ClickBank for Beginners: A Complete Guide

Promoting and facilitating the sale of other people’s products has become one of the easiest ways to make money online. Affiliate marketing is the term that best describes this practice.

Platforms such as ClickBank help you find and market products that interest you. You then leverage all possible marketing platforms, such as blogs, videos, etc. to boost the sales of the product. In return for your hard work, you earn a commission on each sale.

If you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer who’s familiar with sales funnels, you’ll have a leg up in the competition. If not, don’t worry! You can learn the secret of making lots of money if you keep reading through this ClickBank guide for beginners.

Without further ado, let’s explore how ClickBank works, its pros and cons, practical steps to start earning money, and effective affiliate strategies!

What to Expect

In this guide, you’ll learn how to earn money with ClickBank by implementing our proven, profitable method.

So who’s this guide for? If you’re a beginner looking to learn about ClickBank who wants to…

  • Become familiar with its inner workings,
  • Maximize its advantages while dodging its disadvantages,
  • Learn how to recognize the best products,
  • Find the fastest route to profitability,
  • Create your affiliate link successfully, and
  • Write effective product reviews…

… then you’re in the right place!

What Is ClickBank?

A lot of people see ClickBank as just another type of affiliate networking. Unlike the conventional affiliate sites, ClickBank acts as a network for both product creators and affiliates, allowing them to earn money simultaneously without the need for complicated paperwork or deals.

ClickBank is a digital product affiliate network that houses tons of digital items such as software, e-books, films, etc. It merely functions as an intermediary for commodity manufacturers and affiliates.

As a seller, you can use ClickBank’s framework to set your product(s) up. They then list your product on their marketplace, making it visible to tens of thousands of affiliates. They track sales using special tracking ties and cookies to determine where the transaction originated and credit the referencing account appropriately.

Most people start as affiliates and become vendors later on. This article will concentrate on earning money as an affiliate because it is the simplest route.

Sounds like too much to soak in? It’ll only get simpler from here!

The first step is to sign up for an Affiliate account with ClickBank. Once you sign up, you will find a list of ClickBank products available from their vendors.

ClickBank will then provide you with a unique affiliate ID, which can be used to access every affiliate program on the platform. There are no individual signup processes for distinct products.

Read More:How to Start Affiliate Marketing

What Is ClickBank

How It Works

Clickbank is a platform that connects the creators of online products with those who would spike their sales – affiliate marketers!

Depending on the side of the marketplace you’re connected to, Clickbank performs one of the following functions:

A Product Market for Affiliates

As an affiliate marketer, Clickbank will help you find your feet.

You can get started right away by creating your exclusive affiliate links to thousands of products and then drive traffic to start earning money. From your list of chosen products, you’ll be able to see your real-time earnings as well.

ClickBank is an affiliate network that’s accessible to anyone and everyone. It doesn’t hold a stringent screening process or cap. There are no complicated metrics, either!

An E-Commerce Store for Information Product Owners

As a product owner, you will first upload your product to the database.

From there, ClickBank handles all of the e-commerce and checkout aspects for you and provides a way for affiliates to discover your product.

As a product owner, you never have to worry about dealing with any sort of technicalities. This platform handles everything for you, and as a result, it charges a fee based on a certain percentage of your sales. This percentage tends to be around 7.5% + $1 on every sale.

Note: You will be charged a one-time activation fee of $49.94 to become a product owner on ClickBank.

Besides charging you a percentage of your product’s sales and the one-time activation fee, you’ll also need to pay a Payment Processing Fee. This fee of $2.50 is due any time you place a withdrawal or when your customers request a refund.

Why ClickBank?

Many questions circulate on the internet centered around ClickBank’s legitimacy. Based on our extensive research, we are happy to report that ClickBank is indeed a legit platform with many enticing benefits.

ClickBank remains relatively unheard of when compared to other, larger e-commerce platforms like Amazon Associates. However, ClickBank offers excellent digital products for advertisers to promote to their subscribers.

Are you thinking of promoting a digital product as an affiliate?

ClickBank is one of the best places to be if you’re searching for a digital product to market as an affiliate. The ClickBank marketplace is well-known for offering a diverse range of digital products with hefty affiliate commissions – up to 50% on some products!

This means that an excellent ClickBank deal will pay you several times more than a 3 percent commission of what you make on Amazon or other affiliate programs offering physical products.

The above statement doesn’t mean that ClickBank doesn’t deal in physical products. In fact, the opposite is true! There are a plethora of physical goods to start marketing. These include DVDs, books, fitness equipment, food products, supplements, and many more products.

ClickBank has its unique set of advantages and disadvantages. Before you lock in this option as your go-to affiliate networking site, it’s essential to weigh its pros and cons, especially if you are new to ClickBank.

Read More:How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make? [Discover the surprising truth!]

Pros of ClickBank

ClickBank is one of the best affiliate networks for newbie affiliate marketers because it allows them to start at no cost and make money online. Their model removes much of the confusion and frustration from the startup process of creating an affiliate marketing business.

At ClickBank, you set your own limit. Moreover, for approximately 85% of the deals, there’s no verification process in place, which means that you can begin selling immediately.

This is a massive advantage if you’re just getting started and don’t have a lot of experience or an excellent record on such affiliate networks. Here are some of the many pros of ClickBank:

High Commission Rate

Most of the ClickBank products offer a 65%+ commission rate – pretty enticing, right? For instance, if you facilitate a sale of $100, you earn $65 (maybe even more). What if we told you that a certain number of products have commission rates as high as 75%?

ClickBank is able to pull this off mostly because their goods are digital, which implies that certain expenses (like shipping, manufacturing, or other expenses related to physical products) don’t factor into costs, thereby resulting in large commissions.

Commission Rate

Shorter Payment Schedules

Depending on your preference, you can get your payments either weekly or bi-weekly. This is a much shorter and much more reasonable timeframe than most affiliate platforms, which usually pay after a cumulative period of 30 or even 90 days.

This means that other companies have a longer security window, which allows the payment method to hold the money you’ve rightfully earned for 30+ frustrating days. This is inconvenient and may cause huge cash flow issues, especially if you’re using paid traffic.

Beginner Friendly

When it comes to welcoming new affiliates, some affiliate networks may require rigorous research.

In contrast, there is no dearth of ClickBank guides. ClickBank users can access books, articles, YouTube videos, and many other resources that simplify the learning process.

Furthermore, ClickBank University is a training program by ClickBank itself to help novice affiliate marketers take baby steps in the right direction in this industry.

International Affiliate Friendly

Besides the option to receive payments to your U.S. bank account via Direct Deposit (ACH), ClickBank uses Payoneer, a standard digital and mobile payment system.

ClickBank’s use of Payoneer enables you to receive secured, electronic payments irrespective of your global location. Moreover, several other payment options are available for your convenience.

Large Variety of Products

At ClickBank, there are thousands of products in over three dozen categories. Choose one or multiple of them from niches, brands, markets, and resources. In fact, one vendor account can house up to 500 affiliate products!

60-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Your customers have the option to return their purchased product within a period of 60 days (on reasonable grounds, of course).

This creates fewer headaches for you, as the affiliate marketer, if any customers are ever less than satisfied with their purchases.

Cons of ClickBank

As an affiliate marketer, there are many amazing things to like about ClickBank, but it’s crucial to understand the whole story. It’s not all rainbows and golden tickets!

If you are interested in learning how to earn money on ClickBank, you must first learn how to overcome some very valid possible obstacles. The most common disadvantages of ClickBank are:

Tons of Terrible Products

ClickBank has some wonderful digital goods, but it has some trashy ones as well. It is your responsibility to zero in on lucrative products in the ClickBank marketplace while ignoring the spam, fraud brands you wouldn’t want to be “affiliated” with.

A good way to steer clear of terrible products is to look at the refund rates of the product. Novice marketers can sometimes lack the attention to intricate detail it takes to identify adept products.

Marketing bad products will lead to a loss of customers, even if you direct them to a subpar offer by accident. This is among the primary causes for customer complaints about ClickBank’s credibility.

Competition on Popular Products

Needless to say, the most popular and best products on ClickBank will have loads of competition. This means that a single content or product review is unlikely to make you stand out.

You will have to employ more strategies to compete, particularly if you do not already have an existing online platform.

Finding a Low-Competition Product

As we’ve mentioned earlier, this platform houses a wide range of junky, poor-quality products. And the majority of the desirable items have cut-throat competition.

This means that you may need to invest significant effort and time researching a perfect ClickBank product. Look for items that you would be proud to promote and that don’t have high competition already.

High Commission Requirements to Attract Quality Affiliates

Surely, if you’ve decided to market a product as a product creator, you’d want the best in the business to be sending business your way. If you want the best affiliates pointing people to your products, you’ll have to offer a high commission percentage to attract the most qualified marketers.

To find good affiliates who are willing to promote your ClickBank product, you may need to adopt the same ClickBank-wide practice (high commissions) that makes the destination so attractive for affiliates.

While the advantages of being an affiliate with ClickBank outnumber the disadvantages, it’s crucial to be aware of both sides of the coin in order to make a level-headed, well-informed decision.

How to Earn With ClickBank: A Step-By-Step Guide

To earn money from affiliate networks such as ClickBank, you can use various methods. Follow this step-by-step tutorial to walk your way to the top of this venture.

To start, you’ll need to open an account. Next, you’ll look for an excellent product that has adequate demand. Finally, covert this traffic by creating sales funnels.

Furthermore, you can boost your traffic, create content, optimize your funnels, and scale the entire process until you’re profitable (i.e., your conversion rate is higher than your investment rate).

On paper, it seems easy, but very few individuals put in the effort and time to fine-tune this process to the last dot.

Interesting Fact: The top 10% of affiliates generate 95% of affiliate sales.

Let’s get started!

ClickBank Sign Up Process

ClickBank allows you to sign up as either an affiliate or a seller. Though the sign-up procedure for each of these is the same, the accounts function differently.

  • To register with ClickBank, go to the web page’s top right side and click on the “Sign Up” button.
  • On the registration page, enter some basic details about yourself, such as your first and last names, email address, phone number, and country.
  • Agree to the terms and conditions before hitting the “Join ClickBank” button.
  • Create a new ClickBank account as an affiliate after you’ve signed up, and don’t hesitate to use your nickname.

Exploring the ClickBank Affiliate Marketplace for Product Promotion

After you’ve added your fresh affiliate account, go to your ClickBank dashboard and click on your nickname. You can also find the “Marketplace” option in the overview of your Affiliate account dashboard. That is where you’ll find all of ClickBank’s most famous deals and products.

The marketplace, as you’ll see, has a variety of product categories as well as a product search bar. These product categories include:

  • Games
  • Arts
  • Entertainment
  • Languages
  • Parenting and Families
  • Health and Fitness
  • Homes and Gardens
  • E-commerce and e-marketing

The list is illustrative and not exhaustive due to the ever-growing categories and products.

Before you go any further, consider settling on an affiliate promotion niche. For example, determine whether marketing tech would be lucrative for you or whether focusing on health and wellness will yield better results.

This is an important decision to make as it can make or mar your progress and earnings. To do this, we highly advise you to conduct market research first.

Once you’ve done so, hunt for the best affiliate offers by browsing the categories or typing a keyword into the search bar. The results will reveal thousands of products and offers to choose from. Don’t rush this part of the process; take your time and be precise.

Make use of the below-mentioned instructions for locating and selecting the most ideal offer.

Picking the Right Product

It’s true that millions of affiliate marketers fail to succeed on ClickBank due to poor marketing skills, but a huge percentage of failures result from a dubious selection of offers.

Based on our research, we recommend that you follow these steps meticulously in order to choose the right product(s):

Step #1

From the affiliate account Dashboard, navigate to the Marketplace.

Step #2

Type a particular keyword in the search bar that relates to the product you want to promote. Then click the search button.

Step #3

A list will appear. You must now sort the data by Gravity by searching for the bid with the highest Gravity score. An offer with a high score indicates that it has proven to be profitable for other affiliates.

Also, make sure that the offer includes several upsells as well as an informative sales page. If you are satisfied with what you’ve read after reviewing most (if not all) of the offer’s metrics, hit the “Promote” button.

Step #4

A new tab will appear on the screen. You must input or validate your affiliate information in this tab before clicking on the “Generate Hoplinks” icon.

All you need to do now is copy and save your Hoplink (which is your personal tracking link), and then get ready to promote these products using various marketing techniques!

The Different ClickBank Metrics

A metric is a numerical value that can be used to evaluate and track the progress of a business process. It’s crucial to understand these indicators, as they are important to key stakeholders like clients, consumers, and various workers like middle and executive managers.

There are various success indicators for each field of operation that should be tracked. Marketers keep track of engagement and online media indicators like campaign and initiative numbers.

Similarly, sales departments keep track of sales growth metrics like new opens, clicks, and leads. In contrast, executives keep track of important economic metrics.

If you want to isolate important data and then handpick the ClickBank affiliate offers with maximum profits, you should look for the following metrics:

Initial $/sale

This reflects an affiliate’s commission (in dollars) to sell a bid or funnel’s front-end (first) commodity.

Avg $/sale

This figure reflects the total amount of money received by an affiliate for transactions in a funnel (in dollars). This measure varies from the initial $/sale, whether a deal includes several downsells or upsells.

Avg %/sale

This is the vendor’s average affiliate commission percentage for its product or item.

Avg Rebill Total

This measure indicates the total commission received by the affiliate from rebills if the deal has items with multiple payment periods.

Avg %/Rebill

This is the vendor’s cumulative partner commission percentage for recurring billing periods.

Gravity

The statistic applies to the estimated number of associates that have marketed the commodity or bid effectively. The higher this amount, the more likely you are to benefit.

Affiliate Strategies Used to Make Money With ClickBank

The volume and consistency of traffic used for a promotion is the most important feature of any effective digital marketing strategy. However, luring traffic is often easier said than done.

The great news is that it becomes much easier if you use proper promotion or marketing tactics to unlock the door for traffic. This can involve the following:

Paid Promotion

This promotion strategy will assist you in earning passive income quickly with ClickBank if you want fast results. This technique requires investing money in exchange for speedy profits from affiliate commissions.

Merely copying and pasting the link on various networks is not a sure-shot way to achieve success. Instead, concentrate on bringing your prospective clients face-to-face with your marketing funnel.

Constructing a funnel entails a number of steps. The funnel’s main objectives should include:

  • Providing your audience with educational content via videos, infographics, and blogs
  • Getting them acquainted with the products, their advantages, and their uses
  • Making an offer in your sales pitch that solves the customer’s problem
  • Obtaining your traffic’s contact details before they make a purchase for follow-up

Free Promotion

This marketing plan or campaign will assist you in learning how to make passive income with ClickBank for free. Furthermore, you would not have to expend any money on sales marketing.

Now that you know several ways to promote products, below you’ll find verified strategies for free promotions:

Influencer and Social Media Marketing

Generating traffic and promoting your product without an affiliate marketing blog or website can be a great way to learn how to make money with ClickBank.

This works best if you have access to a sizable, established number of followers or fans on social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram.

If you go this route, don’t shy away from leveraging photographs, emails, and other forms of media to persuade customers to enter or progress through your sales funnel – whether that means signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

On certain grounds, influencer marketing and social media marketing are not all that different. Many social media personalities have embraced affiliate marketing by leveraging content on their social media pages.

This consistently produces satisfactory outcomes and yields organic traffic from various sources.

Video Promotion

Video content is undeniably the most consumed form of media thanks to its effectiveness in communicating information interactively.

The trend these days is to make and post videos on various platforms. Taking advantage of this viral pattern can lead to a fast and immediate increase in direct traffic.

But have you thought about how, when, where, and how often to share your videos? Here are a few tips:

  • Shoot the videos with your smartphone to start. Invest in a professional camera after you begin raking in profits.
  • Upload the videos during the waking hours of the majority of your audience (disregard if your audience comes from many different time zones).
  • Aim to upload at least one to two videos every week.

Blogs and Search Engine Optimization

There’s no better way to get started with digital marketing than to build your digital footprint in the form of a blog. As intimidating as it seems, creating a blog can be a piece of cake!

Furthermore, it does not burn a crater in your wallet either. You can use free sites like WordPress.com to create your website and start a blog.

After that, help your blog rank higher by following SEO best practices. A downside to free hosting platforms is that Google rarely rates free websites on free platforms very highly.

For increased credibility, better rankings, and a better customer experience, purchase a domain that’s hosted on a secure server and launch your website as an official company.

When it comes to finding the ideal option, based on our research, no platform beats YouTube (thanks to the efficacy of video content). It’s also very easy to upload your videos on YouTube.

Instead of aggressively convincing your audience, the quality (both in terms of content and voice & visual appeal) of the video can reflect how they will profit from what you’re providing.

Tip: Be sure to display your affiliate link clearly in the video description.

In addition to YouTube, you can upload your videos on channels like Vimeo, DailyMotion, Instagram, etc.

Developing a Value-Oriented Media Funnel

All of the previously discussed approaches can be effective, but they’re often overused and worn out by other affiliate marketers. This can make these methods very competitive and difficult to scale.

Furthermore, none of the above material is linked to or shared unless it sells, and people dislike connecting to content that sells just about anything to its readers. That’s unfortunately how things are.

In this cut-throat social network era, not sharing or linking directly to your content puts you at a massive disadvantage. If you want to rank higher on search engines, devote time to building links. It’s not entertaining, modular, or cost-effective, but it’s extremely important.

So, how do you earn money through the Clickbank affiliate network? You sell online products to people who seek cheap, durable, and accessible products and are willing to give their email address in exchange.

We recommend withholding promotional pitches from the front end. Instead, operate your blog as a publishing business that provides readers with free content.

Next comes the use of content enhancements and retargeting to sell lead magnets. Those that are curious enough to exchange their contact details for the lead magnet will get cheap or free products or content.

Once that’s done, email your new subscribers about the offer to ensure they don’t miss out on the opportunity.

Tip:We advise you to execute this from your Thank You page.

Creating Your Affiliate Links and TID’s

The best way to leverage ClickBank is to generate a new affiliate link anytime you post your link on any platform. This will enable you to track where your conversions come from.

This will bring you clarity regarding which pages, emails, and platforms are generating adequate traffic and which are not.

Tip: To generate a tracking code, simply enter it in the “Tracking ID” bar while creating your link.

Scaling

Allow the funnel to function for an extended period once you’ve completed it. You can also go ahead and create a second one for the sake of comparison.

If the funnel is converting well and you want to extend it, focus on one area at a time. These may include:

  • Increasing the amount of SEO content you create using targeted keywords
  • Creating links to your content to boost its rankings
  • Generating traffic using social media paid advertisements

Owning the Offer

Earning significant, regular, passive income monthly will become second nature to you if you abide by the above formulas.

Once you’re comfortable navigating the affiliate world, you can even consider swapping ClickBank affiliate offers of your own. This will allow you to save and earn more by controlling more aspects of your business model.

This won’t happen quickly, and it’s not recommended if you don’t have enough traffic or sales established.

However, once you hone your ability to attract customers and earn sales, this method is one of the most effective ways to increase your own sales and set yourself free from the clutches of commissions.

Conclusion

This guide illustrates that ClickBank is a convenient place to start developing your affiliate marketing business model, which can be much more effective than other affiliate opportunities.

The steps, tips, and points above will light the way as you learn to navigate ClickBank. Ultimately, you can refer back to this resource as you start earning passive income as a successful affiliate marketing business.

We wish you success on your affiliate marketing journey, and in case you have any questions, kindly drop them in the comment box!