If you have additional ideas or suggestions for promotional tools, please suggest them in the affiliate forum on our discussion board.

Don't Get Hijacked!

Although it is not strictly necessary, I strongly recommend that you also use affiliate link cloaking software when linking to us. I want to make sure you get every penny of affiliate commission that is rightfully yours, and the research I've seen states that nearly 30% of all affiliate commissions are "hijacked" or bypassed, often by customers who either put their own affiliate IDs in where yours should be or who "chop off" affiliate links at the end of URLs. The worst part is that they are stealing money that is rightfully yours.

But, finally, I've found two solutions that stop "affiliate link hijackers" dead in their tracks. The first is called Affiliate Link Cloaker, and the second is called NameStick. It's your choice, but, if you're serious about making money as an affiliate, I don't think you can do without one of these.

How and When Do You Get Paid?

Clickbank will mail you a check approximately the 1st and 16th of each month for the monies earned during the prior half-month, assuming you meet the payment threshold (i.e. a check will be mailed on July 1 for the period from June 1-15). The payment threshold defaults to $100, but you can adjust it to as low as $10 or as high as $10,000.

How Do You Check Your Statistics?

Click here to login to your Clickbank account. When you login, the first page will show your statistics. Click on any of the dates to show detailed activity during that half-month period.

Ways to Promote The Site:

• Basic Linking
• Headlines
• Pop-Under Scripts
• Endorsed EMail (Most Effective Method)
• Banner Ads
• Building a Content-Oriented Web Site
• Newsletters and E-Zines
• Posting to Discussion Groups
• Other Ideas / Contact Me

To create a basic link from anywhere to the FFL Kit, you only need to know your Clickbank "Nickname" or account name. If you have forgotten this name, please check your email, as Clickbank will have sent you this nickname when you signed up.

Assuming your nickname is "jimsmith" you would simply need your prospects to go to:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?jimsmith/fflkit

To create a hyperlink to that site, you can make something that looks like this:

Of course, put your nickname in the place where it says "jimsmith" and please test your link before you send it out or publish it. A single misplaced character can make the link not work properly, so testing is necessary to be sure you get the results you want.

For best results, use one of the headlines below with your link.

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You can place these little ads in lots of places. On your website as a text link, as an e-zine ad, as a signature file, and so on. I'll cover all of these options below (except text links, which is above). For now, here are the different headlines you can try:

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There is one, and only one, reason that you have seen so many pop-up and pop-under windows recently. THEY WORK! Because they are far less intrusive than pop-up windows, and they do not interfere with your visitor's browsing experience on your website, pop-under windows are the preferred alternative for most circumstances. If, however, you prefer a pop-up script, email me.

A pop-up window is one that shows up on top of the primary website when the site is loaded. A pop-under window is one that loads in the background in a new window, so the user will not notice it until they close their primary browser window. For this reason, it does not interfere with their browsing experience.

For a sample complete web page utilizing the script, go here. The web page will be loaded in a new window, and it will spawn the popunder page.

If you want a more sophisticated version of the script that uses cookies to make sure that the popunder window will only load once per browser session, or if you have any problems implementing the script, email me for the script.

If you want to learn all the ins and outs of pop-ups and pop-unders, click here to find out more about the only pop-up course I recommend.

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This is an extremely simple to implement, but unbelievably powerful, method for promoting the FFL Kit to your existing email list.

The key to making this work is that your list has some existing relationship with you, so it's not just some guy sending them information out of nowhere. For trade associations, clubs, and other organizations, the results are so good you will hardly believe it. For existing customer bases or prospects with whom you regularly communicate, they're equally good. Even if it's just a relatively stale opt-in list, the results can be better than any other method.

You should put this into your own words, but here's an example email you might send to your list:

Subject: Special Announcement

Hi Subscribers,

Do you know the one and only BEST way to save big money on
your purchases of firearms and accessories?

Get Your Own Federal Firearms License (FFL).

That's right! No matter what else you do, your access to the
best deals and direct sales from manufacturers and
distributors is shut off without your own FFL.

What if I told you that a large percentage of current FFLs
run their business from their home, and many of them have
never made a sale to anyone outside of friends and family?

Yet they buy at low, low wholesale prices and have no
shipping hassles, as everything is shipped right to them
directly. They will never again pay someone else $25.00 to
$40.00 for doing nothing more than filling out a form and
handing them their gun.

There is now a kit, available for immediate download, that
walks you through the requirements and process of getting
your own FFL. And the kit only costs about $20.

To get the full details and order now, just click here.
I've seen a lot of information for gun owners over the years,
but I've never seen anything else that can save you this
money.

Jim Smith
GunSite.info

Of course, don't forget to make sure that the link is set up using your Clickbank nickname (see Basic Linking above), and don't forget to test your links.

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Here are several banners you can choose from. This is probably the easiest and fastest way to get going with the program if you have a website.

After picking the banner or graphic you'd like to use, simply position your mouse over the banner and Right Click your mouse (PC Users). Then click "Save Picture As" in Internet Explorer or "Save Image As" in Netscape.

Save the graphic as a .gif file.

Now to make your banner or graphic "clickable" you'll need to code your affiliate URL around the banner. Here's the code to put up a graphic with your affiliate link:

 
   <a href="http://hop.clickbank.net/?jimsmith/fflkit">   
   <img src="banner.gif" border=0></a>   

In this example you would substitute your Clickbank name for "jimsmith" and "banner.gif" would be replaced by the banner or graphic name you used when saving the banner or graphic.

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Building a Web Site

One very effective way to drive traffic without spending much money is to build a content-rich web site. You can easily put together a lot of content in a weekend by including publicly-available information with your own analysis and summaries.

You can post this site for free at places like Geocities.com or TheFreeSite.com, but I recommend that you instead use discounted hosting somewhere with your own domain, as this is the only way to get the best placement in search engines. GoDaddy.com offers hosting starting at under $6 per month, and you can register a domain there for $9 a year, so it doesn't have to cost much.

You can drive traffic to your domain through a variety of methods, but the only one that will continue to drive lots of traffic for zero cost is to get it into the search engines. See the subsection on "Getting Your Site On The Search Engines" below for more information on how to do this.

BLOGs

Blogs offer you a quick and dirty way to set up a website, and they can often achieve good search engine placement for their relevant words. What is a Blog? Below is an excerpt from blogger.com:

For instance, you might put up a blog about your experience in obtaining your own FFL, or about your experience as an affiliate. Then submit the site to as many search engines as you can (see below), and, after a couple of months, start enjoying the rewards of your efforts. Keep the blog active and up-to-date for best results.

If you want to start a blog, here are some tools that can get you started for about $30 and in under 10 minutes:

• Blogger
• Blogroots
• LiveJournal
• Moveable Type
• PHP-Nuke

Getting Your Site On The Search Engines

Optimizing your site for top search engine placement is a science that requires a lot of study, but the most important things to start with are:

1. Get a domain name with your targeted keywords in it, separated by hyphens (ex. "www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com")
2. Make sure the title and meta keywords have your keywords in them, with as few extra words as possible (you can use multiple pages, each targeting a specific keyword)
3. Try to target your keywords as appearing around 3% of the time on the page. In other words, if you counted the real words on the page (ignoring words like "and" and "the"), divided the number of times your keywords appear on the page into that number, it should be around 3% (you can use multiple pages, each targeting a specific keyword)

If you really want to get serious about learning to optimize a site for the search engines, this is the best solution I've seen -- Search Engine News and The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars. It costs about $100 for a year's subscription and access to the book, but it's worth 20 times that much.

If you just want to get started with free search engine submissions, I would recommend that you start with the biggies. If you want to submit to smaller search engines, there are many sites that will do it for you for free, but I have rarely found it to be worth the effort.

For a great chart that demonstrates how the search engines interrelate, click here.

You cannot submit to Inktomi, LookSmart, Overture, Teoma or Yahoo! for free. The current submission pages for the others are listed below. These links change periodically, so if you find a broken link, please let me know.

• Alta Vista
• AlltheWeb
• AOL (no submission page; submit to Google for inclusion)
• Ask Jeeves (email submission)
• dmoz (Open Directory Project)
• Excite (no submission page; gets results from others)
• Fast (no submission page;use AlltheWeb)
• Go (no submission page; use Overture)
• Google
• HotBot (no submission page; in transition; gets results from others)
• iWon
• Lycos
• MSN
• Netscape (no submission page; gets results from others)
• Webcrawler (no submission page; gets results from others)

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Newsletters and e-zines, whether online or offline, are great places to promote the kit. There are three basic ways to use them:

1. Put articles and/or ads in your own e-zine/newsletter
2. Advertise in others' e-zines or newsletters
3. Put articles or reviews in others' e-zines or newsletters with your link

In addition, towards the end of this this section you will find a subsection titled "How To Find E-Zines" that will help you locate relevant e-zines for advertising, articles or reviews.

Your Own E-Zine or Newsletter

If you currently publish an e-zine, you already know the incredible power of having your own opt-in list of subscribers. If you aren't using e-zines, you should consider adding them to your list of marketing weapons.

Run Articles as Editorial Material.  One way to promote the kit is to run an article about the kit or this site with your affiliate link listed as a resource for further information.

Do a Review of FederalFirearmsLicense.com.  You may also want to consider running a review of the site or the kit and bringing this resource to the attention of your subscribers. This would include telling them about the kit, who it would be good for, what it could do for them, and so on.

Make your review factual and based on your opinion. It doesn't have to be 100% glowing, either. In fact, people will believe you and trust you more if you put in a few minor weak points (ideally you can phrase it so that they actually turn out to be benefits).

Advertising in Others' E-Zines or Newsletters

You can find lists of e-zines below (under "How To Find E-Zines"), and advertising in them is an inexpensive way to reach a lot of people. For instance, a five-line ad in an e-zine with a circulation of 100,000 or more may cost as little as $40. It's a really great deal for the circulation you get.

You can combine several of the headlines from above ("Basic Linking" Section) to create an effective classified ad.

Here's an example of an effective ad:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
           ===> LOOKING TO SAVE ON GUN PURCHASES? <===
   There Is One, And Only One, Best Way To Save Tons Of Money
   On Your Firearms And Accessories Purchases -- Get Your FFL!
        And You Can Do It Right From Home In Most Cases!
     Check out  =====> http://www.FederalFirearmsLicense.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Or just use your imagination (and if you've got a really effective ad I'd love to see it).

Articles/Reviews in Others' E-Zines or Newsletters

As anyone who has ever published their own E-Zine or Newsletter knows all too well, editors are desperate for halfway decent material to put in their issues. Finding or creating the content for the newsletter is the biggest hassle publishers face.

So give them some help. Write an article, or do a review of this website or a review of the FFL Kit. You can include a link in your byline, and they'll thank you for your efforts. In most cases, you can run the same article in several different publications without changing a thing. Here are some topic ideas:

• How To Obtain Your Own Federal Firearms License
• How To Save Money On Your Gun Purchases
• How To Avoid The FFL Trap [about getting your own instead of paying others]
• Site Review: FederalFirearmsLicense.com
• New Resource: The FFL Kit
• Shipping and Internet Gun Purchases

How To Find E-Zines

The sites below offer lists of e-zines or provide instructions for placing ads. Some on the list below cost money, and some are free. Although it costs a few bucks, I think the best is the Directory of Ezines.

• Best Ezines (be sure to check out all the other websites listed on the rightmost column of this page)
• Directory of Ezines
• E-ZineZ
• Ezine-Universe
• eZINESearch
• John Labovitz's Ezine List
• Marketing Maestro (now under new ownership; not sure what you'll find here in the future)
• Top Ezine Ads

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This is a great way to promote the program at zero cost to you. Discussion groups or forums are spots where people can post questions, answers and comments on different topics related to the group's common interest. This is not a place for blatant ads! Doing so will result in lots of trouble for you and me.

There are, however, good ways to promote your program there. For instance, look for posts with questions and provide useful advice. Include a simple headline and link below your name (like in an email signature file). Many discussion groups actually allow you to set up a discussion group signature file for postings.

This is an accepted form of advertising, and the more you post, the more exposure you get. The better the content of your posts, the more likely you will get sales.

Before you consider posting you should read lots of posts to get a feel for how the messages and group dynamic flow.

Blatant commercial messages or spamming any board will get you kicked out of the affiliate program and you may be forced to forfeit your commissions. This is a violation of the Clickbank agreement and of your agreement with me. So please do not do it!

With all that said, you should check for different discussion groups and lists you can contribute to. Here are some sources for groups and lists:

• CataList
• CoolList
• ezboard
• Forum One
• Google Groups
• listTool.com
• Topica
• Yahoo! Groups

Although I have provided some of the larger ones above, there are tons and tons of discussion lists and groups on the Internet. Just pick your favorite search engine and type in relevant search terms like "gun discussion group" or "gun discussion list" or other relevant terms. I recommend bookmarking the groups and lists as you find them so that you can go back and post regularly.

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Using Your EMail Signature File

Your email signature is a powerful way to promote your program. In almost every email program, you can append an automatic signature file (aka "sig file") to your outgoing emails.

Just search through the help files with your email for "signature" and you should find clear directions on how to create an email signature.

Use a short headline with your affiliate link.

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If you have any other ideas or suggestions for promotional tools, please suggest them in the affiliate forum on our discussion board.