Clickbank For BeginnersClickbank Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

What and why Clickbank
There’s quite a reason why Clickbank is so popular, perhaps the first affiliate network for most people when first start. Being an affiliate marketer myself, Clickbank is one of the earliest affiliate network I ever joined. For a few reasons:

• Most new marketers, including me back then start internet business by reading eBooks and at the same time lots of famous eBooks sold by experts like Ewen Chia, Mike Filsaime, Chris X and Andrew Fox are based on affiliate marketing with Clickbank.
• Clickbank is one of the largest, oldest network with over 100,000 affiliates. So many affiliates, so many people talk about it, making Clickbank is known better than other network like RegNow.
• Easy to start and easy to sell. You can register within minutes and start making money.
• The number one payment processor for eBook sellers after Paypal.

How to start selling products at Clickbank

These are a few tips on how to make money as Clickbank affiliates:

• Focus on just one traffic strategy per month. Don’t rush and try lots of them at once.
• Forum marketing does work, but it will generate passive income.
• If you want consistent income, with at least one sale or more per day, you should focus on search engine traffic only.
• Increase the sales rate of your visitors by growing your mailing list. If you don’t collect visitor’s email, 98% of them will leave your website without buying anything. However, if you collect emails, at least 10% of them will convert into customers. Even better, they might buy from you for lifetime.
• Most of Clickbank products are not worth having, to be honest. Which is why, I strongly recommend that you buy the product itself before recommending to others. If you don’t like it, request for refund.
• Clickbank gravity might be a good indicator of quality product. High gravity means lots of unique affiliates able to sell the products in the past eight weeks.

Other factors you might want to consider
Despite what you might read in lots of eBook, Clickbank might not a good way to make money. It depends on the product. I found that lots of quality internet marketing products are not necessarily sold via Clickbank. For example like Seven Figure Code from Mike Filsaime, IM Niche Formula – these products are sold via Paydotcom, a competitor to Clickbank. While membership sites like Niche Profit Classroom and Wealthy Affiliate have their own affiliate program.

These are reasons why Clickbank sucks:

• You need to wait months before enjoying your hard earned cash. Especially if you are living outside USA where the only payment method is check. Pretty tough if you use pay-per-click as promotion strategy.
• Read their affiliate FAQs properly. To receive your check, not only your earnings must reach the minimum $10, but also the sales must be from five different credit cards, with at least one Mastercard and another one is VISA and none of the five are from Paypal.
• Most people know about Clickbank affiliate program. Especially when promoting internet marketing related products. So, instead of buying from your link, they prefer to click their own affiliate link and get rebate from it.
• The refund rate is high, even for product with high gravity. Of course, you might think that selling expensive products, which the price is over $100 could make you lots of money, but think again. What if the buyer ask for refund within 30 days? The higher product price, the more chances customers would ask for refund.

How to counter these problems
These are some suggestions. It won’t eliminate all above problems but at least you can reduce them:

• If you are living in the certain countries, use direct deposit as payment method, instead of check.
• Avoid promoting internet marketing related products, especially if you use pay-per-click. Usually link hijacking would happen if the buyer is also an affiliate. Otherwise he won’t notice.
• Avoid promoting internet marketing products using paid traffic. Especially for product name keywords. Commission theft tends to be higher in this niche compared to health and fitness and hobbies.
• Give the buyer a reason why he must buy from your link. For example, offer them special bonus in exchange for their purchase.
• Cloak your affiliate link. There are lots of ways to do this. The most common is by using iframe techniques. When people click your link, they will see http://yourwebsite.com/recommends instead of http://productname.com/?hop=yournickname.

Click here to download free Clickbank guide. No sign up required.

Is Clickbank a scam? Well, if you think Clickbank is a scam, then e-commerce itself is a scam. Affiliate marketing is a scam. eBay, Paypal and Amazon are scam companies. The fact is, Clickbank is not a scam. However, there are some issues with Clickbank that makes some people think that it is a scam while some affiliates, especially experienced marketers don’t like Clickbank. Let me explain.

Issue 1: Clickbank doesn’t pay some affiliates, although their commission earnings exceed minimum $100. Well, actually this is to avoid lots of affiliate from using Clickbank just to get rebate for every purchase they made. Yes, you can buy any Clickbank product from your own affiliate link and get paid for it, but they won’t pay you until these conditions are met:

• The transaction must be made from five different credit card numbers. Two of them must be from both Mastercard and VISA. Paypal is not counted here.
• Total earning must be at least $10. For more information, see their affiliate FAQs.

Issue 2: There are lots of low quality make money products sold via Clickbank. People buy this product with hope they will earn money by investing on these products. However, in the end, all they got is low quality products teaching methods that didn’t work. So, they consider that product, even Clickbank itself is a scam company. Well, you cannot blame one big organization just because of a few bad apples. Anyone can sell their digital products at Clickbank for $49 payment. With such low capital to start but a huge potential to be made, it’s normal to see some publishers take this advantage to get rich by scamming people. However, it doesn’t Clickbank itself is behind all these. In fact, Clickbank has refund policy which allows any customers to request for refund in case the product is defected or not as good as it sounds. You can always request for refund by filling this form.

http://www.clickbank.com/orderDetail.htm

I made this several times this year and always gets my money back in three days. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t ask refund from the product owner himself. Some publishers refuse to refund your money and won’t answer your support ticket. This is example of my purchase which had been refunded. I hide some information inside this screenshot for privacy and to protect credibility of product owner.

Issue 3: So many commission thefts that you sometimes could hardly sell products. People can register as Clickbank affiliate for free, hence they knew they are going to buy form your affiliate link. Unethical people can very easily place a cookie at the time of purchase that changes or adds their affiliate ID into the link. In the end, he buyer gets the rebate, but you’re not.

Issue 4: High refund rate. It’s easy to request refund from Clickbank. Some buyers even created same email copies asking refund from four different products. This is bad for both affiliate and merchant. As an affiliate, should the customer asked for refund, it means goodbye to your hard-earned commission.

Issue 5: Ugly hoplink at the address bar.Whenever visitors click your hoplink, they understand that you’ll get paid for their purchase. It’s not that hard, just look at the address bar. Compared to other network like Commission Junction, RegNow and Shareasale where people don’t see your ugly link at the address bar.

Conclusion: Clickbank itself is not a scam. Many marketers make good income, even quit their day job thanks to Clickbank. However, you need to be smart and think a way to avoid all these issues. One way is by looking for Clickbank alternatives like Paydotcom, Commission Junction or in house affiliate programs. If you still want to use Clickbank, don’t start by promoting internet marketing related products, unless if you use mailing list techniques.