Have you ever wondered what the best area of Internet Marketing is? Where will you consistantly make money over a long period of time.

I’ll put you out of your misery and let you know where one of the best areas of making money is.. Selling Your Own Products.

Apart from Wordpress Goldmine I have several digital products that I’ve created and sold. One in particular I created 2 years ago and have not touched it since. It doesn’t make me enough to retire on but has made me several thousand dollars over the last 2 years …it cost me less than $100 to create and add to clickbank.  It can make that in a day if I promote it with articles or PPC. 

The great thing about having your own products is that you can turn on the income like tap water if you need an income boost. A few articles posted, a bit of ppc or a post in a relevant forum can bring an avalanche of sales. 

The problem is most people are afraid of  creating their own products and of writing a sales letter. They think it’s difficult. Well I am about to prove otherwise.  Over the next 3 to 4 weeks I am going to create 2 digital products one IM orientated the other non Im and I am going to document it all on video.  To make it really difficult I want to try to get to the #1 ranking in clickbank for one of the products.

The second product will either be given away or sold via different method..

Check out the video below for more Info.

Remember Wordpress Goldmine is still only a one time payment of $67 …not monthly recurring fees and each month you’ll get more of this madness!!

Hi, my name is Mark and I am an idiot….

There I said it.  It’s true, last week I had an epiphony, a proper road to damascus moment..Actually in reality it was the road to the Kudu Bar but why let the facts ruin a good story.

I was walking up the hill to the bar thinking about some of my sites and admiring the views across to the Mountains in north Africa when I realised that I have been throwing away thousands of dollars.  Normally I build sites then pretty much leave them alone, I’ll do the odd bit of promotion once in a while but generally after the first month I’ll ignore them and leave them to their own devices.

This works well for me as they’ll continue to make sales or get clicks. There are some that do really well and will make sales almost every day or at least 3 a week and some that can make me $100 a day on a regular basis. So on the face of it everything is good the ones that only make 1 or 2 sales a month still earn me $300 -$600 a year which isn’t to be sniffed at.

My epiphony came to me when i realised that the sites that make me the most sales are obviously in very active markets and that I should be spending my time writing more articles about the topic and not leaving them alone.  Instead of patting myself on the back and saying “well done mark thats another $50 a day niche you have” I should be saying “right thats a good market to be in lets exploit it until i can’t squeeze another sale out of it.”

If a site isn’t making what it should make then sell it on. Take your good niches and try to get every cent you can out of them.  Be ruthless with your sites try to find the winners and promote the hell out of them, sell the poorly performing ones. Imagine being able to have only 10 sites that made 2 sales a day each of $30 commission clickbank items.  Or 20 adsense sites that made $20 a day each.

I am going to use this new thought process for the new step by step site i am going to create between the 14th and 28th of february. In the forum I’ll be documenting every step I take to build a site each day i’ll post a video and make a diary entry .  You’ll be watching over my shoulder as i build a new site from scratch. If you would like to see this sign up now. you’ll see a wordpress goldmine advert in the sidebar.

One of the most common questions I get asked I what affiliate martketing program is the best.  The first thing to keep in mind is that there are thousands of affiliate programs and hundreds of affiliate networks. They all have their pro’s and cons.

For the purposes of this post I will focus on the big 3 programs , Clickbank, eBay and Amazon. Between those 3 there is nothing you can’t sell and personally i much prefer to have my comissions spread among a number of large programs than several small ones .  In the past I have lost commissions because I promoted a program and didn’t make the $100 minimum for payment.

First up Clickbank.

Over the past year clickbank have been making lots of changes that have made them a much more viable proposition for internet marketers. Weekly payments, Direct deposits and multi language products mean that affiliate in most countries can enjoy regular payments.

Income from clickbank tends to be steady unless you start a sucessful campaign the sales will stay similar month after month.

There are a few things that go against Clickbank, they only sell digital products and they are very quick to issue refunds. They actually issued a refund to someone who claimed that their credit card was stoled despite the fact that i provided them with a full list of IP addresses and email conversations that proved they were lying.

eBay, I have to declare now that I love eBays affiliate program. Yes there are occasional tracking problems and they can make stupud decisions like expiring loads of accounts for no aparrant reason but if you can accept these as just teething problems with a new network the results are excellent.  I recently switched a site from adsense which was making about $50 per month , It immediatly started earning me around $300 a month with EPN (ebay partner network).

In the past month i’ve had simple sites with just an article or two and a few eBay listings earning me over $150 a day.. Unlike Clickbank eBay can be seasonal, I know that in November or December I’ll earn 5 times as much than I will in April, but I quite like that as it comes at an expensive time of the year.  Last years Christmas eBbay earnings bought me a Jeep Grand Cherokee, This years should pay my Housing costs for a year.

I am currently working on a new system to help me produce good quality profitable ebay affiliate sites and I fully intend to build an extra 20 or 30 eBay sites and make it my major income stream in the coming year.

Finally Amazon, I have a love hate relationship with amazon. I love that a customer usually goes from my sites to amazon and not only buys the product that I was promoting but 3 or 4 others that are unrelated and I still get commission for them.  I also love the wide range of products available.

 I hate that the commission is so low 4% - 7% usually depending on how many products you sell each month, (mine is usually 6.5%) but the extra sales tends to make up for that. I hate that they won’t do direct deposits into my bank account as i don’t live in the US. I have to get a cheque/check sent to me and then paid in to my bank and wait 4 weeks for it to be credited to my account .

Lastly I hate that I have to wait so long for payment, I’ve just received septembers finalised details a few days ago.  Compare that to Clickbank and ebay who will both have paid me what I earned in November before Christmas. With Amazon i’ll be lucky to have a credit in my bank before April. If I lived within the US it would be much better I could also concentrate on Amazon UK which I do for some sites and many of the payment issues would disapear.

So thats a brief round up of the big 3 affiliate programs , I am sure you can tell that eBay is by far my favorite at the moment. Throught out next year I’ll be keeping you up to date with how my new ebay sites are going and if I make my targets.

Right I am now off to move house….

Breaking news… (it’s not often that i can break a scoop…hold the front page!)

It’s looking like clickbank have had a major hiccup today.  I received an email from them saying that my Weekly payment had been rejected by my bank and that they were switching my account back to check payments. The thing is my payment has been received. It’s there in my account.

Check payments are not a good thing for me it takes me about 8 weeks to get the money and it costs me a hefty fee each time I pay in one of their cheques.

Asking around several other people have had the same message and their payments have also been switched to check payments. Make sure you check your clickbank settings.!!

I’ve asked someone with more influence with clickbank to speak to the mamagement there and find out wahts happening. As soon as i know anything I’ll post it here.

*****EDIT*****

Just got this…

On 2008-10-15, ClickBank experienced a communication problem with our merchant bank,resulting in some direct deposit-enabled clients receiving emails stating their depositfailed and having their accounts changed to “Pay by Check.” In most or all cases, thedeposit did actually go through. Please check with your bank to see if your deposit wasreceived. We are working to find and correct the source of this error, and will givefurther details as soon as we have a resolution.

********

On a more happier note , i received an email from a regular reader of this blog asking me to have a look at a tool he’s created.  It’s a tool/site that analyses you and your competitors websites and rates them. The level of detail in the results is excellent.

I’ve made a few suggestions for improvements but there is no reason why you shouldn’t check it out right now. You can access it at www.reviewmyweb.com

One of the big problem with choosing clickbank products to promote is working out what the refund rate is. This is no longer a problem , on checking CBengine today it was showing the refund rate for all the products sold on clickbank in the pro edition. 

Unfortunatly it can’t display it for sites that have recurring billing so several major prodcut that have been launched recently, escape my derission for their 30% + refund rates. 

CB engine offer a free trial account and also a free account with limited information alternativly you can get a full account for $39 a year.  Compared to using the Clickbank marketplace it’s an absolute pleasure to use , this is what the marketplace should be like. 

If you are serious about affiliate marketing then check out CBengine now.