ClickBank Has Competition – Meet Click2Sell
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Products, Affiliate Programs, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Click2Sell is a new online marketplace very similar to ClickBank with a few subtle yet potentially important differences depending on what you prefer.
ClickBank has been a favorite amongst both affiliates and sellers of digital products for many years. ClickBank currently has over 100,000 affiliates and over 10,000 digital products. Click2Sell however, is slightly different and is obviously competing for the business that ClickBank currently has.
First off, Click2Sell not only offers digital products but physical products as well as subscriptions, something that ClickBank just recently implemented. However, ClickBank doesn’t offer you the opportunity to sell physical products like Click2Sell does.
Click2Sell also offers someone selling a product the ability to manage their Articles, Banners and E-mail messages used to help affiliates promote the product. ClickBank currently does not offer these tools for the merchant but rather leaves it up to the merchant themselves to create these items for their affiliates.
A big plus is that you also have access to who your affiliates are; their name as well as how many visitors they’ve had, their number of sales, the ability to ban the affiliate if necessary, and even email the affiliate directly. Something again that ClickBank doesn’t allow you to do.
Merchant Fees
In order to list a product, ClickBank charges you $49.95 however, Click2Sell only charges a fee per transaction and no more than $3 per transaction for products over $40.00; $1 for items $19.99 and less.
There are no fees whatsoever for affiliates.
Affiliate Information
As an affiliate of any product within the Click2Sell marketplace, you can sort the available products by category; very much like ClickBank but if you’ve visited ClickBank in order to promote one of their products, you’ll notice that the statistics for the products are a little proprietary and take a bit of reading to understand what they mean.
Click2Sell on the other hand, allows you to sort the products by more well known terms such as:
- Commission %
- Dollars earned per sale
- Rank
- Popularity
- % of sales made by affiliates
- As well as the conversion rate of the product which is a HUGE factor in helping determing how well you may do per 100 visitors.
Additionally, Click2Sell allows PayPal as a payment processor, something that ClickBank does not except for recurring subscriptions – See this post. This will be a huge plus for many people.
However, unlike ClickBank who acts as a third party when it comes time to pay affiliates, Click2Sell leaves the payments up to the vendor supplying the product. This could be a downside for those who are concerned that they may not get paid their commissions. It is a plus with ClickBank that they handle all of the payments and send you a check every two weeks.
The second downside is that Click2Sell doesn’t have as many products as ClickBank does but I expect that to be changing as the company grows.
I really believe that Click2Sell has a large future with many merchants as well as affiliates checking out what they have to offer and giving them a try.
While ClickBank has an almost cult-like following, the company has made some decisions in the past that have not made merchants nor affiliates happy.
As an affiliate you now have a second option open to you, so take advantage of both streams of revenue.
Choosing an Affiliate Program
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Products, Affiliate Programs
There are so many different affiliate programs available, that sometimes it can be hard to choose. While you can be involved in more than one affiliate program, you’ll want to be sure of a few things first before you decide to participate in one.
- Is it going to cost you anything to join? Many affiliate programs are completely free to join. Sometimes you’ll find people who have developed unique products and only allow those who have purchased a product to join their affiliate program. If you have the money to put forth for the product and a use for the product, then by all means purchase it. However, if you personally don’t have a need for the product there are many other affiliate programs available at no cost.
- When do they issue commission checks? Every program is different. Some will issue checks once a month or every quarter. Be sure to choose the one that fits your needs.
- Do you have to earn a minimum amount of commission before a check gets issued to you or can you set your own standard? Some programs only pay out when your commissions hit $50 while others will pay out as low as $10.
- How do they track referrals and how long do they stay in the system? Ideally you want real-time tracking but sometimes this is not always the case. It’s important, especially for your own testing purposes to know which links are getting the clicks and how many clicks it takes to actually get someone to purchase.
- How long are the cookies set for? Many affiliate programs have cookies that last for 30 days, some 90 days, some for a year and some for a lifetime. Still some only have it for a day. Typically website visitors who click on your link don’t make a purchase initially so you’ll want to be sure that when the day comes that they do in fact make the purchase, you get credit for it. If it’s only for a day, you’d do well to steer clear. If, however, you see a program offering lifetime cookies, then you’ve found a goldmine!
- Is the program one tier or two tiers? A single or one tier program only pays you for the business you have personally generated while a two tier program pays you for the business you brought them as well as pays you a commission on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsored into the program.
- Finally, what amount of commission is paid out to you? 2%? 5%? 50%? Even though you may at first be tempted to look at only those programs that pay a high amount of commission, keep in mind the products that your merchant has. 5% on a new computer that costs $2,000 is quite a bit more than 50% on a digital book.
These are just a few questions that you’d be wise to answer for yourself before you sign up to be an affiliate. You should be familiar with many of these aspects as they’ll help you make a more informed and educated decision.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Products, Affiliate Programs
You may have heard the term “affiliate marketing” and you may have even heard of people making tremendous amounts of money on the Internet from it.
First off, affiliate marketing is a huge business on the Internet. And there are many people, maybe just like you who have have heard the term but aren’t sure what it is or even how to participate in it.
To put it in a very tight nutshell, affiliate marketing is a cooperative effort between merchants and an affiliate. Now while that sounds like a very large statement, it’s not.
What this means is that you, as an affiliate, sign up and agree to market a product or service. When someone purchases a product or a service through the special link that is provided to you by the merchant, you get paid a commission from the merchant.
Every single day people just like you get interested in affiliate marketing for one reason or another. The most obvious reason is that it creates an additional source of income for you. There are people who have built entire businesses around simply marketing other people’s products and services.
But unfortunately, many of the people who do get involved in affiliate marketing, end up making mistakes and because of these mistakes, end up not making any money until they eventually quit.
What you’ll learn through this site are steps, ideas and techniques that you can use in order to become a successful affiliate marketer. Take your time and browse through the site, find topics that fit your interest and then learn from them and implement them.
The most important tip I can give you as an aspiring Affiliate marketer is to take action. Most often people fail simply because they learned everything they needed to but failed to take action.
Knowledge that sits in your head or on your hard-drive does not pay you an income.
