How to Use Clickbank and Make Money as an Affiliate Marketer

Digital products such as eBooks, training courses or software offer a lot of income opportunities for people who want to start an online business. That’s because they are easy to create and access by anyone. If you are interested in promoting digital products as an affiliate marketer, this article will show you how to use Clickbank and make money online, full-time.

What Is Clickbank and How Does It Work?

Clickbank is a digital online retailer that allows content creators (aka vendors) to list their products for sale and to promote through affiliate programs. To participate, you need to set up an account first (it’s free). After the verification, you can go to the marketplace and check out the vendor’s offer. Each listing will look something like this.

Let me briefly describe what they are all about; 

1 – Hypertext link to the main product page.

2 – A brief description of the product.

3 – ‘Stats’ that represent the sales, earnings, and popularity of the product in the marketplace.

4 – Icons that represent the product features such as the language, the recurrence of sales and shipping availability.

5 – ‘Vendor spotlight’’ is a special page that offers details about the vendor’s profile, their sales performance, and affiliate news.

6 – The ‘Promote’ button is where you click to get the affiliate link which looks something like this;

When you include this link on your promotional content and a reader follows through to the point of purchase, you make a sales commission that is based on the net sale price (after subtracting Clickbank charges).

The commission is usually higher than physical products (within the range of 50 to 70%) and you can cash out the payment for as low as $10. Take note that $150 is the maximum commission you can earn on a single sale transaction with Clickbank.

How to Monetize From Clickbank

This is probably the main question that you need to find out when using Clickbank. You might have heard of some fast-and-easy way to promote affiliate products. In my opinion, if you adopt these types of techniques, you wouldn’t be making money for the long term.

However, if you follow these step-by-step, I can guarantee that you’ll achieve better results. 

1) First, you need to identify a niche that you are interested in, preferably something that you have skills and knowledge about because you’ll be promoting to this group of people over and over again.

2) Next, you need to create a website (not a webpage) as a source of information for your readers and for you to build authority within that niche.

3) Before promoting the product, it’s best to try it out to experience the results yourself. That way, you can gauge the quality level, vendor’s commitment and help your readers make better purchasing decisions.

4) Next, using a targeted low-competition keyphrase, write a product review and elaborate on as much aspect as you can. This is the page that you want to maximize your affiliate links. Here are some keyword ideas that you can use;  

• Brilliant Yoga Review (competition = 48)
• Best Online Paleo Recipes (competition = 1) << This is a good one!
• Best Japanese Language Program (competition = 11)
• Ultimate Hawaii Guidebook (competition = 19)

5) To get traffic to your website, you are going to build content for your niche by publishing relevant articles regularly that point towards your product review page. Again, you should focus on long-tail keywords because they rank better in the organic search.

6) Other methods that you can use to promote your article/product review are social sharing, email marketing, banner ads, and bonus offers.

7) When you are finally getting conversion from these organic sources, you can then venture into paid traffic sources such as PPC and Facebook Ads. Plan your budget wisely as you shouldn’t be spending more than what you invested in.  

Some Do’s and Don’ts to Keep In Mind

Unlike other networks, it’s fairly easy to obtain the affiliate links from any vendors in Clickbank. Most of them do not do any screening or require any information from your side. But this is where a lot of people misuse/abuse the use of affiliate links.

So here is some gentle reminder to keep in mind when it comes to promoting digital products.

• Don’t promote a product if it’s NOT RELEVANT to your niche. You’ll confuse your audience.
• Don’t place affiliate links into every single article that you publish. The search engines see this as an overzealous self-promotion tactic.
• Don’t place affiliate links directly on social sites. That’s an act of blatant spam.
• Do work with good quality products as it will give more value for conversion.

So, Is Clickbank Worthy of Your Time?

That really depends on what type of niche you are involved with. Clickbank currently offers 23 types of product categories that are fairly popular these days online.

If you can find one product that matches your niche, by all means, promote it using the methods that I’ve mentioned above. If you can’t find one, don’t feel despair because there are many more opportunities out there.

• Try JVZoo. It’s an affiliate network that focuses on digital products too.
• Search in Google using this phrase “niche + affiliate program” and you’ll discover other private affiliate programs.
• Consider promoting physical products relevant to your niche. That way, you can leverage online retailers’ sites such as Amazon or affiliate networks such as ShareASale.

I hope this article has given you a better idea of how to use Clickbank and make money for your online business. If you like to know more about website creation, keyword research and most importantly, driving targeted traffic to your product review page, then you should check out my recommended training platform for more information.

Have any thoughts or questions about Clickbank? Just leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get back to you.