What is Clickbank? I’m guessing by the fact that you are reading my blog that at some stage you have looked on the net for ways to make money online! Well if you have ever looked for any information on affiliate marketing, online product creation or training designed to help you start your own online business, then no doubt you will have heard the name Clickbank. In this article we take a look and ask what is Clickbank? Can you really make money online with this site as a vendor and as an affiliate? We also ask is Clickbank a scam? Find out the answers to these questions and more in our in depth guide to the Clickbank marketplace.
What is Clickbank? One of the Largest Retailers Online
Clickbank is one of the largest online retailers on the internet. The company aims to make the process of selling products online easy for retailers and product creators. But the biggest use of this website is within affiliate marketing community. CB also makes it really easy to sign up as an affiliate, instantly giving entrepreneurs access to thousands of products to promote and sell on their website for a commission.
Affiliate Marketing? What’s that?
If you are new to the concept of affiliate marketing, allow me to quickly explain…
Affiliate marketing is the process where anyone, anywhere in the world can be given a special online website link that leads to a product or service. This link is called an “affiliate link” or a “hoplink” in Clickbank language. Signing up with Clickbank gives you access to thousands of online products and services that you can promote as an affiliate.
Most affiliate marketers own their own website and advertise affiliate products within their site in order to make extra revenue. Some affiliates make a full time income, simply by adverting other people’s products and services and taking a cut of the selling price once a sale has been made.
The process is simple… You sign up with a product marketplace like Clickbank, who have a database of many affiliate products that you can promote. You select a product or service that is within the same theme of your website niche and get your unique affiliate link. Your affiliate link is then placed within your website. When a visitor clicks on the link, they are taken to the relevant product page and if they make a purchase, you make a sale and earn commission.
Each affiliate link that you are given is totally unique to you. So for each product that you promote, you will get a totally unique affiliate link that is yours alone. Each affiliate marketer is given his very own link for every product that he or she decides to promote. This is how product creators keep track of how many visitors each affiliate is sending to their site. More importantly this is how product creators track how many sales you have made for each product.
For a more in depth explanation, please visit our this page: What is affiliate marketing?
Clickbank Commission rates
CB is very popular for affiliate marketers because unlike a lot of affiliate marketing companies, the commission rates are very high. The amount of commission that you earn will depend on the type of product that you choose, the selling price and the percentage of the selling price that the vendor is willing to pay you.
Commission rates on Clickbank start from anywhere above 10% and go right the way up to 100%! Yes you heard me right, some product creators will pay you 100% of the selling price! The average commission rate on Clickbank is around the 50% mark, which is still quite high in comparison to many affiliate companies.
There are many products within Clickbank that will pay you “reoccurring” monthly payments. These commissions are excellent if you can get them as you can get paid over and over again, month after month for generating one single sale.
Is Clickbank A Scam?
Like many companies, CB has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years. Going back a few years Clickbank was slightly different to the way it is today. The company was there, right at the beginning when affiliate marketing started becoming popular among ordinary people like you and me. There were lots of myths and mistruths about Clickbank and affiliate marketing, some that still exist today. Creating an affiliate business was said to be the easiest thing that you could ever do to make money online and become one of the rich and wealthy. Unfortunately the constant tales of making easy money with CB only led people to be extremely disappointed and frustrated when things didn’t quite turn out the way that the “guru’s” had said it would.
I can say from experience that I was there in the beginning and Clickbank was full of fake and useless systems that claimed to be able to make you tons of money online. Product creators took advantage of the fact that Clickbank was easy to set up and easy to make sales with as there were so many people searching Clickbank for ways to make extra income online. CB was flooded with make money online products that covered every area imaginable.
But that was just one category, the weight loss and dieting niche was no better either! CB had made the process of putting a product online so easy that product creators were churning out digital eBooks as fast as they possibly could, just so that they could cash in.
Clickbank Upsells & Complaints
A lot of complaints have been made for years about “up-sells” within Clickbank products. Upselling is the process where a product or service is sold for a low price and then more products or services are sold after the initial sale is made, usually at a much higher price!
A typical example would be a product that initially costs just $20 may have an additional add-on costing an extra $200 or $50 per month option.
So does this mean that Clickbank is a Scam? No, absolutely not. It’s totally fair to say that over the years there have been a lot of products sold through Clickbank that could well be classed as scams. Some products have been known to bend the truth and some have told outright lies! Yes, it’s fair to say that CB as the online retailer of the these products should have had better procedures in place for dealing with these product creators and in recent year it appears that they have tried to clean up their act.
Pros and cons for affiliate marketers
Clickbank has become one of the most worldly recognized affiliate marketplaces online. As we have already said, it’s incredibly easy to get signed up as both a product creator and an affiliate. There are tons of training courses out there online that will tell you that making money online with Clickbank is easy, however this simply isn’t always the case!
Clickbank has been around for a very long time and because of this there are tons of information on the net that is out of date and no longer works. Because of what they read a lot of people think that Clickbank is the easy path to getting rich online, but this really isn’t the case. The Clickbank marketplace is just one small element in the big picture if you really want to build a successful business online.
As a beginner Clickbank offers you a great opportunity to start promoting products within the hour. Unlike many companies that require you to jump through hoops before being accepted as an affiliate, Clickbank has you started very quickly. However, having an affiliate link that leads to product page is not enough to make constant income online. If you are going to make real money online you will need up to date information and training on the best way to set everything up.
Clickbank also offer training for both affiliate marketers and product creators. Being one of the largest online digital retailers you would think that their training would be second to none, however this is not the case.
Clickbank University
Clickbank has evolved over the years and in recent years has made some efforts to clean up its act, especially within the “make money online” niche. So when Clickbank University arrived on the scene I was somewhat surprised to see that it was being hosted by two of Clickbank’s vendors that were most famous for creating lots of money making systems. Although Clickbank University should have been one of the internet’s best training courses for both affiliates and vendors, it actually turned out to be mediocre at best.
Should you consider promoting Clickbank products?
Clickbank have had some stick over the years and their reputation has taken more than a few knocks for various reasons. However this has not stopped Clickbank from being one of the world’s largest online retailers. In fact Clickbank was recently listed as one of the top 100 internet retailers. The CB marketplace has become huge, due mainly to the fact that they have thousands of affiliate marketers who promote their products constantly.
For a new affiliate marketer this is both a good and bad thing. The amount of affiliate marketers promoting Clickbank products is massive and this leads to a lot of competition, especially within the most popular categories. On the flip side of this, a lot of affiliate marketers promoting products creates a lot of “buzz” online. Affiliates spread the work in various ways about products and this in turn creates demand for that product. Nobody wants to promote a product that people don’t want to buy.
Making money with Clickbank as a product creator
As a product creator you should be aware that Clickbank are not as easy to get into as they used to be. Gone are the days where you could throw together a weak product and start getting tons of sales the following month. However, once again CB does make it as easy as possible to get your product shown within the Clickbank Marketplace. Since CB make their money from every sale that is generated through their site, it’s within their interest to make the process as easy as possible to get your product online. Products in the money making niche are the most difficult to get onto Clickbank these days as they have been forced to implement lots of rules that safeguard buyers. Although this has helped improve the quality of products on the CB market, there is certainly more room for improvement.
Clickbank University is the main product sold by Clickbank that teaches how to get a product launched within the Clickbank marketplace. But even after purchasing this course and setting everything up with their expensive site builder, there is no guarantee that your product will ever make it to market.
One mistake that many people make is believing that if their product makes it to the Clickbank marketplace that they will automatically start making sales. Unfortunately this isn’t the case! After spending hours putting together a product that is accepted by CB you still have to ensure that affiliates see your product and have a good reason to promote it. On saying that, Clickbank has thousands of affiliates that search the marketplace every day. If you can get your product seen and if you can get lots of affiliates promoting your product then you can make some serious money.
Since Clickbank is one of the largest sellers of digital media, selling a popular eBook means that you could potentially make a fortune from having other people sell your product.
Clickbank refunds
One of the best things about Clickbank for buyers is the fact that they can always get their money back! If you purchase a product that is sold through the CB website you can always get your money back within 60 days, regardless of the reason. This is great for the people that are buying these products as it means that they can essentially try the product out and if they are not entirely happy with the purchase, they can simply ask for a refund.
This may be very good for the person buying the product but it’s a slightly different story for the affiliate. Since it’s easy to get your money back through Clickbank, refunds are high! This means that as an affiliate you might spend hours and hours building webpages and promoting a product only to find that once you have started making sales, the refunds also start to roll in! You could well make several sales as an affiliate and then see them all disappear before your eyes up to 60 days down the line.
Although frustrating for both affiliates and product creators, refunds are just part of being a vendor or affiliate. It’s the product vendor’s job to make sure that his or her product is of the best quality in order to avoid refunds from happening. It’s the job of the affiliate marketer to ensure that the right people see the right products. Although this is easier said than done in a lot of cases, it often pays to try and make your visitors as targeted as possible to ensure success.
My Final Advice
Clickbank is no more a scam than any other internet marketplace containing affiliate products. Yes, there are quite a lot of complaints online and there are certainly things that CB could do to improve the quality of some of the products that it offers within its marketplace. However, high refund rates and poor products can be found in most affiliate product sites.
If you want to learn how to make money online as a product creator, Clickbank certainly offers an easy way to get your product online but depending on the type of product you are making and the niche in which you are working will determine how easy it is to get on the CB marketplace.
Clickbank is not an all in one easy solution to making money online as an affiliate marketer either. Although many people will tell you otherwise, promoting Clickbank products to make money online is not as easy as some people would have you believe.
In order to stand the best chance of making consistent money online you need a good understanding of how affiliate marketing works and how to properly set up your website in order to attract the most targeted people to your offers.
My No.1 Recommendation
If you are interested in making money as an affiliate marketer my No.1 recommendation is Wealthy Affiliate. This website offers a completely free beginners course that is right up to date with the latest changes online. Unlike many training courses and systems that you will find online, Wealthy Affiliate is brought up to date on a regular basis. The starter membership is completely free of charge with a premium option should you decide to take things to the next level.
Should you decide to join the free membership you also get my full help and support at no extra cost. You really have nothing to lose by trying this out.
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