CBTool Blog

Squidoo has modules for various merchants (e.g. Amazon) but it doesn’t have a module for ClickBank. I’m a programmer – kind-of – so I after looking at the Module Development Kit I wondered whether I should go ahead and try to create the module. After some thinking I realized it would take a lot of work and that there already was a somewhat usable workaround for getting dynamic CB ads on your lens.

It’s quite simple – just use RSS. You can place a RSS module on your lens and configure it to use a keyword-based RSS feed that you can create with one of the many ClickBank RSS tools. Some of them are even free to use. One advantage of this approach is that you’ll get to keep all the profits from affiliate commissions (This may vary with the RSS provider. Some might use their CB ID for a certain percentage or links). If it was a separate module you’d have to split the profits with Squidoo.

On the other hand using a RSS feed has it’s disadvantages (some specific to a certain RSS provider and some common) –

• Ugly titles and descriptions. If the RSS provider uses the marketplace title/description, you’ve got a problem. Those descriptions are often aimed at affiliates, not buyers. Someone visiting a lens on dog training won’t be impressed by an ad stating “This converts at 10%!!”.
• Weak keyword matching. Some sites will return more relevant results than others and more results overall (e.g. CBMall is better at keyword matching than CBTool. Yep, I’m criticizing my own site )
• No product images or screenshots. This problem can’t be reliably solved by a computer at all because vendors are not required to provide a snapshot of their product. Someone would need to manually specify an image to use for every single product.
• Unneeded complexity. You’d need to find a good RSS feed provider, create an account with them and figure out how to configure the feed instead of simply setting up a module.

Personally I think it would be much better if someone who has already solved most of the abovementioned problems wrote a module for Squidoo. This would give lensmasters more options to choose from as you could use RSS, the ClickBank module or neither. The guy who runs CBMall (Jeff Mulligan) would be a good candidate for creating the module – CBMall has a good search engine and usable product descriptions. There’s also a lot of contextual ad scripts designed to show ClickBank products. A script like that could be reworked to function as a module on Squidoo.

I’m surprised no one has done it yet. The module’s author would likely get a good deal of traffic and recognition.

As a final note, I think it would be great if CBMall offered a RSS feed for search results (with some randomization maybe?). It would probably work better than most existing CB RSS feeds for the purpose of getting visitors to click.

White Shadow :: Jul.05.2007 :: Clickbank Stuff, Rants :: 1 Comment »

I have sometimes wondered which marketplace categories get the most affiliate attention or what gravity value is “just right” – not too low and not too competitive. I’m sure ClickBank vendors spend a while thinking what commission rate would look most attractive to affiliates. These questions can be answered – to an extent – with statistical analysis of ClickBank marketplace data and historical trends.

It just so happens I keep a local copy of CBTool database which contains exactly that information. Yesterday I spent a few hours analyzing it and in this post I’ll show you the results I came up with.

Distribution of Products by Marketplace Category
Products that belong to several categories were counted in all of them. As might be expected, “Money & Employment” is leading with 20% of all products belonging to this category.

How Popular With Affiliates is Each Category?
Gravity represents the number of affiliates that have promoted a product, so the sum of all category’s product’s gravity values shows how many affiliates are promoting products from that category. Looks like 47% of affiliates are promoting the three categories which basically contain “make money” related stuff.

Most Attractive Commissions and Prices
I rounded up all commissions to full dollars and calculated the sum of gravity for every distinct “earned per sale” value. This indicates the number of affiliates that promote products with a specific commission size. I did the same for price (estimated, ClickBank doesn’t provide that info in the marketplace so the price graph is probably slightly innacurate). Looks like most affilates promote products that pay out around $22 and cost around $33.

Vendors and Gravity

Some more numbers
Approximately 21.4 new vendors are added to the marketplace every day and around 15.65 vendors drop out daily meaning ClickBank’s marketplace grows by 5.75 products daily on average.

The categories that get the most products added per day :

• 4.76/day – Money & Employment
• 4.43/day – Business to Business
• 4.42/day – Health & Fitness

That’s it for today

White Shadow :: Jun.29.2007 :: Clickbank Stuff :: 2 Comments »

ClickBank has finally implemented recurring billing! It can be used to receive recurring payments for products and services like membership sites and subscriptions, offering lots of new possibilities for vendors.

Read more about it here : Recurring Billing Description

I’ve already updated CBTool to display the relevant information – the “Future $” and “Total $/sale” values are available on the vendor info page.

There are currently no products in Marketplace with recurring billing enabled… we’ll probably have to wait a while for those. I know I’d like to see some – getting paid every month for every customer you referred sounds better than a one-off commission

White Shadow :: Jun.21.2007 :: CBTool News, Clickbank Stuff :: 2 Comments »