I’ll be honest, I was close to spend $97.00 on a small eBook called “Affiliate Project X”. I was on the Clickbank checkout page more than once, but then decided to read a little more and I think I discovered one of the essential secrets this eBook is trying to give you after you pay. Here, you will get it for free. It’s a great twist on affiliate marketing and if done right can give you the extra cash you need. And even if it would not be described in this eBook it is still a neat trick to increase your affiliate sales through Clickbank.com. So, what exactly is the secret?
 
It’s not really a secret and many things that apply to normal affiliate sales still apply. But there is a neat trick to blow away your competition on Adwords, Yahoo Overture, or MSN Adcenter. Let’s assume you are trying to promote a clickbank product that sells for $97.00 a piece. Let’s further assume your Clickbank commission is 50% =  $48.50. That is some good money. Imagine having 5 sales a day and you can stay home and do not have to work anymore. You build your normal affiliate website or webpage and do your normal promotion. As always you might be struggling with finding the right balance between affordable keywords and targeted keywords. That struggle is usually the key to success or failure. If you bid too low, nobody will see your ads and you will not generate sales leads. But stop right here. Did you know there is an easy way around it?
 
The most important thing is to write very targeted ad copy and sales copy. Make sure people who see your ads are exactly looking for that specific product. They are like me (see beginning of this post) looking for the best deal on the expensive product. Well, give them the best deal. The author or manufacturer won’t give them the best deal because he shares a lot of sales with his affiliates. But who says you cannot share your commission with somebody else, too? $48.50 is enough money to split with a buyer, don’t you think so? How about offering a $20.00 Rebate on the purchase of that $97.00 product? That still leaves you with $28.50 for the sale. Important: You need to attract the people who are ready to buy and who are just looking for the best possible deal for this product.
 
But how do you put that into production? You do not want to look cheap and just offer a rebate payment via PayPal. Sure, that would be easy for you, but does it give you enough credibility? Does it protect you from a customer asking for a refund and taking your money and run? You’ll be stuck with payment to the customer while you are losing your entire sales commission. One way around it is setting up a system that buys you time. If the product has a 60 day refund guarantee you could set the limit to pay the rebate after that period of time. But with most rebates customers will not like that. In your never-ending search for the Clickbank product to promote you can limit yourself to products that either do not offer a refund guarantee or pick the ones with a short refund window. This will reduce your risk significantly. But remember that I said, target those customers who already made their decision to buy a specific product? This is important because it again minimizes the risk of losing a sales commission to a refund. If you run a legit business, process your rebate payments via check. Get a cheap software that allows you to print your own checks and buy ‘blanks’ at Office Depot or OfficeMax. Setup a webpage where customers submit the sales receipt and then process everything manually. Manually? It’s not that much work really if you use software and a template to print the checks. Why a payment via check? It gives you additional time to protect yourself from a refund and loss of sales commission. You can still call the bank and cancel the check when needed.
 
This sounds complicated, but it is really fairly easy to implement. And now instead of doing this with one Clickbank product, do it with 5 or 10. Then dedicate maybe 2 hours a week to write rebate checks (if it takes that long at all). Once you have setup the first product and implemented the rebate system things get easier for you. You can bid more money on specific keywords because you are targeting only those people who already made up their mind about a purchase. it is much easier to convert visitors to sales then.
 
What does this have to do with “Affiliate Project X” (aff)? Well, like I said in the beginning I am very tempted to buy this ebook. Eventually there is more information than what I provided here. Am I sure? Hell, no - because if I would be sure I would either buy the ebook and dramatically improve my affiliate sales or would write a review ripping the ebook apart. Why am I hesitating? I do not know. I bought some good ebooks and learned from them and I bough horrible ones and wasted money.
 
PS: If you like this article and it helps you to make some more money, please link to it. Maybe even digg it?