Which is better for selling goods online?  Clickbank or eJunkie? You’ve probably heard of Clickbank, so why go with Ejunkie?

There are three ways to make money online. Products. Services. Advertising. The real money is in selling products. You own the product, make 100% of the sale, and can setup affiliate programs if you want. You can also create upsell opportunities with your newsletter. Sounds good?

So, how do you do it? I started with Clickbank. It’s very good, not perfect, for selling digital goods. I’ve used it for nine years and seen it improve dramatically. E-junkie is another site that lets you buy and sell digital goods online. Let’s compare them and see which is best.

Why I like E-junkie to sell digital goods

E-junkie is less well-known than Clickbank but has some powerful tools for upselling, digital delivery and secure downloads. It’s not free but at 5 USD per month for 10 goods, it won’t break the bank.

• Cost – It costs $5 dollars a month to sell 10 goods. The pricing structure is staggered depending on the number of products you sell and/or bandwidth you want.

• Quality – The quality of the information products and digital goods is high. The marketplace is smaller than Clickbank, I think. I stand corrected on this.
• Delivery – Downloads are sent by email. With Clickbank, you have to create a web page where the customer goes to buy the product. Some customers don’t get it and expect an email with the digital good. Customer support can take time and time is money.
  
• Affiliate – You can setup affiliate programs in a snap. Couldn’t be much easier.
• Product Listing – you can add multiple digital products to its online marketplace. With Clickbank, you need to apply/create a master account and then link different accounts to each product. Takes time.
• Guarantee – no guarantee. It’s up to you to resolve with the affiliate manager.
• PayPal – integrates with PayPal, which also allows you to upsell digital productsl.
• Upsell – it has a built-in tool that lets you create a shopping cart and upsell other products. Possibly the one reason to choose E-junkie over Clickbank.

Why I like Clickbank to sell digital goods

• Cost – Clickbank is free!
• Quality – The quality of the digital goods may not be as high. However, the range of products is larger.
• Guarantee – you get a minimum 60 day guarantee on all products.
• Affiliate – You can setup affiliate programs, add commissions and get tips in the affiliate newsletter.
• Product Listing – you can add one core product to its marketplace. However, you can create a Master account and add different products. It’s doable but a little cumbersome.
  Clickbank Analytics Page
• Delivery – you have to create a web page where the customer goes to buy the product. Some customers don’t understand this and expect an email with the digital goods. Customer support can take time and time is money. Also, some close the download page and don’t receive the product, then request a refund. With E-junkie, they get an email with a link to the product. There is also a limit on the number of times/days they can attempt to download the product.
• Upsell – Clickbank has a manual system that lets you upsell digital products. I got the PDF with instructions but never actually tried. Too much coding and testing involved. I want something that’s automated.
• PayPal – integrates with PayPal and 2Checkout.
• Shopping Cart - built-in shopping cart that helps upsell products and increase sales. You can do this manually on Clickbank (e.g. hardcode HTML pages) but if you change the prices, then you need to go back and manually change the web pages.

Which is best for selling digital goods?

• While Clickbank is free, the five dollars for EJ shouldn’t stop you. Not if you’re serious about selling goods online.
• Quality is hard to tell until you buy. Clickbank’s reputation is better than it was and they are trying to give extra support to power users. I have a dedicated Relationship Manager, for example.
• Clickbank gives you a 60 day guarantee.
• E-junkie is a little easier for setting up affiliate programs, especially as you can separate out different products. How sure how to do this with Clickbank, tbh.
• Clickbank lets you add one core product to its Marketplace. You can apply for a Master account and add different products. With E-junkie the process is much simpler.
• Delivery – Clickbank makes you create a web page for every product, which must be open 24*7. Security issues here. The link can also be passed around. Not ideal! Many customers expect email delivery. After the purchase, some close the browser and don’t receive the product – request refunds. E-junkie sends them an email with a link to the product. Limit on the number of times/days they can attempt to download it. You can update this.
• E-junkie has a nice tool for creating a shopping cart and upselling.
• Both integrate with PayPal.
• E-junkie has a built-in shopping cart that links to PayPal. Great for upselling information products and long-tail products. You have to do this manually on Clickbank and if you change prices etc, then you need to locate, change and ftp the web pages.

Which do I use to sell digital products?

Both. I have so many products that moving them to E-junkie (mostly for the shopping cart feature) takes time. Some friends suggested that I use 1Shopping Cart to sell my digital products instead!

What do you suggest? Looking forward to hearing from you.

About the Author: Ivan Walsh is a recovering technical writer who develops internet business plans for savvy clients .He also shares business tips for smart people at Klariti.

Clickbank’s reputation as a site for selling digital products, such as eBooks, has improved recently. It certainly had teething problems at the start but most have been sorted out now. When John Chow and ShoeMoney use it to sell their online courses, you know it’s got to be good. But, what if you’re still not convinced? What are the other options for selling goods online?

Why Leave Clickbank?

I decided to look into this. I contacted other ecommerce companies that help you sell online to see if they offered better value.

What I was really looking for was a compelling reason to switch from Clickbank and move to them.

Could they persuade me to move? Let’s take a look.

Why Sell Digital Products?

I’ve sold ebooks, software, reports, online services through Clickbank for ten years.

Customers like the simplicity of the Clickbank shopping experience. It lets them get in and out with minimum hassle. For that reason, we’ve stayed with them.

But, if you’re starting out, then look at your options before making a commitment.

For me, the attraction of selling Digital Goods, such as Information Products is that there are:

• No cost to produce
• No time to deliver
• No shipping costs
• No physical production

How Much Does Clickbank Really Cost?

Clickbank charges about 7.5% commission and a small fee for every transaction.

While this is not ideal, the technical setup is now in place with Clickbank, so moving to a new system would take time, be expensive, and may not be a success with customers.

It works out at about 10% of the final sale.

But the 10% hurts. So, I decided to explore another ecommerce provider. Or, at least, look for one that would give a better deal.

My Shopping Cart Criteria

I contacted 9 companies – these quotes are from those who responded – they other didn’t get back to me or even send out an auto-responder!

My requirements were for the following:

• Delivery mechanism to sell digital products, such as ebooks, software, templates, reports and so on.
• Real-time credit card processing system.
• Ability to manage everything online.

Most websites listed their products features and fees but I wanted to know a bit more. For example, how could I move from Clickbank to them or did they have any advice on how I could save money with volume transactions.

I sent them an email and asked 2 specific questions about selling digital online products.

Here is what I wrote:

1. I want to sell ‘Digital Products’ on my site and offer them as ‘Instant Downloads’ to my customers. From your site, it appears that you offer such as service.
2. Can you clarify how this process works, especially if a customer buys more than one product? For example, if they buy one item, they can be directed to a download page. That I can understand, But, how would this work, if (i.e. they used a shopping cart) and downloaded two or three products.
3. Do I need a Merchant Account to do this? What is the price for this service? I’m based in Europe if this makes any difference.

Note: one of the limitations of Clickbank is that it’s hard to upsell a second product automatically. You can do it but the process is rather complicated. Other ecommerce providers, such as PayLoadz and EJunkie have in-build tools for upselling.

Here are the responses (with minor edits), in no order of preference:

PayDotCom

I contacted PayDotCom, which integrates Paypal, and got a response almost immediately.

1. PayDotCom is a marketplace where you show your products.

Customers purchase them and then are taken to a download page you have setup. All this information is input into your product setup.

PayDotCom currently does not offer a shopping cart, but I understand that is coming in the near future.

2. You do not need a merchant account. All transactions are processed through PayPal or StormPay.

While this sounds good, there is no shopping cart. Customers can only buy one item at a time, which is a limitation if customers likes your products and want to make multiple purchases.

1Shoppingcart.com

1Shoppingcart.com is one of the most well-known ecommerce/online payment providers. It offers an incredible range of products and features, but it’s a little pricey compared with entry-level products such as eJunkie..

Here’s the reply:

1. If the client buys more then one product they will be given multiple download links on the download page. Basically they will be given a separate download link for each digital product.

2. As for the merchant account, where in Europe do you live?

Update: 1shoppingcart.com came back and said they could arrange for me to get a Merchant Account with one of their partners. I took the trial offer and have to say it’s very impressive. Hard to fault it except for the price but then you always pay for quality.

Stormpay

Very disappointing. Straight from auto-responder land:

“To create StormPay payment buttons for your web site, log into your StormPay account and click the “Sell” link. Next, choose the type of payment button you want to create (ie: single item, subscription, or shopping cart). After you enter the details into the form, html will be auto generated for you to paste into your web site. For advanced button codes, click the “Integration Manual” link which can be found at the bottom of any StormPay.com web page.”

Some of the answers are in here, but it is hard work. You’d think they would make a bit more effort, especially as they are competing with Paypal.

For example:

1. Does Stormpay let me upsell products?
2. Does Stormpay let me track and/or contact buyers via email?
3. What the main advantage of using Stormpay or Clickbank?

I never heard back from them.

GoDaddy

I’ve hosted my websites with these guys and they are great. Some glitches now and then but overall GoDaddy were able to offer instant downloads through email, much like EJunkie.com does but there were problems with the Merchant Accounts.

From GoDaddy’s email:

1. They would receive an email to download the product after they have purchased it.
2. To answer your second question however, we won’t offer international Merchant accounts, also if you’re planning on using this shopping cart in Europe, this would not be feasible since it’s required to be in the United States to function properly.”

In other words the: “Quick Shopping Cart is currently only designed to work with U.S. addresses.”

So, GoDaddy is an interesting option if you want to combine your web hosting and ecommerce tools and are based in the USA. If you’re in Europe or Asia, the 1ShoppingCart is a better offer.

2Checkout

Next, 2Checkout one of Clickbank’s main rivals.

Here is what happened:

1. Yes we do allow vendors to sell digital products and allow them a way to redirect the customer to a download url.

Unfortunately if a customer purchases multiple downloads a simple url redirect will only take the customer to the approved url for the last item they ordered.

You would have to build your own script that took the correct item paramaters from the 2co sale and populated a database that would decide what downloads would be on an active download page.

Or you could just email download links to the customers.

2. 2co charges a one time startup fee of $49.00. After that you will be charged is 5.5% of the sale and $0.45 per transaction.

There are a few problems here.

• Fee Per Transaction – While the 5.5% is less than Clickbank’s you need to factor in the setup fee and the cost per transaction.
• Customers Trust – The brand is not as well known as Clickbank, which may reduce sales. Customers buy from sites they know and trust. As 2co is a lesser known company, this could work against you when selling goods online.
• Technical Limitations – The part about “build your own script that took the correct item paramaters” is fine if you’re a programmer. I’m not so that rules them. I asked if they had a generic script I could use to get started. No response so far.

Do They Really Want Your Money?

Most answered the first question only.

My suggestion is to ask 1 question only when contacting Customer Service.

Most never addressed the second part, or, if they did, very fleetingly. Almost none addressed the question about being outside the US.

Several companies never got back to me. Maybe when they saw I was outside the US, they didn’t bother to waste the time responding. At least, these companies did, so let’s give them credit for that.

If I Had To Leave Clickbank, I’d Use…

If I had to leave Clickbank or was starting again in the morning, it would be either EJunkie.com or 1ShoppingCart.

Why?

• EJunkie.com is less than $5 per month, offers upsells, has an Affiliate Program, and is a trusted brand. If you’re selling your first goods online, then go with this.
• 1ShoppingCart.com – If you’re already selling goods online and want to scale up, for example, offer newsletters to your customers, create different auto-responders, then 1ShoppingCart is the best I’ve seen. It also has a terrific training centre with videos which explain how to use the epayment tools. And probably the simplest user interface to use. It also has an Affiliate program, which I recommend you sign up for. It’s free to be an affiliate.

As things stand, I’m staying with Clickbank though I have started to develop an alternative buying option with Paypal. More of that in the next post.

PS: Let me know if you’ve found any companies that provide these services, especially if you are also outside the USA.

PayPal offers Personal and Business accounts. Both are free but one offers better rates, better tools and lower fees. Want to know more?

photo credit: valdeklaur

As a small business owner you’re looking for ways to cut costs and stay competitive. I run several web businesses and PayPal has been a godsend. While I still use Clickbank and eJunkie, I’ve switched to the Business account and started to see the benefits already.

Getting a PayPal Business Account

It takes about 20 minutes.

• Create a new account on PayPal.
• Select Business (far right of the screen). This is for Merchants (i.e. business owners) who use a company name.
• Click Get Started.
• Enter in the Business Account details. Remember to have your company name and VAT details ready.

Why Choose a PayPal Business Account?

In addition to accepting and receiving payments, you get:

• Accept Credit and Debit cards. Personal accounts can’t accept Debit cards.
• Multi-user access. Your team can all access the same account.
• Lower Fees For Receiving Payments
• Standard rate for receiving payments for goods and services is 3.4% + €0.35 EUR.

If you receive more than €2,500.00 EUR per month, you’re eligible to apply for PayPal’s Merchant Rate – which lowers your fees as your sales volume increases. Your fees can be as low as 1.9% + €0.35 EUR, based on your previous month’s sales volume.

Merchant Rate Fees

Once you start to use PayPal more frequently – and the amount of sales increase – the fees per transactions goes down. This is one argument for centralizing your ecommerce activities through PayPal rather than eJunkie or Clickbank, neither of which offer sliding scales for payments, i.e. lower fees for higher transaction fees.

Criteria for Merchant Accounts

The Merchant rate criteria is as follows:

• Merchant rate pricing approval is reserved for members in good standing (whose accounts are not currently under investigation) who meet the following criteria:
• Received more than €2,500.00 EUR in PayPal payments in the previous calendar month.
• Maintaining your merchant rate: After qualifying for merchant rate pricing, all members are expected to keep their PayPal account in good standing. Members may be downgraded to the Standard rate if a payment volume of more than €2,500.00 EUR is not maintained in the previous calendar month, or if they have unresolved chargebacks.

Note: You do not need to reapply for merchant rate pricing if payment volume drops below €2,500.00 EUR, unless your account is downgraded or if there are unresolved chargebacks.

Other Advantages To a Business Account

I have two accounts with PayPal: one Personal and one Business. I keep the Personal account for buying things on Ebay and/or paying for small items online.

Business account I use for business-related transactions has a few benefits:

• Trust – Showing that this is a Verified account increases trust with buyers. Next week I‘ll show you how to get your account verified.
• Customer Service – When things go wrong with transactions, for example, I have a query with a payment, the Customer Service from PayPal is very fast, usually within a few hours.
• Tax Records – having a dedicated account makes it easier to me to track payments and calculate the amount of tax to pay every year. In the past, it took forever to separate personal and business related transactions, especially small payments. Now, I use the reports functions and print out all the transaction or simply paste them into Excel.
• eBay Tools – the Business account (and Premier accounts) offer more advanced tools for integrating your epayments to eBay. In later tutorials, I’ll show you how to do this.
• Merchant Services – as with the eBay tools this offers more sophisticated tools for sending, receiving and integrating payments.

Transaction Fees for Cross-Border Currencies

There are fees for Cross-border transactions, for example, payments made by a Spanish customer to an American website. Likewise, there may be cross-border fees between two countries in the same continent, such as between Iceland and Spain as they use different currencies.

Fees for receiving eCheck payments will not exceed $5.00 USD per transaction.

Next Steps

If you plan to sell goods online, take a good look at what PayPal, eJunkie and Clickbank offer. These are the three big players in the market. There is no cost to sign-up with each, so your only investment is your time.

I’d suggest that you give special attention to PayPal, for a few reasons:

• It’s a trusted brand name. There was issues in the past but these have been ironed out. This will increase transactions and sales over
  lesser known products. People are more comfortable with brands they know, even if the price is slightly higher.
• It integrates with eJunkie, Clickbank and other web merchants.
• From 2011 eBay will only accept payment through PayPal. We’ll look at how you can use eBay to sell goods in the coming weeks, so don’t close the door or think it’s not for you.
• The Invoice tools let you send out invoices to customers as orders come in.
• The Reporting tools let you break out sales figures and see which products are performing best.
• The Reminder tool let you send out an email to customer reminding them the payments are past due.

Ok, you get the idea, I guess. There are other features that, for me, put it head and shoulders above the competitions.

But what are the negatives about PayPal?

It does have drawbacks.

For example, you can setup a script to let customers download a digital product, such as an ebook. By setting up these scripts is not for
everyone. Again, I will show you how to do this. It’s not that hard and we’ll walk you thru the process.

This article outlined some of the reasons I use PayPal for my web businesses. I also use Clickbank and eJunkie. They all have their respective strengths and weaknesses.

What’s the main reason you use or DONT use PayPal?

Let us know below and we’ll discuss it in next week’s tutorial.

Making money from niche blogs in an inexact science. What works in one blogs, fails on another. I’ve launched over 200 websites since 1998 (mostly ecommerce) and about 30 blogs (technical). If your blog has a technical slant, for example, its target audience is technical writers, analysts, architects, or others micro-niche areas, then use some of these search engine techniques will increase your traffic.

29 Ways to Increase Traffic to a Micro Niche Blog

1. Monthly Interview – do a profile every month or a day in the life of your target audience. Rule #1, people like to read about people.
2. Company Profile – same as above but focus on how the company developed, what it’s doing right AND mistakes it made. Rule #2, people like to read how others solved problems.
3. Product review – don’t do a short review. Aim for 1000 words. Look at this review of Camtasia Studio. This will live long in the Google index and generate more backlinks. Short reviews melt like dew in the morning sun.
4. Guest articles – do them and take them. I take guest articles all the time (send me text files, please not Word). Make sure these people have a brain, i.e. that they remember to share the buzz on their site, their twitter, their Facebook page, and maybe on other Social Media networks. I’m still amazed at people who take the effort to submit, write and publish an article but forget to promote it.
5. Be the Hub – make your site the hub for your niche. This means others in the field will flock here to see what’s happening, who’s been hired, rates, buzz, gossip – whatever rocks their boat. And it’s ok to throw in the odd joke to lighten things up. Don’t take yourself too serious.
6. Deep Link – instead of linking to the main page, link to a page within a site. This increases the number of trackbacks. You can also do a Google search for sites that offer back-links and add these to your ping requests.
7. BusinessWeek – has a professional network that that accepts links, i.e. yours!, which get indexed v quickly by Google. You can also connect your account here with LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh)
8. LinkedIn – you use this, right? If not, sign up and join groups that match your target audience. Get involved. Be active. Ask and answer questions. Check in once a week. Link your RSS/blog to your profile. More back-links for little effort.
9. Connect with Startup blogs – while everyone wants to get on C Brogan, you’ll get further if you connect with people starting out. They appreciate the value and will share the link love. If they don’t, well… PS: here’s the right way to add a comment to chris brogan’s blog.
10. Google Adsense – not very fashionable these days but it still pulls in $750 per month, which pays for the Frappuccino, Cable, and Brazilian waxes. Ok, one of those isn’t true. It’s cable, isn’t it?
11. Calendar – use Google Docs to get it up. Simple way to create high-traffic pages.
12. Add Photos – don’t be shy. Show us your mug! Take photos whenever you go to an event, conference or client. Let others into your world. Remember rule #1.
13. Use Creative Commons – share. Make it easy for others to get your message out there. Why don’t you share?
14. Setup a Newsletter – use Aweber, not Feedburner, if you are serious about making money & getting the news out. The money is in the list. Share useful information. No one cares about your cat’s dysentery.
15. Reach out to Other Bloggers – mention other bloggers, writers etc in your articles. Why? They might pop over and leave a comment or respond in their blog. Don’t write in a vacuum.
16. Add Short Video – use YouTube to increase traffic, cross-links, and to establish yourself as an authority.
17. Offer Incredible PDFs – create PDFs of your best work, upload it to Slideshare and index it in your Sitemap. Why? Google indexes PDFs. Include links back to your site + you’ll see the page rank increase.
18. Create Unique Twitter Lists – create unique and interesting twitter lists. As Twitter has become a wall of noise, people use lists to share, aggregate, and curate information. Make your list as specialized as possible. Then link to the list, not your twitter page. See the difference? Twitter followers will go thru the roof!
19. Twollow – use this to follow others by keyword, e.g. follow those interested in video marketing. AND use it to un-follow deadbeats that don’t follow back.
20. Ejunkie – use this to sell digital goods, information products, online training, or ebooks. 100 times better than Clickbank. $5 per month. How can you go wrong?
21. Optimize Money Pages – log into Google Analytics. Find your top 10 posts. Go into each of these pages and fine-tune them over more. Add 1 product to each page. These are your MONEY pages. Start making money here.
22. Google Analytics – learn how Google Analytics works. ‘I know how it works’. No, you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article! Spend 5 hours here. Do split testing, setup reports, check entrance paths, bounce rates and duplicate headers. All the heavy-weights do this.
23. Posterous – use this to publish your blog posts across all your Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Flickr, YouTube with one click. Now you can add tags and use Google Analytics as well.
24. Contact Journalists – identify 5 journalists in your industry. Tell them what you write about and why they should read your blog, i.e. to give them material for their articles. See your PageRank shoot up if you connect with one high-profile journalist.
25. Create 2 Sitemaps – add an XML site for Google to read and a HTML one for the humanoids. Check this with Google Webmaster Tools.
26. Title tags – don’t do all the hard work and forget to add the correct title tags to each post. It takes 5 min to get this right but it’s worth the effort. Use SEO in a Box plugin to do this.
27. Google Webmaster Tools – like Google Analytics, spend 30 min in here every week and see how Google in indexing your blog. Look for duplicate headers (i.e. pages with the same title tags) as these lower your PageRank. Also check for crawl errors and others horrors.
28. Leverage Facebook – forget pigville and join groups, fan pages that compliment your business. Add useful comments, not just high fives. Say something that others have overlooked. Add videos, photos and RSS feeds to your pages.
29. Create a Publishing Process – saving the last til best. Develop a workflow for publishing your material. Don’t just write and hit publish. Stand back and see how you can gather information, identify your audience, focus on pain points (i.e. their problems), develop content that will be evergreen, source photos, respond to comments, and get busy promoting. No one knows about your site.

Now, get out there and tell them.

Ok, that’s how I do it. What did I miss?

Photo: invisiblekid

You can create more content for your blog – and generate more business – if you work in batches. Instead of creating videos, or writing blog posts, one by one, do them in batches. Organize your workspace so that you can process several videos/posts at the same time. Videos and blog posts don’t have to be long – but they have to be useful to the reader or viewer.

How To Create More Content & Be More Productive

Seven ways to be more useful to your readers:

1. Current – Talk about a current issue that the reader can relate to – and that you helped solve. Keep it simple. Don’t crow. Don’t take all the credit.
2. Problem – Discuss some common problem/business situation that arises every day and show how it can be fixed, reduced or mitigated against.
3. Angle – Provide an observation that encourages the reader to make a comment. “Ever been to London, here’s something I didn’t know about using mobile phones here…”
4. Ask for help. Ask the reader what they think about a business or technical problem you’re having. 
5. Challenge the reader. Ask them if they agree with you?
6. Provide useful information. Does it really help? No-one wants to hear you ramble. Share something that helps that other person with their business.
7. Focus in one area. Keep your blog under control. Keep drilling-down into these areas. Go narrow, not wide.

What do you think?

I know I’ve missed something here. What is it?

Getting started with Clickbank is easier than you’d think. In this video, we look at how to get started, setup your account and start selling your first information product.

Video on How to Sign Up & Start Selling Information Products with Clickbank

This instructional video helps you get started with ClickBank. It walks you through the process of signing up for a ClickBank account.

Problems Getting Started with Clickbank?

What problems have you had getting started with Clickbank?

It is:

• How to set a price for your information products
• How to setup the account information
• Adding images for your products or
• Creating more affiliates?
• Selling digital goods outside the USA

For me, it was knowing how to price the product I was selling.

What’s the main problem you’ve had with Clickbank?

Clickbank’s analytic data is refreshed multiple times per day. You can view the last time your analytics data was updated by checking the Data Last Updated box. This contains the date and time your data was last refreshed.
[ad#ad1]
1. Daily information for your account is available for 120 days.

2. Hourly data is available for 40 days.

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The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare specified dates hour by hour.
You can setup marketing campaigns for specific times in a day.

All of the charts we discussed in the previous articles provide information for a whole day.

However, ClickBank can also let you view your information hour by hour.

The hourly charting control is located above the trend chart, as a button; toggle the trend chart between daily and hourly to update it.

The hourly trend chart lets you compare any selected day to another selected day hour by hour.

For example, you can configure it to see your sales for today versus yesterday, or compare different days of the week.

You can use this to determine how your web business is performing during a time period and examine which marketing or business tactics are performing the best.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare stages of the sale.
Clickbank offers a further degree of sophistication in its comparison charting. Comparison charting lets you chart two metrics over the same time period.

For example, say you were viewing Gross Sales by customers in India.

You can gain more insight into customer tends by overlaying the Hops received in that same time period and gain insight into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns targeted at customers in a different country.

To do this:

1. Select a different country.

2. You can have the same insight into any other campaign you are performing at the country level.

3. All of the metrics available in the data table are available in comparison charting. The control for comparison charting is located above the trend chart in a dropdown menu.

Anyone familiar with Google Analytics will understand the user interface very quickly.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to explore by attributes of a sale.
When checking the performance of your Clickbank sales, there are many attributes for each sale or prospective sale.

To manage your business with ClickBank, you need to examine the performance (i.e. in terms of sales and click-thrus) of your products or marketing campaigns by many or all of these sale attributes.

The ClickBank analytics tool let’s you explore and view sales trend for these attributes.

These attributes are as follows:

Vendor: The nickname of the vendor whose product has been promoted (available for affiliates only)

Affiliate: The nickname of the affiliate who promoted the product (available for vendors only)

Product: The vendor nickname and product item number promoted

Billing Type: The type of product promoted – Single Sale or Recurring

Customer Country: The customer’s country based on IP Address or the country the customer selected on the Order Form

Customer Province: The name of the province the customer selected on the ClickBank Order Form

Currency: The currency the customer chose to pay in for their purchase

Language: The language assigned to the product sold

Tracking ID:  The tracking code used by affiliates to classify campaigns for HopLinks (affiliates only)

Category: The ClickBank category and sub-category assigned to the promoted vendor (affiliates only)

You can report on these attributes by selecting them from the left-hand navigation menu once you login to your Clickbank account.

You can drill-down into the trends of each item by clicking on the item in the data table.

For example, when viewing Gross Sales By Customer Country, click on the America item in the data table and the trend chart will show Gross Sales by customers located in America.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to analyze sales by stages of a sale.
As an affiliate in the ClickBank Marketplace, you probably know that prospects work their way through several stages in the sales process.

For example: a prospect (potential customer) might start by clicking on a Hoplink from an affiliate.

This may result in the customer visiting the vendor’s web page, placing an order, and then moving on to the ClickBank Order Form.

Note: Clickbank refer to this first visit to the order form as an ‘Order Form Impression’.

Once on the Order Form, the customer fills in the required fields and clicks the Pay Now button.

This is the Order Form Submit.

If the submitted order form has no errors, passes fraud detection, and is accepted by the payment processor, it becomes a Sale. Technically, this is a Gross Sales as the customer can refund the product in which case you lose the sale.

After a Sale, the customer can return the product for various reasons. Depending on the action the customer takes, these returns can be processed as a Refund or Chargeback.

Refunds and chargebacks are removed from Gross Sales.

The new ClickBank Analytics tool lets report on and measure success through these stages of the order process.

The stages are as follows:

• Hop: prospective customer clicking on a HopLink
• Order Form Impression: prospective customer visiting the ClickBank Order Form
• Order Form Submit: prospective customer clicking the Pay Now button on the ClickBank Order Form (reporting counts up to one order form submit per customer visit to the order form)
• Gross Sale: A successful customer purchase of a ClickBank product
• Refund: A return of a customer purchase
• Chargeback: return of a customer purchase initiated by the customer contacting their payment processor or their bank
• Net Sale: A customer purchase (Gross Sale) that has not been returned

Additional metrics measure the success of converting a customer from one stage of the process to the next.

These are:

1. Earnings per Hop: Dollars earned for each Hop that a customer clicks. Calculated by dividing Gross Sales Amount by the Hop Count for a specified time period.

2. Hops per Order: The number of Hops it takes to generate a sale. Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Gross Sale Count.

3. Hops per Order Form Impression: The number of Hops it takes to get through the vendor pitch page and generate a visit to the ClickBank Order Form.

Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

4. Order Form Sale Conversion: The rate at which a visit to the ClickBank Order Form generates a sale.

Calculated by dividing Gross Sale Count by Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

5. Refund Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a refund. The metric is calculated by dividing Refund Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

Note: Each refund is assigned to the date of the original sale, so the refund rate is an accurate indicator of performance of sales on a given day.

6. Chargeback Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a chargeback.

Calculated by dividing Chargeback Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to analyse by attributes of a sale, for example, emerging trends.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll look at FAQs regarding this tool.
Q:  Why does the number of Order Form Submits not match my Gross Sale Count?

A: There are several reasons: (1) the customer didn’t enter all fields correctly (2) the customer’s method of payment was declined.
Q:  Where is the Trend Chart? Has it been hidden?

A: If it disappears, you can always find the trend chart on the Hide Chart link in the upper-right of the page.

Q:  Why is the Gross Sale Count higher than the Order Form Submit Count?

A: Subscription sales have a recurring billing element that initiates a sale without the customer visiting the ClickBank order form at each recurring time-period.
Q:  Why are improper Customer Countries in my reports?

A: In certain instances, a Customer Country is determined by the IP address the customer is using. Each IP address belongs to a country, Satellite Provider, or generic region like Europe or Anonymous. However, most IP addresses are assigned to a country.

Q:  Why does the automated Internet robot impact Hop and Order Form Impression data?

A: ClickBank filters automated visits from its reporting so you get a better picture of real human traffic.

Q:  Why are sales not showing in the Analytics tool?

A: Check the Last Updated Data box on the left-hand side of the reporting page. This shows when information was last loaded into the Analytics tool. The sale may be too recent to be available at this time.

Q:  Why will the trend chart not display the selected time period?

A: Select a time period and then click the Go button in order to change the time period.

Q:  Why do the Original Analytics metrics not match the new Analytics tool?

A: Original Analytics and New Analytics do not collect data on the same schedule and will likely not be in sync with each other as they calculate Hop traffic differently.

Q: Why did Net Sales data change since the last time I ran the report?

A: Net Sales may change because of refunds or chargebacks that were not included in the first report.

Q: Why are sales totals by Category greater than by Product?

A: A site listed in two Marketplace categories will include sales totals for each category, which causes your sales metrics to double.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.

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Posted via email from ivanwalsh’s posterous

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Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

Yesterday we looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength. What I’d like to cover today are the type of mistakes people make when creating passwords and how to avoid this. If you’re planning on opening a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this.

How to avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords:

1. Avoid sequences or word or repeated characters.

Examples of these are “12345678,” “778899″ “abcdefg,”

2. Letters on your keyboard that sit next to each other are also a mistake. For example, qwertqwert.  These are very weak passwords.

3. Avoid using look-alike substitutions of numbers and symbols.

This means that you don’t replace an ‘i’ with a ’1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd. These are too easy to guess.

However, these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in upper and lowercase, to improve the strength of your password.

4. Avoid your login name.

5. Don’t use any part of your name, birthday, social security number.

6. Avoid words taken out of the dictionary.

7. Tools can guess passwords based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions.

8. Use multiple passwords

If any one of the computers or websites using your password is compromised, then all of your other information protected by that password will be compromised as well.

So, try to use different passwords for different systems.

9. Don’t store your password online.

I know this sounds obvious but, if others find your passwords stored online (or on a networked computer), they have access to all your information.

Takeaway tips:

• Long passwords are stronger than short ones.
• The more characters you add to your password, the more you increase its level of protection.
• Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or more is ideal.
• Strongest passwords combine both length and different types of symbols.
• Use symbols by holding down the ‘Shift’ key and typing a number are very useful in developing strong passwords.
• Choose symbols unique to your language.
• Use the space bar in passwords.
• Combine letters, numbers, and symbols.
• The greater the combination you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

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