Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

“Your Salesletter Sucks!”

I can’t help but think it. And you’re probably the same.

In fact, you know you’re becoming a good copywriter when you visit another person’s web-site, and pick holes in their salesletter.
Either you’ve become good enough to be able to offer constructive critique, or you’re developing something every one of us copywriters seems to develop sooner or later - a big, fat ego.

But it’s one thing to be able to offer constructive critique - it’s another to have the results to back what you say up.

So here’s a quick tool for putting your salesletter to the test…

How To Use Clickbank Order Links To Test Your Copywriting Skills
I’m sure you’ve heard of Clickbank before - but if you haven’t… then the “short version” is that it’s a service which helps niche eBook and Software marketers to sell their products online - through affiliates, and direct to the public.

It means the “little guys” in the market don’t need to spend $1,000’s or $10,000’s on shopping cart systems just to sell their $30 eBook on Antique Valuations.

This is the best thing about Clickbank.

There are only a limited number of people on Clickbank who really understand Internet Marketing.

So with a few hours online, it’s not hard to come up with a long list of salesletters which could use a little tender-loving-care from a good copywriter… But because of the strength of their niche, these salesletters still manage to make a pretty decent amount of money!

…and surely if they’re making decent money with crappy copy, then a savvy affiliate could potentially make BETTER money with great sales copy?… right?

Right!

The Hard Way To Do Clickbank Referrals:
Normally, the best you could hope for would be to carefully construct your salesletter (or video salesletter)… and then direct customers to the vendor’s crappy crappy salesletter… knowing that’s going to cause you to lose a stack of your best leads.
So instead, write your salesletter (make sure it covers everything!), and then use this Clickbank Buy Link format:

ITEM.AFFILIATE_VENDOR.pay.clickbank.net

Here’s the break-down of how it works..

1. ITEM - is where you insert the vendor’s item number (1, 2, 3 etc).
   Make sure you get this right - because if a clickbank vendor has several products, you might be selling trout fishing guides to antique enthusiasts.
2. AFFILIATE - is just your clickbank ID… (the one you login with)
3. VENDOR - is the clickbank ID of the person who is selling the product

So the link will look something like this:

1.johnsmith_troutbooks.pay.clickbank.net
You know you’ve got it right when you type the link into an internet browser, and you see a Clickbank credit card ordering page with this down the bottom:

[affiliate = YOUR-AFFILIATE-ID]

(Where “YOUR-AFFILIATE-ID” is your affiliate ID… of course ;))

This is great if you’re using Adwords to drive traffic to your salesletter - because you get a better representative conversion rate (rather than having to factor in the poor conversion rate of another guy’s site into your equations!)

IMPORTANT WARNING: This is not an official Clickbank order link. You won’t find it in any of their FAQ’s, and if you ask them specifically about it, they won’t even tell you it exists!
In the past, Clickbank has changed these links, dropped them, put them on-hold, or otherwise stopped using them. This means people using these types of links to test marketing strategies have been caught out - and ended up missing out on affiliate sales.

So check your account regularly to make sure they’re still working.

GLHF (Good Luck, Have Fun ;))

Brent Hodgson

P.S. - Oh, by the way. Before you start circumventing some poor guy’s salesletter, it’d be a good idea to tell him first.

If for no other reason than to make sure your salesletter fairly represents his product.

Copywriting, Clickbank, Split Testing, Internet Marketing, Buy Link, Hop Link, Affiliate

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