Could we get a brief background of yourself and some of your websites
I am an old entrepreneur who have actually been in business for myself for about 12 years now and I came out of a technology background working in the defense industry and started an Internet website business in, it was about '95, I think. And we originally started off as just a Mom & Pop website design shop, and because of where we are in Huntsville, it's very high-tech town. There's a lot of government contractors here.
So, we quickly morphed into a software business, we would do web based applications. And that company is still going strong, it's called Digital Graphiti and we are, as I said, going into our 12th year I believe.
But about three years ago I got interested in Internet marketing, because I had a customer who actually hired us to create an e-Book site for them. And I had never really thought much about e-Books or online selling or that sort of thing. But I
started investigating what they were doing, because this guy was making a ton of money. And so I am like, well geez, if he can do that, that I can sure do that.
And I was very fortunate because along with being an entrepreneur I am also a writer, I have a weekly column on small business for the newspaper here in Huntsville. I have written for Entrepreneur Magazine and just - it's very easy for me to write. So, I started developing my own info products and marketing those, and that was about three years ago and today we have eight or nine products of our own.
We also started affiliate marketing a couple years ago and are now, I guess you could call us a super affiliate for a lot of people. So, we do a lot of things online now. Our own digital products, we have membership websites, as well as a very robust affiliate marketing business.
So, after you had started marketing your own products what made you decide to get into affiliate marketing?
Well, you know, it's kind of funny because when I first started this business I would not sell anyone's product but my own, because in my mind if I was selling someone else's product I was actually taking money out of my pocket.
Well, it occurred to me one day that maybe my customers would be interested in seeing other products. Maybe already purchased my product or maybe my product was not a specific fit for them.
So, I had gotten into doing a lot of joint ventures, and of course all my joint venture partners started saying, well, just give my product a try, and that's what I did.
I actually started it under resistance because I didn't know if it was for me. But we quickly became entrenched in that market and now probably half of our revenue is done from affiliate marketing, selling other people's products.
How much of that is through ClickBank in particular?
We do an enormous amount through ClickBank, not. we have our own products, I have seven different products that are listed in ClickBank. But there are, I would say probably a dozen others that I promote regularly to my list and off of my websites.
I have a list of about 65,000 and it's a pretty diverse group. They primarily started off as an eBay crowd, but over the last couple of years have become an online marketing group.
So, anything that I think is a good fit for them, especially if it's in the online marketing space, I don't really vary from that too much, I will promote and usually those are our ClickBank products, because everyone is using ClickBank because it's just so darn easy to set up as an affiliate system. And so, out of all the affiliate marketing we do, I would say probably 75% are ClickBank products.
What are some of those ClickBank products that you promote as an affiliate?
Some of the big ones we do of course are Ros Gardner, who is a very good friend of mine, her e-Book on affiliate marketing is a very good seller for us. Rick Davies who has IstPromotion, we push a lot of his products. We have done really with a variety. We have done some AdSense products. We have done some that are eBay related.
The thing that I have found is it's, once I know who my market is, which is my list, I can identify a product that I know is going to sell to the list and sell over and over. So, what I always do, is I like to nose around ClickBank every now and then. I will go over there and not really look at the top products, but I will actually go down and look at the new products and the ones that are not the big sellers, and look for little nuggets of gold down there, because every now and then you can find either a new product or a product that's not getting promoted much, and find a really great product to sell.
But I always just, I base it on what I think my list is interested in.
I also, I have a weekly newsletter that goes out, and occasionally we will do a thematic newsletter. For example this week we did, Women Entrepreneurs and so I spotlighted a couple of products in ClickBank that, one was Ros Gardner and the other one was Robbin Tungett who has a really excellent product there called, I think it's Garage Sale Strategies. So, because our theme was Women Entrepreneurs, those were perfect products, and we did very well with them.
So, once you go into the Marketplace and you are trying to identify products that your list would like, how do you actually test the product to make sure that is in fact a quality product?
What I will do, usually before I will promote anything, I will ask for a review copy. And if a person really is interested in having people promote their products, they will provide you with a review copy. You of course have to prove to them that you are not just some Joe off the street who wants a copy of their product. I am very blessed that I have a very good reputation and people know me. So, when I request a review product, it's very easy for me to get.
But I will actually either personally review it or have one of my assistants do it, and we will look at it and make sure it's viable.
Make sure it is something that meets our standards. Because as you know in this business, you really do live and die by your reputation. And the last thing we want to do is promote something that's not as a high quality as we want it to be.
So, it's like everything else, do a little research, just look at the product up close, get a review copy, test it out, especially if it's a piece of software, because a lot of ClickBank products are software related. We try to test everything. And we also go by reputation.
Once you are in this business for a while you know who are the trustworthy, credible sellers there, and you can usually count on them having a quality product. So, it's all about homework.
OK. So, somebody like you with a big list and someone who is well known, obviously it's easier for you to get the review copies, but what about some of the newbies listening in who might not have the budget to go out and buy the products that they want to promote, but they would really like to take a look at it and give a personal recommendation?
Well, when I started in this business three years ago, even though I was a successful businessman, nobody knew me online. I was not an Internet marketer and I was lucky that I could afford to buy those products. I can remember actually requesting review products from several people who, they are like, "well, who are you? If you want to review it, buy it." You know?
So, and I can understand that. It just kind of goes with the way it works, but I would, if at all possible, I would buy the product. If you can't afford to buy the product and the person won't allow you a free copy, you might ask your friend to try, try to find someone else to order the product for you.
Usually the ClickBank products are not very expensive. I mean you are going to look at typically a product there is anywhere from 40 bucks on up to 100 bucks, something like that. And you have to put, and this is what I tell everybody, I also do a lot of consulting with new businesses and I teach entrepreneurial classes. You have to be willing to invest a little bit in your business, and if your business is going to be affiliate marketing, you really have to be willing to invest, to buy some of those books.
The nice thing about ClickBank is, all of the products do come with money back guarantees. You don't want to buy something specifically knowing that you are going to refund it, but approach it with the best of intentions, get the product, review it, make sure it's something that you can market with a good conscience. If it's not, get your money back.
I have no problem with that whatsoever. If someone buys one of our ClickBank products and they are not satisfied with one reason or another, well, it's got a refund policy, it's not a big deal. So that's what I would do. I would really invest in your products, because if you do find a product that you like and you can promote, you are going to make your money back many times over.
Now at this point in your career, if you ask someone for a review copy and they say, "No, you have to buy it," do you buy it, or do you say, "well, screw you, then I am not going to promote your product"?
At this point in my career if I ask for a review copy and they don't provide it, I will not promote it. I actually had someone tell me that they had created an e-book and they were very highly complimentary of me in the book. They had used some of my articles and this sort of thing, and I said, "Well, that's great, send me a copy" and the guy said, "Well, you can buy it on ClickBank for 47 dollars."
And needless to say, I did not buy it, but when you get to the point where I am really, you have a lot of people who offer you the book, you don't even have to ask. And I am the same way. If I want to promote to someone's product, I will go over and ask for a free copy and see if they'll give it to me. But I also have no problem buying it, if I can't get in touch with the product provider, in a timely manner. I will just go ahead and buy it, and if I like it, I have no problem in paying them the money to do so.
It's kind of funny because they have been a couple of occasions recently where I have promoted someone's product and ended up being in the top five promoters, and they find out that I had originally bought their product as a customer, and they want to refund my money and I am like no, it was money well spent, it was OK. The thing about it is you approach someone, if you are a new player in this game, you really have to approach the current players with an air of respect, because they have accomplished something and they are doing something that you would love to learn how to do.
So feel free to ask them for a review copy. If they refuse, feel free to buy it. You got to pay your dues in the business as they say.
And I guess too it depends on the niche, because if you are asking for a review copy of a niche that goes with your list, you can expect them to probably give it to you, but if you are asking for a review copy of something that is completely out to left field compared to what you normally do, then they might not be so inclined to give that.
That's exactly right. Whenever I am approached to do a joint venture of any kind, the first question out of my mouth is, "how big is your list, and what's it targeted at?" Because my customers are primarily interested in eBay and online opportunities, so if someone who has a very large list of, let's say pet owners, we would have nothing in common.
So it would make no sense for me to give a free review copy of one of my eBay drop shipping books to someone who has a list of pet owners. So it's a waste of their time and mine. If you are a newbie in this business, what I tell everyone is, when you're, if you're interested in developing a product of your own, look for people in that industry who are already in that space, OK?
Now, if you are more interested in affiliate marketing, the best thing you can do is just go to ClickBank, dig through the categories, see what's selling there and find something of interest, and that way you at least have a product that you know something about in that industry.
If you have a list, of course you want to select a product that is tailored to your list. My list is just not going to be interested in a book on how to teach dogs tricks, they're just not. Now they may be interested in how to sell dogs on eBay, but not dog tricks. So just use some common sense.
When you are evaluating the product, do you also evaluate the sales page, and see if you think it's going to convert well?
I really do, that's a great point. When I look at a product, I will spend some time on the sales page, and if the sales page doesn't do a good job of selling me, I don't think it's going to do a good job of selling my list. Now, in the past I have made suggestions to sellers, especially if I am one of their bigger affiliates, I would make suggestions on how they might improve the sales page.
If they were not willing to do so, I have actually put up sales pages of my own to act as kind of a bridge page. You go directly, you go to my page first with what I think is a good sales copy, and then it will take you over to either directly to their page, or I will link directly to ClickBank with their ID.
So, unfortunately not everyone is a wonderful copywriter, and you'll see, on ClickBank, there are so many products there, you will just see a variety. You will see great pages, you will really see bad sales pages, so I would review the product. If you are very strongly believe in the product, but the sales page have problems, think about in doing a bridge page of your own to sell it.
Of course you want to get the owner's permission to do that, or at least let them know you doing that, because you don't want them thinking that you are trying to hijack their sales or this sort of things. So the sales pages are highly important, I mean that's what closes deal for you.
What if they do have a good sales page, but you still want to do some kind of interim landing page that might give your review, or just a little bit extra for that customer?
I am all for that. I think that's a great idea. If someone, let's say they click on a link instead of going directly to that sales page, they come to a sales page with your review, just as you said, "here's, I
personally ordered this product, here's what I think about it, here's the features and benefits, here's what it did to you," and I did this recently actually, with a product that Michael Cheney had come out with, his AdSense Videos.
I actually ordered the product. I was out of town on vacation and I saw the product come through, I thought it was very cool, I ordered it. And because it was rainy night in Florida, we didn't go out that night, I actually watched the videos, and put into practice some of the things that Michael was recommending. And lo and behold, I increased my AdSense revenue like 300% overnight, it was amazing.
So I wrote a testimonial about that and sent an email to my list, and my testimonial, I believe, is what really sold the product, and I ended up being, I think I was in the top five affiliates with Michael on that. So if your list, if they believe in you and you are very credible and they rely on you for advice, you doing a review or you putting up a sales page is going to be so much more effective than just sending them straight to a sales page.
You know that Michael did give free access to all the JV partners?
Well, I didn't know that until after I bought it. And he did offer to refund and I said no, it was money well spent.
So apart from the vendor sales, how much do you make now just as an affiliate for ClickBank?
Our affiliate revenue every month, of course I sell my own products in ClickBank and that is. we've had a very good year there. We do, oh gosh! We do at least 1500 to 2000 a day just off our products, but off of everyone else's I would say that we are doing, I don't want to give exact dollars, but we do five figures a month just as affiliates of other people's products on ClickBank.
How much do you think it would be possible for a newbie just starting out to make?
It really depends on several factors. Number one is, have they taken the time to educate themselves on how this business works? This is one of my pet peeves. A lot of people believe that you can just jump full boar into Internet marketing on Monday, and be rich by Friday. And you can do so without taking the time to learn. And that's one thing I tell everyone, you wouldn't start any kind of business without knowing about that business, without knowing what you are doing and that's, you know, the affiliate marketing business is a business.
So if someone had taken the time to learn about the business, to learn about affiliate marketing, to learn about building a list, that sort of thing, I really think they could start making money pretty quickly with ClickBank and affiliate marketing.
Now it all goes back to, who are they going to market those products to, how they are going to do it? If you are already online and you've got a website or an existing business, it's very easy to get into affiliate marketing, and if you are not doing affiliate marketing, you are a fool. Trust me, because I was a fool who didn't do it. I saw, our revenues literally doubled when we started affiliate marketing.
But if you are a newbie, you've got to look at, how are you going to get these products out? How are you going to get them in front of people if you have no list and that sort of thing, and I have to be honest, that's a very difficult thing to do. There is no magic bullet.
One thing that I have seen that works very well is to use Google AdWords campaigns to sell affiliate products. I think the Google Cash method was basically that, where you would buy Google AdWords and your Google Ad would actually point to either a bridge page or directly to an affiliate product.
And that's really the best way to go, because when you start out with no list, no contacts, no nothing, that's about the only way to get the product out there, is to do AdWords, but again what I stress to everyone is take time to learn about this business, learn about affiliate marketing, learn about AdSense, about AdWords, that sort of thing, and then once you have a good working knowledge, then put it into play and go out and start making some money.
Do you personally use Google AdWords to promote your affiliate products?
OK. What are some of the other tactics that you use to get that traffic and those sales?
A couple of thing that we do to get huge traffic from. Number one, I mentioned that I am writer. I write a new column every week, and every time I write it, it is blasted out to hundreds of ezine article websites. I have the guy that this is all he does for me, is blast out my articles. And we get a tremendous amount on traffic because we have been at this for a couple of years, so I have almost two hundred articles that are pasted all over the web.
And of course in every article, my signature block has a link back to my website, and we have what I call a mall website, we don't just have one sales page, we have a website that features all of our products and the affiliate products. So that's one really good way to get traffic, is through these articles.
We also do a weekly newsletter. I said I have got a list of about sixty, sixty-five thousand, that every Tuesday, the Tim Knox Newsletter goes out, and I always include what I call sponsored links in that newsletter, and you can just track this stuff. I can tell, when I send out a newsletter, I can watch my ClickBank account and see those sales come in.
So that's how we do the majority of our sales, is through traffic that the articles bring. We do the AdWords, but primarily the newsletter that goes out to our house list.
So on your site, which has presumably lots of pages, do you also use your articles there to add content to the website?
I sure do. If you go to our main website, it's called DropShipWholesale.net and you'll see there's actually two sections. Number one is my articles, and we also have an articles database, because we have another website, which is an articles aggregate website, so we use that database to populate those articles on our main site.
And so at any given time we probably have my articles, which are a couple of hundred, but we also have a couple of thousand that are also there on the website for content. And we do, of course every one of them has AdSense on them, so we do very well with AdSense just through our own articles.
When you send out your newsletter with the sponsored links, would you say sponsored links convert better than just writing a review as part of your newsletter, or an article as part of your newsletter that might happen to have your affiliate link in it?
Yeah, the best thing that works is to do exactly what you just said. Either write a review or mention it as part of an article.
The sponsored links work well, but they are commercials, and people know they are commercials and they know that when they click on one of those, someone's going to try to sell them something. So, what we do, it's not really disguising the link but if, for example this week I had a product that I thought was very good and I included a link to that, but what I did before I included the link, was wrote several paragraphs on why I am recommending this product.
I gave a little bit of background on the person who had created the product. I gave a little bit of my opinion of the product, and then just a link over to it, and those convert much better than just having a list of sponsored links. If you look at, it kind of goes back to the old
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