Welcome to this Clickbank review. In this article I’ll be giving you the information you need if you are thinking of using the Clickbank site as a way to promote products as an affiliate and make money online.
It is certainly true that ClickBank has established itself as one of the most popular, if not the most popular affiliate marketplace in the online world.
Yet, ClickBank itself admits that most newcomers to the platform who sigh up to become an affiliate really struggle to make money and that the majority actually fail.
So does ClickBank really work for the serious aspirant who is focused on becoming an online entrepreneur? In this article, I will give you a brief overview of ClickBank, some words about who it is for, some basic pros and cons of signing up and my overall thoughts which will include whether I recommend it for affiliate marketing or not.
You can sign up as a Vendor, and Affiliate or both on ClickBank. Our focus here will be on joining ClickBank as an Affiliate.
General Overview
Service Name: ClickBank
Owners: Tim and Eileen Barber
Website: clickbank.com
Cost: Free
Date Created: 1998
Ranking: No. 1. Affiliate Website worldwide
ClickBank is essentially an online marketplace where digital products are sold and where anyone who has an account with ClickBank can promote these products or services as an Affiliate.
The marketplace has a fairly wide range of products, starting with a list of categories which are then divided into sub-categories.
Once you have found a product that you want to promote as an affiliate, you can visit the affiliate page for further information and marketing resources.
After generating your affiliate link, or hoplink as they call it, you are free to promote your chosen product(s) by whatever methods or strategies you chose.
So, if your marketing skills and methods are good, you can certainly make sales by promoting ClickBank products.
Who is ClickBank For?
Marketers and Affiliates of all levels can use and profit from using ClickBank. The process of finding a niche or products to promote and getting your affiliate link, as well as some useful resources are all fairly straightforward steps to take.
The newbie will have a harder and slower time making money, while the experienced marketer will find it easy and significantly faster.
If you have your own product which is not on ClickBank and you are fully invested in promoting that, then ClickBank may not be for you. But really anyone eligible for an account, can make ClickBank work for them.
ClickBank Tools and Support
As has already been pointed out, there are affiliate pages useful for those promoting ClickBank products. Other than this, you will not exactly get free training on how to get the most out of joining ClickBank. They do however offer their own training for paid members at ClickBank University. If you need help or are unsatisfied with something, you can submit Support Tickets and get an answer within about week or sooner, sometimes even within an hour.
ClickBank has a good reputation for processing refunds. A lot of their products come with the option to refund for a certain period which is usually quite generous; it could be anywhere from 7 to 30 days.
Benefits of Joining ClickBank
High Commission Rates: One of the best benefits of promoting products from ClickBank is the high commission rates. While many other sites offer a small percentage in commission to affiliates, ClickBank frequently offers a whopping 75-90% commission per sale.
Products with Recurring Commissions: A good number of the products sold on ClickBank offer monthly subscription plans which means you as the affiliate will receive monthly recurring commissions on certain products you sell. As these build up, you can really begin to generate sustainable, long-term income online.
Marketing Resources: Many products on ClickBank offer promotion tools to affiliates, such as sales funnels, email swipes, video ads and various tested scripts etc. Whether already experienced or a bit at a loss, any affiliate can really benefit from these resources to make sales.
Drawbacks of Joining ClickBank
Meeting CDR: Before you can be paid by ClickBank you will have to make five sales with at least two different types of credit or debit card, e.g., Visa and Master card. It can be a slow and frustrating process to finally start getting the money owed to you from ClickBank.
Dated Look: ClickBank really does have a dated look which could potentially be a put-off for some people.
Dormancy Fees: If you do not make sales for a certain period, you will be subject to dormancy fees. The first of these typically starts after 90 days of no earnings. After all your trouble, they start dipping into your earnings. It won’t be a lot, but not only do they do it, but they won’t even notify you that it’s happening.
Unpopular and Dubious Products: ClickBank does have a lot of products that hardly anyone will ever have heard of. It’s not the easiest thing to sell such products to people. There is a way to see which products are selling but you also have to be careful about promoting those which have high competition rates. Besides this, they still sell a lot of scammy looking ‘Get Rich Quick’ and similar types of MMO programs with all the usual sales jargon surrounding them.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I would say ClickBank is worth making use of as an Affiliate, so long as you know what you’re getting into. Millions of people make money with it and generate good income.
The issues people have with ClickBank, particularly, failing to make money, are more to do with their methods of marketing than with ClickBank itself.
Any thoughts on this topic would be appreciated. I hope I have helped you decide whether ClickBank may work for you as an Affiliate.
I decided to join clickbank once in the past and i cannot say that I like it. It wasnt’ because I thought it was a scam, but rather because so many people were able to create products online and many of them were not real valuable products. They may have seemed valuable but there was no buffer to entry on quality products. The good ones got mixed with the bad ones. You had to be sure you were picking the right products as an affiliate and I personally did not want to spent the time doing that. I really appreiecat your article. I definitely agree with everything you’ve put here.
Thanks so much for this! Good point about the good products being mixed up with bad ones. That’s definitely still true to this day with ClickBank. Affiliate marketing often gets a bad rap because many affiliates simply promote things for the sake of it, well, purely for the sake of money. But they don’t necessarily even agree with or use these things themselves. Unfortunately, it’s all to easy to do this with ClickBank.
To be able to promote your business and span across so many people is something that will appeal to so many online marketers which is why I think it’s great that you have shared this informative and comprehensive article which I’m sure will serve as a superb introduction to a lot of people
Thank you so much for your positive feedback. Much appreciated.