Hello All,

Welcome to Week 25A of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Training Masterclass Coaching Program.

The week has run away from me already so I thought I had better get another training post out to you. This weeks post is actually going to be split in to 2 parts like I did for Week 5. It is a big one!!

Week 25 is all about creating our download page and preparing our product for Clickbank. Now before I continue I need to let you know that I actually listed my product with PayDotCom instead of ‘Clickbank’. I did this for a few reasons that I will try and explain further.

The main reason I chose ‘PayDotCom’ over ‘Clickbank’ was because of my main affiliate Boshena, who has an information website dedicated to spray tanning that gets hundreds and hundreds of visitors per week (Her site is www.best-spray-tan-guide.com). Boshena has had problems in the past getting paid by Clickbank due to their policies on having 5 different payment methods before paying affiliates out.

I have also heard of other people that have been owed thousands in commissions from affiliate sales, but because most people have used either PayPal or MasterCard their commissions have been held by Clickbank until 3 more methods were used. One person I know had to send abusive letters in order to get paid. Clickbank did end up paying him and he hasn’t had a problem since.

I do believe Clickbank will need to reconsider these policies as more and more people will start listing their products with other affiliate programs such as PayDotCom, 2Checkout, and Plimus etc. PayDotCom doesn’t have any ridiculous policies like Clickbank, however the difference is that the publishers (the product creators) have to manually pay their affiliates via PayPal at the end of each month.

This is great in one way because the affiliates are directly paid into their PayPal accounts. The downfall is that as an affiliate you do have to wait for the publisher to pay you, where as Clickbank will automatically pay the affiliates for the publishers, however Clickbank will keep the affiliates money on hold until 5 different pay methods are used. It is a bit of a catch 22!

My product ‘Spray Tanning Success’ is currently listed with PayDotCom and has been for the last year. Apart from the fact that I have to manually pay my affiliates every month I have not had any problems with them at this stage.

So getting back to Week 25! This was a big week. We were sent 14 videos to watch and a big list of tasks to do. I will be splitting this post into 2, like I did for Week 5.

So without further comment lets begin with this weeks tasks…….

Internet Marketing Masterclass Week 25: Clickbank Approval

This week we were sent our welcome letter for the week, our checklist and like I mentioned earlier we had 14 videos to download and watch to learn what tasks we needed to do for the week. Here are Videos 1-6.

Video 1: Edit Product DNS Settings

In this video John shows us how to edit our ‘Domain Name Server’ (DNS) settings of our products domain name that we should have purchased in Week 10 after we had decided on our niche.

Assuming that we bought our domain name from ’1And1′, John shows us how to set the settings of our domain name in our ’1And1′ account to be redirected to be hosted by ‘D9Hosting’.

We are shown:

1. How to find the domain name we need to edit in our ’1And1′ accounts
2. How to edit the domain name server (DNS) settings to D9Hosting’s hosting servers
3. And how to save our settings

Video 2: Add Product Domain To D9Hosting

Now we need to add our sales page domain to our D9Hosting account.

In this video John shows us:

1. How to log in to our D9Hosting control panel and access the ‘Add On Domain’ tab
2. How to add in the new domain name
3. And how to save the FTP settings

Video 3: Create Download/Thank-You Page

Video 3 is all about creating our download page. This is the website link that our clients will be redirected to after they have successfully made a purchase.

The first thing John wants us to do is set up our ‘Thank-you’ folder. (We should have created this folder in Week 17) Now we need to add in our e-books and any other products or bonuses we are including such as audio, video, reports etc.

In order for the ‘Thank-You’ pages to be approved by Clickbank we also need to include a statement on there that says: “Your credit card statement will show a charge from CLK*Bank.com”. (If you are going to use PayDotcom as your merchant processor you need to have a similar statement saying the charge will be from PayDotCom.)

Another thing John suggests to add to our ‘Thank-You’ page is an up-sell to another related product with in our niche. If we don’t have a related product we can offer a discount on, then we could link to an affiliate product that is related to our niche. For example in my case I could find related products in the beauty industry such as nails, waxing, skin care etc.

At the moment I haven’t included any up-sells on my ‘Thank-You’ page. I do plan on creating some other products with in the ‘Beauty’ niche so I will look at cross promoting at a later stage. The other reason why I haven’t include any affiliate products is because I want to review the product first before I recommend it. I do not like the idea of recommending a product just because it relates!

Another thing you need to include on your ‘Thank-You’ page is a contactable email address. (This is required by Clickbank and PayDotCom). Do not type your email address in as this is easily accessible by spammers. Instead create an image of your email address (I used publisher to do this) and insert the images into your template instead.

The final point John recommends that we include on our Thank-You page is an optin form for people to subscribe to in order for them to receive updates. According to John about 80% of our customers should sign up.

Personally, I  do not agree with this statement. I have placed an optin form down the middle of the page and I have only had about 30%-50% sign up. In order to comply with anti-spam laws it is important for our clients to opt-in voluntarily.

The other option is setting up the ‘Thank-You’ page where our clients must sign up first before receiving their download links. I have not done this yet, however I am seriously thinking about doing this as a test and see what happens. Part of my offer is free updates, however if they don’t sign up they are not going to get them! I have even written the information in bold and large! Maybe it is just my niche!

At the end of this video John gave us access to 2 more of his products to show us his download pages. We were given free access to ‘Auction Profit Systems’ ($27 product free!) and ‘Resale Rights Blueprint’ ($97 product free!). More Freebies!!! Cool!

Video 4: Rename Our Thank You Page

In this video John advises us to rename our ‘Thank You’ page to something different. The reason for this is to protect the link from people trying to access our product for free.

John believes if people want our product for free, they will work out a way. The most obvious way is to buy our product and then ask for a refund. In the last year I have had 4 requests for refunds. 2 requests were reasonable as they read the sales page incorrectly, however 2 refund requests were ridiculous. These requests were definitely from people that just wanted my product for free!

I do believe over all people are honest and do have integrity to honour a situation, however I do believe there are also those people that will always want something for nothing!! And I am a big believer in Karma as well!

Another thing John recommends is to rename our product with letters and numbers, as most people will also look for the ‘product name’ or derivatives of it ending in ‘.zip’ or ‘.pdf’. Renaming your ‘Thank You’ page and product will make it a little harder for people to guess your links.

Video 5: Add Product To Clickbank

In this video John shows us how to list our product on ‘Clickbank’.

We are shown:

1. How to access our account and log-in
2. How to add our website to the marketplace
3. How to set the affiliate commission
4. And how to choose the 1st and 2nd categories our product should be listed in

Video 6: Add Product To Clickbank-2

This video  is a continuation of adding our product to ‘Clickbank’.

We are shown:

1. How to add our download/thank-you page to our listing
2. How to select the currency (most people use the US currency as it is most recognised)
3. How to select our product price
4. And how to save the changes

Choosing a sales price can be confusing. Most ebook packages vary between $17 & $47 approximately. If we are having trouble choosing a price John recommends for us to have a look around at what our competitors are charging. The more content we are including in the package, the higher we can charge. For example if we are including audios, videos, extra reports etc etc.

At the moment I have chosen to sell my product for $37US. I do believe it is worth more, however I also have to be careful on being biased. I only have 2 manuals in the package at this stage and I do plan on adding in another 2 manuals and some video. Once I have completed the additional material I will increase the price, or I will create an up-sell for the product. I am not sure yet, I will keep you posted!

The next phase of videos for Week 25 are about finalising our product ready for uploading and applying for ‘Clickbank’ approval. I will continue writing about these videos in my next post.

Week 25A Checklist:

Our checklist tasks for Week 25A were:

1. Edit our DNS settings for our products domain name from 1And1 to point to our D9Hosting account
2. Add our product domain to our D9Hosting account so we can upload our website when it’s finally ready
3. Create our download/’Thank-you’ page for our product
4. Rename our ‘Thank You’ page to deter would be freebie seekers
5. Add our product to our ‘Clickbank’ account
6. Visit the forum and communicate with fellow students and John if we have any problems

OK so that’s it for part A of Week 25.

So until next time……..

Enjoy Your Learning!

P.S If you want to read more posts on my master class training, you will find them all listed on my masterclass training page. Click on the following link to get to that page: My Masterclass Training

P.P.S John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Masterclass Coaching may be closed at the moment. He has just started the new 2010 program and he only ever takes a limited amount of students at a time so as to dedicate himself to our learning, basically it is a first in first served situation.

Update 10/4/2010: John has just released a one month $4.95 trial to Masterclass meaning you can sign up for $4.95 and trial the training. As far as I know he is limiting these places. If you see a sold out sign, then do sign up to be notified when there are new places available again.

This training program was the best decision I ever made. I would not be doing what I am today if it wasn’t for John. I can not recommend this program enough!

Click On The Image To Be Taken To John’s Coaching Website

(Please note: You should assume that any links in this post are possible affiliate links. Please refer to My Website Policies Compensation Disclosure for further information.)