The Nicher

Yesterday, I came home to find a check sitting on the floor beneath my mail slot. Despite the fact that it said “ClickBank” on the envelope, my work worn mind thought it said Commission Junction.

Now, I haven’t checked either account in quite a while as neither has been performing for me. Opening the envelope to find a check that was worth more than my CJ payout level, but less than my CB level continued to mess with my mind.

Once I realized that it was CB, I was livid. I had nearly twice the amount in my CB account than the check was made out for.

I checked my CB account, and sure enough, they’d deducted over $10 in fees. I knew that they’d been deducting $1 a month since I hadn’t met the requirements for pay out, and they justified a little over $3 in excess charges which is mentioned in their payment terms. But there’s an additional $7.50 which has no explaination.

Granted, I’m glad that they released what was left in my account, since I haven’t had purchases from 5 different cards yet (seriously, their terms are whacked, and I wouldn’t use them at all if it weren’t for a very lucrative program that affiliates through them), and I can even deal with them deducting nearly half of my money when they spell out why.

But that last $7.50? I really want to know why that was taken out. That one just burns my buns. I don’t do affiliate marketing for a living, but I still need my money. If I didn’t, would I really be marketing? Well, maybe, since I actually enjoy the creation process of these websites, but I certainly wouldn’t devote as much time to it as I do.

Clickbank: up yours.

It’s been two months since the eBay affiliate program moved in house.  So what does a newbie like me think of it?

At first I was very displeased by the change.  Not that I was particularly attached to Commission Junction, but it was a lot of work for me to change over.  BANS is very good about making easy updates, but my updates didn’t work.  So I had to erase my stores and start over completely.  The truth is, as most of those stores were merely experiments, it was the kick in the butt I needed to create stores that were actually worth having.

The commissions themselves stayed the same, aside from an introductory bonus that eBay offered to those who switched early.  So as far as that is concerned, it wasn’t an issue. And really, aside from the updates, it didn’t effect Build A Niche Store users at all.

But here’s what you get with eBay alone: great widgets.

Seriously- you could build a passable store without buying BANS at all using only the widgets that eBay provides you.  However, you won’t get the same detailed, niche and micro-niches you can get through BANS.  But if your shop is meant more as a hobby than as a business, you could do worse than signing up as an eBay affiliate.

For example- here’s one of the widgets you can build through eBay:

In my opinion? The move was good. It takes a bit of exploring to find the widgets (or as they say “creatives”), links, and RSS feeds that work best for you and your site or blog, but once you do? It’s great. Not quite as versatile as Amazon’s affiliate program, but a lot more lucrative.

And best of all? You only need to reach $5 for a payout with eBay, where as Commission Junction was $24, and Amazon is (I believe) $10. The commission reporting is much more regular as well, with clicks updated hourly and purchases updated daily.  New sign ups through your link will garner you between $1 and $50 per sign up (so long as the sign up bids on an auction within 30 days of signing up) depending on the quality of your traffic.

Personally, I still prefer to build my stores with Build A Niche Store, but eBay’s in-house marketing materials are a great addition to regular websites and blogs. 

Being a beginner, and knowing that many, many people are trying to learn how to be professional affiliate marketers, I thought it would be helpful to post some of my stats.

 Now, all of my free time has been going into writing my blogs (I have quite a few), building my BANS sites, loading crafts onto eBay and Etsy, and crafting.  This should make it very clear that my affiliate marketing is only a very small portion of my time.  To be successful at it, you really need to devote several hours a day (at least in the beginning) to your marketing efforts.  I, however, do not advertise, and most of my sites have very little in the way of keywords, or, indeed, content, as my time is mostly spent elsewhere.

None the less, I’ve managed to turn a small profit entirely using BANS.  Since the program has now paid for itself in the last month, I thought I’d post last month’s stats.

So, how many clicks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a affiliate program? Let’s find out:

Store #1: 23 clicks = $27.55

Store #2: 64 clicks = $4.73

Store #3: 1 click = $0.54

Store #4: 19 clicks = $0

Store #5: 2 clicks = $0

 Now, that’s how many clickthroughs the stores got, not how many visitors or page views.

Store #1 had the best pageview/clickthrough/profit out of all the stores.  Nearly everyone who viewed the store clicked through, and several made purchases.  I was lucky enough to stumble upon a very, very tight niche.  Really, no one else is exploiting it, and that may be because there’s not much profit to be had in it.  However, that store is what pushed the edge in making my affiliate marketing account solvent.  There is very little content, merely a paragraph or two before each store page, but the niche is good.

Store #2 garners quite a few page views, and clicks.  Not as many purchases.  In fact, the page that collects the most search engine traffic is the one that I tacked on as an afterthought.  That page is responsible for all my traffic and profits for the site. I have no idea if the searchers purchased what they clicked on or not, but it doesn’t really matter.  The key is to get customers to click through, and then buy anything.  As long as the cookie is active on their computer, you get a cut whether they buy a yacht, or a deck of cards.

Store #3 I set up in anticipation of cornering a good niche.  And then I got bored.  That site is more or less empty, and so I use it to track my own purchases.  Since I get a cut of anything I buy through my own affiliate links, I like to keep my purchases separate- so I use that store.

Store #4 is a recent set up.  I’m not even certain if Google’s crawled it yet.  However, it’s my public store.  It’s my example of how simple it is to set up a BANS site.  It may not seem to be the most professional around, but it’s the first that I’ve paid much attention to- actually writing content for it, and designing an ok logo.  This is the store that hosts my About BANS page, which I plan to use to direct all interested parties to.  It also has a page hosting nothing but my own eBay auctions.  That’s also why I have so many clickthroughs on it, without any purchases.  This is the page I show friends in case they want to buy something of mine (since I’ll get a cut on top of the sale price).  This is the store that I don’t mind advertising around other marketers, because, really?  Who else would want that niche?

Store #5 was my very first experiment with BANS.  I set up a series of broad niches to experiment with the program.  When I deleted all my stores and rebuilt, this is the one I kept.  Mostly because I’d actually written content for it.  I don’t believe I’ve ever had someone purchase anything through this store, but that may change soon.

 See, I pay attention to the search terms people use to find my stores.  That particular store has 2 or 3 searches that turn up dead ends on my site.  I couldn’t figure out why.  So I did a little digging, and found that, strangely, what they were looking for isn’t found under the categories you would assume they’re listed under.  So I added sub pages using the correct categories and search terms.  The next time someone lands on my page looking for one of those terms- they’ll actually find what they’re looking for.  And if the price is right? I may just have a sale.

Bottom line? Well, there’s no magic number for page views or clickthroughs.  People are people, and no matter how much you pay attention to what they want, they’ll change their minds the second they’re asked to pay for it.  But in the mean time, 109 clicks produced $32.82 in profit for me. Here’s hoping to even more in August!

As of Sunday morning (July 27, 2008), my affiliate programs become solvent.

Some time between checking my stats Saturday night, and my stats Sunday afternoon, someone either made a huge purchase through eBay, or signed up for an account through one of my links. That final number not only paid off the $97 that I paid for my BANS program, but also for the two domains that I’d built my BANS stores on. Yay!

So what’s next? Well, obviously I plan to enjoy pure profit after this. And once I get a few of my shops looking presentable (since, strangely, my biggest converters are the least developed of my stores- I’ve even had a purchase from a site that had nothing but the eBay link on it) I plan to build a few landing pages and start advertising.

I don’t know what I’m doing in regards to advertising, but as I’ve finally figured out how to layer pictures in my photo editor, I think I may stand a chance at actually building the ads. And since I don’t believe in squeeze pages, I have a few ideas in so far as simple landing pages.

As far as I know, I don’t have the Ebay affiliate program on anything but my BANS sites.  But, for some reason, my BANS EPN updates won’t give me a confirmation screen.  So, I’m doing it the hard way.

 I’m deleting my BANS sites and re-installing them.  Yeah, yeah.  I know it sounds like waaaay too much work. But seriously?  All my income came from two sites despite my having 10 or so.  I had very little content, and what was there is a simple copy/paste.  So, I’ll have to upload the logos again, re-do the search boxes, and change the color scheme.  Irritating, yes.  But, not so bad.  After all, the color scheme can be done at work since it’s all online.  Copy/paste could be too if I put the content into an email first. 

 Plus, I just deleted- yes, deleted- 4 or 5 of my stores.  See that?  I can’t even count them, they meant so little to me!  As I said, only two of my stores generated cash.  Some of them I may rebuild one day, but for the most part they were the broad “niches” of which I spoke earlier.  I’d do much better to start from scratch anyway.  In the mean time, making the switch, heavy as it is, for the 6 that I have left will be much easier.  And, honestly?  I may delete a few of those and simply use the content elsewhere. 

 In fact, I just deleted one.  That leaves 5 for updates, and one of those is already installed. 

 Why am I talking about this?  I don’t even know right now.  I would normally say that the lesson here is to not bite off more than you can chew, but these were sites that I’d intended to build up over time.  If Ebay hadn’t decided to move their affiliate program in house, I may have never touched these sites again.  Not even to delete.  I guess I’ll just chalk these up to growing pains.

Sweet! I just made another $5.31 on my BANS sites. A few days ago I had another commission for just over $1. I’ve now reached payout (payout is $25, and I’ve reached $28.50), which means that I only have $25 left to go until my Build A Niche Store software has paid for itself.Now, I know that this isn’t the kind of money that you can live off of. I bought the software in December 2007, and it’s now April 2008. I sold the BANS software once, which gave me a $44.36 commission (the program is $97), and now the sales through the program is $28.50, leaving $24.14 unpaid for.

I’ve been checking my Commission Junction account on a daily basis, anxious to catch the smallest sign of potential profitability.

Well, this past week I’ve seen a huge jump in sales from my Build A Niche Stores. Or, one of my BANS stores, I should say.

Now, before you get too excited thinking that I’m about to tell you how to make thousands of dollars a day using BANS, you have to understand that my new total is $21.19. That’s for sales through Ebay, not any other affiliate programs including BANS own affiliate program.

I first started building BANS sites in December 2007.  I have about 1/2 dozen BANS sites all together, but only two have turned a profit.  And of those two, all but one sale came from just one site.

I posted about my first BANS commission on February 21.  That $3 commission was the sum total of 6 separate sales that happened to occur on the same day.  I didn’t receive any other commissions for over a week.  Then, in March- boom!

Note that I haven’t even touched my sites in over a month.  No tweaking, no new content, no sales pushes or advertising. 

Combined with the $44 commission for selling the BANS program to a friend, my new total of over $21 in sales commissions has made my investment quite small.  In fact, less than $32 left to go to break that magical number of $97.

Here’s a clever guy who uses his artistic skills to promote his marketing products.  Even if you have no interest in what he’s selling, if you’re into internet marketing, you’ll want to check these comics out.

I logged in to Commission Junction, as I do every day, to check my stats.  Not surprising.  I have a click through rate of 20% most days, and yet no sales.  But I checked the reports section anyway.  Lo and behold- a pending commission of $3.24!  Woot!

This is my first commission from BANS, and it’s larger than most first commissions (from reports that I’ve heard- I can’t back that up).  Granted, I’ve got a long way to go to reach payout, let alone make back my investment.  But it definitely gives me hope.  I think I have all of 1 paragraph of content on the page that produced the sales.

And then I logged in to Squidoo and saw that I’d earned another $0.83 from an Amazon module.  I’m not retiring yet, but what a great start!

I was talking to a friend at work about my websites.  He knows that I’m a bit addicted to BANS, despite the fact that I haven’t made back my investment yet.

He’s been interested in making a living online for a while as well, but he’s better at planning than I am.  Me, I get an idea and I fly with it. He actually takes classes.  We’ve always said that if we were one person, we’d probably be rich.  I think as partners we’d kill each other.

He was only interested in the basic numbers, so that’s what I gave him.  I said, domains are about $10 a year.  I know where I can get codes to get either 10% off, or domains for $7 a year through GoDaddy, so that’s who I use.  I also told him that .info domains are about $2-3.  I wouldn’t recommend getting a .info domain if you want to build up repeat viewers, but for a site that relies on search engines for traffic, you could certainly do worse.

Hosting totally depends on what you want.  I told him that I pay about $8 a month with HostGator for unlimited domains.  I also told him that if he wanted just one website to build up, he can get cheap web hosting even cheaper than that for just one site.  I didn’t tell him about dedicated servers and such, because I don’t think either of us expects to become popular enough to need it- and if we do?  Then we celebrate!

He’s also interested in my affiliate accounts.  All of them.  So I told him about BANS since I think the program is well worth the one time $97 fee.  Even if you didn’t want to sell anything through the site, you could pay much more than that for a website template.  You’d probably get something more out of the box and ready to go, but BANS is highly customizable.

I also told him about Commission Junction and ClickBank.  I think his mind began to boggle at that.  They’re both free to sign up for, and you get a cut of any sales you make for the other companies that you’re promoting.  I don’t think he understands much about affiliate marketing since he kept asking me “and you don’t have to actually have a product, right?”.  I’ll need to talk to him about that a little more.

All in all, I told him that if he started a blog and started pimping products on it, (rather than purchasing BANS or anything else other than domain and hosting) he’d be shelling out $6-17 a month.  And you know?  I never realized just how cheap that is.  Where else can you start a business for under $20 but on the internet?