Choosing an affiliate network is one of the first decisions a new affiliate has to make. Ideally you want a network with a good range of products, decent commissions, an easy to use system and good support.
Clickbank is a network we talk a lot about here on Affilorama, but we thought it was about time we did a Clickbank review post to weigh up the pros and cons of the popular network.
A little background:
Clickbank was founded in 1998 and has now grown into an online retail service provider with over 12,000 digital product vendors and over 100,000 active affiliates. Processing over 26,000 transactions daily, and averaging over 700,000 unique visits a month, Clickbank has grown into a major player in the affiliate network market.
Getting Started:
When you first head over to the Clickbank sign up form, you will notice that everything is pretty straight forward requiring only basic address and contact information. A distinct advantage for affiliates is Clickbank's lack of requirements when you first sign up. Rather than requiring preapproval like many networks, Clickbank allows virtually anyone to sign up and start promoting. This is great for newbies who can't really point to existing websites and programs they have promoted. Clickbank also allows affiliates from over 150 countries to sign up - which is most. Unfortunately if your country isn't listed in the drop-down menu on the sign up page, there isn't much you can do.
Strolling the market-place:
Once you've signed up, one of the first thing's you'll want to do is have a look through the Clickbank Marketplace. Clickbank has thousands of products that you can choose from. However it is important to take your time in promoting. While there are some really high quality products on Clickbank, there are also a lot of sub-par products that should be avoided.
The best thing to do is check the "gravity" score of a product. The gravity is essentially a calculation that takes into account how many different affiliates have made a sale in this product in the past 8 weeks; the higher the number the better. Our in-house affiliate expert Mark Ling recommends that you always aim for a gravity of at least 30. In addition to the gravity, there are a number of other statistics for each product - these are;
- $/sale: This is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale of this product, including refunds, chargebacks, and tax.
- Future $: The average amount an affiliate will make from recurring billing of a single sale after the initial purchase (recurring billing only).
- Total $/sale: For one-time purchases, this number is the same as $/sale. For recurring billing products, it equals the average total of the initial sale plus all rebills, divided by the number of initial sales.
- %/sale: Commission rate
- %refd: This is the percentage of sales that were referred by affiliates.
All this information gives you a snapshot picture of the products - how much you are likely make and how competitive it is.
The Technical Bits
Clickbank has a very straight-forward tracking system - basically there are two kinds of affiliate links you can get; either encrypted or standard. The standard Clickbank affiliate link or "HopLink" is in the format http://affiliateid.vendorid.hop.clickbank.net. Clickbank also has encrypted HopLinks that hide the vendor ID and affiliate ID. While I can understand people wanting to hide their affiliate ID, I believe a redirect is a far cleaner way to do it as the encrypted links are not exactly pretty (e.g. 902q3fhawiojewasdfef3.hop.clickbank.net). Also it's important to remember that if someone buys through your link, you affiliate ID will be visible on the payment page.
Some merchants set up more sophisticated set-ups for their affiliate programs through Clickbank. For instance here at Affilorama we allow people to link to any page in our site by simply adding "?aff=affiliateID" to the end of the url. However this is not standard for every product. This does mean that often the only affiliate link you can get is to the main sales page.
Personally I recommend setting up affiliate links in the original un-cloaked format. This is just personal preference, but it is way easier to troubleshoot any problems if you can see what the code actually is!
Getting paid
Clickbank pays out commissions every two weeks. One of the great advantages of Clickbank is that you get to choose the payment threshold which can be set to as low as $10 - which means no waiting around for weeks because you were $1 below the threshold.
Payment is either by posted check or direct deposit is available to 17 countries including the United States. However in order to qualify for direct deposit you have to receive three paper paychecks within any 12 week period - that might be a bit frustrating at first, but once you qualify you're set.
Commissions on Clickbank are generally quite high - many over 50%. This means you are really rewarded for your efforts.
Because Clickbank is also a payment network - i.e. they process the payment of sales, Clickbank is quite good at preventing fraud. Merchants aren't able to try and trick you out of sales (unfortunately this does happen) because Clickbank gives you your cut straight out of the payment.
Becoming a Merchant
A really big advantage of Clickbank is how easy it is to become a merchant. They provide a ton of support material and it's really cheap to get started (just $49.95 to activate a product). While this might seem out of reach for beginners, you'd be surprised how easy it is to create a product and start selling it.
Need Help?
Clickbank has a massive Help Center, with lots of frequently asked questions and informative articles that cover most of the information you will need to know. There is also a video library of useful video tutorials and a frequently updated blog that provides up to date information, news and advice. In addition they do have a contact form for direct requests.
One slight downside with Clickbank is that there is no direct way to contact the merchant unless the merchant goes out of their way to provide contact details. However most merchants have affiliate pages on their site - usually located at www.merchantsitename.com/affiliates, so I always recommend looking through their site and seeing if there's any affiliate resources.
All in All:
In summary, Clickbank is a great network, with a simple and easy to use system, easy sign up and good support. While there are a few things that could be improved, overall Clickbank is a really accessible network that should be perfect for people first getting started in affiliate marketing.
Alessandro Zamboni • 15 years ago
It gave me optimal results, you need only to trust in what you are working on and write with the hearth, following the directions of Chris.
I used Clickbank as a Merchant for my first launch, and I can say that's simply one of the most trustable and working platform, so I confirm all what you said Chris.
You are covered by strong security, the system is always online and I never registered downtimes or problems in payment process by customers.
For any questions you may have, a strong and quality support will answer in only a few hours.
And I tried other three payment processor, equally famous, but they never delivered the same quality, and I got also one fraud.
So, make your choice but keep in mind Clickbank effective highest quality, as merchant but also as Affiliate !
Thanks again Chris for your high quality Clickbank review !
Goodbye,
Alessandro Zamboni
geraline mcchesnie • 15 years ago
Geraline
Grant • 15 years ago
Grant
Colin Hayvice • 15 years ago
So to become an affiliate via clickbank you just click on hoplink?
Do you need a website up to promote this product? if not how is the promotion done?
I am a newbie and probably slow and sure but I don't think I have had this point
explained to me.
Regards colinhvc
simon321 • 15 years ago
Actually I'm still stuck in looking for a suitable niche from clickbank. It seems like it's quite difficult to get a few products to promote with the same niche, not to mention those popular niches like weight loss, dog training, etc... Or it's difficult to find most of the product with gravity more than 30, either one or two product with very high gravity (more than 100) and the rest is less than 20). It really make me headache.
Simon.
Moira Anthony • 15 years ago
Wow what a relief I was begining to think that something was wrong with me. I actually feel like I know clickbank off by heart I have been searching for so long.
This is really holding me back and I cannot figure out how to get around it so if anyone out there has any help I would be really grateful to hear it.
Thanks Moira
• 11 years ago
James Pruitt • 15 years ago
simon321 • 15 years ago
One thing I've found in clickbank market place is that, whenever I type a keyword and press Go, there will be a lot of irrelevent searches pop out. Can anyone help me to solve this problem?
Simon
clickbank affiliate • 15 years ago
Karoly Domonyi • 15 years ago
Can you tell me anybody how can sell better?
Thank you for your answer in advance.
Tim Winner • 15 years ago
I think clickbank should make paying their customers living in other countries out of the US easier by using paypal.
damian biggs • 15 years ago
Eric Moore • 15 years ago
balogun abiola • 15 years ago
Molly • 12 years ago
If you want to see the whole page where I got the answer from, go to:
https://www.affilorama.com/blog/clickbank-review
• 15 years ago
Thanks for the help; and I'll keep posting as I learn and succeed.
rocky • 15 years ago
Chris Goddard • 15 years ago
@GRANT: You're right that Clickbank often draws a lot of newbies, so there may be a lot of people promoting the same product as you - however because they're all newbies you will find it won't be too hard to beat them - particularly as most of them won't have Affilorama's training material to fall back on!
@COLINHVC: You can sign up as a Clickbank affiliate at https://www.affilorama.com/redirect/clickbank-application . A hoplink is just what Clickbank calls an affiliate link. You do not have to have a website to promote Clickbank products, however it is certainly advisable. However if you don't yet have the money to invest in this, you can use free methods like posting links in forums, blogs and social media sites (like Twitter) - just what ever you do, don't spam! It's the quickest way to get banned. My advice to you would be to look at getting a site as soon as possible though - you can get some really cheap hosting options, like Hostgator, which you can see here https://www.affilorama.com/redirect/hostgator or Affilorama Premium also includes web hosting.
@Simon1234: This can often be one of the trickiest things - remember though that while it is preferable, not ever product you promote has to have a gravity of above 30 - so long as you have one or two with high gravity, you can add in some lower gravity related products to give your site more options. Remember though - just because there are lots of people in the niche doesn't mean you can't get in there - in fact if there are lots of people making money out of a niche, that means that you can likely get in and take your share of the pie too. Also with searching Clickbank, yes sometimes you can get unrelated results - best idea is to narrow your search options by category. Then it's just a matter of reading through and research - it takes time, but it's worth it.
@Paylpal: This is often one of the biggest criticisms of Clickbank - that they don't have Paypal, however the trouble with Paypal is that they take a no-insignificant chunk of the transfer - to ensure you got the full amount, Clickbank would have to absorb these fees, or you would miss out on some commissions. Remember they do provide wire transfer to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore,Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.
@BALO1234: Unfortunately if you're not on the list of countries you cant promote Clickbank products.
Erina Feala • 15 years ago
Detonyish D Maalory • 15 years ago
IE TOO.. I WOULD LOVE TO GET STARTED NOW. PLEASE SHOW ME HOW.
David Dombeck • 15 years ago
sumatriptan • 15 years ago
zahid • 15 years ago
Thomas • 15 years ago
Deanna • 14 years ago
I am new to ClickBank and it looks pretty straight-forward. However, I am a bit concerned about one of the conditions to joining that I read on the site. It said that if your account becomes dormant, they can charge you each month that you do not earn money. Do you know what that is all about? I am concerned because I'd hate to not sell anything at ClickBank to earn money and then start getting charged for not selling anything.
Thanks.
Meg • 14 years ago
Steve Sr. • 14 years ago
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Steve Sr. • 14 years ago
If You Are Running Your Own CB Store You Can Protect Your CB ID And Your Commissions...For More Info... Click Here!!! http://www.noelinfoservices.com/CBStore
Mark Collin Glynn • 14 years ago
Market Guru • 14 years ago
CBReviewed • 14 years ago
internetten para kazan • 14 years ago
I was just browsing here and there to get some stuff and got to read this post. I am new in affiliate marketing and I think also that the best way is to start with CB. Thanks a lot for this excellent post.
saran • 13 years ago
ianfrederick • 13 years ago
Hassan Jawad • 13 years ago
mohammod • 13 years ago
George Edwards • 13 years ago
Didik Rahmanto • 13 years ago
LIcinio Vasconcellos • 13 years ago
Keshri Nandan • 12 years ago
What is the reason ?
My campaigns are getting hindered due to this...
Please help...
Dan • 12 years ago
Joe S • 12 years ago
John • 12 years ago
Ganhar dinheiro • 12 years ago
Clickbank is for sure an excellente tool to make money online.
Continued success to you !
Mathias • 11 years ago
Beni • 11 years ago
Cecille Loorluis • 11 years ago
Are you creating your product sales page or squeeze page on ClickBank? If so, I suggest you get in touch with their vendor support. They had a major update on their site late last year that should have improved the merchant tools on their site. I also recommend optimizing your video prior to uploading it.
Hope that helps. Have a good day!
Teetee 22 • 10 years ago
thank you!!!
Melissa Johnson • 10 years ago
https://www.affilorama.com/forum/
Carol • 10 years ago
Melissa Johnson • 10 years ago
vernetta sims • 10 years ago
HopLink, and I am trying to find out if there is an alternative?
I really need to start selling on line and that is the only thing
that is holding me back.
Can anyone help.
Thanks
Vernetta Sims
Melissa Johnson • 10 years ago
I'm not sure what the issue is, but you might want to head over to the Affilorama forum to ask your question: https://www.affilorama.com/forum/ Our members and staff there should be pinpoint your trouble!
Cecille Loorluis • 10 years ago
You can post your inquiry in the Affilorama Forums as Melissa suggests, but you might want to check with your affiliate network too and see why you can't copy/paste hoplinks.
If you're trying to promote Affilorama courses, then you can go to our Affiliates area https://www.affilorama.com/affiliates and get your affiliate links from there.
All the best!
vernetta sims • 10 years ago
able to find the site to be able to sell products. And I was told at
ClickBank today that I can type in the code. and I think the reason I can't
copy & paste is because of the browser.
Thanks for reaching out!
Hope you all the best with your selling.
vernetta sims • 10 years ago
I will do that I appreciate the feed back.
I wish you all the best!