Affiliate Marketing with Clickbank Pirate – Case Study – Week 3
OK, so after having the week from hell, I haven’t gotten hardly anything done with building my traffic this week. Nor have I been able to get my new blog online.
I did manage to make a sale, but again, not off the product I am promoting.

The sale was through one of my other initial Clickbank Pirate products – Secret Affiliate Weapon. Unfortunately this product only sells for less than $10, so not much in commissions there.
This brings up a good point though, and one that I honestly did not take into consideration before beginning my promotions. (big mistake on my part)
You should know how much the product sells for and what percentage you get in commissions (preferably before you start promoting).
So let’s take a look:
Clickbank Pirate – $67 signup plus $47/month residual – 50% commission
Easy Offline Cash – $49 or $18 depending on option purchased – 50% commission
Privacy Control – Free front end – 75% commission on multiple back end products
Secret Affiliate Weapon – $9.97 – 60% commission
Commission Blueprint – $97 – 60% commission
Automated Cash Formula – $37 – 75% commission
So, it looks like I actually did pick out a good product to promote.
Clickbank Pirate looks like a good one as well, but it was promoted heavily during the launch, so I will most likely just use some thank-you and download page ads and some mentions in emails and blogs for now. Once it has become old news then I will pick up the pace on it somewhat. (now that I think about it though, this would be a good time to get some articles, videos, and podcasts online for this as well and get them indexed).
Automated Cash Formula looks promising as well, though while it is not a residual product, has a good price point and good commission percentage.
The Privacy Control would be interesting to try out as well as it is simple to give away free items on the front end, while backing it up with paid products. I am using this exact same model on my own Build A Niche Marketing Business ebook.
Another suggestion that can help immensely, in not only being familiar with the product, but knowing that it is a good product, is to purchase the product before promoting. Now I know this can be difficult when first starting out if you are working on a shoestring budget.
Some marketers (myself included) make this process easier in that we will allow you to purchase the product through your own affiliate link. That way you get your commission back during the next commission payout (this varies by marketer).
This has always seemed like a good idea to me, because it helps both the affiliate and the marketer by allowing you to become familiar with the product at a reduced price. If you are familiar with a product you can do a much better job of promoting it, thus making more sales for you and the marketer (a definite win-win situation for everybody)
BTW: I have been promoting the other products in small bites, like adding them onto the end of some of my mailings to my list, but that is basically it.
Also, I did get my mailing out to my list for Commission Blueprint (which is the aweber tracking code). As you can see I did add an additional 132 people to the Commission Blueprint list from this mailing.

You’ll also notice that I got my first conversion from my videos. May have to break this down a little more and track each individual video so I know which ones are working the best.
So that is almost all I have today.
I do have one other thing that I would like to get peoples comments on.
In the image below you will see that I have gotten several hits to the order pages. Just curious as to how many of these you think backed out of the process and how many may have changed to their clickbank affiliate link and then purchased the product?
Seems to me Clickbank still makes it much too easy to steal commissions. I know that you can hide it up until they hit the order page, but there doesn’t seem to be any options at that point, to my knowledge.

Again, thanks for reading and please do let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post, or posts it may lead to, are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don’t personally believe in and welcome your questions and feedback.











August 27th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Still is some good work that you have put together. Hope your weekend will be better than the week for you. And as you get back into it I am sure you will show some better figures next time. Thanks for keeping us informed.
August 27th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Great follow up if you keep adding people in the money will come.
August 27th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Thanks for the weekly update on Clickbank and Clickbank Pirate in particular. I have done some promotion of the products that I have access in Clickbank Pirate but have not made a sale yet. Still think that it is a good program.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Thanks for the follow up. You’ve done a lot of work and your promotions will pay off. I cloak my links but as you say when you get to the order page the click bank ID is visible. It’s impossible to say what percentage of people would steal commissions. I’m sure it happens but we can’t wory about it. I’m the type of person that goes back to the original salesman that helped me in stores and would do the same thing online. I hope others do the same.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Congrats on two fronts here, Brett! The first is that you’re testing and tracking your results, and looking to improve them. This incremental increase not only benefits you here, but is a great training ground or bootcamp for your future affiliate efforts.
Secondly, you’re using articles, tweets, videos and podcasts to promote your links – these are all viral in that they’ll stay out there working away for you as time goes on, thus making non-recurring products into recurring sales for you. While your tweets scroll offscreen in minutes, they DO get indexed by the search engines, so again you have long-term benefit.
Keep up the great effort!
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 am
[...] NOTE: This post was originally published on http://brettmcellhiney.com on August 27, [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Thanks for the review. I have been checking out cbpirate for a couple of days. That is how I found your blog. Just doing my research. By the way nice blog!