$1000 on a site, $1000 on marketing

[jcpeden]

I've been mulling over the idea of working with Clickbank sites for a few days now and after putting pen to paper, I've decided that I'd like to invest seriously in site flipping: time, money and effort. I'm not incredibly short on any of the three but there definitely seems to be some dispute over what constitutes a big budget on this forum. $1000 is pretty considerable for me so I want to make the right moves and plan everything as far as possible to minimise risk.

My plan
I want to purchase a CB site that is in decline or has been poorly marketed. Budget will be $1000 and a further $1000 to market and build the business. I'll reinvest all profits into the business to increase growth as much as possible.

My target site

• Niche must be one that I enjoy as this will make it easier to work on.
• Niche keyword CPC must indicate that there are easily-accessed prospective buyers for my products.
• CB gravity should be 0-2 (2 is poor enough that I can negotiate a good price, above 0 means they have had affiliate sales in the past 8 weeks)
• Niche must allow me to introduce a range of physical products to sell (solar panels, sports equipment etc)
• Products should sell for about $150 (good figure to work with as you don't need to shift tonnes of stock to hit target profits)
• Site must be getting 1000 uniques/month (plan to pay for at least some of my traffic anyway so this is less important)

Tactical plan
The aim is to purchase a poor-performing CB site by negotiating down and making the owner glad that they are getting anything for it. Hopefully this will mean a site doing $100-$250/month for no more than $1000. I'm hoping to boost this figure up to $1000/month in about 6 months, feeding profits back into the site. I'll then work my magic and sell a site complete with stats showing continual growth for at least 12x monthly profits which should hopefully be about $12,000 by that stage.

Does this seem realistic? I'm planning on shortlisting sites this week. Basically, I just want to think through my moves and plan as much in advance as normally I jump in with 2 feet, waste time and money and end up getting burnt out and disappointed by poor results.

[crabfoot]

It depends on how well you apply yourself to the job, and how much you know (and don't ask me to help because I know how to spell SEO, that's about the limit).

I see conflicts in what you are looking for, what you want to do, and what you should be doing. Your plan is workable, but you appear to have missed the best points from the advice you have been given, so I'm sending you a PM.

If you are going to put so much work into the one site, I don't see a lot of point in selling it unless you really need the money. Better to keep it, employ the income, and use it to boost other sites in the same vein, to my mind.

[Magnus]

Can you explain your plan a little further with respect to this...

"Niche must allow me to introduce a range of physical products to sell (solar panels, sports equipment etc)"

Is the site(s) you're looking to buy going to be a digital or physical product (or either)?

How are you planning to introduce the other products? Most CB products are a single product on a single, long-copy sales-page; any detraction from the main product and sales-page would be a step back (read: lower conversions).

There are a bunch of other things I can point out, but I'm not quite clear on your plan right now.

Also, I have around a dozen CB products that I launched myself; so I know a little about this area.

[Clinton]

I think it's a good plan though I suspect most such CB product owners won't sell for 4x especially if they have an affiliate or two occasionally sending a sale

[jcpeden]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the advice and the input. This is exactly what I wanted to do; get some help refining my plan before I got to work so that I was clear in what I wanted to do and to avoid.

I see conflicts in what you are looking for, what you want to do, and what you should be doing. Your plan is workable, but you appear to have missed the best points from the advice you have been given, so I'm sending you a PM.

I'll check it out! Thanks. In response to your questions:

"Niche must allow me to introduce a range of physical products to sell (solar panels, sports equipment etc)"

I'm looking for a CB site selling a digital product that already has a bit of traffic and affiliates. I had planned to introduce a range of relevant products to the site so a CB product about snowboarding could be used to sell snowboarding products with the original ebook included as an upsell or as a way of getting people to signup to my mailing list.

How are you planning to introduce the other products? Most CB products are a single product on a single, long-copy sales-page; any detraction from the main product and sales-page would be a step back (read: lower conversions).

Good point, I hadn't thought about changes affecting conversions in a negative way. I'd probably setup the site as a shop with the physical products being presented on the landing page. As above, I'd then offer the original ebook as an extra when they are about to purchase.

It is clear that there is still a long way to go until I have something resembling a blueprint to work with, but that was the whole point wasn't it! I'd be surprised if I could get a site for 4x profits but if the site is in decline and I've got up to $1000 to spend, I'm hoping that I'd be able to pick up a site doing $100-$250/month within my budget.

[Magnus]

(note: this post ended up going a little off tangent...)


So you have a $1000? I didn't have that when I first started earlier this year - it was a big decision alone to pay just under $100 for graphics for the sales-page for my first product.

I created the product, sales-page, emails for affiliates to use, etc.

I just copied what everyone else was doing:

Sales-page
Grab emails
Banners and email for affiliates
Simple product
...

As I released each product I would test and try various things that I thought might work and they almost always fell flat; which is good because it confirmed that just copying everyone else was what worked.

Now, 25 products later (lots of successes ...but even more failures), and I'm still doing exactly what I was doing in the beginning: single product, sales page, capture emails, and so on.

I feel I've tried nearly everything to increase profits, but the same old simple sales-letter (or sales-video) just can't be beaten. I say this as offering additional products and such will not be quite what you think it is; it's hard enough to get visitors sold on one item alone ...never mind adding additional upsells, cross sells, down sells, etc.

Also, your views of the stats (pageviews => sales) is a little hopeful I feel - particularly for a $150 product.

The other thing is that it takes some solid salesmanship to get decent conversions on a $150 product. If a CB product has a low gravity (anything less than 10), then this implies a few things - but mainly that sales are relatively poor - the #1 reason is most likely the sales-copy.

If you you can't write decent sales-copy yourself, your going to have to pay someone to do this - which is generally fairly pricey if you want good stuff (well, you get what you pay for).

What I've said has been more of a criticism unfortunately - but, when I feel I can help someone, I try to.

Before you invest money in buying someone else's product - perhaps using your money to get a product created might be the better option just now; you'd learn a lot about how clickbank/stats/figures/conversions/affiliates/sales patterns/etc. works (these are things that no one can tell you - you really just have to do it).

Get an ebook written in a popular area, such as dating, for say $500; and either get the sales-letter written yourself, or pay someone for it (get it done for $500 - won't be amazing, but that doesn't matter). Learn about collecting emails and such. See what happens when you try to upsell.

Also ...why physical products?

[KenW3]

I'm looking for a CB site selling a digital product that already has a bit of traffic and affiliates. I had planned to introduce a range of relevant products to the site so a CB product about snowboarding could be used to sell snowboarding products with the original ebook included as an upsell or as a way of getting people to signup to my mailing list.

For a digital product sales page, there is only one thing you can do on the web site. This is 'Click the buy button'. The only way to exit the site is to close the browser, as there is no other link out than the one in the buy buttons. Any links you have to a mailing list takes from the sales message. Any sales message for a different product dilutes the message and will cost sales for the product.

It is best to do an upsell after the purchase, and a similar type of product converts better than a related product. (In other words, if they just bought a digital info product, offer another that adds value to the product just purchased. If people arrive looking for a digital product as information, and you offer physical products, conversions will suffer.

[crabfoot]

When I tried my first suggestion how to find neglected clickbank sites (search for "product1" "product2" and start looking from page 10 of the search for sites that have not been touched for a few months) I came across several sites that had a general plan - they list five products per page in a particular niche, and have several pages to cover several niches.

Whereas I can imagine that each product could link to a "one-pager", I'd like to know how you guys see these sites as fitting into the scheme of clickbank sales.

[KenW3]

When I tried my first suggestion how to find neglected clickbank sites (search for "product1" "product2" and start looking from page 10 of the search for sites that have not been touched for a few months) I came across several sites that had a general plan - they list five products per page in a particular niche, and have several pages to cover several niches.

I would have to see an example of the site(s) you are describing, but more than a single product is usually a store with a shopping cart. Digital product sales pages have one function - make the sale then and there. Visitors can buy or leave. If I am a product affiliate, I want to make a sale, not send someone a prospect to their hoplink for future attempts at conversion by someone else. The page's ability to convert is what brings more affiliates to promote the products. There is no cart, just a payment method.

Conversely, a true squeeze page also has a single function - capture a lead by enticing a visitor into revealing information. Sometimes, it is just an email to plug into an auto-responder sales funnel. This type of landing page also has a single clear call to action. The visitor either performs the action or can close the browser, but there is only one thing for a visitor to do.

For CB digital product sales, there may be more than one transactional landing page on a site, but each would be dedicated to a single function and they would not be cross-linked to each other. Each page would have a single purpose. If there are two different sales pages or two different squeeze pages (for capture of information) on a single domain, the only reason would be for split testing (sometimes named multivariate testing for those who may Google some of these terms).

Yes, there are sites that try to do all of this on a single page, but conversion rates would be lower than a transactional landing page. That's a very interesting idea, converting back and forth between types of pages.

[jcpeden]

As I released each product I would test and try various things that I thought might work and they almost always fell flat; which is good because it confirmed that just copying everyone else was what worked...I say this as offering additional products and such will not be quite what you think it is; it's hard enough to get visitors sold on one item alone ...never mind adding additional upsells, cross sells, down sells, etc...Also, your views of the stats (pageviews => sales) is a little hopeful I feel - particularly for a $150 product. Also...why physical products?

Interesting, you've tested things and developed a formula that works based one what other people are doing. That makes sense and I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel. I'm not trying to sell a huge range of products but basically I'd like to turn a fairly low-proft CB site into a true ebusiness, dropshipping physical products to my customers as this (from what I understand having read Justin Gilchrist's ebook on Flipping eCommerce sites) *seems* more valuable to the person who will ultimately buy my site.

The aim here is to create something more valuable and with greater longevity to the customer so that my profit margins in selling it are maximised. Perhaps I've missed the point of what I read or perhaps its just not in keeping with the well-beaten path here?

Ultimately, my usual style is to read something like this, jump in and get nowhere. I want to have my strategy cross-examined and whittle it down into something worthwhile before I leap this time!