158: Promote Affiliate Offers, Build Your List, and Create Your Own Products with Top 100 Clickbank Affiliate John Lagoudakis

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show Episode 158 promote affiliate offers, build your list and create your own products with top 100 Click Bank affiliate. John lagerdakis, Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Robert Plank show. Our guest today is John legudakis. He's one of Australia's leading internet marketers, and back in 2007 he stumbled across affiliate marketing, and within two years, was able to go from $0 online to being one of click banks top 100 affiliates worldwide. He's been featured in The New York Times bestseller get rich click List for his book, and it's authored several books and has a long running internet marketing podcast. So today, John helps businesses to get more exposure online, more leads and to make more sales. How are things today? John,

John Lagoudakis 0:50 great. Thank you, Robert, appreciate you having me on your show today.

Robert Plank 0:54 Awesome. I'm glad you're here, and I'm sure that having you on will be able to fill in the gaps for a lot of people and so, so your your your whole business, and everything you do is through this processor called Clickbank. Is that, right?

John Lagoudakis 1:08 That's how I got started, and it was a it was a great place to start. You know, there's a lot of different ways. There's a lot of there's many ways to get started online. I chose Clickbank for few different that was really big. Back in 2007 a lot of people making good money. For me, you didn't have to have your own product. You can promote other people's products or commissions excellent, anywhere between 50 to 75% of the sale is yours, sometimes even 100% that was rare, but and it was easy to promote to back in 2007 you could go on to Google AdWords. You had heaps of traffic. It didn't cost you too much back then. You could do it back then. You can't do that now, and so it's just very easy, open up Google account, promote the clickbank products, and you could see your commissions instantly. You can log in. I was totally guilty of this. I think many people are guilty of this. We log into our affiliated accounts and want to see, have we made a sale yet? Have we made a sale yet? So it's just, it was a very it was a fun, easy way to get started, and I had success with it, awesome.

Robert Plank 2:21 And so a couple things about that. Like, one is that I'm kind of hearing that a few times you're mentioning that that maybe, maybe in this day and age, is Clickbank still a good option for people to use nowadays. Or, I mean, what's changed in the past 10 years or so with ClickBank?

John Lagoudakis 2:40 Yeah, yes, Clickbank is still a fantastic place to get started. How you promote your clickbank products is very different today, as I mentioned, you can't use Google AdWords as an affiliate. You can create your own and sorry, I should clarify too. What I mean by that is, I was sending people from Clickbank that sorry from Google, that would see my ad, they will click on my ad and they will go straight to the product sales page on Clickbank. So it's just my direct affiliate link. You can't do that today, but what you can do is send traffic to your own website where maybe you're reviewing products or you you're an authority site, and you're recommending products, whether in your on your through your email list, or directly on your website through links and banners. So you can do it that way. So send traffic to your own site, and then from there, send them to Clickbank.

Robert Plank 3:44 Okay, and that makes sense. So, so what you're saying is, so, 10 years ago or so, so basically, I mean, just to make sure everyone's all on the same page here. So Clickbank is this platform like, like you say, where anyone who decide wants to sell anything, make it, make a website, and then take payments and deliver a product can deliver that on Clickbank. And so the power what you're saying is that they have a huge network of affiliates. And so if anyone has something for sale on click to sell on ClickBank, then there's all these affiliates already ready to promote, already plugged in. And then from the point of view of anyone who's first getting started and make, looking to make that first dollar online. They can register with ClickBank as an affiliate and promote something there, and so and so. Having said all that, what you're saying is, in the past 10 years or so, there's, I guess, a few, there's a few extra hoops to jump through. And one of those that you're explaining is that it used to be that if you found, I don't know, like a weight loss product or something you could go and find on ClickBank, grab your link, set up a Google ad, and then just be running and keep refreshing stats and see, you know if you're getting traffic, if you're getting sales, and then that would be it. And what you're saying is, now there are, there are more rules in place than the. Before, and so now, if someone was looking to to do that method, they could, they still could, you know, target Google traffic and Google ads and send people to a site, but now they have to, kind of have their own site. Now they have to send that Google traffic to an authority site, to a blog, or maybe they're making reviews on this weight loss product, but then once someone clicks from Google onto that person's blog, then they can click on those affiliate links and then go to the site and then buy. So it's similar, but there's a few steps and rules nowadays. It sounds like,

John Lagoudakis 5:34 yeah, exactly, exactly,

Robert Plank 5:37 cool. So, I mean, so so click banks, great. Selling on Clickbank is great. Being an affiliate on Clickbank is great. So as far as John legui doccas goes and ClickBank, what makes you, what makes you stand out, as far as the other Clickbank sellers and as far as other people teaching about marketing on ClickBank,

John Lagoudakis 5:57 well, I used to teach people about Clickbank and how to do that. But because things have changed, and I've sort of moved away from that myself, what happened was I knowing that Google was going to stop allowing affiliates to promote clickbank products the way I was doing it, I decided to move on to something more stable, where I wasn't relying on one thing, you know, putting all your eggs in one basket. So, so what I started doing, Robert was email marketing, because you have more control over list if I because the problem with sending traffic straight to whether it's your own product or someone else's product, straight to a sales page. The problem with doing that is that you're going to make some sales. Yes, but what if? What about the 98% that don't buy? Because typically on a sales page that converts a good one converts at around 2% so you make 2% of sales, the other 98% of visitors, you lose them. So the better strategy is to get people onto your email list and then start promoting your products. And not just promoting your products, but creating it's a better way to create a relationship with people too, because when they're on your email list, you can give them great content, as well create their goodwill, as well as promote products, not just once, but for as long as they remain an active subscriber. So I took my focus away from promoting products again as an affiliate, just straight on Google AdWords, to building my list, an email list, and then promoting products. And now I took a step further, and I started creating my own products and and promoting those first and then for those that weren't interested in my products, then, yeah, I could promote affiliate offers related affiliate offers as well. So that's definitely the way any business needs to go. Doesn't matter which business you're in. You need to be building your email list. Sometimes an SMS list is appropriate, especially if you have a local business. That's a must also as well. So

Robert Plank 8:16 would you say that that like a good and is this like the correct order someone should be going in like, what a good, a good plan for someone who is looking to make a new income stream? Should they be doing it in this in this sequence, first, they promote an affiliate offer, and then they look into maybe adding on the email marketing piece, and then, if they're having success there, with some sales and with some subscribers, then they should move on to their own product. Would you say, is that a good logical step by step sequence for people?

John Lagoudakis 8:49 That would be a good strategy if you're not sure if the offer that you're going to promote to your list is going to convert? Well, because you don't want to go to the trouble of creating an email marketing campaign, meaning setting up your landing page and setting up an email campaign, writing up the sequence and then sending to an affiliate offer if you didn't always convert. Well, however, because we know which products convert well, the great thing about Clickbank and other networks like JVZoo today, and if you're if you're promoting physical products like Commission Junction, is that you can go in and you can see how each product is rating as far as an affiliate is concerned, you can see in an instant, how many affiliates are making sales with a product today? And what I tell people, I tell my clients, is, if you're going to promote affiliate offers, Go in, go into the networks. Pick the ones in your niche that are selling the best. Because, you know. So that they're going to convert well, that their offers, they typically good products, and products that sell like the conversion rate of the sales page is really good so and knowing that, having that information beforehand, what I tell people when they're starting out is start building a list straight away, because it's the most important thing. The number one regret of most successful marketers have is that they didn't start their list earlier. So right from the beginning, I say, start a list, and then once you get people on your list, then Yep, definitely. And even immediately, you can start when someone opts in to your list and subscribes to your list, you can send them to an offer straight away. That could be a thank you page, if you like. So it's not like you're delaying the sales process or anything, but it is so important to start building a list. It's the most important thing you'll do to me in any business that you have

Robert Plank 11:01 cool and I like that advice. And I mean, I also wish that that had been my advice starting out, because if you think about it like there's all these products plugged into ClickBank, and these are all products that someone took the time to make the product, whether that was recording videos or whatever, to make the sales letter, to change it over, who knows how many years to make it, to convert, to reduce the refunds, to add all these upsells. So what's cool about starting as an affiliate is all those things are already done for you, and if an affiliate focuses just on building the list, then, I mean, that's a lot of just steps taken out of the process, right? Because someone can just, you know, they only have even an hour or two a day to focus on building their online business. Well, then that doesn't have to be they spend, you know, an hour writing emails and making products. They can spend an hour setting up ads, or they can spend an hour, you know, getting new link backs and things like that. So it sounds like because of Clickbank and because of affiliate products and affiliate networks, and especially that these networks show how well these things are selling, that people can just hit the ground running. Is that right?

John Lagoudakis 12:10 Oh, definitely. You'd be surprised just how long it takes to do all those things you mentioned, Robert, picking a niche, creating a product, the sales page. Everything that's involved with having your own product selling, there's so much involved, and especially if you're sorry if you don't have a product that you want to sell online, one of the worst things you can do is spending a lot of time creating product and then trying to sell it. Definitely being an affiliate first is so helpful, because what you learn in the process is which products sell by being an affiliate and looking at what's the highest converting products, and you learn a lot about your market. So if you, and if you don't do that first, if you just come in and say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna create a product, not only is it going to take you a lot of time to set that all up, but many times you're not going to create something that's the market really wants. Because what, unfortunately, what we what, necessarily, we think will be a good product, is not necessarily what the market wants, right?

Robert Plank 13:19 And that that makes a lot of sense, and it makes me think of, you know, all kinds of historical examples where, you know, like, like, some car came out that everyone hated, or, you know, everyone hated tablets at first, or things like that. It seems like there's all these, all these cases in like, you know, history, or in business, where businesses spent millions and millions of dollars, and they still got it wrong. So even if you know Apple or Microsoft or whoever, or Ford, can't get it right, even with their millions of dollars of research, then, then I don't think I'm going to get it right just by guessing. The only way I can really trust it is, like you said, promote some stuff and see what makes a bunch see what makes sales right. Yeah. And

John Lagoudakis 14:01 what a lot of email marketers do, that's very a great idea as well. So as you build your list, ask your list too. Send them an email and say, Hey, I'm looking to create a product, and I want to I want to know your feedback. What is it you want? And you don't even have to say, looking to create a product, email your list and say, What's your biggest frustration, and then find out what is their biggest need, what's their biggest desire. And once you and if you see a trend, and especially if there's no one in the market providing a solution for it, then that that is where you want to be.

Robert Plank 14:36 I like it and and I'm digging it, or I'm looking, I'm both thinking and looking at the the ClickBank marketplace right now, and the thing I like to go to Clickbank to get ideas about about different angles for things on that. Because what's cool about clickbank products, especially is that it's not like the highest selling weight loss products will be just about generic weight loss, right? When I think about a Clickbank product for weight loss, I think, Okay, well, there's a Clickbank product for how to lose man boobs, or how to lose a belly, or how to remove cellulite, right? I think about all the, all the products that that you always see it like in the top ranking, and so, so that's kind of cool. It's almost like they, they've blazed the trail before, before all of us and and the clickbank products are kind of going after that, with that, with that approach, right? Like people have a problem, they have a need, and the clickbank products, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the clickbank products are really geared towards these desperate kind of problems, right?

John Lagoudakis 15:37 Yeah, exactly. Robert, so that's exactly right. So you don't want to go too broad and say, you know, weight loss product, but exactly you want to break it down to a sub niche. So do you want to get rid of your man boobs? Is a good one. Do you want to get rid of your your thighs? Okay? For women, so it's Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And by doing that as well, you can create specific demographics. So if for the man boobs, one your you can gear your sales copy and your images and your colors and your the title of your product towards men, rather than trying to do it, trying to capture men and women's interests, you know, with generic weight loss product. So it's definitely a great idea to to break it down to a specific sub niche, right, rather than trying to sell to everyone, because that doesn't work in a way, a good way that someone put it to me recently was it's easier to it's harder to catch a small fish in the sea than it is a big fish in a small pond and and that's what you're trying to do when you create a sub when you're targeting A sub niche,

Robert Plank 17:01 then that makes sense. And the other thing that's great about the internet and affiliate marketing is that you're not limited to just one product. So if someone finds like, like you said, they find the weight loss product for the men, if there's a weight loss product for the women and so on, then those are different. I mean, those are different, you know, funnels and things like that that an affiliate could set up.

John Lagoudakis 17:25 Yeah, and one of the biggest mistakes that Robert that a lot of people make when they start out with their online business, I've definitely made it in the past. I don't know if you ever but is that we we get excited with all the possibilities, and we have too many projects going on at one time. And the council I always give to people is pick one area, one niche, get the marketing right for it. Set up. Be happy with your sales funnel. Make sure it's profitable, and once it's profitable and you're making money with it, if you want to go to a different area, different sub niche, or a different niche altogether, then great, go for it. But until you do that, don't have more than one project going at the same time, because there's so much involved in getting it right. And if you're Yeah, so if you're working on two more projects at the same time, it's very hard to have success, and then you get discouraged because you're doing a lot of work in nothing, no particular project is gaining traction and making sales. So definitely encourage people make when you're starting out, pick one strategy, whatever he clicks with, you find someone that's having success with that strategy, learn from them. Do it to do everything they say to the T until you're having success. And then once you're having success, and you're making at least a full time income from that one strategy, until you're doing that, don't move on to another one, and even, but, and what I've also found is there's just so much with even just one niche or one sub niche, it's better even then even to go deep. Once you're having success, go deep, find create a funnel where you can sell even higher end products in the back end, so you can make more money with that niche, rather than going into two niches, it's just, it's a better way to go anyway.

Robert Plank 19:27 And I can totally relate to that. And I see a lot of people where, you know, I'll give them an idea for a website or something that, or make a landing page or whatever that they should create, and then the response is, but if I could make one, I'll make 50. And I think, well, yeah, but like you said, like, get the one working, and then maybe get to two. But, I mean, and it almost, I think we've all had to go through that, that phase. I mean, you have, and me, especially, I've gone through that phase for sure, early on where I said, Well, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna make 10 landing pages, and I'll make 10 up. Forms, and I make, you know, 10 sequences, and it's like, I'm just, I'm pushing the goal post too far out, and I'm delaying the amount of time it would have taken me to get to the money making stage from, you know, it might have taken three months, or might take it a month beforehand, but now I'm pushing it out to nine months or a year, or probably never, because having to switch all those gears and have all those half finished things. I mean, super discouraging, in addition to what you said, a lot of time, a lot of effort and no money yet, because the focus is too split.

John Lagoudakis 20:31 Yeah, exactly. And again, I made, I made that mistake when I started out. You know, we get so excited, and I see a lot of people making it, yeah, so

Robert Plank 20:41 as far as as what, what you're doing with ClickBank, I mean, I know that that you said, uh, you know, you, you promoted stuff as an affiliate at first, and then you built a list, and then now you create your own products, and you have, you're a top 100 listed seller on Clickbank. So, I mean, what, what is your setup? I mean, do you have? Are you all in one niche? Is it spread out? Is it some vendor stuff, some affiliate stuff? What do you have set up on Clickbank? Okay,

John Lagoudakis 21:09 sorry, sorry, Robert, um, yeah, so, so there might be a big confusion. So definitely, I achieved the 100 Click Bank affiliate status very soon after I started with internet marketing, but I no longer sell a lot of clickbank products. My focus is on my own products and and what I do today is two things, I help people that are getting started online, and definitely I'll point him to networks like Clickbank and JVZoo, where they can promote other people's products. But I also, Robert, I help people, and this is my main my biggest part of my business today is helping other businesses. So people that have already have a business, they're already selling products, they maybe have an offline business that they're struggling to get online, or maybe they have an online business, and might purely be online, and they just needed, needed to take it to the next level, cause they're not making many or not any sales yet, and they just want that help getting traffic leads and sales. So that's where I focus my time today.

Robert Plank 22:17 Okay, so, so what you're saying is that where you focus your time on today is with coaching clients. Is it more coaching clients and less of selling your own stuff?

John Lagoudakis 22:29 Yeah, it's a bit of both. Because I you know it's you have to be doing it yourself as well, to to coach other people and to keep up to date, because it's always changing. So I have a business that is not internet marketing. Is not in the internet marketing space, if you know what I mean, it's separate to my coaching business. So I have actually two businesses that is not I am related at all, and that allows me to, again, keep up to date, keeping myself in the real world, where I'm promoting those businesses and making sales in those businesses, and then I have the coaching business where I'm able to help people again, anyone that's just starting out online, or those that have businesses that want to improve them,

Robert Plank 23:18 not nice. And what I've been hearing all through our discussion today is that that when you find you find like something that you want to do, and you do what's practical, and you get it set up, and you grow it, and then you get it to the point where there's like a next logical step to get to. So like you started with, you know, the affiliate marketing with AdWords, and then when the game changed a little bit, then you started building your own list that and your own, you know, SMS, so that way you can build it up. And then you started making your own products, and now you're diversifying into these other businesses. So that's what I've been hearing over and over again, that that you're not locked into, you know, one money making strategy, and you're not locked into one particular platform, but you're also giving it a chance to work out right, you're having enough focus where, in, in back, when you started with a Clickbank, you spent those two years building that up. And then when, you know, maybe there were other alternatives to ClickBank, or there were other, you know, ways to make money, or some of us, you know, might get bored with a certain way of making up, getting that income in, then you kind of transitioned, or you you you diversified and tried out different ways of making money, as opposed to just being stuck with ClickBank, which might have limited your income as the rest of the world changed around you.

John Lagoudakis 24:35 Yeah, it's, it's definitely not good to have all your eggs in one basket. And while I tell people, you definitely, especially when you're starting a focus on the one niche. So what happened to me? I sort of give you an idea of the logical progression. So when I first started trying to make money online, I found out about affiliate marketing, about Clickbank. So I was using Google Adwords mainly to promote the clickbank products, and then I started using Yahoo and Bing as well, because they had their P. Platforms that was before, while Yahoo overture was still around and but most of my sales were coming through Google AdWords. About 90% of my sales, because that's where the most of the search engine traffic is. Then Google changed their policy. So that was I started in 2007 2009 around the middle of 2009 Google changed their policies, and they said, No, we're not gonna allow Clickbank affiliates to promote products online with direct affiliate links. So overnight, Robert, it was shattering. Overnight, my income dropped like 90% and it really hurt. It really hurt. However I knew was coming, so I already started building an email list, and so that's where I sort of so then I spent my time focusing on building my list and promoting my products to my list and and then I decided, as well, instead of promoting someone else's products, I'll promote my own products. So I created my own product. It was called the list marketing system, where, basically I set up list, marketing site, list building sites just like I created for other people, because I knew that's what, that's where I I felt people needed the most helping, because people knew people coming along wanted to make money. They knew they needed to build the list. But it's so hard to get started. You know, learning email campaigns and setting up high converting squeeze pages and sales funnels. So I just did all that for them. I set it up for them, and so I did that, and I promoted that mainly through webinars. So I've got people onto my list. They went to a webinar, and I sort of taught them in the webinar how to build a list, the importance of building a list, why they need to do it in their business, and then how to do it. And then at the end, I said, Look, you can do all that yourself. I'll create it for you. And so that's what sort of I did for a while there. And then, anyway, I have went for a rough period. I went for a divorce, and back in 2011 it was worst thing ever. You wouldn't wish it on your enemies and and the other great thing was, though, while I was going through that, because I had automated a lot of my business, I automated a lot of the way I got, I got the traffic, the webinars were automated. Uh, they were evergreen webinars. They weren't live webinars. Well, even while I was going through a tough period of, like, around two years, while I was going through that divorce, I wasn't able to like my mind was so gone. I couldn't really focus on my business at all. But the beautiful thing is, I was actually because I had set up what I had set up in my business. I was actually having the income coming in. I was just doing the main things that I needed to do to keep it running. And so, yeah, I was able to have my full time income coming in while I was going through that rough period in my life. And then when I got out of that, when I saw things sort of started to pick up for me mentally anyway, and I could focus again. I got approached by a friend of mine who was starting a business in a different niche. He wanted someone to do the online stuff, like take care of the website and do the traffic generation, generate the leads. So I went on a partnership with him, and that's how I first started my first non im business. And then recently I started a second one, because of a need. I had another friend approached me, needed to get leads for his business, so I started generating leads for him, mainly, and then that's sort of grown from there, because other people in the industry, in other areas of the world are having that same need for those kind of leads. So that's how that second business got started. And then at the same time, while I was working on those two businesses, I learned a lot being again, being out of the I am internet marketing niche, being outside of that, learn a lot in those two niches as well. So I thought, I come back, and I said, Well, you know what? There's a lot of businesses out there that need help with the internet marketing. So someone like myself that's got experience been in the industry many years. I've eight years, full time now, eight and a half years, so I've come along, I thought, You know what? Should start a consultancy where I basically help these businesses. Because, unfortunately, yes, there's a lot of people out there, a lot of internet marketing consultants and agents and agencies out there. But what I have noticed, Robert is a lot of them, they don't it's like a car. It's like a mechanic. You know, we dread taking our car to a mechanic, because we don't if we, especially if we don't know much about cars, we don't know if we don't know the mechanic, we sort of, you know it's 5050, really, are you going to get the job done properly? You're going to get ripped off. And unfortunately, in the im industry, internet marketing space, it's the same thing like that first friend. Mine that approached me about his business and wanting me to help him out. He, for example, he had just recently hired an SEO company that were doing work for him for they've been with on board with him for three months when I, when I joined my friend as a partner, I had a look at their initial proposal and the keywords that were targeting for him. They chosen 20 keywords for him. They said these keywords we're going to target for you, and if we rank on the first page of Google, this is how much traffic you're going to get. I looked at those keywords. I did the research. The lot of the numbers they'd given him were a total lie. They were telling him. They were saying he was going to get 10s, hundreds of 1000s of views for these long tail keywords. And I did the research. He was lucky to get 510, views per per day. Well, actually it was even less than that. It was less than five views per day if you rank for those keywords. Oh no, yeah. And, and I saw that, and, and he's not the only one. I I've heard many horror, many horror stories like that, so that, and that's where I come in. I sort of figure, look, I'm going to come to this space because there's a lot of good that I can do, and I only do work for clients that I know is going to get results. Actually, I have a I give my clients a guarantee. I say to them, if the if the leads I generate for you, if you're not making at least enough sales in profits to cover my expenses, don't pay me nice and yeah, so and again. So if there's that need, and so that's why I've come back into that space as well. Cool.

Robert Plank 31:40 So if people were looking to to hire you for something like that, or even just see what you're up to, what website could they go to find out all that stuff?

John Lagoudakis 31:49 Yeah, Thanks, Robert. So the website is just my name, which is not easy to spell, but I'll spell it out. It's John legged arcus.com, J, O, H, n, l, A, G, o, u, d, a, k, i, s.com,

Robert Plank 32:03 awesome. And we'll, we'll also toss that link at Robert Plank Comm, slash 158, in the show notes that way, even if people are, you know, don't have time to write all that down, or didn't get all that. We'll, we'll link to, to the John lagodaca site at Robert plank.com/ 158,

John Lagoudakis 32:21 great. Thank you for that, Robert. And

Robert Plank 32:23 no problem. And then, is that the only website do you have? Do you have the get rich click book? Or is that not being promoted right now?

John Lagoudakis 32:32 Yeah, look the I was a, I was a guest in that book. I think the last edition they did of that was back in 2011 it might have been updated 2013 you can get that from Amazon still, but yeah, the my main site, John, like a darker.com where you can I've you can find out about more about what I'm doing. You can get in touch with me there. Also on my website, I do have something that may interest your listeners, Robert, and that is, I have a platinum online business coaching program, and what it is, it's it's video training I've done myself, step by step, video training how to go from choosing your niche all the way through to creating a sales funnel and even driving traffic and making sales online. And all of that's free anyone. If you go to John leggedas.com and you click on the banner there for the platinum online business coaching program. You can get free access to that right now.

Robert Plank 33:25 Awesome. So they should all go there right now. One more time it is. John lagos.com. Thanks for being on the show today, John and sharing your unique insight and your story and all that kind of cool stuff.

John Lagoudakis 33:37 All right. Thank you, Robert. Appreciate me. Appreciate you having me on.

Robert Plank 33:40 Robert plank.com/itunes, you.