Can You Make Money with ClickBank? Or Is it Full of Scams…

Alongside Amazon, Clickbank is one of the most recognised Affiliate Networks online. Amazon is well known and in the public eye, 43% of all US transactions online went through Amazon and there a lot of ways of making money with them.

But Amazon around physical products.  Clickbank is typically a lot of digital products. It’s affiliate program accepts anyone and their commission rate is much higher.

But there is also a lot of low-quality products that lead some to believe it is just full of scam products.  I will cover how you can make money with clickbank and how you can ensure the products you promote are right for your readers.

What is Clickbank?

Many would assume that Clickbank is just an affiliate network, but it is actually a lot more than just that. You will find it is actually a marketplace for product creators and affiliates to make money together in a simple platform.

Really Easy to Use for Affiliates

Affiliates will find it easy to get started – it is free to join and there is no screening process.  In this way, it is very much like an affiliate network.

Product Owners Benefit from an E-Commerce Platform

As a digital product owner, you can simply add your product to the Clickbank database and they will take care of the checkout, e-commerce part of your business.  They will also add the affiliate program part, so people will promote your products.

This is a good move if you are not that technical, but there is a cost associated with it and it will be more than you might expect. ($1+7.5% sales).

It can be a great starting point, but eventually when you are moving serious volume, you might consider moving it to another platform.

The Pros of Clickbank

• Up to 75% Commission Rate (typically 30-50%)
• A lot of Unique Niches to Promote
• You can see in the majority of countries
• Can Organise by High Converting Products
• Commissions can be split with another affiliate for a project
• Vendors welcome most affiliates, generally

The Cons of Clickbank

• High Fees from Clickbank lower commissions
• $150 Maximum Commission earned from a single sale
• A lot of low-quality or scam products
• Lots of competition on popular products
• High costs associated to the e-commerce side

How to Start Making Money with Clickbank

Once logged into the Clickbank marketplace you will notice a ton of categories to choose from to get started promoting any of the products on offer.  It would be prudent to stick with a category in something that you are interested in, that will go a long way to helping you promote the product to earn any commission off of it.

The categories are far ranging and cover almost all niches. This will hopefully make it easier to identify products in your niche.  Being considered a subject matter expert will go a long way to building trust, this will improve your chances of making a sale.

Once you choose a category, you will be presented with some metrics to consider when seeing the list of products.

What Makes a Great Product to Promote in Clickbank?

It can be hard to narrow down a perfect product, but there are definitely some factors that can help you pick up a great product to promote.

1. A low dollar offer exists ($1 trial)
2. There is recurring income on the backend
3. There is at least one upsell
4. There is at least one downsell
5. There is search volume for the problem it is solving
6. There are positive reviews for the review keyword for that product
7. Gravity over 20 for existing products
8. Gravity between 5-20 for new products (these are looking promising)
9. Projected commissions can cover your ad costs (assume a 2% conversion rate)
10. 10.The Landing Page doesn’t look like a scam

Whilst these 10 points can give you a good overview on the product, the best way is for you to review the selling page yourself and make your own mind up on whether it is a product to promote.

This is where Clickbank let’s itself down a bit, anyone can promote any product.  So a lot of the products are low quality and have a lot of similarities to scams.  The sales page is full of false promises or tells the user that they will make money overnight.  A lot of this can seem too pushy and actually put people off.  So you do all the hard work of selling a product to have it never convert.

Remember, there is always a trust element online and if you are just sending them to a over salesy funnel page, you will find it never converts.

Conducting Keyword Research for Clickbank Products

Whatever your niche website is, keyword research will work the same way for clickbank products.  But you will find there is more an emphasis on the information keywords as it is mostly digital products on there.

The main 3 types of keyword you will be trying to find are:

1. Product X Review
2. Best X
3. How/What (Info Keywords)

There is also the customer purchase lifecycle.  Knowing how to target each of these 3 points in the right way considering where that customer is in this cycle.

If they are looking for information, they are further away from making a purchase decision compared to someone who is looking for a product review.  This is normally where they are making their mind up on whether to buy it or not.

So you might point a how to guide at a review to then point that at the sales pitch.  That is more likely to work compared to a how to guide taking them straight to the sales page.

If you would like to learn more about the customer purchase lifecycle, check out this great blog post on it – “The Customer Purchase Lifecycle”

Creating a Sales Funnel as an Affiliate with Clickbank

Making Money with Clickbank will rely on your building up a sales funnel for the products you want to promote.  This would work in a very similar way to if you were promoting products on Amazon.  The key difference is, most people are further along in the purchase lifecycle when deciding whether to buy a product off of Amazon and there is the trust element already.  This will mean your conversions will be lower through Clickbank compared to Amazon.

You need to rely on SEO, Social Networks and Paid Ads to funnel traffic into your Clickbank Offer.

I would advise you to create a lot of supporting content, if your website is just sales funnels to Clickbank with no other supporting articles you will not find success in getting your page ranked well or finding the traffic you need.

Related Post: How Affiliate Marketing Really Works

To make it work, you will need to spend the time building out your website and getting consistent traffic, you can then utilise email marketing.  This way you can actually start sending them targeted emails around these sales funnels.  Email Marketing is still very effective, but I would wait until you are getting consistent traffic.  Otherwise it is just a cost you could do without.

Once you start converting some of these funnels, you will find you can then start investing in Paid Ads, Email Marketing, etc.

Is Clickbank Worth My Time?

I am going to be honest, you are going to find a lot of low-quality products on Clickbank that might lead you to think it is full of scams and not worth your time.

But like anything, spend a little more time digging through the crap and you will find there are products that are there to promote.

You will also find that many affiliates actually talk about the low-quality products in reviews (often negative reviews) but still utilise the affiliate link and sometimes people still buy the product regardless of the review.

Everyone is different and will have a different perspective on the products you talk about.  My only advice is be honest about the product you are promoting, point out both sides of the story – and if it looks too much like a scam, tell people.

Clickbank is very well known and offers a great starting point for people looking for products to promote in an affiliate marketing business, alongside Amazon it is the most recognised brands.  There are definitely some things to watch out for when looking for products, but don’t be put off by it.  There are some great products in amongst the crap with high commission rates for your online business.

IF you are still relatively new to affiliate marketing and feel Clickbank might not be for you just yet, I highly recommend people start out with an Amazon Affiliate website.  You can always utilise Clickbank or other affiliate networks further down the road.  If you would like to know how to get started with an Amazon Affiliate site, check out this post “How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing for Beginners”.

If you have any further questions around Clickbank, or Affiliate Marketing in general please leave them in the comments below.  I would also love to know about any experience you have had with Clickbank and want to share with us any tips that worked for you.