With Google’s new algorithms, it is more difficult for an affiliate marketer to rank high on a search engine for your web page unless it is highly relevant to what someone is searching for.
This means that affiliates need to change their game plan accordingly if they want to grow their business and be successful affiliates.
For many entrepreneurs, the best way they have found to build their online business is with ClickBank.
As a beginner just starting out, ClickBank can be a difficult thing to understand if you have never used it before.
However, nothing could be further from the truth.
In this ClickBank for beginners tutorial, I’ll explain what ClickBank is and how you can make money with ClickBank while growing your affiliate marketing business.
ClickBank for Beginners TOC
What is ClickBank?
ClickBank is an affiliate network that has one of the biggest affiliate marketplaces for many of the popular niches for any internet business.
The great thing about ClickBank is that you don’t have to own or create any of the merchandise or services for sale on the platform.
You only need to promote these products and services and earn commissions whenever a sale is made.
As a new affiliate marketer, ClickBank is the first place to look when you start making money for your affiliate marketing business.
First, the ClickBank affiliate network is huge. Over 100,000 active affiliates are registered on the network and with over 4,000 items to choose from in the ClickBank marketplace.
Second, this isn’t a fly-by-night company that will disappear tomorrow and leaves you stuck with an empty wallet.
This is a company that has been around since 1998 and it has grown into one of the largest affiliate marketing companies on the web alongside CJ Affiliate and ShareASale.
How Does ClickBank Work?
ClickBank works by allowing affiliates to recommend other peoples stuff offered on the site through a special link. Additionally, it allows producers of a particular product or service, to sell on the CB marketplace.
For this ClickBank tutorial, we’ll just focus on making money as an affiliate.
To get started with ClickBank, you simply find a vendor that has an a program for affiliates in the niche you are interested in.
An affiliate link (aka Hop Link) is provided by CB that associates your account with the vendor product you are looking to share on your site.
When a user clicks on your Hop Link and makes a purchase, you receive a commission-and the vendor pays ClickBank for hosting their affiliate offer.
The commission rates can vary depending on the product you have chosen to promote, the vendor, and other factors.
Since there are hundreds of thousands of affiliates that offer their programs through CB, it’s important to do some competitive research before choosing which vendors/products to promote.
I won’t go into the nuances of ClickBank’s fee structures. The main point here is that you need to understand the potential of earning a lot of money by shooting for high commission and recurring sales on certain items.
Lastly, ClickBank provides free training for new affiliates. This training is offered through a step-by-step video tutorial that will walk you through all the ins and outs of the ClickBank program so you can understand how to market a program effectively and start making money.
Why is Clickbank so Popular?
There are several reasons why ClickBank is so popular with new affiliate marketers.
First, ClickBank is the best way to make money by promoting digital media. As I mentioned previously, ClickBank has over twenty different categories that offer over 100,000 products for an affiliate to promote.
Second, ClickBank has made it fairly easy for new affiliates to start an affiliate marketing business because it’s free to join.
Third, they pay each affiliate every Friday as long as you meet the minimum payment amount (plus the processing time by your bank). This makes it very easy to make money with ClickBank.
Lastly, it is free to sign up for a ClickBank account. This might not seem like a big deal, but as a new marketer, doling out monthly membership costs can be a considerable blow to your earnings.
That’s a bad thing!
Learn How To Make Money Selling Other People's Products!
***Affiliate Disclaimer: This post contains product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.
Can you Really Make Money With Clickbank?
Yes, you can make money with Clickbank if you follow the rules and put in the effort.
It’s important that you take your time and do due diligence before committing many hours trying to make money on a program that doesn’t produce for you what was promised.
Your affiliate marketing success will be based on how much money you make, but directly related to the amount of effort you put into it. That holds true for any business, not just affiliate marketing.
What Brands Can You Promote With ClickBank?
As mentioned previously, you can promote virtually any computer-based as well as a few physical products on the CB marketplace.
Here are some example products:
- Specialty health & wellness products (weight loss, health supplements, vitamins, etc.)
- Software guides or courses focused on making money using the I, fitness, and more.
- eBooks such as business and self-improvement.
- Cooking, food, wine, etc.
These are just a few of the categories found in the CB Marketplace, but here are literally thousands of vendors that offer some form of program for you to market their products.
Once you get proficient, you can market multiple products. But as with any affiliate marketing opportunity, it all boils down to the vendor’s product and advertiser. This is something to really concentrate on when deciding which products you want to promote with your business.
How Do I Sign Up for the ClickBank Affiliate Program?
The signup process to the ClickBank community is extremely simple. Once you’re on the ClickBank website, do the following:
- Click on “Sign Up” to create your account
- Select your country
- add your first and last name
- valid telephone number
- email address
Once you have completed the signup process, you’ll receive a confirmation email. When ClickBank verifies your email address, you can then log into your ClickBank account.
Now you have access to the affiliate training center and the CB marketplace right away.
This is where you can click on different categories and search through all the ClickBank affiliate programs that are available.
You can even check out the top sellers to see which products have recurring commissions.
Another good tip before you start advertising products is to create an email newsletter of your own.
This will help you understand what your audience wants, so you know the particular info they want to read about or watch on YouTube.
You’ll also be able to promote your own products and services – not just those of other affiliate marketers or ClickBank.
You can even create an autoresponder series, so you can follow up with people who have subscribed for it.
While there are a lot of people who complain that some of the products on CB are too expensive, I personally disagree with them.
Since there are thousands of goods available, you can pretty much find exactly what you’re looking for – even if it’s a high-ticket product.
This means that you have access to virtually any kind of print or computer oriented media without spending too much out of pocket.
As long as you know how to promote your own offers through an affiliate page, email follow-ups, and targeted traffic, you’ll be able to make money online doing what you love – sharing amazing content with your audience through blog articles, YouTube channel or whichever marketing medium you choose.
As for ClickBank’s training center, Spark (once known as ClickBank University), it offers plenty of training and useful tips to promote ClickBank products on your own website, Facebook groups, YouTube videos or YouTube ads, it doesn’t matter.
In the end, it’s your personal preference on which marketing strategy you employ to make money with ClickBank and grow your business.
It also offers other ways on maximizing your income as an affiliate marketer, such as offering your own affiliate program and tracking down new potential affiliates to bring into your sponsor’s downline.
Just be mindful that if you sign up for the training, it has a 7-day free trial that automatically converts to a $47 monthly subscription.
How To Make Money With Clickbank Step-by-Step Guide: 7 Steps to Earning Commissions for the Affiliate Marketer
ClickBank users can easily earn as much as $400 monthly (and even more) depending upon several factors.
These factors include the products that you choose, the amount of traffic that hits your online landing page for each product, and how well you are able to convert your visitors into customers.
The seven steps below will set on on the path to making money with ClickBank once you’ve decided which niche you choose to go after. This will also be a determining factor in how much you will earn in commissions.
In order to earn these commissions you need to:
- Become an affiliate
- Find a product to promote
- Create a HopLink (affiliate link)
- Promote the product
- Drive traffic
- Earn commissions
- Get paid
Step 1. Become an affiliate
Becoming an affiliate for ClickBank is quite simple. I have already outlined the steps in the “How Do I Sign Up for ClickBank?” section of this article.
But there are a few more steps to round out the process.
Once you are approved for your account. Login in and head over to your account settings.
When the page loads, you will see three sections “Account Information“, “Contact Information“, and “Payment Information“.
Each of these sections is self-explanatory, but I would pay particular attention to the payment section.
Here you want to furnish your bank account direct deposit details, payment method, and select your payment limit.
You definitely want to do these steps because when you make money, the payment method you added during the signup process will be how you will receive payments.
Also, you have the option to receive payments by electronic transfer. Using wire transfer is more geared for international affiliates.
I mention this because new affiliates may get confused and select the wrong payment method after meeting the established payment threshold.
This may lead to delays in receiving your earnings during the payout period.
Step 2. Find a product to promote
After you have set up your account head over to the marketplace on the ClickBank platform. Here’s where the fun begins!
If you look over to the left of the page/dashboard, you will see a category menu.
The menu contains twenty-four categories of products to promote for your marketing purposes.
When looking for a ClickBank product to sell on your site you want to use the following metrics:
Gravity
The ClicBank gravity score is a rating utilized to gauge the sales momentum of affiliate offers on the ClickBank affiliate marketplace.
Spanning a 12-week rolling time period, the gravity score computes the number of outstanding affiliates who are generating commissions on particular affiliate program.
The greatest emphasis will be on current affiliate goods sold.
This number is necessary for both sellers and affiliates, but in various ways:
For sellers, the ClickBank Gravity Score acts as social validation to entice quality affiliates.
This is confirmation that your items not only can get generate profits but have actually gotten a recent purchase of products.
For affiliates, the ClickBank Gravity Score functions as a metric to discover appealing offers that are currently making earnings for affiliates.
Recognizing that both sides depend upon gravity in assisting their buying decisions, you can without a doubt be sure that it’s a crucial factor.
When selecting a product for your affiliate site, you want to pick a product that has a minimum of 30 gravity to 100 gravity.
This is what I dub the sweet spot because you know that there are people making consistent earnings,
If the gravity is great than 100, let’s say 349 gravity, it’s a good indicator that it a new product release.
You can expect that sales will fall off relatively quickly and you may waste your time trying to generate sales with a product that is so saturated.
Good commission rate
ClickBank gives vendors two options for affiliates to receive their commissions: revenue share (commonly known as revshare) and CPA (which means “cost per action”).
The commission type you choose is up to you. The only thing I would recommend if you can is to opt for the revshare method.
This is because it will be easier to track your earnings instead of having one big lump sum payment for sales from ClickBank based on cost per action.
When doing affiliate marketing, it’s best that you get your sales up as quickly as possible because once the period for receiving a commission ends ClickBank will no longer count any sales until the next time you reach the commission for that part of the purchase.
Learn How To Make Money Selling Other People's Products!
***Affiliate Disclaimer: This post contains product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.
Affiliate marketing and email marketing tools
If you are going to be promoting ClickBank products, one thing you want to make sure of when picking a vendor is that they have affiliate and email marketing tools.
You want to make sure that the tools they have are easy to use and geared towards helping you sell their product.
Picking a product to promote without any of the marketing tools means more time you are going to spend creating graphics and banner ads.
We don’t want that!
Low initial costs
Keep an eye out for products that have low initial costs. This is crucial if you want to make a consistent commission with ClickBank.
You want to do this because people will buy more when the price tag is lower, and people generally don’t like risk.
You know this intuitively as well!
That means there is a good percentage of affiliate marketers who would opt for a product that costs $15 instead of a product with the same value that costs $50.
If your item has recurring fees, you increase your chances of having a constant flow of commission payments from ClickBank.
This is good practice because it’s almost essential for you to have recurring commissions for you to really make a nice income with affiliate marketing.
You also want to avoid products that are too technical, unless you have an established audience that you can market to.
Low refund rate
Surprisingly, many people that buy products online will file for reimbursement with the credit card company even if they have no intention of using the product and just want to take advantage of the money-back guarantee offered by some vendor.
That means when you are trying to market a product, the percentage of the return is going to become part of your commission.
A high rate will make it difficult for you to try to convert and sell products because the customers feel like they can “get away with” blowing some cash without having to use it.
You need a low rate in order to keep making consistent sales. You want to check and see the refund rates, especially if it’s a recurring payment product.
Good ClickBank reviews
One of the hacks that you can use to find out if a product is right for you to market is by checking out both the positive and negative reviews from ClickBank users and customers.
You will quickly see that some products have many positive reviews while others have far more negative than positive reviews.
You want to find products that have mostly positive reviews and few complaints because those are the ones that people are generally happier with.
That positive feedback will make it easier for you to sell the product, and that’s exactly the thing you want: making it easy for our customers to buy products.
Related products
Products with related products also mean more chances for you to make sales because if it’s a product that is well-liked by previous customers, they are happy and willing to buy the other products made by the vendor.
Making sure there are related products available can also help you increase your ClickBank earnings.
If you have numerous related items available, you are more likely to have the potential of making recurring commissions on each product.
Step 3. Create HopLinks
A HopLink is nothing more than the affiliate link that you make using the vendor’s tracking data so you can see how well your marketing efforts are doing.
This unique link is provided when you establish your ClickBank account. It’s really important to have a HopLink because it will tell you what your conversion rate is.
If, for example, you had 100 clicks with a HopLink and only 10 of them made purchases, you would know you have a 10% conversion rate.
That’s pretty good!
So you know what to focus on for improving your sales by focusing on that percentage.
Step 4. Promote the product
Typically, most marketers
will use their webpage to promote ClickBank products. It’s one of the easiest steps for you to begin to take action.
If you’ve got your own site or are planning on starting your own blog, then this will work out great for you.
Just make sure you include ads in it and promote ClickBank offers. By doing this, you can generate more sales through your site.
Don’t forget about social media!
You can use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Step 5. Drive Traffic
You want to make sure that you drive traffic to the affiliate page for a product, not your own product.
If people come to see what material is available on your blog about a topic they are interested in, they are more likely to click through.
If you talk about it and then send them off directly where they can get more info about the product.
If they see your own promotional material, they aren’t going to want to buy a product from you because that would be like buying an affiliate product from yourself.
Step 6. Earn commissions
I don’t want to sound like Captain Obvious, but the whole reason you are doing everything I have mentioned above is to earn a commission.
You can do affiliate marketing on your own or you can use the ClickBank platform to help.
Regardless of which method, if you are promoting products and getting sales done there will be commissions for you!
So make sure you check out the tracking data about your affiliate account so that way you know how much money is being made and make sure you are getting paid correctly.
You need to market affiliate products if you want to make money with ClickBank.
It’s a great way to make quick cash and have an asset that you can use anywhere on the internet!
Step 7. Get paid
And lastly, you want to make sure you get paid. This is why the account setup up is so important.
You want to make sure the payments you receive are going to direct deposit to either your checking or savings account.
If you have to mail a check somewhere, it’s going to take at least 10 days for that money to hit your bank account.
That’s a lot of time!
Pros Of ClickBank:
1. You’ll have access to more than two million products in the ClickBank online marketplace – These products cater to virtually any niche, so you can pretty much find whatever you want – whether it’s print-based or digital media.
2. The commissions for most affiliate products are recurring – Which means you’ll earn money even if the customer cancels his or her payment after a certain period of time. This is why more than two million affiliates have joined ClickBank since 1998 and continue to promote formatted for computer products today!
3. They also offer plenty of promotional tools such as banners, widgets, and landing pages. By simply checking out your affiliate dashboard, you’ll be able to access them quickly so that you can begin sending targeted traffic to your offers as soon as possible.
4. They also offer a 100% money-back guarantee policy for all products on the ClickBank Marketplace, so they’re pretty confident about the quality of their product portfolio.
Cons of ClickBank:
1. Maybe a bit overwhelming for new affiliates – because there are so many different digital products for you to promote, it can be a bit overwhelming for those who are not familiar with affiliate marketing.
It’s good to know what your audience wants and what type of niche they’re interested in before deciding which product you want to promote. This will save you time, so you can have better results faster.
2. The affiliate training center does not have an autoresponder – but you can use another autoresponder service and create your own series of emails based on the information that CB offers.
Is ClickBank a scam?
There are many ClickBank reviews that call ClickBank a scam. And I know you’re probably not going to believe me here, but the thing is that nothing in affiliate marketing is for sure.
You could have the most amazing product out there and nobody will buy it if you are not willing to put in the effort promoting your offers.
ClickBank is not a scam… it’s a business opportunity. Anyone can get caught up in the hype.
But then again, nothing is promised and everything has to be earned!
Final Thoughts
It’s as simple as that. The key to any program for an affiliate is and always will be the product.
If you can manage to find a well-converting offer and then market it effectively, you will earn commissions no matter what platform or marketplace you’re promoting on!
Congratulations on reading this article until the end! I hope you found this ClickBank review helpful
If you want to make more money online, you need to have the correct mindset and click here now!
Beginner Affiliate Marketing FAQs
How much does it cost to join ClickBank?
The cost to join or set up an account with ClickBank is free. However, the cost of running a successful business does not come cheap. It can’t be stressed enough that you should find out what will make you succeed before starting anything else.
What are the Best Methods to Get Traffic to Your Affiliate Link?
When it comes to getting traffic to your link, there are a few options you can choose from. For example, there is direct traffic, organic traffic, paid traffic, and referral traffic.
As you build your business you will likely use all of them, but I recommend starting out with free traffic.
Free traffic is the best way to start because it is free. The top options I recommend are:
- Use long-tail keywords
- Post quality articles to your blog
- Build a list of emails
- Writing guest posts
- Post videos on YouTube
- Post to Facebook
Use long-tail keywords
These are words that find buyers are looking for before they start searching for products. For example, “make money online” gets over 15 million searches per month, while “how to start affiliate marketing” gets around 400 monthly searches.
Post quality articles to your blog
Quality articles are what you start with when you want to start getting traffic. It is an easy way to start bringing in traffic from search engines.
The idea is that people start searching for phrases related to your niche and find your blog post, which contains a quality article as well as a link at the end. This would be considered back-linking and it is a great start for getting quality traffic to your link.
Build an email list
Creating a list of emails of people that you can market to directly will get you more money than anything else online. If done correctly, you will most likely have about 1 out of every 3 people click the links in your emails and purchase something. This means it’s easy to start earning commissions directly through your list.
Building a list isn’t easy, but the best way I’ve found is by writing articles on my blog and asking people to subscribe at the end. You can also use a service like Aweber or Getresponse.
Writing guest posts
Guest posting is a great way to start bringing in high-quality links and content for your website. This will require some outreach to other site owners in your niche.
The objective of this strategy is establishing a relationship and ensuring that you are pitching high-quality content that will be interesting for their audience.
Post videos on YouTube
This is an underutilized form of content that many people don’t often leverage. If done correctly, you could see a massive amount of traffic coming directly from your affiliate links.
The strategy with videos is to release videos on a regular basis that provide visual material that will help people solve their problems or find success within your niche.
Post to all your social media profiles
The final option for getting traffic to your links is that you can post on all your social media profiles. We always try to add a link at the end, but this isn’t required when posting something publicly.
This is not the end-all of the options, but they are the best practices to get free traffic to your link. On the flip side, you definitely want to avoid using paid traffic for your affiliate business!
Paid traffic is not desirable to squander your money as it does not convert to sales.
