Clickbank Merchant Threatens Me and tells me to stop promoting her product.
Ouch that’s not a nice way to start the weekend is it?
Here’s the story:
I started promoting a clickbank product in february solely via ppc marketing. I made more sales than anticipated and the sales kept rising. I contacted the merchant to get more tips on how to promote the site (banners, emails, basically a little more help..)
I never got an answer. A month later a sent another email stating that i started building a list and was close to 130 people on my list.
This time i got an answer after about a week’s time.
The merchant apologized about the wait and let me know she was updating the site to help out her affiliates.
I replied telling her i got a little annoyed about the fact that i didn’t get an answer the first time. Then i told her exactly how i was promoting her product. I created a squeeze page and populated the autoresponder with her own emails. I just replaced her links with my affiliate id. Then i asked her if she would agree to an interview.
My mistake here is using her emails, they are copy written and i had no rights to use them. But i did thinking it wouldn’t really be a big deal as long as i’m redirecting the traffic to her site.
Moments later i get a call from aweber because she had filed a complaint on me. I was stealing her business model and that i had no rights to do so. I got shocked and explained that i was basically redirecting traffic to her site and made a commission from that effort. I also stated that i was disappointed that the merchant didn’t contact me first and went straight to aweber.
I got an email from the merchant stating that i violated her copyright rules and that she wanted me to stop using her name and stop promoting her book.
The Aftermath:
I’ve erased all emails, I sent a letter of apology to the merchant.
I lost one source of income and i’m left with a site, some subscribers and nothing to promote to them.
Don’t be like me. Do not copy the emails of the merchant even when they don’t reply to your emails. Always ask for permission first.
Make sure you communicate well with the merchant before you buy your own website. Also being sincere about your marketing methods is not always a good thing.
Another lesson learned!
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Costly Mistake With Google’s Site Targeting (a.k.a Placement Targeting)
In the hopes to driving quicker traffic to my site i decided to try to run a google site targeting. Unlike keyword targeted campaigns site targeting campaigns reside on other people’s content sites. Usually with a keyword targeted campaign your ads primarily appear in search engines and also on the content network if you choose to run it. In this case you are charged a certain amount per click. Let’s say that if your cost per click is 30 cents, each time someone clicks on your add you pay 30 cents. This basically how i’ve run most of my ppc campaigns so far.
Why did i decide to try site targeting?
I felt very bold and adventurous today. I’m also in a product creation phase and wanted to drive more traffic to my squeeze page. I wanted to direct traffic immediately. So that pretty much excluded many traffic tactics (article marketing, seo …). I could have added another campaign and use more keywords but i decided to go with a site targeting campaign. Under the pretext that i would be getting more targeted traffic. I also thought that i could ideally spend a lot less, because you’re charged on a cost per thousand impression. That means if you set your campaign to $1.00 for every 1000 impressions. You only pay $1 and nothing more than that. It doesn’t matter if you get 1000 clicks you still get charged the same regardless of how many clicks you receive. Which is pretty neat.
Why even bother running a site targeted campaign?
Am i crazy!? Humm… yeah lol i am but did you know that you can actually have extremely targeted buyers come to your site that way? Usually someone goes online looking for something and hopefully in my case to buy what it is i’m promoting. So the person jumps on google and types in that product. The person looks slightly to the right and low and behold!! My add is right there for them to click on. That’s great isn’t it? but maybe they were just curious and looking around. The person really had no intentions on buying anything. Well that’s fine and that’s where site targeting comes in.
The person looking for my product is on a relevant site. The person is already in the product buying curiosity mindset. The person reads and reads and sees my ad which has this call to action: Hey i know you’re looking for this, for this particular reason, well come here and get it. I’ve only tried that method for half of a day and i know that it works. Why, because i received feedback from them saying oh i was on a certain site and i saw your add, so i came here to find what it is i was looking for. It’s very nice to get that kind of feedback.
My mistakes:
I added too many sites to my campaign.
I didn’t even stop to think how much that would cost me.
I set my cost per thousand around $3.00 to maximize impressions
And the worst mistake of all was to set my budget at $100/day.
I’m glad i came back to check on my campaign because by that time i had already spent close to $80. Yeah! that’s right $80 in half of the day. That’s crazy!! I was not expecting this at all but it happened. So naturally i paused the campaign. I need to re-educate myself on running a site targeted campaign. On the plus side i broke a record by capturing a total of 40+ leads in half a day. Not too bad.
I learned my lesson and i will try to improve on my site targeting skills.
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