Clickbank is the largest affiliate network and online marketplace for digital products on the Internet and it is one of my favorite affiliate networks. It is awesome for newbie online marketers who want to promote and sell digital goods that offer high commissions but
is Clickbank a scam and how do you really
make money with Clickbank.
Choosing an affiliate network is one of the first decisions a new affiliate, blogger or online marketer has to make. Ideally you want a network with a good range of products, consistently high commission rates, an easy to use system and good customer support.
Getting Started With Clickbank
1) Head over to Go to their homepage and sign up as an affiliate. It’s free. Everything is pretty straight forward requiring only basic address and contact information. Clickbank allows virtually anyone to sign up and start promoting products right away.
2) Once you’ve signed up, one of the first things you’ll want to do is browse their marketplace for products related to your site’s content. Clickbank has thousands of products to choose from and you can quickly and easily browse the individual categories to discover what products and topics are hot and being actively pushed by affiliates. However it is important to take your time choosing the right affiliate products to promote.
How To Choose Affiliate Products on ClickBank
The best thing to do is filter by both “popularity” and the “gravity” score of a product.To filter by gravity you’ll simply click on the dropdown and sort by popularity. So as you scroll down you can see the most popular “products” that are related to your niche.
Next you will want to filter by gravity. You can either filter in the drop down or filter via the sidebar category list. You want to find products that have a gravity of 10 or better. If your topic has a gravity of ten or better then you know that you have a topic that can sell very well online.
Understanding Clickbank Gravity
So what is gravity? I’m not going to go in an extensive training on all the features of Clickbank but I want to make sure you understand what gravity is because it’s an important concept.
A product that has a gravity of 10 means that it’s making anywhere from $2-3000 dollars a week in total sales. So your target is them, but if you see a niche or topics where there are a number of products that have high gravity number then it is a highly profitable topic.
Gravity is a measure of the number of separate affiliates that make sales of a particular product. For example, if a product has a gravity of [38.75] an easy way of thinking of it is there’s roughly [38/39] different affiliates making sales of that product every week.
So one affiliate might make 100 sales a day, another affiliate might make 1 sale a day, another affiliate might make 7 sales a day. Each affiliate can only add ‘1’ point as a maximum to the gravity. If an affiliate made a sale say three weeks ago, but they haven’t made another sale since, then they might only add say 0.3 to the gravity. It works on a sliding scale. The longer ago they made a sale, the lower the amount they add to the gravity. This technique is important because you’re establishing what type of information is selling.
A rough rule of thumb is just to think of it as the number of separate affiliates that are making sales of that product. Ultimately the key is to find a product with a high Clickbank Marketplace gravity ranking because you will probably make more money.
Promoting Your Clickbank Affiliate Products
The people that do the best with affiliate marketing take the honest approach. I buy products that relate to the content on my website(s), review them and recommend them to my audience. If I don’t like the product, I don’t promote it. It’s that simple.
One o the easiest ways to market affiliate products is to use them yourself and write a review. Be honest. Tell what you like and what you don’t like about the product. Then finish the review with an affiliate link to the product sales page.
Clickbank offers a detailed guide for getting started and knowing how to obtain and create links to the affiliate products for your site.
Is Clickbank A Scam?
As good as Clickbank is there are two major problems. Unfortunately – and this is not just a Clickbank problem – there are a lot of “poor- quality” get rich quick books and products that people purchase and when all is said an done, they are left disappointed and unfulfilled. So they assume all products on Clickbank are the “get-rich-quick” type…and that is not true.
There are some awesome products on Clickbank and many of the top online marketers and industry leaders use or have used this affiliate marketplace with great success at some point. Before buying or choosing to promote a Clickbank product, it is important to see which products are useful, bring value, and are relevant to your target audience.
Do not promote something because it has a high commission attached to it, it’s not worth it. Your visitors and email list subscribers can tell when you are promoting something just for the sale of making money. Do this one too many times and you can ruin your reputation and your online business.
The second issue with Clickbank, which can be quite discouraging for new affiliate marketers is that Clickbank will deduct $1 from your account every 2 weeks and not pay out even if you have set the minimum payout level, which is $10.00, until you meet the Clickbank minimum payout conditions.
So here is what sucks about Clickbank (and most affiliate programs, in fact)…they will charge you a few for every pay-period you don’t make a sale.. Ooh!!
And the worst part of the Clickbank minimum payout conditions is that they INSIST you have a minimum of 5 unique credit card payments (not counting Paypal transactions). And that sales have to come from at least two different payment methods (like Mastercard and VISA).
In other words, it makes it really tricky for anyone who’s just getting started online to get paid – which can be super annoying. I know that when I made my first sale on Clickbank for about $90, I was jumping up and down excited to have made a commission, but because I hadn’t yet met the minimum payout conditions I couldn’t get a check.
This can be deflating, especially when you work so hard to get a sale and then have money sitting in your account that is dwindling down to nothing until you meet the requirements. Now to come to the defense of Clickbank, these minimums are there to protect the marketplace from fraud and scammers but it still sucks, especially when it seems like the entire world is out to conspire against you getting money.
Clickbank is no more a scam than Amazon, LinkShare or Commission Junction is a scam. It’s an affiliate network that sells digital goods created by people from all over the world.
In summary, Clickbank is an awesome network used by many of the most respected marketers in the industry. With a simple and easy to use system, easy sign up and good support, Clickbank is not noted as the go-to affiliate program for digital products online because it’s a scam. While there are a few things that could be improved, overall Clickbank is a great starting point for people getting started in affiliate marketing.
No Traffic. No Money.
Clickbank is not a silver bullet and it is definitely not some lottery ticket to massive wealth online. If you don’t have enough targeted traffic to your blog or website, then you won’t convert many sales regardless of the affiliate product you are promoting. People who say “Clickbank doesn’t work” probably don’t have enough traffic coming to their websites and/or they aren’t promoting the products properly.
When you have thousands of visitors landing on your sire each day, you better believe you can make money with Clickbank or any other affiliate program for that matter. Remember, traffic is the lifeline to any business. Without it you can’t survive.
Succeeding With ClickBank
The key to success with Clickbank or any affiliate program is to build a blog or website as I have done here. The goal is the educate and write valuable, useful content centered around your niche topic and then recommend Clickbank products that match your site’s content. You can write product reviews or subtly recommend the products on relevant pages or promote them to your email list.
Making money online takes work and is not an overnight home run. However, if you have the right training and approach affiliate marketing the right way, it can become a very lucrative income stream.
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) and then try to market the product to them. You can make use of facebook pages and the information boxes of youtube videos to promote your hoplink and receive targeted traffic.
Clickbank is a retail marketplace for selling digital products. They have thousands of ebooks available in various categories. Some of popular categories available in Clickbank marketplace are Arts & Entertainment, Business/Investing, Computers/Internet, Cooking/Foods, Games, Health & Fitness, Parenting, Politics and Software’s & Services etc. Mostly ebooks will be focused around how to fix a particular problem like how to walk your dog, how to lose weight, how to repair your xbox etc.
