Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make money online quickly, but in most cases it’s tough to make money on a residual or recurring basis. Most sales are one-off products, and you make your money sending new people to buy it. ClickBank introduced recurring billing into their system this year, allowing merchants to now offer membership sites and the like, because ClickBank would now track and process the monthly payments on an ongoing basis. Great news for affiliates too, since you could now refer people once and make money over and over.

As a professional super-affiliate though, I knew what to expect since I both own membership sites and have promoted many more over the years. A reasonable expectation is that people stay with most paid membership sites for 3 months or so, or at least that’s been my experience as an affiliate.

Now you can tell from my postings here I haven’t really actively promoted ClickBank Pirate since August, when the service first launched almost 5 months ago. Based on my previous experience, I would have assumed almost all of my referrals would have left the site by now – but that certainly isn’t the case! I’m still seeing renewals (which ClickBank lists as Rebills in your stats) on a constant basis, and have made mone pretty much every two-week period since the site launched! (ClickBank Pirate is billed monthly, so not every 2-week ClickBank pay period includes rebills for me.)

So while I wasn’t that pleased with my results during the original launch, my attitude towards ClickBank Pirate has certainly improved since then as it’s turned into a much better money-maker for me than it had appeared it would – so much so that I heartily give it two thumbs up if you’re looking for a great service to promote as an affiliate marketer!

I guess I should have known it would do well, since both Cindy and Soren are excellent marketers themselves and no strangers to affiliate marketing before they launched the service. Recognizing that most affiliate sales these days are made on the back-end after offering a free gift of true value, that’s how they’ve structured the site – every month members get a new squeeze page to promote, pre-built and already online, and just send traffic to pick up the gift.

This month, for example, the squeeze page is giving away a report entitled Affiliate Resources – and as they’ve done each month the squeeze page is professionally done and even includes short sales videos – take a look at the squeeze page so you know what I’m referring to. Best of all, the new squeeze page doesn’t replace the previous ones, it’s in addition to them… That way blog posts, articles, podcasts banners and any other affiliate promotions you have online can continue driving traffic to the links they sport without reaching a dead-end or being redirected to something other than the prospect expects.

I’ve promoted a couple of these free reports now through various channels, but not given any the push they deserve – to be honest I’ve just been too busy promoting our own products, other affiliate and joint venture opportunities and doing e-zine swaps to continue building our list. Yet we’ve made some affiliate commissions from these free reports as well – first, the autoresponder sends them a pre-written series of e-mails guiding them to the ClickBank product being promoted, and secondly the links to that product within the report itself are branded with my affiliate links.

Best of all, I didn’t have to do either – both the autoresponder series and the branding are done for me as part of the monthly service! The downside to this is that I’m not getting the leads the pages generate since they’re going into the pre-built ClickBank Pirate autoreponder system, but that’s more than compensated for by the days of effort I skip by not having to write the e-mails, brand the e-book, design the squeeze pages, etc.

Now don’t misunderstand – I’m a super-affiliate so my results aren’t typical of the average affiliate – but since most affiliates have a lot less to promote, they may be putting in a lot more time and effort promoting ClickBank Pirate and could see similar results. In fact, I don’t want you joining ClickBank Pirate because of how much I make from it or even because you could make any given amount. While I DO want to see you join it, there are more important reasons why I think you should – reasons that have nothing to do with how much or how little you make. In fact, even if you were to lose money on the site, the education you can glean from ClickBank Pirate would still be well worth it!

For those new to affiliate marketing, there are two such reasons to join. The first is that everything is done for you on the technical end of things – the product is chosen, the free report is created, the squeeze page uploaded, the followup e-mails written and loaded into the autoresponder… All of which you’d need to learn how to do if you were trying to do this alone! All you’re really trying to do is drive targeted traffic to a new offer each month – and being free to learn traffic generation is an awesome opportunity – it’s one of the most necessary skills online, whether you’re gong into affiliate marketing, mainstream Internet marketing or niche marketing – even just blogging for that matter… Every single site needs targeted traffic!

The other advantage a ClickBank Pirate membership has for newbies is the chance to see how it’s all put together – the whole system described above. Sign up for your free reports, watch the system of pages involved in getting your gift, how it’s laid out and what offers appear where. Then download and read the reports, read each e-mail you get from the system – and learn from it all. That’s why I say even if you invest and never make a sale it can still be well worthwhile – for the education available if you take the time to absorb it!

If you’re an old seasoned pro like myself, you’ll already know the system – although it’s a good refresher if you haven’t built a funnel recently. But the real advantage is having all these reports just sitting in our arsenal, waiting for those rare days when we have nothing good to promote – just pick up your link for the report of your choice and fire it out to your lists. The system will take care of the rest. Over-promoted paid products to your list during a big launch? Reward them with a free report – one you just might make money on… And one you don’t have to think about after you send it, since the system is fully automated.

If you’re ready to take action, follow my affiliate link to ClickBank Pirate now and get your account. If you’re still not sure, download this month’s free report and see what you think of it all – don’t worry, there’s a link to the site in the report too – use that once the report convinces you, ok? ;-)

Happy New Decade – may it be filled with ever-increasing affiliate commissions for you as your affiliate marketing prowess continues to grow!

About The Author…

Internet Marketing Mentor & Speaker Doug Champigny

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet Marketing mentor & speaker and a recognized super-affiliate who has been online full-time since 1996. Be sure to visit his DougChampigny.com Internet Marketing Blog, his Captain-Affiliate.com Affiliate Training Blog and to follow Doug on Twitter!

 

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