I typically trash Clickbank as a low-quality garbage bin for discount digital products worth very little money, and even less of your time.
But the company is still alive and well, and in the digital info-product world I live in, people are still touting it as a great place to find things to promote for your affiliate business.
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I decided to investigate further to see not only if it’s still possible to make money on Clickbank, but if it’s actually possible to make honest money there.
- Are there any quality products on Clickbank worth promoting?
- Bad Product Examples
- Good Product Examples
- How much money can you make by promoting stuff from the CB marketplace?
- How to find high converting, high paying items with low return rates
- What does the future of Clickbank look like?
- A look inside my Clickbank earnings
- What Now? (How To Start Making Money With ANY Products Online)
How To Make Money On Clickbank
1) Are there any quality products on Clickbank worth promoting?
Yes, there are actually some good products worth promoting within the Clickbank marketplace.
Be aware though, you really need to dig.
And I mean really dig deep.
There is a lot of crap on Clickbank. How do you tell the good products from the bad? This is a matter of judgment, taste, and personal bias, but here are a few pointers.
- Upfront and honest sales pitch
- Short and to-the-point product description
- Informative with little or no hype
- Up to date information
Here are some examples of good and bad products I found in various niches.
Bad Products Examples
Good Products Examples
2) How much money can you make by promoting stuff from the CB marketplace?
The question of how much money is “possible” to make gets asked the most.
Of course, there’s no real good answer to that, because it depends on a lot of variables. You can make anything from zero dollars, up to tens of thousands of dollars per month.
For me personally, I don’t make that much from Clickbank, and never have. I take in about $100 per month. It isn’t impressive, but I’ll explain more about my stats below.
Other people swear by this marketplace, and a lot of “how to make money” products are based solely on using Clickbank. To them, Clickbank is the foundation of their business despite the fact that there are thousands of other affiliate programs out there.
In this sense, Clickbank is kind of a relic of the past. Affiliate programs are so diverse nowadays, that you are not restricted to only promoting digital products. Physical products are just as easy to buy online these days!
Plus, as more people start shopping online every year, it’ll get easier and easier to convert them to sales.
3) How to find high converting, high paying items with low return rates
You can find this information right in the little blurb about each product.
- Initial $/sale: How much money you make for each sale
- Avg %/sale: The percent commission you make of total cost
- Avg Rebill Total: If there is a recurring payment, the average total of all rebilled commissions
- Avg %/rebill: If there is a recurring payment, the percent commission you make
- Grav: How many affiliates have made commissions in the last 12 days
A high commission, recurring payments, and a high gravity is what you want to look for. Be sure to watch out for that gravity! I found more that one product with HUGE commissions and rebills, but a super low gravity. It was several years old and obviously no longer popular.
This will also depend on your niche of course, and your particular audience. You are the expert, so think about what your audience wants, and find a product to match them. Here is a popular product that can be used for many niches.
Further Product & Niche Research
Even with all these combined factors, you still need to know if this product is worth promoting. You need to investigate a few things.
- The product itself (is it good)
- Keyword ideas & metrics
- Competition from other affiliate websites
Very often you’ll find fake reviews from other affiliates that make a product sound awesome, but it will probably be clear that they never tried it. To find out if a product is worth promoting, you can actually buy it (if you have a budget), or you can look for legit reviews from non-marketers or high-quality marketers.
This research process is a good way to review products without having tried them yourself.
4) What does the future of Clickbank look like?
I think Clickbank is going to be around for a while. Digital information products, membership sites, PDF guides, and other information that can be bought and sold on the internet is only going to grow.
I give CB a hard time because I work in the internet marketing industry so I see hyped and misleading products all the time. Doing research for this post though, I did find a few goodies in the marketplace.
There are other marketplaces out there, but they are in a lot worse shape than CB. Clicksure and JVZoo are two examples. My advice is to avoid Clicksure, but JVZoo has some good stuff as well.
Bonus: A look inside my Clickbank earnings
I don’t actively promote any Clickbank products these days, but when I got started with affiliate marketing, I followed the crowd and promoted some Clickbank stuff. Here are my earnings from that period.
I pulled in about $600 for the first half of 2011 (my first year at CB) and $1500 for the year 2012. For the following year (2013), I earned about $800. These numbers are not impressive, of course, but they are the earnings of a fresh affiliate marketer.
As I got more disillusioned with Clickbank products, I promoted things less and less. For 2014 I pulled in $1,000 for the year, but it was mostly from random sales and not an income I could count on.
I didn’t work on these websites anymore but was happy to take in a random grand for the year. I do absolutely zero work on these websites except to update them, which means I make about $1000 per hour promoting Clickbank products!
Don’t take that as a green light to rush over and start promoting info-products through! Though you can still make money on Clickbank, as I have demonstrated here today, it’s not any easier than any other affiliate marketing setup.
Promote products you like and understand is my main bit of advice. Pick a niche you are interested in, then find products to fit that niche, rather than the other way around. That’s my advice to newbies, at least.
For more experienced marketers, you may find you have the patience and tenacity to see a project through to profitability, even if you’re not passionate about the topic. However, for most people new to making money online, it’s a real struggle to put in the daily hours selling boner pills when you aren’t really sure if this whole “affiliate marketing” thing works or not.
Not sure what to promote? Here are some affiliate program reviews to get you started.
What Now? (How To Start Making Money ANY Products Online)
I know my Clickbank earnings were pretty poor, but I actually make a full-time income promoting other affiliate programs. I just found that most of what was on CB wasn’t my style, and there was too much junk to sort through.
Don’t be limited by what you find in the Clickbank marketplace. There’s a whole other world out there.
There are literally thousands of other affiliate programs out there with physical and/or digital products for you to promote. Clickbank is just one affiliate network and has a very limited number of things to promote.
I started out as a newbie in 2010, and quit my job in 2012. Now I spend my days helping other people on their own businesses. If you want to start a new online business or have an existing one you need help with, you can get 1-on-1 support from ME! All you need to do is join the same online business training center where I learned to build my first business.
Make Money on Clickbank
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Cheap To Start
Easy To Scale
Income Potential
Final Review
There are thousands of different side hustles you could do to earn some extra money on the side, and which one "clicks" for you depends on your personality and goals. However, there's one side hustle that makes an insane amount of money and works for anyone.
Starting an affiliate website is an incredible way to earn extra money because you can do it from your home on a laptop, and work on your business in the evenings and on weekends. The income potential is huge, and it's easy to scale
Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
Craigslist + Fiverr Arbitrage – Is This A Legit Online Business Model?
Joe
Nathaniell, I have a few basic questions for you, as I’m new to affiliate marketing & Clickbank…
1. Since I am not a PPC expert, and there seems to be a LOT of competition online, I am interested in promoting CB products through print media channels, primarily newspapers. Is this doable, in your opinion?
2. I’m a bit confused. When promoting a CB product, I know I have to use a certain affiliate code to get credit for the sale, but am I sending people to the product author’s sales page, or do I have to create my own?
3. If sending to the author’s sales page, what happens if people do not use my affiliate code?
4. Whether sending people to my sales page or the author’s, how do I ensure that I am not being cheated out of commissions? If someone buys something, or even if they do not, how do I as an affiliate have any concrete proof of what is going on?
5. Whatever I make on CB, whether it is $30 or $3,000, how soon can I withdraw that money, and how to I go about doing so specifically? Is there any “hold” on funds?
6. What happens in the event of a product return or refund? How do I pay that money back, and how can I have proof that the actual returns are legitimate?
Nathaniell
1. I think doing it via print media is going to be an uphill battle, but it could be a niche worth looking into. Entrepreneurs like testing things – nothing wrong with trying!
2. You are sending people to the author’s sales page. The link goes to the sales page.
3. If they do not use your affiliate code, you don’t get credit. If they click someone else’s link before buying the product, that person gets credit.
4. There’s no “concrete proof” I guess.
5. I forget what minimum withdrawal rate is…something like $20 I think.
6. There’s a hold on the money at CB for 30 days I think. If the refund happens after that, the money is taken from your newer earnings.
Hope this helps!
Joe
Thanks for the info, and the speedy response, Nathaniell 🙂
I was thinking print because I understand that market much better, as I come from that world. Also, there is an immense amount of competition online, specifically regarding PPC. Finally, print offers something which PPC ads do not IMO, which is, when people see something in a newspaper or magazine, they give it more weight. They tend to put more trust into it. Even though they shouldn’t, they assume because something is in print, it must be good and worthy. However…
What print does not have going for it is, the ability to drill down and achieve incredible depths of consumer insight, and then reach those people based upon interests, age, hobbies, occupations, income levels and so forth. This is quite valuable. But it is also quite complex, and since it is not my main area of expertise, I would prefer to test the waters – at least initially – via print.
Your business platform and its premise seem to be an updated version of Ken Evoy’s Site Sell (SBI)…
1. Find a niche
2. Create an info website
3. Develop traffic to info site
4. Monetize
Obviously, this isn’t a new idea, and has been around for ages on the net. So, specifically in what regard is your program different? The biggest problem with all of the similar systems out there always leads back to the root cause…
TRAFFIC. How much do you cover this in your program, and how much of it would be able to be achieved by someone like myself, who doesn’t know a lick about coding, website tags, PPC, etc.?
I actually own a good sized website (the leader in its niche) for a hobby I am devoted to. It’s been 4 years now, and I average about 100,000 page views per month. But monetizing it, aside from a few banners from sponsors, has been difficult. Again, more traffic would be helpful.
Sorry for all of the questions, but I’m interested in your program and just want to make sure it is worthy of my dollars before moving ahead.
Nathaniell
Wealthy Affiliate focuses on getting organic traffic through Google, using content as the main driver. Sounds like you have that down with your website already. Though if you are struggling to monetize 100k visitors a month, my guess is that you are not creating targeted content, and you are not creating content that lends itself to sales. I would work on doing more research about topics related to your niche, and see if you can find some keywords with more “buyer intent” that relates to your niche!
Kasey Currier
Hi. You sound very intelligent. I am much older. I need to make money quickly and cannot afford a lot of upfront fees. I can work as many hours as it takes. After I pay the initial sign up for monthly pays. Are there other cost I will be .asked to add on for more information? You seem very honest and I appreciate that. Most companies start with one fee and than add more prices for more features when you think you bought the entire package.
Please answer
Thank you
Kasey
Nathaniell
If you need to “make money quickly” then I don’t recommend starting any kind of business. Making money in business rarely happens fast, especially for newbies. Also, it would be a shot in the dark to look for someone who will train you to run your business and only accept a “fee” after you start earning money. They’d rather just build the business themselves!
Just talking about Wealthy Affiliate in particular, they charge a monthly fee because you get help every day you are a member. Building a business is a continual process. Their fee is $49/month. You’ll also need a domain for $15/year. You have the option of paying for a keyword tool for $19/month. There are no other required fees or upsells. No expensive mentorships!
SOKHA MOEUN
Dear Nathaniell,
Can you help me? I want to make money online but I don’t know where I should start from. Do I have to pick products from CB or Jvzoo to promote? Excuse me. Can I choose products to promote on blog or create landing page and drive traffic?
Nathaniell
These are all choices you have to make. JVZoo vs Clickbank is a matter of preference, but mostly a matter of choosing a GOOD product. It doesn’t matter if you choose either company.
It’s also your decision on how to promote. I create blogs, and have had success doing that. Many other people do landing pages and drive paid traffic. That works too! I just don’t do that method because it takes too much money.
Jornes
It’s very good article. I have been looking for a way to make some extra money for my bills. I recently noticed Clickbank when i search make money online. It seems good to be with. But, not sure how to work it out. I’m in Asian, should i target the local people or it is only suitable to aim western country?
Nathaniell
If you can speak/write English, I would target the English speaking market because it’s so much larger. However, Asians of all countries shop online, so you could absolutely make money with your locals as well.
Mohamed
Hi Nathaniell
That was really an awesome review, Honestly I want to quit my hated job and be a full time online marketer, eventually it didnt work out what do you suggest to go forward, I dont wanna give up still.
Nathaniell
The key is to take the first step and start building a website. My #1 recommendation for getting started is found within the content of this article and pretty obvious in other places on my site. It’s free to join, so check it out!