ClickBank has been round for a very long time.
The truth is, the affiliate community launched approach again in 1998.
Meaning ClickBank is without doubt one of the oldest internet affiliate marketing networks on the market.
A storage start-up run by three mates who constructed their very own web site has grown to grow to be a enterprise with an annual turnover of US$1 billion.
ClickBank can be barely totally different from most internet affiliate marketing networks as a result of it focuses totally on digital merchandise.
It’s predominantly a market the place digital product creators add their merchandise, though they do additionally function some bodily merchandise today.
However I do know all you new associates are questioning: how does ClickBank work? And is it nonetheless price utilizing right this moment over totally different affiliate networks?
Let’s get began with our ClickBank assessment to search out out.
Is ClickBank Legit?
Clickbank internet affiliate marketing is 100% legit. That’s all there’s to it. However since you’re doubtless hoping for a extra detailed reply, I’ll go into a bit extra depth.
As we’ve already identified, ClickBank is without doubt one of the oldest affiliate networks on the market, having been within the internet affiliate marketing sport for greater than 20 years now.
In that point, it’s constructed a community of just about 100,000 affiliate entrepreneurs, from digital content material creators to bloggers and influencers.
Based mostly in over 200 international locations, they’ve leveraged ClickBank to rake in additional than $4 billion in commissions. And so they clearly prefer it, as a result of the corporate has a 4.5-star score from greater than 2,300 evaluations on Trustpilot.
Distributors adore it too, with greater than 4,000 merchandise listed within the ClickBank market.
Actually, with numbers like that, there’s merely no approach ClickBank is a “rip-off community”. Somebody would have seen by now!
Signing Up
Their signup course of for brand spanking new associates may be very easy.
Merely enter your location, identify, phone quantity, and e-mail handle:
The signup web page can be obtainable in six languages, in order that’s a pleasant contact.
When you’ve entered your private particulars you then click on on ‘Proceed to Phrases and Circumstances’.
That is the same old scroll rapidly and click on the ‘Settle for Phrases and Circumstances’ button.
After which as soon as that’s achieved you possibly can lastly click on on ‘Be a part of ClickBank!”
Be aware: It’s essential to reside in a rustic that ClickBank could make a direct deposit to.
It’s a tragic truth of life however affiliate networks can’t function in sure international locations due to the danger of fraud and/or authorized restrictions.
So if you happen to’re an affiliate marketer residing in a kind of international locations you’re SOL I’m afraid – at all times assessment the TOS for any service earlier than signing up.
The subsequent step is being supplied some free coaching.
You additionally get a “Welcome” video to observe…which subtly tries to upsell ClickBank distributors on a month-to-month membership.
You’re then inspired to finish your writer profile, together with fee and get in touch with particulars.
It was weird to see my house province listed in Irish Gaelic right here, but it surely exhibits they’ve made an actual effort with localization.
Then the ultimate step is to ‘Optimize your efficiency’ by telling them if you happen to’re an affiliate, a vendor, or a researcher.
Now, this may sound a bit odd, however it’s worthwhile to create an account inside your major account for sure options to work.
That is what ClickBank refers to as your ‘Nickname’.
Which may even be a part of your referral URL, so it will possibly’t be any longer than ten characters.
You could be intelligent right here and use one thing associated to your area of interest e.g. pets100.
It’s annoying to have to do that as a secondary step – it was once half of the particular signup course of.
However when you do that you just’re now free to roam the ClickBank market and begin selling digital merchandise.
Wait…they don’t ask for any website positioning metrics or visitors particulars throughout the sign-up course of?
Nope.
That’s a part of the attraction of ClickBank – there’s a really low barrier to entry right here.
That is the place you discover out you’re coping with a special kind of affiliate community.
Principally, this ain’t Kansas, Dorothy.
ClickBank sells each digital merchandise and a few bodily ones too.
However the factor is these are all model names you in all probability gained’t acknowledge. For those who’re completely trying to work with a high-profile on-line retailer, ClickBank in all probability ain’t the one.
You might need seen a few of them in your social media feed or in pop-ups by way of retargeting campaigns, however that’s it.
Right here’s a random sampling of the top-converting merchandise on ClickBank to point out you what I imply:
Do any of those merchandise look acquainted to you?
In all probability not.
However that doesn’t cease merchandise identical to these promoting by the truckload.
And incomes the typical affiliate marketer a really good chunk of change within the course of.
One attention-grabbing discovering is that lots of the greatest promoting merchandise on ClickBank are actually well being dietary supplements.
That’s a giant change from even a decade in the past.
Ease of Use
I’ve been within the internet affiliate marketing sport for about 20 years and it seems — reward all of the Gods — that the ClickBank web site is lastly getting a facelift.
It’s nonetheless not the prettiest affiliate dashboard on the market.
But it surely retains issues easy.
And it does that through the use of WordPress for its backend. As with a variety of WordPress websites, which means it’s pretty straightforward to make use of.
Most affiliate dashboards include their very own coaching tutorials…so you already know you’re in for a UX nightmare.
Not so with ClickBank – it’s mainly a clean canvas with a handful of capabilities:
- Dashboard
- Tickets
- Transactions
- Reporting
- Accounts
- Customers
- Affiliate market
- Profile
- Assist
The one one that basically wants any rationalization right here is ‘Transactions’ – that is very, very helpful for monitoring down serial refunders.
However the one which’s of most curiosity to us is the ‘Affiliate Market’ button.
As a result of that is the place you’ll discover ClickBank gives to advertise.
Discovering affiliate packages on Clickbank
The ClickBank Market is the place all of the motion occurs.
It’s additionally an indication of simply how previous this platform is:
Yup, it appears to be like like a kind of clipart websites you thought was cool.
If you had been 10 years of age.
However there’s additionally a sure logic behind the dearth of change evident right here.
Principally the method that if one thing isn’t damaged, then don’t repair it.
And though their interface is horrendous by trendy requirements…it’s nonetheless doing the identical job it has for 22 years.
Which helps you discover worthwhile gives and be a part of packages with a lot of incomes potential.
You are able to do this through the use of both key phrase searches or looking particular person classes and filtering the outcomes.
So if we wished to search out all of the ClickBank affiliate packages for fats loss, we’d merely enter that key phrase:
And also you get the next:
It’s price mentioning right here that ClickBank’s potential to kind outcomes by ‘Key phrase Relevance’ normally drops off a cliff after the second or third web page of outcomes.
Principally, their key phrase search performance is a bit shit.
However the potential to filter by a lot of totally different metrics similar to ‘Reputation’ and ‘Gravity’ work simply positive.
Wait…what has ‘Gravity’ acquired to do with internet affiliate marketing?
Even when the film was superior.
ClickBank, in its divine knowledge, determined to easily not use the identical EPC metric as each different affiliate community on the planet.
Nicely, they did, however they determined to name it ‘Gravity’ as an alternative.
So now’s pretty much as good a time as any to take a look at the assorted ClickBank metrics you should utilize to filter key phrase or class search outcomes.
Gravity – that is an approximate measurement of how properly an affiliate product converts – a better quantity is best.
Preliminary $/sale – How a lot an affiliate makes for the preliminary sale, minus any month-to-month recurring funds
Avg %/Sale – The quantity of fee an affiliate marketer earns per sale
Avg Rebill Whole –For a recurring billing product, that is the quantity the seller costs prospects every month
Avg %/Rebill – The proportion of recurring commissions you get
Now let’s assessment the totally different classes within the ‘Market’:
A few of these classes are clearly going to be extra in style and worthwhile than others.
Like ‘E-business & E-Advertising’ for instance, or ‘Well being & Health’.
So if we drill down into the ‘Well being & Health’ class on ClickBank it routinely populates with an inventory of accessible packages.
You possibly can add quite a lot of filters to your search question to slim issues down a bit.
Within the above instance, I set it to solely present me affiliate merchandise with a (1)‘Gravity’ rating of 20 or above and a minimal (2) ‘Preliminary sale’ worth of $20.
Why select a ‘Gravity’ rating of 20?
That’s defined in our in-depth article on the way to earn cash with ClickBank.
However there’s an extra set of attributes you should utilize to refine your outcomes even additional:
- Required Product Kind(s)
- Required Language(s)
- Required Billing Kind(s)
- Required Attribute(s)
So, it’s also possible to filter by ‘Rebill’ if you happen to’re solely in search of an associates program that provides recurring fee, for instance.
However it’s also possible to tweak your outcomes to solely function merchandise obtainable in particular languages.
Or that truly ship bodily merchandise to prospects i.e. ‘Shippable Media’.
From a product-finding perspective, the ClickBank platform has most of its competitors licked.
If solely the interface wasn’t so damned ugly…first world issues although, proper?
The flipside of that is that almost all ClickBank associates solely seek for merchandise with a excessive ‘Gravity’ rating and/or preliminary sale worth.
Many of the different options are actually solely window dressing.
Creating affiliate hyperlinks
ClickBank has made the method of making affiliate hyperlinks stupendously easy.
Principally, you discover a product you need to promote and click on on ‘Promote’:
A pop-up window seems the place you merely add the account nickname you created throughout the setup course of:
And click on ‘Generate Hoplinks’ to create your hyperlink, which can appear to be this:
Why are they known as ‘Hoplinks’?
That’s very a lot a “…simply because” reply.
Anyone clearly thought it was a intelligent option to differentiate a ClickBank hyperlink from another kind of affiliate hyperlink.
However what about banner hyperlinks and graphics in your website?
Nicely, the factor is…there’s no assure there’ll be any.
It’s all the way down to the seller.
And also you’ll should navigate to what are mainly affiliate useful resource pages to search out banners.
However there’s completely no assure your vendor can have one in all these pages.
This implies you’d want to really e-mail distributors asking them for banners or different gross sales materials.
Which is sillier than an inebriated bear attempting to knit itself some mittens.
Of their protection, the higher distributors do a reasonably good job of supplying associates with all of the promotional supplies they want.
And that usually goes past simply banners to incorporate swipe recordsdata full of articles, autoresponder sequences, and so on.
The affiliate hyperlink creation course of may be very decentralized…but it surely works.
ClickBank is without doubt one of the solely networks to handle affiliate hyperlinks this fashion.
However, on assessment, it’s nonetheless far much less convoluted than what you must put up with on different affiliate networks.
Getting Paid
Sure, selling ClickBank merchandise is enjoyable.
But it surely’s additionally enjoyable to earn cash and line your checking account.
That’s what internet affiliate marketing is about, in any case.
So let’s assessment how that works with this specific affiliate community.
Fee timeframe
The overwhelming majority of affiliate networks function on a web 30 fee schedule.
ClickBank, alternatively, gives weekly or bi-weekly funds.
However you gained’t truly obtain your fee for an extra two weeks after your payout date.
Principally, it would take 4 – 6 weeks in your ClickBank funds to begin overlapping with one another till you are feeling like they’re weekly or fortnightly.
However I by no means as soon as had an issue getting paid by ClickBank – they at all times paid on time.
Fee technique
You possibly can select to obtain funds both by verify or direct deposit.
However that’s it. No different fee technique is permitted.
A further observe right here for worldwide associates is that ClickBank checks don’t arrive in a single day.
So you possibly can tack as much as seven days onto your fee timeframe.
This isn’t as full a set of fee choices as a few of you may like.
There’s no choice to receives a commission by way of Payoneer, PayPal, or wire switch, for instance.
Whereas this could be annoying for some, ClickBank clearly has a cause for doing this.
But it surely’s in all probability all the way down to a scarcity of demand i.e. most associates are proud of funds by verify or direct deposit.
Fee threshold
It’s good to earn the tiny quantity of $10 in commissions to set off a ClickBank fee.
However I’d recommend retaining your threshold set so much increased if you happen to can solely obtain funds by verify.
Financial institution costs will decimate checks below $100 in worth.
So, retaining your ClickBank fee threshold set to not less than a number of hundred {dollars} is a greater transfer.
Be aware: You do additionally have to generate not less than 5 sales before you can receive a payment.
This was to assist stop one thing we focus on within the subsequent part.
Refunds
ClickBank’s actual Achilles Heel is that they provide a 90-day money-back assure.
That is nice information for purchasers as a result of they will return something they’re not proud of.
However there are unscrupulous individuals who will use this identical money-back assure to get stuff without spending a dime.
They mainly order digital merchandise, obtain them, after which ask for a refund.
And the sick factor is that it’s largely affiliate entrepreneurs who do that.
Nicely, it’s actually simply scammers pretending to be associates.
However it’s an ongoing concern with the platform that may eat into your ClickBank affiliate commissions.
Writer Assist
ClickBank retains their writer help system to a naked minimal.
You possibly can select between utilizing their ticketing system or the knowledgebase.
However that’s so far as issues go.
There’s a ‘ClickBank College’ however this prices cash, and is barely appropriate for distributors/advertisers.
It appears to be like like they’re making an attempt to place collectively a ‘Group’ part, but it surely’s clean thus far.
They’d in all probability be much better off organising a Slack channel as an alternative.
Their knowledgebase is fairly complete.
I simply want they’d use extra combined media like screenshots and tutorial movies.
The blocks of textual content are positive, however once more fairly dated wanting.
So, there’s nothing truly incorrect with their help choices besides that it feels a bit dated.
ClickBank Evaluations
So let’s take a look at some ClickBank evaluations to see what the typical Joe and Josephine consider this community.
A person clearly making good cash with ClickBank who’s proud of the positioning.
Suggestions from one other affiliate who remains to be receiving checks from ClickBank for blogs he now not updates i.e. the identical merchandise are changing eight years later!
However with the great, we should additionally settle for the “dangerous”.
Like someone getting their ClickBank account terminated for no obvious cause.
However there’s usually a traceable on-line historical past to those “dangerous luck tales”. Learn a bit additional and also you understand that…his second account acquired canceled, plus he’s additionally completely banned.
Which implies he was shopping for digital merchandise by way of his personal ClickBank affiliate hyperlinks to offer himself a reduction.
Affiliate entrepreneurs have achieved this for actually a long time now.
So you must watch out when studying any ClickBank evaluations – they’re not at all times altruistic in nature.
The place ClickBank does type of stand out from the gang although is with their social media presence.
They’ve a really lively Fb web page with 91k followers…and no seen adverse suggestions.
So it could seem they’ve nailed their customer support.
ClickBank Evaluate Abstract
URL: ClickBank
12 months established: 1998
Variety of retailers: 3,500+
Provide varieties: CPA/CPS
Weighing it up
So what’s our goal tackle ClickBank?
Professionals
- The oldest community solely for digital merchandise
- Very excessive fee charges (as much as 90%)
- One of many few networks to supply recurring fee
- ClickBank offers a 60-day cookie throughout the board
- No approval wanted to advertise merchandise – simply click on and go
- Creating affiliate hyperlinks may be very straightforward
- ClickBank gives weekly and fortnightly payouts
- There are merchandise to swimsuit most niches
Cons
- The dashboard is a clusterfuck of previous and new interfaces mashed collectively
- It’s important to trawl by way of hype to search out respectable merchandise
- ClickBank is now not the one participant within the digital product market e.g. Udemy
Conclusion
In order that brings us to the top of my ClickBank assessment.
ClickBank offers associates with a market to search out a variety of digital, and a few bodily, merchandise to advertise.
The truth is, I keep in mind the great previous days of internet affiliate marketing when you could possibly direct-link from AdWords to a ClickBank gross sales web page and earn cash the simple approach.
The actual concern this community has that is that actually anybody can promote a product on ClickBank.
And that features a lot of merchandise by “Get wealthy fast” and “web advertising” gurus.
Which has given the platform one thing of a adverse fame by affiliation.
But it surely’s not all crap.
There are many high quality packages to be discovered on ClickBank (alongside a couple of poor high quality ones).
You may make cash there as an affiliate marketer.
You simply have to do your analysis, learn evaluations, and search for legit merchandise.
Sure, they’ve a lackluster interface, and teething issues. And positive, there are many ClickBank alternate options on the market. However a lot of individuals nonetheless earn cash selling their wares by way of ClickBank internet affiliate marketing.
And if you happen to’re excited by getting cash on-line (and who isn’t?) why not take a look at our free 2-hour coaching class on constructing your first affiliate website.
We train new associates the fundamentals of area of interest analysis and key phrase rankings, in addition to what it takes to really get affiliate web sites on-line, create high-converting gross sales pages, and drive natural visitors to your key touchdown pages.
And also you don’t have to purchase a damned factor from us.
Simply tell us the most effective e-mail handle to ship your invite to.
P.S. For those who discovered this assessment useful then why not share it on social media?