Clickbank is one of the most lucrative Affiliate Marketing Networks available online today, click to register for your free Clickbank account. That is primarily because of the amount of items available to advertise as well as the extremely high commissions on some of the items, up to 75% commissions on some programs. The reason these vendors can pay such a high commission is because of the fact that many of the items are digital, meaning there are not any distribution costs for them to get the product to the customer. From my research Clickbank is one of the better affiliate networks available because of how easy it is to place links and earn commissions through their various programs that are constantly being updated.
As with the other programs I have reviewed so far the most important lesson to learn is to be consistent with your efforts. You won't make a lot of money overnight, but if you are consistent in your efforts and take an educated approach then it should work out well for you. It can take a while before you start seeing commissions based on what sort of traffic your site generates and how targeted you are making your articles. You can typically expect to start earning a regular commission after a couple of months of concentrated effort. My typical advice is work on a program for at least 100 days before you expect any results. Then start setting reasonable goals for improving your results. There are many great articles on this, and I'll be improving this article as time goes to help those who are interested in earning money from Clickbank improve their commission performance.
How to Join Clickbank
Joining the Clickbank network is easy, and does not cost anything to get started(only when you wish to advertise your products). You can register here, and then once your account is created you can start promoting products on your website that same day. Some programs have various requirements so make sure to read through each one before you start marketing it on your site.
Finding the best Clickbank Product to Promote
To find the products you can promote on your site, you just need to click on the Marketplace link on the top of the ClickBank homepage. Once you are there you will see a list of categories for various products on the left. Click on one that matches something you are familiar with and starts browsing the programs.
Once you find a category that is similar to your niche then you should look through the available products that you can market on your site. You will be able to see the average commission as well as other statistics for the program. Finding programs that are profitable will take some time for you to learn, but once you find a pattern that works best for your audience you will start earning a reliable stream of commissions from your traffic.
As you can see above from the picture this particular product pays an average of $85.50 per sale. The important thing to note is the amount you earn per sale, which may not match that number exactly due to various upsells, sales tax, chargebacks, etc. Even given those unknown variables you can still get a fair idea of what you can expect to earn from a particular program. You can also look at the Stats section at the bottom of the program's detail block to see some additional information like an Initial sale, Average Sale, Average Rebill, and Grav. Finding products that not only have decent commissions but also have good rebill averages can be a way you can start building residual income from your marketing efforts. Build up enough customers who are purchasing these then you can quickly find your self in a very profitable situation.
Once you find the program that you think will work best for your situation you will need to generate a Clickbank affiliate link that will credit you for purchases made by those clicking through your site.
Obtaining your Clickbank Affiliate Link
Click on the large orange Promote button, and then you will be presented a form like the one below. It is advisable if you plan to market your product in different locations that you also provide a Tracking ID, this is optional but very useful for gauging the performance of products among different audiences. This will show up in the reporting section at the top of the page where you can view sales by Tracking ID to see how effective different campaigns are. Click the Orange Create button once you are ready. It will present you with another screen, copy the first link and use it for your marketing of the product. Additionally, you could use a service like Bit.ly in order to shorten the link and make it more presentable in various locations.
How to Best Promote ClickBank links
There are numerous places that you can market your ClickBank, below I will go over my top picks for doing this and how you can go about it in order to maximize your conversions and generate the most possible revenue from your available resources and traffic.
Niche Websites / Blogs
Without a doubt, the best method of promoting Clickbank products can be a niche website. That is because you will tend to know a lot more about the likes and dislikes of the audience and you can convert that targeted traffic much more than a general avenue. A method best used is to promote the product in the form of a review. Discuss what the product is, how it works, and what your readers will benefit most from it. In addition to helping to convert traffic to customers, this will help you continue to build valuable traffic page views that can also help you earn money from Google Adsense or other passive programs that you have on your site.
When your able to demonstrate using the product in a way that benefits you, then you will be able to increase the credibility of your article and the conversion rate of the readers viewing your article. This is an important strategy for affiliate marketing that I will go over later, it is very similar to strategies that are employed by many of the more traditional network marketing programs like Amway.
Targeted Email Marketing
In an earlier article, I talked about how to utilize a contact list of leads generated by inbound marketing can earn you revenue. The key point to keep in mind is to not go overboard or you risk crossing into the spam category of emails. Make sure that what you send is a part of a longer message, and use that longer message to target a subject that the product in question answers. This way not only are you providing something that may be useful you will likely see higher conversions, and see lower unsubscribe rates than if you were to just send out weekly blasts of emails with different products.
Marketing on Social Media
If you have a large following or a niche following, you can also do well at marketing to that list of followers. You can promote your various products via social media. Just keep in mind that like Email marketing you don't want to overdo it. I would limit this to one or two targeted campaigns a week in order to keep from driving away your followers. Make sure that you are providing extremely high-value content to your various followers so that they continue to grow, increasing your number of potential customers and increasing your conversion rate.
As long as you are doing things in a casual sort of way and providing a relevant response to posts on social media posts, then replying with a link to one of your products that solves the question or provides an answer to something else will make sure that not only you are being an engaged participant, but will ensure that those you are engaging with will respond in a positive manner. When you post to twitter think of posting a link to a helpful how-to article instead of just a direct link to the product. On the how-to article or review article, you can then include links throughout that will allow your readers the chance to purchase and convert.
Utilizing Inbound Marketing
I am a huge proponent of creating a concentrated Inbound marketing strategy when it comes to your blog or business website, and doing this can also help you convert your visitors if you write your articles in a way that they provide an extremely high level of information and quality information in exchange the visitors will provide you with page views and will convert at a much higher rate. Writing articles that place your products in front of customers that are most likely to purchase them is the key to most inbound marketing strategies these days and will lead to the highest possible commissions from your efforts.
More to come
I will continue to update this article on a regular basis, so if you want to see updates make sure to sign up for my newsletter, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter. For now, I think this is a great start to this article. As always if you have questions or are looking for more information comment below and I will reply as quick as I can.