Prologue
In my last post, I talked about using AI chatbots to get leads to build up my email lists.
In this post, I’ll discuss building my first real AI chatbot, what was involved and how long it took, and at the end of the post, I’ll show you the chatbot.
Maybe you could give me some feedback on it, good or bad, so that I can improve it.
My First Real Chatbot
Since my niche is Affiliate Marketing, I wanted to start with a chatbot that’s aimed at that niche.
So what I did initially was to clone one of the pre-built chatbots that come with one of the ConversioBot upgrades.
This was simply to be a starting point where at least some of the work was already done.
I followed the training on how to build your first chatbot to the letter, as this was my first bot and I didn’t want to miss some crucial step.
Essentially what the chatbot does is say hello to the visitor and ask them if they’re interested in making some money online.
The default answer is “Yes” but the visitor needs to click a button in order to continue, giving me/the chatbot permission to promote to them.
They’re then offered a free gift with a perceived high value (a video course) which they can get if they enter their email address.
At this point, they’re added to my list and the first email in my email sequence is sent out to them.
This includes the link to the free gift.
They’re then asked if they’ve ever tried to make money online before.
If they answer “Yes” then they’re directed to another question that asks them what level of experience they have – Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced.
In the original chatbot, these three options all led to the same 5 money-making opportunities and the visitor selected which one they were interested in before being redirected to that product.
Modifying The Chatbot
There is actually a mistake in the flowchart for this chatbot (below) where, if they answered “No” to the previous question (i.e. they had no previous experience), they were then presented with 4 options for making money online – eBay/Amazon, Facebook, Clickbank and YouTube.
Whatever of those options they chose, they were then presented with the question about their level of experience.
That didn’t make sense and they were eventually sent to the same 5 product offers as before which were no related to ebay/Amazon, Facebook, Clickbank or YouTube.
So that needed to be sorted out.
The original template/flowchart for the Affiliate Marketing chatbot (click for a full-sized view)
I also wanted to provide different products for the Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced marketers.
One thing I had wanted to do was to tag subscribers as being a beginner, intermediate or advanced marketer so I could segment them in my list and send them emails tailored to their level.
I couldn’t find a way to do that with this AI chatbot setup as visitors are asked for their email address before they answer the question about their level of experience.
The only way I could do this would be to move the Free Gift question to after the level of experience question.
And with my revised AI Chatbot template/flowchart, I would have needed to offer the Free Gift three times, one for Beginners, one for Intermediate and one for Advanced marketers.
ConversioBot doesn’t provide an option to “add to list with tag”, at least with Aweber, which is the autoresponder I use.
If I could have added tags, I could have added all new subscribers to the same list, but tagged them as being a beginner, intermediate or advanced marketer from the outset.
The only other option would have been to create three separate lists, one for Beginners, one for Intermediate and one for Advanced marketers, and put subscribers into the appropriate list based on their answer to the experience level question.
People who answered “No” to the “have to tried to make money online before?” question would also have been put into the Beginner’s list.
This was too complex for what is essentially a test chatbot so I stuck with offering the free gift early in the chatbot flowchart and to put all subscribers into the same list.
I’ll try using later emails to segment people with tags by getting them to click links.
I also selected different products for each experience level and provided those different options to subscribers.
This greatly expanded the flowchart and there was quite a bit of editing in changing the messages for each product and adding in the correct affiliate links for each.
Here’s what my revised flowchart/template looks like:
My revised template/flowchart for the Affiliate Marketing chatbot (click for a full-sized view)
Setting Up My Affiliate Links
Each of the boxes in the bottom two rows of the above image is a product I redirect visitors to based on how they answered the questions posed by the AI chatbot.
I could have pasted raw affiliate links into each of these boxes, but I like to track my links to see where traffic is coming from.
That gives me a better idea of what products are resonating with people and if I need to look at swapping one product out for a different one.
I mentioned in my previous post that I use the Affiliate Linkr WordPress plugin as my link tracking tool since it allows me to track by subid (being able to use the same link but with a different identifier at the end).
For example, the Video Marketing product is presented to both Intermediate and Advanced marketers and using a subid, I can see which level is getting the most clicks and sales.
I can then look at swapping out the lower performing product for one more suitable to that experience level.
Affiliate Linkr also allows me to create a link rotator, so I can present 1-4 products to visitors (but they only ever see one link).
This lets me split test products that do the same thing, again to see which product gets the most sales.
I can then either only promote the best-selling product or split test that against a new product.
Over time, I’ll end up only promoting high-converting products.
If you’re looking for alternative link tracking solutions, the free Pretty Links plugin for WordPress will allow you to create short tracking links but not track by subid.
You could create copies of your links, one for each traffic source you want to test, using a different slug for each link.
I’m pretty sure the paid version of Pretty Links can do this type of subid tracking so you only have to use one copy of your link and the subid tracks the traffic source, so that’s one alternative to look at.
Other click online tracking services (that don’t require WordPress) to check out are ClickMagick and Click.org.
Final Chatbot Settings
I had already linked up my Aweber autoresponder to the ConversioBot AI chatbot builder but I decided to use a an old pre-existing email list for this project.
I could have created a brand new list but the pre-existing list name was well suited to this project.
There were only 41 subscribers on this list, one of which is me (for testing purposes), so I’ll deduct that number off any new subscriber count as the list builds.
Having picked the email list to use, I was able to set up the chatbot to send visitors to that list when they signed up for the free video training gift.
Setting Up A Custom Domain
This chatbot is a full-page bot which means that it’s the only thing on the page.
However, full-page chatbots need their own custom domain to run, so I repurposed an existing domain I owned for this purpose.
All this involves is removing any DNS nameserver settings and domain forwarding settings and adding a CNAME record.
Once those changes had propagated over the internet, the non-secure version of the site was up and running.
To enable the secure, https:// version, I needed to send an email to the ConversioBot Support Desk asking for SSL to be enabled for the domain.
That took a few hours as I emailed my request in late at night.
But next day, https://AffiliateMarketingCircle.com was up and running.
Another thing I changed was the default background image used in the chatbot.
I don’t know if it’s a good choice for this specific bot but maybe you can let me know in the comments below if you check it out…
…or suggest a more relevant type of background image.
Conclusion
To sum up what went into the creation of this chatbot:
- Clone chatbot from ConversioBot library
- Modify chatbot to remove the error and build it out with extra options – this involves creating new blocks with new text for additional products to promote and adding tracking links for my affiliate links
- Change the background image for the bot
- Link my selected email list to the bot
- Pick a custom domain to use and setup the CNAME record for it so that it will display the chatbot
- Email Support to get the SSL Certificate for the domain enabled
- Testing EVERYTHING to make sure visitors end up where they’re supposed to!
The bulk of the work was in modifying the chatbot flowchart, adding the new blocks, picking products to promote, creating track links for my affiliate links and adding those links into the product blocks.
All in, it took about 3 days to build this bot.
That sounds like a lot of time but bear in mind that this was my first chatbot and I had to learn how to use ConversioBot.
I’ll be able to build the next more quickly.
I also changed the chatbot flowchart 3 times before settling on the final one above, so a fair bit of time went into the aborted versions of the chatbot.
Cloning an existing chatbot and using it as-is (just changing the affiliate link[s] and custom domain settings) shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, depending on the complexity of the chatbot.
Customised chatbots will obviously take longer to finish but shouldn’t take more than a day to create.
And then there’s also the option of creating custom AI chatbots for clients and charging them a rental fee for use of the bot! 
I can build as many chatbots as I want, whether they’re full-page bots like the one on AffiliateMarketingCircle.com or they’re bots that sit inside existing websites, like chatbot you can activate at the bottom right of this post, and it won’t cost me anything more.
If you like what ConversioBot can do, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its low price in this special offer.
The next chapter in this project is driving traffic to the chatbot to see how good it is (or not) at getting subscribers and sales.
All the best,
Gary Nugent
Check out my Instagram posts and reels here:P.S.: Don't forget, if you want to create an internet income of your own, here's one of my recommended ways to do that:
Hi Gary, I really could have done without this distraction tonight. I’m going away tomorrow night for a few days and so much I’ve still got to do but wow I took your bait. See your post on WA about email opt-ins not being effective anymore. I’ve really struggled here for almost 3 years I’ve been blogging and it’s not really making me much money for my time at all. I’ve been making a consistent $25 for the past maybe 4 months and I’ve had a few other nice surprises but honestly, I’m still trying to crack the code. I like your suggestion for Conversiobot ~ I’ve heard of it before and if I decide to buy I’ll use your link.
I just wondered though what is the deal it’s $37 for Pro but what’s the catch do you have to buy upsells after or what for it to work to its full potential?
Actually I’ve wondered why I’ve struggled so much.
Hi Alex, getting leads/subscribers is not as easy as it’s made out to be, let alone getting quality, targeted leads.
Everyone and their dog either has an optin-form embedded on their posts/pages, in their sidebar, as a popup or as full-pages or a combination of those. So people are becoming blind to them.
They were very effective when they first appeared as they were novel and the idea of getting a free gift simply for handing over your email address was very appealing.
Roll on a few years and people know that most free gifts aren’t worth much – they’re usually a pitch for some product wrapped in some low-level information.
And people know that if they sign up, they’re going to get emails they may not want to receive, so they don’t bother.
That’s not to say that landing page optins are not effective any more – you just have to craft them a lot better than before.
What the chatbots let you do is pre-qualify people before they get added to your list so you have a better quality of subscriber.
You can also use the chatbots, if you want, to let visitors skip the free gift/join your list step and still redirect them to products that might suit them, based on their answers to the questions your bot asks them.
One thing I’ve found is that most of the “free traffic” sites and safelists are useless at getting you quality leads. Everyone is a seller on these and there a few, if any, buyers. The members and users of these sites are inundated with offers and they ignore 99.9% of them now.
Buying solo ads is a better option but there is a cost involved. And there are no guarantees that you’ll get quality leads this way. Again, the solo ad sellers are pushing continuous offers to their lists, so you’re still trying to catch the eyeballs of people who potentially see endless offers.
ConversioBot does have a list of approved solo ad sellers who do provide quality leads, or so they say. I haven’t tested these vendors out yet but it is on the list of things to try where the chatbot is concerned.
Building your list should be where you focus your efforts. If gives you a captive audience that you can send offers to over and over again without having to put in the work to write blog posts, etc to attract stray passing visitors.
Some say email marketing is dead or dying but everyone still checks their email at least once a day. You just need to create email subject lines that grab people’s attention.
As to your question about the ConversioBot costs, if you go through their main page, it costs $47/mth with 10% off the first month for ConversioBot Pro. If you go to the Special Offer page though, you can get ConversioBot Pro for a single $37 payment with a 10% discount. In my opinion, the $10 saving you get for ConversioBot Lite isn’t worth it.
The Pro version will allow you to create an unlimited number chatbots that you can add to any of your blogs/websites and create chatbots that you can sell to clients. You also get 10 Done-For-You AI chatbot templates that you can clone and edit.
If all you want is to add chatbots to your posts and pages, then you don’t need any of the upgrades.
However, if you want to extend what you can do with chatbots, there are upgrades at different costs, but you can always buy them later:
Now for the upgrades that I did not buy…
One thing to note is that when you buy ConversioBot, you get 30,000 free conversations. That is, all your bots combined, can run a total of 30,000 times for free. After that, you have to pay $17 per month to allow additional ongoing conversations (bot uses) to run. But by that stage you should be making more than enough per month from your bots to cover that cost.
All the best,
Gary
Thanks for your long detailed answer I think I will definitely give this a try. Probably will give the upsells a miss a think – at least for now, but yes very frustrating trying to make my time worth it really.
I like writing. I think this is the saving grace and I do think my content is coming along, but yes would be nice if I could start making a bit more money – even just one or two commissions a month I feel would be a step in the right direction for me.
Think this could maybe be the solution so thanks again and look forward to reading more in future.
Yeah, Ales, you don’t need the upsells if you’re adding your own custom bots to your websites. The Extreme upgrade is worth it to be able to build chatbots on custom domains and the Facebook Upgrade might be useful if you use Facebook a lot. Skipping the upgrades certainly saves on the costs!
I’ve been playing around with tags and triggers in my email sequence and I’ll have more to say on that in a future post.
All the best,
Gary
Hi Gary,
Thanks for giving me the necessary nudge I so desperately needed to finally open the box on the two ConversioBot apps I had paid for in March 2021! Back then I could see the value in the program, but unfortunately had so much on my plate because I realized that customizing my bots would require some focus and time commitment. I’ve gone into my account and with the encouragement of your post hope to build my very first Bot this week! So excited….
I cannot thank you enough!
Ceci
Let me know what you think of the chatbot building process and how successful it/they is/are, Ceci. It would be good to hear from another user.
Like you, ConversioBot was sitting on my digital shelf before I did anything with it.
I know there are other tools I bought through the years that are in the same place. I shudder to think how much I’ve spent on tools I never got around to using!
All the best,
Gary.