When you first start internet marketing, one of the first things that everyone tells you is to start out by doing affiliate marketing, using Clickbank products. This is, in fact, very good advice, and advice that I also give to newbies. After all, you don’t need your own product, you don’t have to worry about collecting payments, you don’t have to worry about customer queries, complaints, etc, because all that is taken care of for you. All you have to do is to join Clickbank, then get your affiliate link for the product that you want to sell. After that all you need to do is to send traffic to your affiliate link and collect your commission checks every fortnight. Sounds like the perfect solution for someone just starting your internet marketing career, doesn’t it?

Well here is the downside to Clickbank that no-one else seems to mention, and it is vital that newbies starting their internet marketing careers using Clickbank need to know! So you have made your first sale, but you haven’t been paid yet, and you probably won’t get paid. This is because there are three stumbling blocks that you need to clear before Clickbank will pay you your first check. Most people aren’t aware of these, so they never get paid, and they quit altogether, thinking that the whole thing is a scam.

The first stumbling block is the payment threshold. By default, this is set at $US100, so if your sale is less than this amount then your payment is held over until the next payment period. This is easily fixed. You can go into your account and lower this yourself, but you need to be aware that you pay a fee of $US2.50 for every check you receive so don’t set the threshold too low.

The second stumbling block is the one that kills most newbies. In the Accounting Policy there is a section called the Customer Distribution Requirement. Everyone should read this in its entirety, but here is the bad news in a nutshell.

“Clickbank will hold payment of any account balance until the following criteria is met:

* Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers and

* Sales made with two different payment methods (VISA, Mastercard, or Paypal).”

So before you can get your first check, you will need to make an absolute minimum of six sales. One through Paypal, and five through different credit cards, using both VISA and Mastercard. And Paypal purchases do not count towards the credit card purchases, even if they are processed through a credit card. So if your first five or six sales were all made through Paypal, you still need to get those five credit card sales.

And the third stumbling block is the final nail for most newbies. That is the dormant account ‘gotcha’. Even if you have a positive balance, if you haven’t received a payment check for some time, your account is considered dormant, and you start to get charged a fee of $US1.00 per payment period after 90 days, $US5.00 per pay period after 180 days, and $US15.00 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity. So even the commissions that you have earned are not safe, you can lose them as well!

Before you start your career as a ‘Clickbank Newbie’, you need to consider all three of these stumbling blocks, and form plans to deal with them. One of the ways that I have recommended in the past was to get some of your friends to buy products through your affiliate link, making sure that they meet the criteria above. How you did that was up to you, and if Clickbank found out then they could close your account down, but the risk was minimal.

Now, however, there is a completely legal and whitehat way of getting around these stumbling blocks, making your first affiliate commissions and getting paid! Harvey Segal, one of the best Clickbank marketers on the planet, has published a completely free (not even an opt-in required) report on how to get around these stumbling blocks and start receiving your first affiliate checks. It is a short read, only 15 pages, but full of vital info, so make sure you get a copy, read it, and take action! You can download the report  “Clickbank For Newbies” here. Incidentally, don’t be put off by the title, there is some good stuff in there for old hands like me too, including a diabolically clever viral twist in the tail, so make sure you read every word!

If you follow Harvey’s advice, you will clear all three of the stumbling blocks with no problems, and then you are on your way. Once you have received your mandatory three paper checks from Clickbank, you can request to have your commissions paid via direct transfer each pay period, so there is no chance of those paper checks going missing in the mail, and the downsides of Clickbank will just be a distant memory to you, just like me. BTW, if you are an affiliate marketer I would urge you to pass this info on to all of your friends, they will thank you for it if they are newbies too. You are also welcome to retweet it.

As all of you budding Internet Marketers should know by now, the US Federal Trade Commission (the FTC), has recently brought out new regulations governing affiliate marketing on the Internet. These regulations cover not only websites written or hosted in the US, but also any websites which can be read by a US citizen, which means every website on the Internet.

These new measures were made necessary by the bottom-feeders who were conning gullible newbies with their claims of making millions of dollars in a week with no work, and similar outlandish claims.

Outlandish to us old hands, but to newcomers who are scared of losing their jobs or their nest-eggs, these claims are hard to resist. So the FTC stepped in and brought in new regulations governing the use of testimonials, and also demanded that all affiliate marketers disclose any compensation agreements that they might have with any products or services that they might recommend.

Personally, I welcome the new regulations,  as you will see on my website I don’t use any testimonials regarding amounts of money made using xyz product anyway, so that doesn’t affect me at all. And I am happy to include an affiliate compensation disclosure on my website because as you all should know by now, I won’t promote crap products just because the merchant offers me a great commission.

My reputation as a straight-shooter is worth much more to me than a few lousy bucks commission from promoting a crappy product. So my position hasn’t, and won’t, change — I will continue to only promote products or services that I personally use and endorse because they are great products at a great value-for-money price.

However I have posted a new page outlining my policies regarding affiliate compensation, and you are welcome to read it at any time. It is not hard to find!

Speaking of which, this page was drawn up by a real lawyer, and it may or may not be suitable for your own business, but if you are like me and hate lawyers with a passion, and hate paying them exorbitant rates for what is basically just a copy’n'paste job for them, then go ahead and copy it and paste in your own information and use it on your own website.

[By the way, I didn’t say that!] 

So, bottom line is that if you are doing what I keep telling you to do, which is to conduct your online business in an honest and ethical manner, then you will have nothing to worry about from the FTC’s new rules. Just make sure that you declare any compensation arrangements on your website, somewhere an average 10-year-old retard can find them and you should be sweet. Not that I am saying that all Yanks are as smart as an average 10-year-old retard, just that that should cover you! 

Product Review of Alvin Phang’s Atomic Blogging 2.0

The first thing that needs to be said about Alvin’s Atomic Blogging 2.0 is that it is not just another 30 page ebook regurgitating all the usual crap like most of the over-priced blogging ebooks you see advertised all the time. This ebook is h-u-g-e, it is over 130 pages and close to 5mb in size! Also unlike most other blogging ebooks out there, Atomic Blogging 2.0 does not contain any junk or filler, it is all meat. Nearly every page contains screenshots, not only showing you what you should be seeing, but most of the screenshots have been edited with instructions written in red so that you can’t miss them — Step 1 fill in this box, Step 2 click this button, etc.

As I mentioned, the book is 131 pages long, and covers everything in simple enough detail so that even a complete newbie can follow along and get their first blog up and running, and making money, just by following the numbers and duplicating the screenshots. The complete chapter list is as follows:

Chapter 1 - 8 Powerful Tips On Dos & Donts On Blogging

Chapter 2 - Getting Started With Blogging

Chapter 3 - Building Your Business With Market & Keyword Research

Chapter 4 - Setting Up a Profitable Blog to Generate Cash Online

Chapter 5 - Optimizing Your Blog to Perform

Chapter 6 - Powerful Tips on Blogging

Chapter 7 - Monetizing Your Blog

Chapter 8 - Getting Traffic and Really Lots of It!

Chapter 9 - Leveraging on Web 2.0 & Social Networks

Chapter 10 - Advanced Traffic Tips & Bonus Chapters

Chapter 10 in particular blew me away, I thought that I had read everything there was to know about blogs (except for where to get the time to update them! :-)  ), but some of the little tricks that Alvin mentions in this chapter are so powerful, but so simple, that I felt like slapping myself on the back of the head for not thinking of them myself! Brilliant stuff, Alvin!

The ebook itself, and the included plugins and themes, are constantly being updated, so this is not just some blogging ebook that has been written, sold, then forgotten about like most. As Alvin comes up with new ideas, and improves his products, he is more than happy to share the new findings with his customers, so the whole product package is constantly improving.

All in all, if you are looking for the best ebook on blogging, whether you are a complete newbie or a seasoned pro looking for an edge, this is it. I have read just about every blogging book written in the last few years, some were over-priced junk ghost-written for the big dogs, some were written by newbies who were simply copying the over-priced junk, and a relative few were written by people who had actually been there, done that, and had the scars to prove it. Alvin Phang’s Atomic Blogging 2.0 definitely falls into the last group, and in my opinion is the best of the best.

Last time I checked, it was still selling for $US47, and it still included all the Fast Start bonuses that I received, so if you are in the market for an ebook on blogging then get your backsides over to http://tinyurl.com/AtomBlog2 and check it out, you won’t regret it! The bonuses are just that, bonuses, but they are the icing on the cake and make this the best value package that I have seen for a long while.

ps I heard from Alvin this week and he is already working on Atomic Blogging 3.0, which should be released some time in 2009 — I can hardly wait to see what he has in store for that! But don’t wait for it, get in now and get 2.0.

G’day,

Just when I thought I’d seen it all… I was really shocked when I saw a video from Alvin Phang exposing some real deep secrets on blogging, explaining how he generated 4 to 5 figures a year just from blogging! Take a look at the video:

http://tinyurl.com/BlogTS

This isn’t like the usual B.S crap that you  normally see from the big dogs, Alvin has been blogging for more than 2 years
and for the first time he is exposing his blogging trade secrets! He started off with just a hobby blog and now his blog business has grown so huge that it’s currently ranked 4,900 out of 115 million blogs in Technorati. And it’s the kind of business that ANYONE can start, even if you have no website making skills or IT knowledge…

I do have to warn you, Alvin will be limiting the amount of downloads for his free series of videos due to expensive bandwidth. If you want to take advantage of what Alvin has to share… take a look now:

http://tinyurl.com/BlogTS

I know you get hit by dozens of “offers” everyday, well this isn’t one of them. There is nothing for sale at this site, just pure great free content from a man who is the real deal!

Bye for now,
Terry

G’day all,

This is the short version for all my Twitter followers: Get your backsides over to

www.27.77plr.com/happy61stgiftbox.html before the price goes up! Long version is on my blog at TheInternetMarketingBloke.com

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My mate Ron Capps (Dr Ron the Niche Prof) is celebrating his 61st birthday, but he is giving us the pressies! The price of the package is going up every few days, so I suggest that you get over there ASAP and have a look at the great value on offer for some absolute must-have products! Note that the link above is not an affiliate link, I am getting nothing out of it at all, except for the products themselves — yes, I got in early myself! 

The first product alone, the Wordpress Membership Site software is worth the asking price for the whole package on it’s own, and some of the other products could easily sell for up to $100 each, as most are either PLR or MRR, so you can build up your own IM business by re-selling the products on your own website.

As most of you already know, my main focus is niche marketing using affiliate products, so take the tip from me — if I am recommending a non-affiliate product to you, it must be good and it must be something that I think will really help you in your IM business, so get your backsides over there and see if it is going to help you!