A Creative, Sneaky, ClickBank Sale!

I earned a very "creative" ClickBank sale recently on a spur-of-the-moment kind of idea that didn't even cost anything to try. But it's such a sneaky tactic that I almost hesitate to even admit to what I've done! That is, afterall, what this blog is about though, documenting my successes and failures along the way to discovery of what really works, so it's only fair that I fill you in on this...but it is pretty sneaky!

I've been experimenting lately with one of the many social networking type sites, similar to MySpace. Like MySpace, it's also free to use, so you know it's going to be tempting to me to try to use somehow, since that's what I'm always after is free or very inexpensive promotion ideas. The problem is, most of these social networking sites are usually meant for personal, rather than business, use. So you have to be a little creative if you're going to try to use them to promote anything.

What I noticed was that whenever an attractive female's picture was posted on this site, their profile usually got a huge number of hits in a short amount of time. And depending on just how good looking the person in the picture was, there were also many comments posted from men about how great the girl in the picture looks.

So I had a hunch that if I were to create a profile for a ficticious female and post a picture of an attractive female on it, I'd get the attention of lots of the male members of the site. So I did just that and included a ClickBank link to an ebook on how to successfully meet girls and ask them out. And just like magic, within 12 hours of doing so I had a nice (although sneaky!) ClickBank sale that earned a $49 commission!

The bad news is, this was about a month ago, and since then I've made no more sales, so I'm about to delete this little experimental profile of mine. But it's tempting to just leave it on there, since it doesn't cost anything, afterall. But sooner or later they might start to catch on that the pictures I posted are free stock photos from one of the free photo trading websites! But before I do delete it, I might still try creating a blog to link to from that profile instead, where I can include several more links that might be of interest to those readers. Then I'd have measurable traffic to get an idea of how many are really hitting this link. Plus I could throw the good old Google AdSense ads on there too and see what they might come up with if I make the page about dating, etc. Once again, this is an experiment that doesn't cost anything to try, yet quite a bit can be learned (and maybe even EARNED) from it!

Hardly Worthwhile

It just occurred to me today that I practically never get any clicks from the Google AdSense ads I have on a certain site I won't name. It's common knowledge that Google does not permit websites to "ask" readers to click on their ads. In fact, they seem to want you to avoid mentioning them at all and to just let the readers' own interest lead them to click for more information. So I hesitate to talk about this, even though I usually write honestly about pretty much whatever is on my mind on this blog...but the click rate is so bad I'm considering just removing the AdSense ads from this page altogether.

If you think I'm exaggerating, try this on for size: 6 months, 3 total clicks for a total of 57 cents! I have heard that blogs about Adsense itself and blogs about blogging itself are notoriously bad AdSense earners, but I thought I would do better than 3 clicks in 6 months?! True, I'm talking about a page that gets only minimal traffic so far, since I don't even really promote it anywhere, but it definitely gets SOME traffic daily. I recently even changed to a template that now allows the ads to be positioned on the left side of the page, which has supposedly been proven to work best...but still only 1 click in the last month anyway. The ads look nice, they're blended to the overall look of the rest of the layout and they're all about various ways of making money...they just practically never get clicks.

I guess the problem is that most of my readers know exactly what the ads are since they probably also use them on their own sites. So most fellow bloggers and webmasters tend not to be curious or interested in them enough to click. But still, you would think these ads would be tempting enough to entice more than just 3 clicks in 6 months. I expected so, anyway.

I'm not sure what the real reasons are, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting proper credit for clicks I might be receiving. I have no way to test this if I'm not allowed to click on them myself under any circumstances. But if the ads continue to keep drawing practically no clicks at all, I'll probably just remove them altogether. Or maybe the Yahoo version of the ads might get better results. You never know until you try...and I guess that goes for just about everything in life anyway.

Discovery Of An Accident (Sequel to last post)

I figured I'll try to duplicate the success I had selling the lawn mower in the newspaper and sell the child car seat my son just grew out of. So I wrote a description for it and posted it with some pictures on the blog I used last time. Then I placed the free ad in the local newspaper, again including my domain name that points to the blog. Everything was pretty much the same as last time, so now all I had to do was sit back and wait for all the ad clicks again in between the phone responses, right?

Well, this time the newspaper quietly just deleted the web address from my ad. When I questioned them on this they said they don't allow web addresses in their free articles for sale ads, only phone numbers. So I asked if this is a new rule or something because my last ad was printed with the web address a few weeks ago. They said it must have been printed by accident, since only paid ads can have web addresses included. So my "Accidental Discovery" last time was actually CAUSED by an accident.

This is frustrating! You just can't get anything for nothing it seems. What an advantage that was to be able to publish a web address in a large circulation newspaper for no charge, even though it brought extremely targeted traffic literally overnight. But they realize this for what it is and decided not to allow it anymore...likely because I brought it to their attention, in fact.

Oh well. They do offer free photo posting on their own website...so perhaps I could brand all my photos with the web address. I could try that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they rejected any pics that advertised a web page for the same reason. They realize how powerful a web site can be to advertise with, since I could include a hundred more items for sale on it if I wanted to - none of which they would benefit from. But then, if they charged me $5 to place the ad, what good would the $5 or so the AdSense ads might bring in be?

It's easy to feel like you just can't win sometimes! You can though...I guess I just have to think bigger than this. I thought I was though - in addition to the AdSense ads I also included a few links to ClickBank products under my item description, as "recommended links". Problem is, nobody saw them anyway this time.

My other idea was to re-record the voice mail greeting on my cell phone to announce that web address first for people who are calling about the ad in the paper. Then, of course, offering to let them leave a message if they're interested. The newspaper can't stop me from doing that - they have to print my phone number!

This makes me feel like getting a great big bumper sticker printed for my car to advertise with - they can't stop me from doing that either!!! :)