21 Days to a More Profitable Blog Tutorial > Day 10! Weave Clickbank Seamlessly Into Your Blog
(Morning! I knew it was too good to last – got up at 3am and, well, here I am!)
Hello gentle reader, so pleasant to see you again! Hope the week has been treating you well. I’m current on Cup of Coffee Number N, where N equals….well, one. 
Woke up insanely early again, checked my feedreader, commented at I Forgot 3 Basic Rules of Blogging! and Link Juice: How to make people link to your website, and am now starting the day.
Oh yes! One other thing – I’ve been asked quite often how it is I come up with zany ideas from which I can make popular posts. Yesterday was a perfect example – I greeted the morning with the realization I had a huuuuge bruise on my forearm from earlier karate sparring. It was almost a perfect circle, so of course….I was inspired to draw a Happy Face on it. And from that was created When life bruises you, decorate it with a happy face and rebound….complete with Venus Fly Traps to boot.
I always ask myself, what parallels can I draw from my real life experiences and make them useful for my readers?
I must write about that sometime….
And of course, that brings me to:
Today is Day 10 of my series, 21 Days To A More Profitable Blog!
And for today, I’d like to talk about…
Self Defense and Fresh Fruit
Admit it. You have secretly been wondering what on earth you’d do if you were attacked by a….a…..a raspberry-wielding madman, right?
Not to fear – I have your answer right here:
What’s that? You’re wondering what self defense and fresh fruit has to do with seamlessly weaving Clickbank links into your blog?
Why, 16 tons of common sense! Okay not 16 tons, perhaps an ounce or two here and there. Fresh fruit and self defense (especially in that skit – my kids and I were ROTFL when we watched it this past weekend on Monty Python’s Flying Circus), put together…is rather, hmmmmm…. unique. Right?
But when you think of the end solution that was presented in that video ("Release the … " !) I’ll bet you said to yourself:
What a clever resolution! (unless you were drinking something at the time, in which case you probably snorted it out your nose)
The brilliance of Monty Python lies in their ability to cast their creativity to the far corners of the universe and run rampant with whatever is generated. They don’t have to worry about censors, they don’t have to dillydally about "nobody ELSE has done this before" … they simply give free rein to their ideas and conquer the world.
Occassionally, publishers at Clickbank achieve the same goal – they’ll present ebooks and infoproducts not only on common Internet ideas, but also ‘way out there ideas you probably never considered before.
Consider these Clickbank products:
- Square Watermelon Secrets Revealed!
- How To Make A Diaper Cake Video Instructions
- World Of Warcraft Gold Secrets
- The Dangerous Alpha Male Book
Because Clickbank gives such a low entry fee for anyone to publish their own materials, you can find some pretty neat goodies there that wouldn’t see the light of day at Amazon or eBay. And even better…quite often the comissions are 50% or more!
I don’t know about you, but More Money via affiliate commissions is always a Good Thing for me.
So! Let’s start off with
….and YES YES YES YES YES! I KNOW the following Before You Begin is identical to the last two days….I have to keep it here for those folks who discover this tutorial via this day first…..
Before You Begin – Make a TEST copy of your theme on your desktop
Chances are that when you changed your WordPress theme, you unzipped it on your desktop and then uploaded it to your THEME directory. Here are some resources about doing that:
As you’ll see, when you download a new theme, you unzip it on your desktop.
Now, I want you to copy that new THEME directory to a TEST copy. For example, perhaps the theme directory name is seashell-10. You would use your filemanager to COPY the ENTIRE directory to, say, seashell-11.
Then copy your sidebar.php file to sidebar.sav in the directory seashell-11 (this provides you with a backup copy).
Once you have done this, upload it to your THEME directory.
And here’s now the cool thingee to try! Nobody wants to hack a live WordPress theme (well, okay, I do, but then again, my idea of fun is using Lynx to access the Internet), right?
Wouldn’t it be peachy if you (only you!) could preview a new theme while the rest of the world saw your current theme? Why, you could make mistakes left and right but your visitors would never see them!
‘Course it would! So! Go over now and install and activate the plugin Admin Theme Previewer. It works beautifully; when I’m forced to admit that even I cannot completely overhaul a theme in less than 7 seconds, I use it myself.
Once it’s activated, go to your Presentation menu on your WordPress Dashboard – you’ll see the new option Theme Preview. Select that, and then select your TEST theme that you uploaded earlier. Voila – you will be able to tweak it to your heart’s content with no danger to your current theme at all.
Now you’re ready to add the Clickbank code to your TEST theme!
Let’s move to:
Step 1 – Sign up for Clickbank and search for targeted niche products.
Signing up for Clickbank is free! Once there, visit their marketplace and search for your niche. When you find a particular product that is of interest to you, you should see something like:
Click on the "create hoplink" link. You’ll see:
Enter in your Clickbank ID (I use the ID "yourIDhere"), click Create, and you’ll see:
See that link circled in red:
youridhere.fatsecret.hop.clickbank.net ?
That would be the Clickbank link you’d use for your WordPress sidebar.
Hey, I just realized….I can use one of my own products as an example!
You can craft a descriptive link like so::
Click THERE for Safe and Smart Internet Weight Loss Edge
When you paste that into your sidebar, you’ll see
Click THERE for the Safe and Smart Internet Weight Loss Edge
But wait! An opportunty now arises. Many Clickbank publishers will offer to you affiliate marketing tools that you can use as well! For example, my affiliate program for The Safe and Smart Internet Weight Loss Edge is at my Fab Fit Mom Affiliate Tutorial. You need to look for an "Affiliates" link on the product’s site to see if the publisher offers you something similar. If so, you’ll be given book graphics, banners etc. you can use.
Once you have the code you desire:
Step 2 – In your TEST theme, open the file sidebar.php in a text editor and edit it like so:
Do NOT be fazed by what you see! The sidebar.php file is simply the code that tells your theme how to display your, well, sidebar. 
You’ll notice that every heading (ie, Lastest Posts, Categories, Archives, etc.) is generally surrounded by a
or an etc. This tells your theme to display the header in a specific fashion (ie, font color, style, etc. Reread my conversation with my kid at Middleschooler Hacks Personal WordPress Theme, Makes Money Online – I explain it in detail there).Thus, you’ll want to ADD something like the following:
Niche Goodies
Click THERE for Safe and Smart Internet Weight Loss Edge
wherever you want your Clickbank goodies to appear. The final version might look something like:
Categories
Niche Goodies
Click THERE for Safe and Smart Internet Weight Loss Edge
Notice how the
- MUST be balanced with a closing
with a closing
, etc.Once you’ve changed your sidebar.php code, upload it to your TEST theme (TEST theme, mind you, NOT original theme, TEST theme), and view your site.
Does it work? Yay! Life is joyous!
Does it not? Wah! Go back to your sidebar.php and examine your edits. Did you remember close off the
- and
or
etc.? Is the javascript you pasted on ONE line (ie, no line breaks)?
Try it again, upload your changes, rinse and repeat until it looks the way you want (and feel free to drop me a line should you have questions!).
And voila, you’re done. Every page of your blog will show the Niche goodies that should someone decide to buy, will result in commissions to you!
As my kids would say:
Oh that is SOOOOO Cool!
Clickbank offers a whole suite of goodies you can use for monetizing your blogs or site. Definitely check it out.
You’re done! But wait! I know right now you’re saying to yourself, Gosh Barbara, where’s Step 3? Hang on a sec….(dig dig dig) Ah! Here it is!
And finally, for my last step in Day 10 of 21 Days to a More Profitable Blog, download and use the following plugin:
Step 3 – Add Alinks to your WordPress blog.
Alinks allows you to specify automatic linking of keywords to specific URLS (like clickbank products!). I first learned about it from reading Sure-Fire Way To Monetize Your Web 2.0 WordPress Blog And Be Proud Of It – you’ll find it quite useful indeed. The download page for aLinks is found over HERE.
My article How to easily cloak your Clickbank and other affiliate links for free is another resource you’ll enjoy too!
Nice, eh?
And that brings me to:
In closing
In today’s lesson, you learned how you can make a TEST copy of your WordPress theme, activate an Admin Previewer so you could tweak it without having the changes show live, add Clickbank affiliate code snippets to your sidebar and verify it works.
And of course (you really didn’t think I’d close a post without this now, did you?) an opportunity now arises!
(remember, there’s no such things as problems in real life – just misunderstood opportunities)…..
HOMEWORK – Now that you know how to add Amazon and eBay and Clickbank to your sidebars….
Can you think of a way to seamlessly add them to specific individual blog posts as well?
Remember:
You CAN do this…you simply have to give yourself permission to be patient and make it so.
Your homework tonight is to visit eBay and Amazon and Clickbank and look for targeted niche products that fit in your blog’s theme. See if you can uncover reviews about them as well.
Thus, until tomorrow! (and don’t forget, if you think any of your friends would benefit from these tutorials, please do share them! They’ll thank you for it…guaranteed).
Enjoy,
Barbara
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners Clickbank Blogging tips: You can always get hoplinks from the Clickbank site.
Intermediate and/or Advanced Clickbank Blogging tips: Search out complete affiliate programs for the Clickbank Products for which you are interested….you’ll get great graphics/banners/etc.
#END highlights of this blog writing post
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ps – speaking about self defense….
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