Sell Multiple Products Through a Single ClickBank Account

A ClickBank merchant account allows you to define and sell up to 50 separate products. If you have more than one product in your range, it makes sense to sell them from a shared ClickBank account. Here are three good reasons why:

• Every active ClickBank account incurs a setup fee of $49.95. Why pay this more than once?

• Managing multiple ClickBank accounts adds unnecessarily to your administrative effort

• The combined sales of multiple products through one account will significantly boost your Marketplace ranking

Unfortunately, the architecture of the ClickBank system has, historically, not been well suited to selling multiple products from a single account, especially for merchants who use affiliates to promote their products. The problem is that, although you can define 50 products within ClickBank's account control panel, you can only specify a single landing page URL - the destination page that your affiliates will refer their prospects to.

The result is that all referrals must arrive at your site via a common page. This forces you either to present all your products on a shared sales page or to create an intermediate page, from which your visitors must click through to see the product of their choice. Neither option is ideal as they both create obstacles that will distract your prospects and seriously reduce your conversion rate.

For optimum sales effectiveness, affiliate referrals should go directly to the sales page for the product of interest. This is known as deep linking and is widely acknowledged as the best way to convert affiliate referrals into buyers. But ClickBank's lack of support for this technique is a major barrier that inhibits effective use of its growing affiliate network.

To tackle this problem, a number of pioneering merchants have developed their own techniques to work around ClickBank's shortcomings. Some of these innovations have even evolved into successful commercial software products. Most implementations rely on intercepting the inbound referral and automatically redirecting it to the relevant product page, as indicated in URL parameters passed by the referring affiliate. There are several variations on this theme, but they share a common gambit - using scripts, installed on the merchant's web server, to intercept and redirect requests.

However, the need for smoke and mirrors to fix ClickBank's limitations may soon be a relic of the past. In October 2003, ClickBank announced plans for major improvements to its hoplink system - improvements that will all but eliminate the need for workarounds or enhancement products.

The new architecture - known as the enhanced hoplink system - employs a more flexible referral URL format, in which affiliates are able to specify the numeric code of the product they are referring their prospects to. Using this code, ClickBank's server will look up the corresponding sales page URL and send referrals directly to it, handling cookie-tracking and other admin chores in the normal manner.

The main attraction of the enhanced hoplink system is its simplicity of implementation and maintenance. Whereas add-on products require at least a moderate understanding of script installation and configuration, the hoplink system is maintained entirely via the ClickBank account control panel. This means that a merchant selling multiple products (even across multiple web domains) can expose them for affiliate deep linking, simply by configuring the relevant sales page URLs in his account.

At the time of writing, ClickBank has published the format of the enhanced hoplink URL, but has not completed the database and control panel changes that will allow the configuration of multiple landing pages. So, although we can visualize the new architecture and dream of the benefits it will deliver, we remain in eager anticipation of its release.

About The Author

Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.

Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.

He is also the author of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide" The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.

http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/

---

How to Make More Money from the Google Adsense Ads on Your Blog

Numerous bloggers these days are looking to earn extra cash... Read More

Team Up With Your Competitors

Pay per click search engines are a great way to... Read More

When Adsense Makes No Sense: Knowing When Not To Use The Google Adsense Pay-Per-Click Program

Google's AdSense program is a proven money-maker that has enriched... Read More

Adsense, Boost Your Payout 400%, No Really

How?Dead easy.I implemented this tactic myself yesterday on one of... Read More

The Truth About Overtures Pay-Per-Click Program

Before Google's AdWords, Overture was the preeminent pay-per- click program.... Read More

How to Master Google AdWords - Part 1

Then most difficult aspect of marketing a new product or... Read More

Google AdSense - A Quick Overview For Beginners

In Google AdWords, the advertisers' links show up when someone... Read More

Dynamic Resource for Adsense: 3 Practical Models Quickly Earn & Maximize Google Adsense Revenue

Looking back in time, I could still remember standing in... Read More

5 Tips to Pay-Per-Clicking

Hi, my name is Darryl Power and I have been... Read More

PPC Search Engines Revealed - 5 Things You Need to Know

The pay per click (PPC) search engines have created a... Read More

Top 5 Secrets to Making Money with Adsense

Did someone tell you you can make money easily with... Read More

Irresistible Click-Me Tools for Marketing

Never mind the irritating, but effective, pop-up window. There is... Read More

How to Waste Money and Annoy Potential Customers

Why do some companies bid on keywords for products they... Read More

The Evolution of Google AdSense

The web has evolved into a complex "organism" which, to... Read More

Buying Your Way to the Top with Pay Per Click Advertising

Imagine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have... Read More

Adsense Secrets

Pst! Wanna know some Adsense secrets? The only secret is... Read More

Understanding Google AdSense

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve... Read More

Picking The Right Keywords For A PPC Campaign

Running a pay-per-click advertising campaign can be very expensive if... Read More

Top Paying Keywords: How to Increase Your Pay Per Click Returns

There is no doubting the success of Google's Adsense program.... Read More

The Fastest Way to Get Traffic to Your Site

Lots of people would like to get their Web site... Read More

The Long Term Benefits From Pay Per Click Advertising

Businesses are starting to look closely at the long-term benefits... Read More

So You Want Big Profits From Your AdWords PPC Advertising Campaigns?

So You Want Big Profits From Your AdWords PPC Advertising?... Read More

Is Pay Per Click your Best Marketing Bet?

You may already have heard of this method to get... Read More

The Click Fraud Problem

Click fraud has become a major problem for online marketers.... Read More

Increase Your Click-Through Rate And Skyrocket Your Sales - 3 Quick Tips

Most pay per click ads draw amazingly low click through... Read More