Click2Sell Merchant & Affiliate Network

Lately I’ve been writing posts on how you can make money in niche marketing, along with methods for selecting which niche market is best for you. In keeping with the topic of niche marketing, I want to high an up and coming network called Click2Sell.EU. Unlike most other large affiliate networks, Click2Sell.EU is setup with a ClickBank feel. As an affiliate you can log into the system and find a various amount of niche products, services and ebooks to sell. Unlike most other networks, you can also login to Click2Sell as a merchant and easily manage your campaigns or setup a new program. Here is a run through of the network and how you can benefit as either an affiliate or merchant.

Navigation & Ease of Network
Once you signup and are logged into the network, you will see an admin area like below. When you are logged in you are sent directly to the “Reports” page, but with the easy navigation toolbar on top you can easily move around the site. The “For Merchants” tab is for setting up your own affiliate program and adding products, while the “For Affiliate” tab is for grabbing affiliate offers and existing campaigns. All other menu tabs are pretty self explanatory.

An Overview of Your Network Stats is Your Main Login Page

The MarketPlace
The main area and purpose of Click2Sell is their “MarketPlace”, where you can search and find all existing offers on the network. Right now they have 558 offers available, spread over 11 different categories. One of the features I like about the marketplace is that you can search on several different methods, such as Rank, Earning % and Conversions. The stats are really nice to have and it’s very easy to understand. Even with over 500 offers on the network, I wasn’t too thrilled with the conversion on most of these offers. Most of the offers are listed at converting 1% or below.

Top 5 Ranked Offers on Click2Sell Network

Selection of Affiliate Offers
Almost all of the offers listed on Click2Sell are ebook/information based, and have long sales pages. If you are currently doing well in the ebook promotion niche, you can probably find a few offers to promote and might find success. I was searching the network for a few niche terms from “comics” or “basketball“, but no search results came out. In my previous post, “Picking the Right Niche Market“, I wrote about focusing on basketball terms and “increasing your vertical leap“. Oddly enough, I did come across an ebook which focused on helping to improve your jumping and sports skills. There are some offers/ebooks on the network that could make money when targeted to correctly, you just have to search around for them.

Your Selected Campaigns will be listed in your “My Campaigns” Affiliate tab.

Promotion of Offers
Once you select an offer from the marketplace, it will then be listed in your “For Affiliate” tab where you can grab links and marketing creative. Unfortunately, I found that most of the products on the network did not have any marketing material and simply provide you with just a link. I know most affiliate marketers want a few banners and at least some email creative or ideas for writing content, so this would be a turn off to most affiliates. On the other hand, with a network full of offers with no marketing creative, those affiliates who take the time to create their own marketing material and landing pages could benefit that much more. If you put the time in to create a mini site based around of these ebooks/campaigns, you could have a winner. I can only imagine 90% of affiliates are turned off when they don’t see any marketing creative available.

Affiliate Marketers Want Marketing Creative, It Shouldn’t be a Mission.

Range of Commissions
The network offers on Click2Sell heavily vary. You will find products that cost $7.00 per sale, then pay 95% commission… while others cost $22.97 and pay only 5% commission. In addition the huge difference in commissions per program, the targeting and products of each offer varies as well. If you are going to promote an offer on the network, take the time to compare and make sure you are running the best offer.

Form of Payment
Click2Sell does not send out affiliate payments through checks, you must have either a Paypal account or a MoneyBookers account. When setting up your account, you will select your preferred method of payment and can check off what type of advertisers you want to work with, based on their payment method. Merchants on Click2Sell can pay in Euro and US dollars.

Using Click2Sell as a Merchant
I already covered most of the points to use Click2Sell as an affiliate, but using the network as a Merchant is also just as important. The first of the three screenshots below (click for full view), shows what your general stats look like from all of your affiliates and their sales. The second screenshot is a listing of all affiliates within your program and the last screenshot is a breakdown of your affiliate stats. The merchant setup looks like it would work really well for any sites looking to bill customers on a monthly basis as well. If you are unsure of what network or tracking system to use, you can always join Click2Sell as a merchant and recruit your own affiliates.

The Backend of a Merchant Account is Very Detailed, Yet Easy to Manage

Merchant Fee Structure
I think the best selling point for Click2Sell, is the very low cost for merchants to sell a push their products through the system. While most other affiliate networks charge a signup fee, then take 20-35% of each transaction (payment to an affiliate), Click2Sell has a very simple fee structure. No matter how expensive your product is, the most you will pay per lead acquired, is $3 (in addition to any cc/merchant processing charges if applies). If you sell a product that costs $50, you only have to pay a $3 fee to Click2Sell each time an affiliate makes a sale… on most other networks you would have to pay 30%, which comes out to $15 per lead acquired.

Final Review
I would like to see what Click2Sell becomes with time and how they will improve their network. ClickBank has been an amazing success for people over the years and Click2Sell, being based off that same idea could make a lot of people money as well. For now I think Click2Sell needs to focus on a selling point or something to break them apart from other networks to make them stand out. I would rather see a network with less offers and focus only on the higher quality campaigns. I do not want to go through 500+ campaigns and hope to find one that works, especially when most of them only have direct linking with no creative.

Though I have broken down the network and pointed out a few of the pros and cons, I still think it might be worth your time to join the network and see what type of offers are available. There might be something that already targets to your niche market, or a competitor that is doing something better.

Join Click2Sell Network

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Crazy Easy Contest with $7,695 in Prizes Up for Grabs!

I first came across Winning the Web a few months ago, and since then Gyutae Park has been doing a great job on providing quality content, while putting forth the marketing efforts to get more readers and eyeballs onto his blog. Gyutae is now ready for his biggest site promotion yet, and has put together one of the best prizes packages I have seen, especially from such a young blog (started in Oct 97). His contest is rightfully called the “Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen“, and I would have to agree. There are some high end prizes here up for grabs, and it’s ridiculously easy to enter… that in itself makes it pretty crazy! In addition to taking part in the contest, you should take a look at his blog, which covers tips on blogging, affiliate marketing, seo and other ways to monetize your online business or blog.

Contest & Prizes
Everyone seems to be making a new contest for their blog every week now… but the main reason why the Winning the Web contest stood out from the rest for me, wasn’t just the cash and prizes from big name networks, but also how he setup the listings on is page. The placement and usage of company logos ended up looking great. You can click here and visit his blog page with full graphics and prize details. Here is a quick run down of prizes available through the contest:

- $650 Cash from Azoogle Ads
- $500 Cash from PepperJam Network
- $250 Cash from NeverBlueAds
- $200 Cash from BidVertiser
- 1 Full Conference Pass to Affiliate Summit East ($949 value)
- 3 Month Membership to Aaron Wall’s SEO Training Program ($300 value)
- 6 Month Membership to SEOmoz Pro ($249 value)
- 12 Month Subscription to RankSense Professional ($630 value)
- 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan from Purple Internet Marketing ($800 value)
- The Secret Classroom from Joel Comm & Next Internet Millionaire ($497 value)
- Autographed Copy of Kris’ Jones Upcoming Book on SEO ($20 value)
- Copy of the SEO Handbook 2008 from HuoMah ($10 value)
- 8 PSD Custom Banner Designs from Banners Mall ($275 value)
- 1 Year Membership to Hlola ($354 value)
- 1 License to Website Optimal Performance ($97 value)
- 2 Exclusive Blog Themes from Unique Blog Designs (2 winners - $100 value each)
- 2 Revolution Wordpress Blog Themes from Brian Gardner (2 winners -$80 value each)
- Wordpress Coding from CSS Rockstars ($209 value)
- 1 Year Swamp Plan Web hosting from Host Gator ($150 value)
- 1 Hour Blog Optimization Consulting from Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips ($175 value)
- Blog Consultation Report from Jay Francis Hunter of Scribbles and Words ($90 value)
- 3 Month 125×125 Banner Ad on AndyBeard.eu ($100 value)
- 1 Month Text Link Ad on Ades Blog ($90 value)
- 1 Month 125×125 Banner Ad on John Cow ($125 value)
- 6 Month 125×125 Banner Ad on JonLee.ca ($300 value)
- 1 Month 125×125 Banner Ad on Affiliate Confession ($35 value)
- 3 Fast Passes, 3 Featured Statuses, and 5000 Credits from Entrecard
- 1 Paid Review on Winning the Web - sponsored by 1 Cool File ($100 value)
- 20 Winning the Web T-shirts (20 winners - $9 value each)

How the Contest Works
I’m sure Winning the Web has spent a decent amount of time compiling this list together to offer his blog readers only the best prizes for his contest. After all, by offering such quality prizes, he will only increase the likeliness to keep his blog readers in the long run. I already went over the prizes up for grabs, so here’s how to get your hands on them.

To enter the WTW contest, simply visit their contest entry page and scroll down past the prize section. To submit your entry, you must “Sign up for the free Winning the Web mailing list (required).” and/or “Subscribe to the Winning the Web RSS feed.“. There are also additional ways for you to earn more entries into the contest, which are the following:

- Sign up for the mailing list (required) - 1 entry
- Blog about this contest and link to this post - 10 entries
- Every 5 comments on WTW (now until March 31 with 5 comments per day limit) - 1 entry
- Subscribe to the feed and stay tuned for more opportunities to gain entries
- Contest Clue entries on Contest Info Page

Winner Selections
The winners of all of the individual prizes will be selected by a random draw on March 31 - there will be at least 39 winners in total (including 20 free t-shirts to the participants with the most entries).

I congratulate Gyutae for his efforts on pulling together an amazing list of quality names and great prizes for his contest. Now it’s up to you to take a few minutes and actually enter the contest. You’d be surprised how easy it might actually be to win! Just last month, myself and Gyutae won the John Chow Elite Retreat contest, each winning a $5k ticket to EliteRetreat! Less than 15 people total entered that contest. Since you are only required to subscribe to his rss and email feed, this contest is so much easier to win and would be a great loss if you did not at least do that! I got my entries in and looking forward to seeing who are the winners at the end of the month, will you be one of them? Good luck!

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Review Me Blogs

Since starting this blog, I have been testing the "Review Me" and "PayPerPost" market places and seeing what type of quality reviews are being performed. Usually you get what you pay for, but there have been some surprises along the way. One of the first sites I requested a blog review from was Kumiko’s Cash Quest. For only $40, this was a great review, she took the time to add images and post her opinions on other sections of the site. Another great review was from John Chow. Since John Chow has a large following and some heavy traffic to his blog, this review cost $300, but was worth it. Like Kumiko’s review, John Chow also listed the ZacJohnson.com logo and went into detail about the blog and many of it’s posts. In addition to the write up, he was able to send a decent amount of traffic and new readers as well.

Kumiko and John Chow were two great blogs to get reviews from, but unfortunately you will come across some bad reviews or low quality ones. The other day I was in Review Me looking for some new high ranking blogs to review my blog. I saw a listing for NicheGeek.com (Alexa: 29,977), the review price was $150. I decided to add this site to my cart and waited to see how the review went. A couple days later I receive an email telling me that my review from the site is now live. Anxious and excited to see what was written, I immediately went to the site. You can read firsthand the original blog post here, then refer to below for my "review" of the review.

In the first portion of the review (shown above), Dmriti Davydov writes how he comes across a decent amount of interesting people through review me orders. After his intro, it seems Dmriti is making the accusation that I am not a so-called "super affiliate", based on AOJon’s blog post. (which briefly states…"Monthly affiliate marketing revenues should be no less than $250k a month (revenue, not profit)…. Annual profits should be no less than $1 million based on your total affiliate marketing revenues"). I don’t know why Dmriti would assume that I do not meet super affiliate status … if he was to fully read through the blog (as one would expect a reviewer to do), it is made clear that I have published figures to back this up. Not to mention, I feel super affiliates come in all different sizes and variations. What about the smaller affiliate networks and programs… if their top affiliate is making $50,000 a month in commissions, they are definitely considered a "super affiliate" among the other affiliates within the network.

In this section, Dmriti writes about my network of sites and the fact that I have indeed paid out a decent amount of money to affiliates over the years. After reading the review over a couple times, I thought to myself… why was Dmriti questioning whether I was a "self-proclaimed" super affiliate, and then post that I have paid out over a million dollars in commissions to affiliates of my own. Wouldn’t this just further justify super affiliate status?

Dmriti’s next section talks about how the blog has too much personality too it and that the blog has too little "affiliate marketing" information. True, I do make personal posts… but if I am not for letting the blog reader know who I am as well as what I do, I might as well just write an ebook, sell it for $97 and not care what my blog readers get. I’m here to provide useful information to help you make money… while giving you a glimpse of who I am. (Funny, Dmriti’s comment on "too little specific content" is exactly my take on his review of my blog.) As for mergers, Jim Cramer and stock related posts… these are still all related. Most people making money online are also interested in what might be happening with the companies that feed them. You may also be looking for information on how to invest your money, I’m providing you with real life figures from Jim Cramer’s program and my person portfolio.

Lastly, Dmriti wants me to start posting my monthly income figures and how much I make off the blog, (like John Chow does), rather than just claims of being a super affiliate. Unfortunately for me, but good for you… I don’t have ads blasted all over the site, and am not looking to make money off the blog right now. I want to provide useful content and help you make money. Since the blog itself isn’t here to make me money, I have no figures to post. As for other income sources, I have plenty and have mentioned several… posts of checks, Affiliate Fuel Review and AuctionAds Performance to list a few. To end the review, Dmriti says it may be a bit premature to do any forecasting on the blog (despite his negative comments)… but has a feeling I will become popular and join the ranks of numerous internet marketing gurus.

What bothered me most about the blog review was not it’s negative comments (all positive reviews do little to improve your blog), but the lack of "specific content" as Dmriti refers to it, and research done by the reviewer. For $150 I was hoping for a more in-depth review and not so much a comparison to other posts or a review on how I am not up to "super affiliate" status.

Why did I write this post? You might think that I wrote this post to let out some anger or disgust from the review, but it’s completely the opposite. I don’t want YOU to have someone review your site and post something similar to this review and get you discouraged. Quality criticism is a great thing! Superficial criticism on the other hand rarely helps improve anything. John Chow had a review done the other day on a money making program. He ripped the site apart and told everyone how to make money, but also how the guy running the site was making his money off the site. Not only did the post focus attention on his site, but the post also received almost 200 reply comments. The owner of the site even posted a comment, saying thanks for the publicity !

As I was putting the finishing touches on this blog entry I received an additional review me from another popular blog, which I signed up for the same time as Dmriti’s review. This review, while also costing me $150, provided details evidencing that the reviewer had thoroughly looked over the blog. This review me also started out with a healthy dose of skepticism (as all review me’s should) regarding "just another blog" from a self proclaimed "super affiliate", but then relied on the actual blog information/data to form his own conclusions.   

As a valued blog reader, please post your comments to this post and let me know if you feel the same way as this reviewer, what type of review me experiences you have had? (the good, the bad… and even the ugly!)

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Make Money with Affiliate Fuel

I’m going to try and start focusing on writing up some reviews of individual ad networks that I used to work with and still do a lot of business with. Today I’m going to do a review on Affiliate Fuel. I signed up to Affiliate Fuel back in August of 2001. At this time I was heavily focusing on the free stuff marketing and building opt-in email lists for free stuff promotions. Networks like Affiliate Fuel have a lot of offers targeted to this niche area.

From the screenshot above you will see that Affiliate Fuel has a lot of different offers targeted towards many different categories. What’s really great about Affiliate Fuel is that they had/have a lot of unique offers available that most of the other network don’t. You will find some very high quality offers like BowFlex, Scholastic, Zoobooks and more, along with some of the highest payouts as well. Some other networks might have 200-400 different offers for you to choose from, but might not offer the same high quality advertisers and offers.

Since joining Affiliate Fuel back in 2001 I have done a decent amount of revenue with them, and I would consider them one of my better affiliate networks partnerships. Below you will find a monthly revenue chart of my activity with Affiliate Fuel from 2001 through 2004.

Fluctuations in the chart simply are from choosing different offers from Affiliate Fuel and offers from other networks. This may also be from new offers that went live and performed very well. Business models change and around mid-2004 I wasn’t focusing on the free stuff market or mailing lists as much anymore, so my activity with Affiliate Fuel also diminished. I previously wrote a post about "Why do Affiliate Networks Let Super Affiliates Leave?". I feel like Affiliate Fuel could fall into this article as well. After averaging six figures for two years with Affiliate Fuel, then only pushing $5000+ in 2004, I was amazed they were not more concerned about keeping the same activity we used to have. While I was producing high volume with them every month they were awesome, and always offering advice on new offers and commission boosts with volume… but except for an email here or there and they didn’t seem too concerned with the loss of my account activity. I would occasionally talk to them over email, but nothing came up that changed my activity with them.

Even though I am not still making a lot of money with Affiliate Fuel, I have made a lot with them. It seems that Affiliate Fuel does not get the exposure and credit it should, compared to the other big networks out there. I would highly recommend you signing up for their program and see what offers might start making you money. Payment, stats tracking and support have never been an issue. I’ve even met with this guys a few times at Ad:Tech!

Let me know if you are running Affiliate Fuel or have any other questions. I’d love to see every start making a few extra bucks!

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Club Penguin

Take a moment before reading this post and visit ClubPenguin.com. Be sure to glance through a couple pages and see what it’s about. Now look at the site again and take a guess at how much you think the site makes per month/year? At first you may think this is just a fun little community for just kids… but it’s really a massively huge cash cow! Think of World of Warcraft, but on a smaller scale and targeted towards a younger audience. TechCrunch reports that ClubPenguin is on it’s way to possibly being acquired from Sony for around $500 million dollars! TechCrunch also reports that ClubPenguin has "projected revenues of $65 million in 2007 with $35 million in profit. Having nearly 50% bottom line margin is exceptional. The company has around 500,000 active users."

Where is the money you may ask? If you look at their "membership plans" you will see that you can signup for a monthly fee and have access to cool member benefits, such as dressing up your penguin or decorating your own igloo! As silly as the idea might sound, it’s making a ton of cash and user activity/signups are still going strong. There is an amazing amount of money in offering paid memberships and monthly billing. If you have had trouble with making the next big step in making big money online, you may want to think about starting up your own paid membership based site. You will need to work hard on bringing in new subscribers, but will soon have a nice recurring source of revenue each month. While there are the usual dating, gaming, greeting cards, hosting and other sites that have paid memberships, something new and original (like ClubPenguin) would heavily increase your likelihood of growth and success. After all… how many paid subscribers have you been signed up to and forgot, or were too lazy to cancel them… someone is cashing in? Why not you!

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