Hey guys, I'm working on a new product, and I'm in the testing stage. Basically I am of a mind set that it's more important to retain affiliates, than get new ones. So before I make the product available, I want to make sure that I can provide step by step instructions on how to sell, even for a new affiliate. Anyways I have a few questions: 1) I was wondering if it's possible to use clickbank for testing without making the product available to affiliates yet? I am currently using Paypal to test, but I want to use the actual payment page that the customers would see once the product goes live, since I think that the Clickbank payment page is much more customer friendly. 2) How many hops should I aim for with a new product? The high gravity products have been around for ages and have been optimized for the lowest number of hops...but what's a good number to launch with? 1:200? 1:100? 1:50? 3) Can someone explain the clickbank launch to me? Am I right to understand, that's its just a way to get all affiliates promoting at the same time, so that you start off with a higher gravity...which will in turn get you the affiliates that search for their products? And if that's the case, how many affiliates should you have for a successful launch? Thanks guys.
1. I would just recommend switching to Clickbank NOW - if that is what you are going to use for real then even this change will alter your conversion rate. Also, unless you actively go out and recruit affiliates you will not get any anyway. I had my website on clickbank for 3+ months without recruiting and only received a TINY amount of hops from random affiliates, I never even went above 2 gravity in all this time... 2. 1:200 is bad, 1:100 is generally seen as an average overall of all clickbank products good and bad... not ideal. 1:50 is more like it - something around this figure will be seen as good / solid enough to get behind. Most don't really test that much and just announce their product, but if you can test it yourself and prove a 1:50 conversion over like 1000-5000 visits or more then you will get people's interest. 3. Whoa, whole books could be written on this... they have.... I would recommend reading Frank Kern material or "Product Launch Formula" in general about this... but yes, you have the basic idea - the premise is that a big launch all at once will work better - you create a buzz on the Internet, urgency for your product, perhaps a limited discount period. Also you provide more incentives for affiliates to get involved - competitions, a proven increased conversion rate for the launch period, even offering them back promotion... This is waaaay more complicated than it sounds and if you are totally fresh in honesty you might struggle as I think you have a simple view that youll just do this and ask affiliates to promote you all at once and it will work... but it is actually months of work on it's own to do a proper launch... I would recommend testing your conversion: recruiting some affiliates and further proving that your conversion is solid... if it really starts to roll then do a launch then (1-3 months down the line).
-the clickbank checkout is much different than the paypal checkout so you definatley should make the switch to CB now so you have a realistic view of how your site is actually converting. -it depends on what your product is for specific conversion rates, some products convert higher but pay less, and some convert lower and pay more, it totally depends.
I only recently launched my product as well. CB has tools for you to test your product sales prior to official release to affiliates. In fact, after you add a product, you need to send it in for approval. Before you send it in, any orders made on the unapproved product will be test transactions by default.