Using ClickBank

Using ClickBank

Using ClickBank: The Pros and Cons

by Mark Thompson

If you ask any group of Internet marketers to name three affiliate networks, they will probably all include ClickBank in the list. Everyone takes for granted the fact that ClickBank is probably the biggest affiliate marketing network. But in many ways, ClickBank isn’t an affiliate network at all — not in the strict sense of the word.

ClickBank is a facilitator for the sale of digital products; that is, it provides a method of promotion and payment for a vast range of digital products. It accepts almost any affiliate and actually provides very few tracking and marketing tools.

Compared to similar sites like E-junkie and PayDotCom, it can be costly for publishers to add their products to ClickBank. And even though it’s frowned upon, it is also easy for people to purchase products through their own links, thus depriving the publisher or affiliate of a large portion of their fees.

With these apparent negatives, there is one question that should be asked: Why is ClickBank so successful?

 

Trust

Purchasers trust ClickBank, and because they trust ClickBank, they are happy to buy from them with the knowledge that they will be able to get a no-questions-asked refund should the product not live up to the hype. This trust is the biggest point in favour of ClickBank, and the key to its success with affiliates, merchants, and buyers alike.

As a merchant, I know that I can put a product on ClickBank, and without much promotion, I can earn $2,000–$3,000 in the next week or so. If the product is successful and gets picked up by some super affiliates, then it will probably make
many sales every day for a few months.
As an affiliate, I know that people will be looking for popular products that are listed in ClickBank. Those people will have heard about the latest weight loss guide or guide to blogging and will be actively searching for information about it. Even as a beginner, I can grab some of this traffic and make sales.

And as a buyer, the ClickBank money-back guarantee increases my comfort level.  Most buyers are much more willing to take a risk on a product when purchasing through ClickBank.
ClickBank is a little like a digital equivalent of a Moroccan bazaar — there are buyers and sellers of every kind of ebook and guide. I’ve yet to build a site in any niche where I couldn’t find some ClickBank product to add to that site. 

Some sites will sell a ClickBank product or two every week; others will sell them only  once or twice a quarter. I even have a site with an obscure product that sold one copy last year, and one so far this year. Considering that the site cost me $8.99 and about an hour to set up, those $65 sales are a healthy profit.

In a press release sent out by ClickBank just over a year ago, they announced that in their first day of trade last year, they managed to take over $1 million worth of sales. Certainly since then, ClickBank has regularly been making sales of more than $1 million each day.
But it is not just the daily sales figures at ClickBank that are so impressive. Other statistics relating to ClickBank are proving to be just as impressive, and these will give you some idea as to why you may seriously want to consider using ClickBank to provide you with a regular source of income.

The Impressive Numbers
There are now more than 1.25 million people who are registered as affiliates at ClickBank. Of these, over 100,000 are classified as being active, and another 12,000 (or more) are classified as being publishers.

The sales taking place on ClickBank are currently running at 30% above those that occurred in 2007.

Currently there are more than 35,000 products listed and an additional 30 new ones are being added to this list each and every day.

The average price of the products being sold on ClickBank is $41, and the average rate of commission being paid to affiliate members is 55%. 

On average, nearly 25,000 sales per day take place on ClickBank. 

Despite these great stats, ClickBank’s real strength is that it is able to cater not only to affiliates, but also to merchants. So long as ClickBank has merchants happy to add products that provide the affiliates with a choice of product, then the system will continue to work.
Giving affiliates a choice among many products in a niche is a greta draw for affiliates. If they consider one product to be overexposed, they can easily choose a less-promoted product.

Getting Started through ClickBank

At the end of the day, the success of ClickBank comes down to those affiliates. They generate more than 70% of all the sales that are made through ClickBank. Promoting one of the many products available in the ClickBank marketplace is one of the most  common ways affiliates begin their marketing careers. The ease at which a complete newcomer can start to promote through ClickBank is yet another strength.

People can start to promote ClickBank products in a number of ways, the easiest of  these being to set up a blog providing information about the product and then create a review of it.  The next best thing to setting up a blog is to write some articles and then submit these to various article directories.  By using the article as a presell to the product and the resource box to direct potential customers to the sales page or a blog, the affiliate marketer is just a click away from a sale. 

With the predominance of free sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, prospective marketers don’t even need to spend any money to promote ClickBank products. This is a far cry from affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale, who often like to see existing sites and a level of experience before accepting affiliates.

Another method that lots of marketers use is to create ads on pay-per-click networks such as Google’s AdSense.  And as you master PPC techniques, you can be assured of getting a regular income from promoting ClickBank products. 

Once again, being a merchant on ClickBank is not as difficult as you would first imagine. Yes, you do need to have something to sell, but any products for which you need article content can be outsourced to one of the many specialist writers.You also have the choice of purchasing Private Label Rights (PLR) ebooks and then revise them to make them unique to you.

Once you have your product, it’s a simple matter to submit it to ClickBank for approval. After it’s been approved, you pay your fee and your product appears in the marketplace. Then you have access to thousands of potential affiliates. So if
you have not tried ClickBank yet, then it is about time that you took a look just to see what they have to offer you.

Nobody’s Perfect
Of course, as with any affiliate network, ClickBank has its weaknesses; however, it does seem to be striving to improve things. Until recently, payments to non-U.S. accounts were available only by check. Thankfully, they now pay directly into your bank account twice a month.

The biggest gripe that most publishers now have is that ClickBank refunds too easily. You’ll hear loads of cases of people submitting refund requests within a few minutes of downloading a guide, and of “serial refunders” who buy loads of
products and ask for refunds as a matter of course. Recently, it seems that ClickBank has been taking action to block serial refunders from purchasing additional products.

Of course, this no-questions-asked refund policy is the reason why ClickBank products are trusted by so many people, so it is a small price to pay for a great system. If you haven’t yet tried ClickBank as a publisher or affiliate, place it on your To Do list…you won’t regret it.

About the Author
Mark Thompson spent many years working in IT consultancy in London. Following a re-evaluation of his goals and lifestyle in 2004 he sold everything he couldn’t fit into the family car and moved to rural Spain where he now pursues a variety of online ventures. See: http://ww.income-academy.com
 

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