How does Clickbank work? Clickbank is often one of the first stop shops for affiliate marketers. It houses a huge assortment of affiliate products which anyone can use to make money online. But how does this work? Simple, you join Clickbank.com and find a product you want to promote. Grab the affiliate link and set about promoting it.
Joining Clickbank and finding a product is easy. Getting customers to buy it is the difficult part of affiliate marketing. Why is this? Anyone can join an affiliate program and get their unique affiliate link. But once you have completed this part of the journey, your job as an affiliate is to promote that affiliate link and make sales. This can be done in a variety of different ways.
How Does Clickbank Work?
To join Clickbank you’ll need to go through their application process. To get paid you’ll also need to add a payment method while signing up. This process is relatively straight forward and pretty much anyone can join without too much hassle. Once you have joined the platform, you’ll want to find a product to promote. If you’re new to affiliate marketing, it may be worth buying a product which will teach you some kind of affiliate promotion method too.
That way, you can promote the product you’ve bought, and also write a review of it. Having legitimately purchased it yourself, you’ll be a genuine customer and therefore be able to write a legitimate review. Although you don’t technically need to purchase an affiliate product first to promote it, it’s way better if you do. Integrity in promoting affiliate products online is a key element to building trust with your potential customers.
How Does Clickbank Work – The Marketplace
In Clickbank’s “marketplace” you’ll find a huge array of products you can choose from. If you already have a website, or are interested in a certain topic, it might be wise to choose a product in that particular topic. With an existing website which already has traffic, you can simply grab a marketing banner from one of the product owners (aka vendors) and paste it on your site. This can give you an almost instant way to monetise an existing site which is already generating traffic.
In the marketplace you’ll find a whole heap of topics and categories where you’ll find many products which you can promote. As an affiliate, you’ll earn a percentage of the product sale value when someone buys through your affiliate link. Each affiliate link is unique and tracked back to the person who brought in the sale. Clickbank will pay you according to the products you are able to sell.
Choosing Products From Clickbank
Your choice of product is pretty important because not every product will sell as well as another. Some products will be very popular too which means there could be a lot of competition online for the various marketing methods available. If you’re going to build a blog around your topic, for example, it’s worth checking out the competition first before you start. A highly competitive niche will be much harder to gain traction in with a new website.
Ideally choose a product you would purchase yourself too. If you don’t want to purchase a product, it could be an indication of your audiences preferences too! Many affiliate marketers will use paid marketing to promote affiliate products from Clickbank but there’s a variety of marketing methods which can be employed. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
Gravity On Clickbank
The “gravity” score on any given Clickbank product will tell you something about whether it’s worth considering for promotion. The gravity score appears in the data underneath a product in the marketplace.
A high gravity score means there’s lots of this product being sold by affiliates. A low gravity score means that not many are being sold. If you’re a beginner you might imagine that choosing the highest gravity score is the best option. But you’d be wrong! A high gravity score will also mean there’s many other affiliates who are promoting this product. This might mean there’s a lot of competition and therefore it will likely be harder to sell it yourself (depending on your marketing strategies).
So it’s wise to choose a product with a median gravity score which means it is selling (therefore sellable) and which doesn’t have too much competition. A good gravity score for a beginner to choose would be somewhere around 20 to 80. High gravity scores of over 100 will likely have a lot of affiliates promoting the product, and therefore that will make it harder to find customers through the various promotion methods.
Clickbank And Commissions
Clickbank is popular because it offers a lot of digital products which can work well for affiliates because of their higher commission levels. Many of the products on Clickbank pay over 30% commissions when you refer a sale. This is much higher than many other affiliate programs which offer low priced physical goods. Amazon, for example, only pays affiliates between 1% and 11% commission on referrals. So a single sale from a digital product is worth 3-30 times as much as selling a low commission product on Amazon.
Some Clickbank products also pay recurring commissions. To find them, you can use a site called CBEngine.com.
Recurring products pay out ongoing commissions month after month. They are great for beginner affiliates because they allow you to make more consistent income more quickly from an affiliate enterprise. See affiliate programs with recurring commissions.
High Ticket Commissions
Most products on Clickbank only sell for around $100 or so which will only give an affiliate a $40 commission on each sale. High ticket affiliate products are good for affiliates because they carry larger price points and therefore offer larger commissions.
A single high ticket sale can earn as much as 10 or even 100 lower value sales.
For more information on affiliate marketing, access a free workshop series here.
Summary – How Does Clickbank Work?
Clickbank is a popular place for beginners to find affiliate products to promote. because they are digital products on Clickbank, they offer a higher level of commission when you make a sale. Physical products tend to pay much lower levels of commission. Recurring commission products let you earn ongoing commissions from product sales and high ticket products are the best paying for “one off” sales.
Once you have chosen a product to sell, the hard part of affiliate marketing is product promotion. It’s easy to join a program but more difficult to get traction as an affiliate and build a profitable business from it. Access a free workshop series of videos here to learn more about the different business models available.