your own product as opposed to someone else's.
Watch the cb-analytics website daily and you will see dozens of new products launched daily, and you will also see almost all of these sink into the woodwork and never make a sale. If you are an affiliate or a vendor, you will have to know how to market and sell either way.. Most times, the vendor themselves is their own best affiliate. Being a vendor is not the easy route. Most people make more as an affiliate than they ever will as a vendor. I am not discouraging anyone from trying, but just understand this.. If you can not sell proven products, you will most likely not be able to sell your own unproven product.
I guess it depends on the product topic.. With my niche, it's mostly advice, usage suggestions, technique questions, and such.. There's a few of the common technical questions like unzipping, ipods, burning to CD, etc.. But mostly personal guidance. You know, refund prevention,,