Break The ClickBank Code for Retirement Profits

The Official Geezer Guide - Your guide to supplementing your retirement income, saving money and protecting and growing your investments.

Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2009

This month's articles:

Off the Cuff

1. Break The ClickBank Code for Retirement Profits
2. Selling Niche DVDs for Profit
3. Can The Little Guy or Gal Still Succeed on eBay?

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Off the Cuff

My long-time readers know that I have been making a living on eBay for years now. In fact we just celebrated our tenth anniversary on eBay. About a week ago, however, I attended a conference of Amazon sellers in Seattle which included a visit to Amazon Headquarters.  Boy, did that open my eyes.

I have been selling on Amazon for a couple of years -but in truth, I only dabbled in it. Now that has changed.  I spent the other night listing items on Amazon that I have for sale on eBay. I started getting sales within 12 hours and I made more money on each sale -a lot more. I am not leaving eBay for Amazon -but I am going to devote more time to it.  Selling on more than one channel has always been a good idea, but until now I hadn't taken the proper steps to educate myself to take advantage of all that Amazon had to offer. It turns out that was a mistake. I could have been doing this a long time ago.

If you would like to get started selling on Amazon, check out The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon.  This great little book by Geezer author Steve Lindhorst will walk you through the steps. 

Each month we post new articles on our FREE Articles page. We cover a wide range of topics from income generation, savings, finance and lifestyle issues.

• Retired Folks are Setting Up Their Own Dropshipping Operation - Forget the big drop shipping and fulfillment companies. Set up your own private drop shipping operation!
• Understanding Leveraged ETFs - Leveraged ETFs can be very useful in some circumstances, but before you put a penny into any leveraged ETF, you need to know exactly what you're getting into. 
• How to Make Money in a Falling Market - How to use inverse ETFs to make profits when the market corrects. 
• Safety Tips for Seniors - Don't be a victim. Ten tips that can save your life.

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1. Break The ClickBank Code for Retirement Profits

Last week I blogged about a product called the ClickBank Code. I got so many questions I decided to expand on this a bit. If you are not familiar with ClickBank, let me review some basics.

ClickBank is an affiliate driven service for people who sell information on a variety of topics.  A lot of people think of money-making schemes when they think of ClickBank. Although that covers many of their products, in fact ClickBank covers a wide range of topics. Here is the basic category list.

The way ClickBank works is that you register on the site as an affiliate. This is completely free. When you register you will create a username. Now, once you register, you click on the link to the Marketplace. This will bring up a search engine. Assume you are interested in golf. I did a search on Golf and about 20 products came up, but here is a shot of the top 4 results.

If you look at the arrow, you see two links: view pitch page and create Hoplink. The pitch page is the sales letter for the product. You should look at that first. If this looks like a product you would like to promote then click on the other link to Create HopLink. The Hoplink is nothing more than a bit of code that you can paste into your blog, website, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Craigslist -basically anyplace people visit - preferably looking for informationout Golf.

Under each listing is information about how much you can make. If you look at the first product you will see that you earn $30.08 on each sale. Not bad. If you could sell just one of those a day you would earn $902.40 per month.

That sounds great but how do you get people to visit your page where you are recommending the product?  I have been doing this for years and I make a lot more than $900 a month on ClickBank, but it took me a long time to learn all the ins and outs and techniques for doing this.  Enter: The ClickBank Code.  This is a program by Michael Jones that will teach you the basics of how to sell on ClickBank -but more importantly it takes you step-by-step through a proven program that will show you how to create and set up free landing pages and drive traffic to them.  Michael is one of the most successful affiliate marketers working today -and he is a great teacher.  That is why I am recommending this product.

This is a great way to supplement your retirement income.  It will take you about 15-20 hours to go through the material, watch all the videos and get everything set up. You don't need to do that all at once. You can st work a couple of hours a day for a week or so and you will be ready to go.

When you read the sales letter at this link, you might think this is pretty complicated -but it really isn't.  The lessons are very easy to follow and if you have basic computer skills (you can point, click, copy/paste and type), then you can follow this. If you are not sure -don't worry. The author gives you a 60-day money back guarantee. (ClickBank is excellent at enforcing guarantees by their sellers).

One Word of Warning:  The author is an excellent salesperson and like any salesman he wants to sell everything he has. When you decide to buy, you will be presented with several One Time Offers. If you want to buy one of them, that's great, but don't feel pressured to do so.  Just click through the presentations.  I know he says they are One time offers, but believe me, once you are a customer, you will get a chance to buy them later. Personally I bought the basic plan and loved it. I also bought the third offer -the one about driving traffic as that is an area I know a lot about, but it is changing all the time and I did want the latest info. So click here to read about The ClickBank Code.

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2. Selling Niche DVDs for Profit

This is a great part-time home business for seniors. If you want a DVD of the latest movie or TV series you can get them just about anywhere, but if you are looking for a DVD that teaches bowling tips or a collection of an old TV show, The Walton's, that is a little harder to find.  It is absolutely unbelievable what people look for and how much they are willing to spend for something they want -especially something nostalgic.

On my eBay website I get lots of email questions from sellers who want to know where to get the latest, hottest DVDs. The problem is, those are the most competitive products. If you try and sell them you will be up against some of the largest sellers on eBay and Amazon and in fact you will be competing with Amazon itself.  Good luck.  But niche DVDs are another matter altogether. DVDs and music CDs in niche topics are far more profitable than the latest titles. Here is an example. Last year, I found a set of 1960s folk music CDs. It was a boxed set of 6 CDs and featured all the big name artists such as the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, Joan Baez and others.  I bought the set at a thrift shop for $5.00.  It sold on eBay for $164.00!

Now you won't always find those types of profits, but there are thousands of titles that you can buy on all sorts of specialty topics that you can easily double or triple your money on eBay.

If you were to buy a copy of a popular DVD such as the movie Marley and Me you would pay about $5.00 wholesale and it would sell on eBay or Amazon for $7.99. That is a margin of $2.99 before your fees. But look at this list below of some of the niche DVDs available from a popular wholesaler.

Now these are margins you can work with. If you are making a $3.00 margin before fees, that works out to about a $2.25 margin after fees. Who wants to do all that work for that? You would have to sell and ship 100 DVDs just to make $225.00.  But if you are making $10 or more on a DVD then you only have to sell and ship 20 or so to make the same money.

So where can you find these niche music CDs and Niche subject DVDs? 

Here are a few sources to get you started:

DVA is a great distributor of specialty DVDs. They have a specials program for small quantities (1-5 each) and a true wholesale program in you want to buy in large quantities.

MusicTins is a distributor of classic music group collections sold in a tin box. You need to use the contact form on the website to get the wholesale pricing info.

Mountain View Movies has a large collection of old movies and DVDs on specialty subjects.

International Wholesale Video carries Health videos, Science videos, Mind Body Sprit videos, Fitness Videos, Cooking Videos, Travel Videos, Pet Videos, Horse Training Videos, and selected books.

A2Z CDs is a sweet little company that specializes in non-music and non-entertainment CDs. They have lots of educational, historical, informational and entertainment titles.

OK - I have the CDs and DVDs -where do I sell them? 

There are 3 main venues and all of them are easy to learn: eBay, Amazon and Craigslist.  If you want to learn how to sell on eBay, please visit our sister site and take a look at The Complete eBay Marketing System.  For Amazon and Craigslist, just look the books in our product page. We have The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon and The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Craigslist.

================= A D V E R T I S E M E N T ===============

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3. Can The Little Guy or Gal Still Succeed on eBay?

I get this question all the time. The short answer is yes -but let me explain. Everything changes and eBay is no different. There is no question that when I started on eBay it was a lot easier than it is today. But back then, buying on the internet was a risky proposition.

Today so many companies have made it easy and safe to shop on the internet that more and more people do it.  Admittedly my 86 year old mother hasn't started yet -but more and more people are shopping online every day. If you look at just two companies, eBay and Amazon, they account for almost $100 billion worth of merchandise sold each year.

To make this happen eBay had to make changes to the way they did business. A couple of years ago, eBay's growth stalled because other sites like Amazon and Overstock.com were making it easier and safer to buy. So eBay changed their procedures and created a lot more rules.  But none of those rules made it impossible to sell on the site.  They really started requiring all sellers to do what the really successful sellers were doing all along -providing a safe, fun buying experience by giving excellent customer service.

I got a call from a reporter yesterday doing a story on people who have recently lost their jobs and are looking for ways to make money online. He asked me and I told him that eBay is still the easiest way to get started selling online.  It is the lowest cost, the lowest risk and it has the fastest returns -you can literally start making money within a few days of getting started.

So, yes eBay has raised their fees (so have Amazon, Overstock and others), and yes, there is a bit more work involved in launching auctions and following through, but eBay is still the single best place for someone starting out selling online. You can learn a lot by selling on eBay and you can take that knowledge with you when you expand to other venues such as Amazon and your own website.

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That's it for this month. Be sure and check out our Blog and subscribe to the RSS feeds if you want frequent updates. We just posted an article about Out of Control Congress Taking Expensive Vacations on Taxpayer Money.

Skip McGrath
Head Geezer
Official Geezer Guides, Inc.

P.S. If you missed the last issue, check out our newsletter archives.

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