I thought I’d share a little experiment I did last month with Clickbank. I signed up for a brand new account & decided to see how much money I could make within a month with just Articles, no ppc or paid advertising.
Since I work a full time job I wasn’t able to really put as much effort into the experiment as I’d liked but the results were somewhat interesting for the amount of time spent working on it.
Here’s what I did:
I picked 10 products from the Clickbank Marketplace which had a gravity of anywhere between 20-100
I did some keyword research on the product, so I looked at the types of keywords people might be using to search for that product. For example, a dog walking guide people may search for “how to walk your dog” etc
I then wrote 2 articles for each product. These took about 15mins to write, so all up I spent probably about 6 hours preparing everything.
I made sure that the articles had keyword rich title tags i.e. “How to Walk your Dog” “How to download games for Zune.”
I did an objective review of each product, so basically I said that normally I’m quite skeptical of these sorts of products but boy was I surprised when blah blah blah. I made sure I gave each product a rating in different categories, i.e. value for money, features & so on.
I added all of the articles to USfreeads, didn’t pay for any to be featured but I’m sure that might provide some sales, that’s something I’ll try for the next update.
Once I’d done that I wanted to get the USfreeads Advert indexed in Google. So I use Bookmarking Demon as usual to Submit to as many social networks as possible. If you’re cheap you can also use Only Wire.
Ok now I wait until the articles are indexed in Google. Once they are I then submit the reviews to Article sites such as Ezinearticles, Goarticles. There’s hundreds of article directories, submit the article to around 10 or so. Make sure that you include links back to your USfreeads advert in the footer with good anchor text (i.e. how to walk your dog).
Wash, rinse & repeat.
You can also make WordPress Blogs, Blogger Blogs, Squidoo, Hubpages, Myspace Pages & heaps more. But I didn’t on this occassion. Perhaps next time round when I get a bit more time to experiment.
Anyway I thought I’d share my results in using the above technique with a screenshot from the new Clickbank account.
Not a massive amount of earnings but not bad for about 10 hours in total work. Now If I was to do the same thing month in & month out I’d be growing the number of articles I have online, growing their inbound links using articles & other sources. Eventually I’d have over 240 articles within a year. These will make me money month after month, not just for the month I write them.
The beauty of this is that the earnings above are probably lower due to the amount of time the pages take to get indexed & ranked. So I plan on increasing the earnings easily by next month.
So for any of you guys out there who are struggling to make any money, it’s not difficult. Don’t just sit there & check your stats everyday wondering why you’re not making any cash. Keep writing reviews, articles & just keep doing it over & over. Eventually you’ll hit a sweetspot & the sales will start to mount up. Once you get a nice tidy Clickbank balance running you can then start pouring that money into other ventures 
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damn dude
you come up with the most genius shit
i am still looking forward to trying yahoo answers one day when i have the time
now i have to add this to the list of things to do
lol
These are the kind of posts I like on your blog Stuart! Keep them coming.
Just curious, why do you have your articles at Ezinearticles etc. point to a Usfreeads article? Why not just have the Ezinearticles article point at the affiliate link? I have never used Usfreeads, so I am not sure what the advantage is. Thanks for the info!
Lol dude … stop copying others 
Ur ideas are not original
Great stuff. You really produce some great articles. How many monthly searches are you looking for on you key phrases?
You’re quite the earner – even “silently” marketing to all of us by putting affiliate links in your own posts here. How about putting “(aff)” or something to highlight your otherwise-hidden in-article affiliate links?
Also, sorry if I’m being dense, but it sounds like you wrote 2 keyword articles for each topic and posed them all on usfreeads. Then wrote 1 review article for each topic and linked to the 2 related usfreeads in the authors box? I’m going to try my best to duplicate this in the next month. I need to get off my butt and see something through to completion for a change. Thanks!
Considering this blog’s target audience, I think we’re all savvy enough to know what Stuart is doing, but I wouldn’t hold it against him. He is, after all, taking time out of his day to write these articles and giving away tips that he could otherwise keep for himself.
I don’t really see what adding (aff) after the links would do except ruin the flow of the article.
Does it matter? If you go and sign up for something from a link on this site, what’s wrong with Stuart getting a little something in return?
Great post! This is my first time to your site, but this is going to be a must read for me now.
You can use affiliate links with most article directories.
I have never tried USFreeAds, but hate the idea of building link equity for someone elses domain. You are extremely limited by USFreeAds on design and tracking.
I still don’t understand it.
I don’t understand that sentence at all. You say that the articles in the article directories increase the rankings of Usfreeads? I must understand wrong. Sorry, maybe because I am german.
And why must the USfreeads articles rank in the search engines? Ok, for direct traffic from the SEs but why you have to wait until they rank, before you post the articles to the article directories?
And what are that articles at Usfreeads? Other articles as I have understand, right? Shorter ones? Not reviews?
Have you buyed and tested the products or are that fake reviews?
Thanks
Andy
This is a nice article you put together, I look forward to trying some of these techniques out.
Well in many ways Vincent might be right, though IANAL.
For instance have you read the Clickbank rules about disclosure recently?
There is a good reason why I include a disclosure statement at the bottom of every post and in my RSS feed.
Ever heard of bummarketing? (www.bummarketingmethod.com)
Thanks for a great blog!
Great info Stuart, I’m certainly going to give this a try! (with Squidoo instead of USfreeads though). Any specific reasons why you’ve choosen USFreeAds instead of Squidoo in this example? (Do you Squidoo?)
Hi Stuart,
Great experiment. It´s indeed an exact copy of the bummarketing methode but I like the fact you included your sales and not everybody knows that site. It´s a great way to start making money online and like you said it´s rinse and repaet..and consistency is the hard part.
Keep up the great posts here,
Great work!!! Going to link to this post on my blog my readers will find it inspiring to say the least
Cool experiment! I think I will try it too.
By the way, totally don’t have an issue with (aff) thing. I think if you are in affiliate marketing writing about affiliate marketing, folks should be able to put 2 & 2 together.
Best regards,
Mark
It’s an awesome experiment for awesome results.
And yes, I am pretty sure that squidoo outrank Usfreeads.
Ummm why don’t you state your source and let your readers know that you copied this idea word for word out of the Affiliate Project X ebook?
IT’s not an original idea at all. Great it works for you but give the original author credit, asshole.
Did he claim it was his own original idea?
Writing articles to get some quality backlinks is quite general and this + some variations like the Bummarketing method, have been around for years now. It’s so general that no one can’t really claim it as his/her own idea.
Anyway, I think it’s a great post nonetheless, as it’s always fun to read some success stories and to discover some slightly new variations & methods 
.
Great method stuart. but does it work with every niche, or maybe only some niches?
Question: Is there a particular reason why you picked USFreeAds? And any other article submission site you recommend?
USfreeads seem to rank pretty well in the SERPS so that was the main reason. Hubpages is another good place to submit the articles. The articles only serve a purpose to help your main USfreeads or Squidoo page to rank higher so submit to social bookmarking sites & as many place as you can
Correct me if I’m wrong, but do you put your article in Squidoo? I noticed that USfreeads are mainly advertistment to products. The key concept is to create and “ad” on USfreeads and submit articles to articles to make your USfreeads “ad” rank well in SE. Where does Squidoo fall into all this?
*correction on reply,
“submit articles to article site….”
USFreeAds doesn’t look very free anymore – at least they won’t let you put links in the free ads. Are you using one of the paid subscriptions?
How did you go about working the domain name on this experiment? Did you purchase a new domain, use an existing one, or just make a new sub-domain of an existing site?
Love the article and the blog in general.
This is some great information you have here, I would love to try this out But after posting the articles On USfreeads I get a little lost. I dont know how to promote it and get it indexed in google, and is that program BOOKMARKING DEMON a lot easier/faster then only wire?
What do THOSE websites/programs do? I don’t know how to use them 
Where did you learn this info from? Affiliate project x?
If anyone can help me get through this or tell me what program they used to get this up and working I would GREATLY appreciate it.
As i am a 19 year old working in a weld shop with a bad back :scholeosis: … I work as a laborer for my uncle who is a complete a$$hole, I want to get out of their so badly. I will do whatever it takes to get this working.
thanks
This seems almost TOO easy! I am usually skeptical of things that are that easy. Also, I don’t think USFreeAds is free anymore. So, I’ll give this a try.
Post your blog at http://www.blogskinny.com and get readers.
Fair and simple affiliate program for name-brand electronics (or host your own store): http://www.miserlymonkey.com
Stuart you a full of it. What is ‘IT’, well in this case ‘IT’ is a good thing because you are full of the greatest ideas, thanks
I started marketing almost 6 years ago but only got my feet wet before I had the heart attack the put my life on hold for the following three years. In that time things have changed and now that I am starting to get back on my feet I seem to have a brand new learning curve.
I really appreciate it when marketers like yourself are willing to share your thoughts and explain them.
Keep up the great job as I enjoy it when you type…
Hi Stuart,
Love to see an update on this and know what your earnings for april and may were. Just curious if it continues
Very interesting approach, nice ideas and well explained. Also, had never heard of the usfreeads site before so kudos to you.
Ok, I think I get it…in newbie terms! So when you write your article..you put your click bank user id/link in there for the product you are selling? So if you cant put a link what if you just say go to my website “my site” and hopefully they will give it a dot com extension. then on your home page you can have a link to that article/product..hmmm I think I would turn a lot of people away…20 step process the way I would do it…yes, I know I’m a newbie…just wondering??
As far as I know, ezinearticles won’t allow you to link directly to affiliates anymore. I don’t think that you can link to usfreeads either. Squidoo’s probably ok to link to.
I didn’t have any problems linking to ClickBank from my USFreeAds pages.
Still, it doesn’t really work since my pages have a problem getting indexed.
It has now been more than a week and only 3 of my pages have been indexed – and that’s at the worst rankings I have ever seen
Stuart, great bit of insight in this posting, thank you.
I have one question on it though, since I haven’t used USfreeads in a long while and think I may be missing something from your posting, but are you actually posting review articles as classified ads there?
If so, I’m sure they could rank well in SERPs but am surprised that they would generate much response/action from USfreeads traffic.
Thanks again
Mostly through social bookmarking. Do you have some nice promotion recommendations?
Stuart this is a great post!
Please clear up the confusion of using USFREEADS.
Do you have any examples or links that you can direct us to? Do you just post a normal affiliate ad or the article itself?
Thanks!
Jordan
USfreeads do not allow affiliate links.
only in certain categories i believe, if not please do prove me wrong. I have been using them for years.
But does ezinearticles allow usfreead links ?
One thing you need to be aware of when you become a Clickbank affiliate is the sales threshold before gettting paid.
They only pay affiliate commission when you have made 5 sales, one of which has to by a customer paying with Mastercard
Thanks for the heads up – I’m finding it hard to find any real blog tutorial on making money with third party systems like clickbank, but I hope that this article is the start of further tutorials on clickbank.
Great tips, but does any one know of any other free bookmarking tools besides OnlyWire? OnlyWire doesn’t seem to work at all and I’m a little skeptical of Bookmarking Demon. I’m afraid I’ll pay all the money just to find out that it is crappy like OnlyWire. If I was certain it’d work, I’d buy it.
okay, i think i figured out some of the questions. for all those lazy people that did not want to do there homework. I went to the free ads site looked for zune and prestoe, it is a review ad but the beauty is in the fact that the link is cloaked so free ads accepts the link. oh and using a squeeze page is how you get around the affiliate link rejection that or right an article that links to a blog or something then links to your affiliate site. i choose the link cloaker
I really appreciate it when marketers like yourself are willing to share your thoughts and explain them.
All in all … pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.
Goes to show that if you put in effort, there are always rewards at the end of it.
I am still curious if you purchased the products and if not, how do you write the article?
You can use USFreeads to sell affiliate products! Here is what it says on their website about this:
“If you’re advertising a website or are affiliate advertising:
If you’re not selling something directly, you can link to a website complete with your referral ID if you need to, and use your ad to tell people about the service so they can click the link to sign up or get more info by visiting the website.”
Stuart,
Did you cloak your clickbank links?
Thanks,
Howdy
Thanks for the post – as an affiliate noob, this has given me some ideas to run with!
I would have used some free or paid PR releases instead of article marketing to do that but what you did was sheer proof that anybody can make free money online. This is what Bum Marketing is all about. Keep it up!
Hi Stuart. I like the sound of trying US Freeads this way. I have just got a question about the articles…
I take it you do 2 articles for each product?
Is the one thats submitted to US Freeads different to the article directory one.
Also I tried joining US Freeads a bit back and I’m sure I could not place a live url without paying a small charge?
Thanks
Hi Stuart,
I have a doubt. When you say that one has to write articles in USFA, do you mean normal information articles on the general subject of the product, say, around 300 words?
Does this sort of general purpose articles go well with the concept of USFA where normally ads are given out?
Product review articles are one thing that you say and that is fine.
Could you please clarify the above point?
Thanks
Raj
Why did you submit ti usfeeds first. Don’t you get faster index in Google with ezinearticles.com?
Cheers!
Just in case there are any non Americans interested in this. USfreadds won’t allow accounts for anyone outside the US. So us brits and australians and south africans and Irish and…. are just stuffed as far as this marketing method is concerned. You don’t have to use the freeads of course for any lateral thinker that is.
I just registered for a premium USfreeads account and I am from the UK? In the country drop down box, United Kingdom was there
Cheers for the post
I dont use this method much now it doesn’t work very well, google doesn’t like usfreeads as much now and article sites ban articles with usfreead, sqidoo etc links in them.
hi im also a newbie n just started with click bank as an affiliate and man the adwords are killing me….. so i think am gonna stick with click bank as an affiliate bt i need a lil help… if ne on can hel plz do
hi Stuart, great post any help in this direction is more than welcome.just one question
how do i go about the wash and rinse and repeat process,does it mean rewrite the articles and submit again, thanks Ron
Thanks! Do you have an update of how well these are doing now?
Hi Stuart,
Never seen your blog before, as far as I can tell it has some nice / educational information. People are willing to make some money online most of them fail, the reason ? They don`t put ideas into practice.
I`m using this method some time now, and it works beautiful. It can easily be duplicated, it depends on how much time one is willing to spend..
USFreeAds works well for me, however there are several free classifieds sites all over the web that get tons of monthly traffic.
One of the largest – alexa rank 36 is Craiglist, last when I checked, this site converts like hell..
If anyone is still confused about Clickbank you must get your hands on Commission Blueprint.. it exposes every little dirty trick out there.
Alex
Cool tips in there. What I like is the fact that the articles you write sort of sit and wait there for someone to buy. This week an article I wrote so long ago I had forgotten about it earnt me $24.95 in one day. Hmmmm, now all I have to do is have 1000 articles that earn me that amount even just once a month.
Just keep plugging away at it people, eventually your articles will earn enough for you to retire.
great article there is some underlying useful advice here but it seems to me that something is missing i don;t beleive it is that easy ? what is missing from this..
Wow, dude, you have a nice twist, the “add to usfree ads” then, everywhere else, usually I like to do ezine first, but I will have to try your usfree ads first method and see what happens. Check out my site too: Make-Money-Clickbank.com Article marketing works great, but sometimes it is hit or miss, sometimes you get mad traffic and others you get spit…
I have not tried article marketing and have thought that it might be good for short term traffic boost but never thought it would produce residual long term traffic. Since you wrote this awhile ago I wonder how this same test would work out today. Maybe better?
I’m trying this advice and signed up for USfreeads. Getting okay views of my product site so far, but hope it delivers in the long run with sales the way your trial did!
Once I heard that clickbank is now available in the Philippines, I started search in google the different ways and tactics to earn from clickbank. I landed here and your tips looks good. Now i got an idea but still need some more.
Nice post. I have to say that Bookmarking Demon is such a great app and every SEO analyst and Affiliate marketer needs in their arsenal!
Nice post and great work. I’m new to internet marketing ,and any information that is pointing toward profits is useful…..Thanks.
It can be hard to keep up with consistency on these types of posts without giving too much away
That’s why I like to spread them out a bit.
Stu