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.

If only Blackadder had eJunkie to publish his books!

It’s my magnum opus, says Blackadder. It took me eight years to write and now Dr Johnson may publish it. If you’ve seen Blackadder, you know what happens next.

Publishing eBooks in 1574

Most of us have a good book in us, declared Blackadder. And he’s right. The only problem for Blackadder was getting published. And paying for the distribution. And getting publicity…

In his day – 1800s – getting a book published was a major undertaking.

• You needed a patron. He wanted the self-important but influential Dr Johnson.
• Paper cost money. Unlike today, tools of the writer’s trade didn’t come cheap.
• Distribution was limited. Outside of London, it was difficult to find publishers.
• Connections mattered. Most publishing houses wouldn’t look at your manuscript unless you had some social status.

The list goes on.

Your Guide to Publishing ebooks

Today, that’s all changed. You now have:

• Your own printing press. See WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger.com
• Your own publisher. See eJunkie, Lulu
• Your own delivery mechanism. See Payloadz
• Your own way to accept payments over the web. See Clickbank, 1ShoppingCart

You can write, publish, deliver, and get paid while sitting in front of your PC.

Maybe the problem is that it’s too easy.

You can setup an account with EJunkie (for me these guys are the best) and get your own printing press in action in about five, maybe ten minutes…

What’s stopping you?

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.

This is part one in a series on how to identify Affiliate Programs that offer High Profit Margins. One of the simplest ways to make money online is to sell other people’s products. This is commonly referred to as affiliate marketing. I’d like to show you how I do it, specifically, how to identify quality products, determine their profit margins, and ensure that you get the best return for your efforts.

This series will walk you through the process of choosing an affiliate product that suits your site, offers higher than average returns and allows you to grow your business using this product line.

Overview – How to Identify Affiliate Programs With High Profit Margins

Where to start? One of the hardest things to do when you start your own web business is deciding which products to sell. In some respects, the problem is that there is too much choice. With so many products to choose from, how do you start? I recommend that you sell 3-5 products. Focus your marketing plan on selling these items. Go narrow, not wide. Become an expert and the go-to person in a single area.

Look at it like this.

‘I want to be the person people go to for advice on…’

Fill in the blank. That’s how you position your web business in your prospect’s mind.

Part 2 — Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing Affiliate Programs

In this module, we will look at:

1. How to avoid Low Profit Margins. Something I learnt from Yaro Startak,
2. How to avoid Crowded Markets
3. Does the Product Conflicts With Your Core Products Suite?
4. Is There Demand In Your Target Market?
5. Are There Opportunities To Upsell Similar Products?
6. Does the Partner Offer Technical and Business Support?
7. Does the Product Align with Your Marketing Strategy?
8. Have you tested the product? Either buy it or get a trial version.
9. Have You Researched The Target Market In Depth?
10. How To Avoid Promoting Too Many Products
11. How To Avoid Low Returns on Advertising (watch the video here)
12. How To Search Engine Optimization your Site
13. How To Develop Your Brand

Part 3 — How to Select An Affiliate Product

Once we’ve looked at the mistakes to avoid, the next module will examine how to select an affiliate product that compliments your business strategy. I’ll show you how to:

1. Focus on 3-5 products (and why this makes the most business sense)
2. Define a high profit margin, at least 30%.
3. Identify a niche market that has customers ready to buy.
4. Ensure that the product aligns with your marketing plan (aka suite of products).
5. Appeals to your target market

Next, we will examine if there is:

1. Sufficient demand (so you don’t waste your time launching a product that no-one wants badly enough)
2. Opportunities to upsell multiple products
3. Adequate support from the partner/affiliate and that the
4. Affiliate product solves a problem. It lets me segment my newsletter list and connect my newsletter and blog together. Something FeedBurner can’t do.

Part 4 — How to Assess Value of Affiliate Products

The next module, we check that:

1. Products align with your core message.
2. Affiliate partner’s website and technical support is ready, offers banners ads, and web marketing kits.
3. Quality of Goods is worth endorsing
4. Reputation of the affiliate partner
5. Commission scheme of the affiliate program is attractive
6. Tracking software shows you that you’re getting paid
7. Terms and conditions for payment are fair

Part 5 — How The Payment Structure Works

This module will look at the payment structure and the pitfalls you need to avoid. This means looking at the:

1. Payment frequency (e.g. monthly)
2. Payout rate (e.g. 30%)
3. Payment for future sales
4. Minimum Amount before payment
5. Rollovers
6. Chargebacks

Part 6 — Where To Find Quality Affiliate Products

This module will show you where to find products that generates high returns. Examples include:

1. Commission Junction – I use this for GoDaddy. I sell expensive (not cheap!) web hosting and it pays very well. Nice setup, banner ads are easy to download and payment is prompt.
2. PayPal — the marketplace is ideal is want to sell digital goods with automated payments or membership sites.
3. Clickbank— for those who want to sell information products and instant downloads. EJunkie is an alternative site for buying and selling digital downloads.
4. Google – how to use Google to research affiliate products.
5. Directories — affiliate products directories

Part 7 — Comparison of 3 different Affiliate Programs

In this module, I’ll give you three case studies and examine different affiliate programs. We’ll examine their strengths, weaknesses, risks and issues. This involves looking at their:

• Pricing Structure
• Target market
• Profit Margin
• Support
• Quality
• Marketing Kit
• Risks
• Issues
• Competition

Conclusion

Identify Affiliate Programs (with high profit margins) becomes easier when you know what to look for. I’ll do my best to flag the pitfalls most new web marketers make and highlight the key areas you need to focus on.

Choose affiliate programs, that suit your customers needs, means considering its

1. Choice
2. Features
3. Payments
4. Quality
5. Relevance
6. Strategy
7. Variety

That’s it for now. At the end of the series, I’ll send out a PDF of the entire course, about 40 pages.

Make sure you sign up for the newsletter, so you don’t miss it!

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

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?

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E-junkie is a shopping cart and digital products delivery system. In a recent poll on www.ivanwalsh.com, we found that E-Junkie was one of the few shopping cart solutions that users had consistently high feedback.

It’s designed for those who deveop digital products, such as podcasts, software applications, mp3s, ebooks and ringtones, and want to sell these online. Clickbank and Payloadz are other alternatives.

Why use E-junkie?

1. You can store files on their secure servers

2. Customers are sent an e-mail (customized by you) to download the product after a successful purchase.

3. Shopping cart buttons are available for a different payment systems including PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize. Net.

4. E-junkie can also be used to sell tangible (ie physical) products on your site.

For these products, E-junkie lets include shipping and packaging, sales tax, color and size options, and more.

Pricing

E-Junkie pricing starts at $5 per month. This gives you the ability to list up to 10 products within a 50-MB space limit. The pricing list is here: E-Junkie pricing list

What’s the best – or worse – thing you like about eJunkie?

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

E-junkie is a shopping cart and digital products delivery system. In a recent poll on www.ivanwalsh.com, we found that E-Junkie was one of the few shopping cart solutions that users had consistently high feedback.

It’s designed for those who deveop digital products, such as podcasts, software applications, mp3s, ebooks and ringtones, and want to sell these online. Clickbank and Payloadz are other alternatives.

Why use E-junkie?

1. You can store files on their secure servers

2. Customers are sent an e-mail (customized by you) to download the product after a successful purchase.

3. Shopping cart buttons are available for a different payment systems including PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize. Net.

4. E-junkie can also be used to sell tangible (ie physical) products on your site.

For these products, E-junkie lets include shipping and packaging, sales tax, color and size options, and more.

Pricing

E-Junkie pricing starts at $5 per month. This gives you the ability to list up to 10 products within a 50-MB space limit. The pricing list is here: E-Junkie pricing list

What’s the best – or worse – thing you like about eJunkie?

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

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com

Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

PayPal Donations is a very nice way to let people donate a small amount of your site, usually as a thank you for providing quality information, tips or advice.

You can use this to collect donations from a PayPal Donation button on your website, or even using it as a link in your email. PayPal won’t automatically place the button code on your website, but it’s very easy to copy and paste the code into your blog or website’s code. The PayPal Create Button designer screen also lets you customize the look and field of the button, set-up  donation amounts, currency types, and other options. You can also create a library of buttons and re-use these rather than starting from scratch every time.

Benefits

• Easy to implement – no programming experience necessary. Jus copy and paste the code.
• No up-front costs – same low fee schedule as other PayPal payments
• No hidden charges – PayPal don’t charge for this service. There are no
  hidden costs
• Reports – PayPal maintains detailed transaction records so you can track your donations
• Flexibility – your donors can choose to give an amount of their choice
  (recommended) or you can set a fixed amount

To add PayPal Donations to your website, follow these steps:

The webpage you use to design the buttons has three sections. You only need
to use the first one: the others are optional.

1. Choose the button type and enter the payment details

2. Save your button (an optional step)

3. Customize the advanced features (also optional)

Let’s get started.

1. Log in to PayPal or setup a new account.

2. Click the Profile tab.

The Profile Summary page opens.

3. Under Selling Preferences, click the My Saved Buttons link.

The My Saved Buttons page opens.

4. Click Create New Button.

The Create Payment Button page opens. This is where you will create the
actual button.

How to Choose the button type and enter payment details

Let’s get started and choose the button type we want to use.

1. In the Accept payments for dropdown menu, select Donations.

2. In Organization name/service, enter the name of your organization

3. In Donation ID (optional), enter a unique number if you want to track the donation.

The next step is to customize the button. In other words, do you want a
simple image with only the word ’Donation’ or do you want to add credit cards to it?

You can also upload your own image, which can be useful if you want to blend
it into your site’s color scheme.

4. Click the blue triangle next to Customize appearance.

5. Click the PayPal button box.

You now have two options:

• Customize the PayPal button or
• Upload your own.

6. If you want to customize the PayPal button:

6.1 Click Use smaller button – if you want a Donate button without any
branding or credit card logos.

6.2 Click Display credit card logos – if you want display credit card logos
such as Visa and MasterCard.

6.3 Select the Country and language for button.

FYI: I recommend United States – US – English.

When you change the settings, a preview of your image appears in the Buyer’s
View pane.

7 If you want use your own image.

7.1 Click Use your own button image.

7.2 Enter the URL of where your image is located on the web. At the moment, you can’t upload an image to PayPal directly.

Note: PayPal will not show your image onscreen when you use this option. But, when you create the code later on, it works fine. You can always go back and change it, by the way.

Next you’re going to select the currency.

8. Choose a Currency from one of these:

USD AUD GBP CAD CZK DKK EUR HKD HUF ILS JPY MXN NZD NOK PLN SGD SEK CHF.

Again, most of you will select USD (US Dollars but you can choose what you
want).

Tip: If you choose a currency other than USD you run the risk of people not
making a donation. People don’t want to get tricked into paying with a currency they don’t understand. If you make them go check the currency rate, they might have second thoughts on paying.

Keep it simple. Use the USD option.

Next up is the contribution amount.

9. In Contribution amount, select one of the options:

9.1. Click Donors enter their own contribution amount.

Let people choose to donate 1 dollar of 1 million. It’s their choice. Never under-estimate how generous people can be if you provide really
useful content (like this!)

9.2. Click Donors contribute a fixed amount.

I’d avoid this. It’s a bit ham-fisted and forces people to pay when you think
they should, under-mining the principle of making a donation. To me, this looks more like a pseudo-payment. I’d suggest you avoid it. But, hey, it’s your site. Don’t let me stop you.

10. Next, enter the email address where the donations are sent to. Usually you’re PayPal account email address.

Step 2 and 3 are optional, so you can ignore these for now. Take a peek if
you want or you can skip ahead and create the button.

The final step is to get the code for the button.

11. Click Create Button at the end of the screen.

This opens the Button Code page.

12. Click Select Code to select the HTML code.

13 Copy the code (CTRL+C for Windows and CMD+C for Mac)

14. Paste the code into your blog or webpage (Ctrl + V)

We’re not finished yet!

15. PayPal also gives you the option to add the button to emails. Fantastic
if you’re selling things via email or are big into good ol’ web marketing.

Just copy and paste the link into your email. Send a few tests to yourself to
check that it works. Also try the link in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail to check that everything works fine with these.

Now you’re finished!

Other things you can do on this page

• Click Create Similar button if you want to use the button you just
  create as a template for your next button. Nice time-saver as you can use the same configuration settings.
• Click Create a new button to create a new button from scratch.
• Click Create Similar button if you want to create another button, withall the same/similar configuration settings as this button

I hope you enjoyed this article and that is made the whole process of
creating PayPal buttons a little easier.

Next week, I’ll show you how to use more advanced features in PayPal, like
setting up a Thank You page or sending customers to a download page
automatically.

To setup a new PayPal account, please go here.

Yesterday we looked at different ways to protect your PayPal account. We looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength.

There are a few other things I wanted to add to the last article so I’m adding them here. If you’re going to open a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this. There is no point making a successful online business if others can highjack your account.

How to create a strong password:

1. Write down a sentence that will form the basis of strong password. For example, “My son Ivan was born on May 7 1998.”

2. Check if your computer supports pass phrases.

If you can use a pass phrase (i.e. spaces between characters) on your computer, then use this approach.

3. If the computer does not support pass phrases, convert it to a password.

For example, take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new password.

Using the example above, you’d get: “mstwbom71998″.

4. Combine uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers to add an extra level of complexity.

You can further strengthen this by adding letter swapping and misspellings.

For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Ivan’s name (e.g. Evan), or substituting the word “seven” for the number 7.

Remember: the longer the sentence, the more complex your password will be.

Your pass phrase might become “My sOn evan waS bORn on MAy 7 1998″

5. Add special characters.

Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, remove spaces between words to make the password more complex.

Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MysOn ev@n waS b#Rn o% M*y 7 1998″ or a password (using the first letter of each word) “MsewaSbMAy71998”

6. Test your password with Microsoft’s Password Checker

This is a non-recording password checking site that helps determine your password’s strength.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

Test the strength of your passwords: Enter a password in the text box to have Password Checker help determine its strength as you type.

Note: Password Checker can help you to gauge the strength of your password. It is for personal reference only. Password Checker does not guarantee the security of the password itself.

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

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com / Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

Yesterday we looked at different ways to protect your PayPal account. We looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength.

There are a few other things I wanted to add to the last article so I’m adding them here. If you’re going to open a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this. There is no point making a successful online business if others can highjack your account.

How to create a strong password:

1. Write down a sentence that will form the basis of strong password. For example, “My son Ivan was born on May 7 1998.”

2. Check if your computer supports pass phrases.

If you can use a pass phrase (i.e. spaces between characters) on your computer, then use this approach.

3. If the computer does not support pass phrases, convert it to a password.

For example, take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new password.

Using the example above, you’d get: “mstwbom71998″.

4. Combine uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers to add an extra level of complexity.

You can further strengthen this by adding letter swapping and misspellings.

For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Ivan’s name (e.g. Evan), or substituting the word “seven” for the number 7.

Remember: the longer the sentence, the more complex your password will be.

Your pass phrase might become “My sOn evan waS bORn on MAy 7 1998″

5. Add special characters.

Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, remove spaces between words to make the password more complex.

Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MysOn ev@n waS b#Rn o% M*y 7 1998″ or a password (using the first letter of each word) “MsewaSbMAy71998”

6. Test your password with Microsoft’s Password Checker

This is a non-recording password checking site that helps determine your password’s strength.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

Test the strength of your passwords: Enter a password in the text box to have Password Checker help determine its strength as you type.

Note: Password Checker can help you to gauge the strength of your password. It is for personal reference only. Password Checker does not guarantee the security of the password itself.

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

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com / Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

Personally, I don’t use PayPal Buy Now or Donations when sending out emails. There are a couple of reasons for this.
1) it’s too hard sell – selling directly through email rarely works.

2) spam filters will pick it out and send your lovely email to the spam filter, adding your email address to the ISPs blacklist in the process (which you can’t undo) and

3) many people (myself included) turn off images in their email.

In other words, I never see any images when I use Yahoo or Hotmail. This means that my emails download faster (less bandwidth required) without images and most are just eye candy with no value add.

To quote Ken Brockman – Just my 2 cents.