ClickBank.com is a company that allows you to make money based on sales as an affiliate. This program is similar to the ones offered by ShareaSale or LinkShare.
Many publishers recommend using ClickBank because they claim that it’s relatively easy to make sales. In this article I will share with you my personal ClickBank experiences as well as the pros and cons of working with this company.
To begin, as soon as you sign up for a free account with ClickBank you can immediately search for merchants and begin placing their links where appropriate. One thing I do like about ClickBank is that you can search through thousands of merchants by using keywords. This makes finding a company that meshes well with your sites material pretty easy. For example, if your site deals with pets and pet care products, you can get a list of affiliates just by typing in “pets”, “animals”, “dogs”, etc. Much easier than having to browse through page after page of companies.
The second thing I do like about ClickBank is that as soon as you find a merchant you think you may want to work with you are able to view the exact page you will be sending your referrals to. This means that before you select a link you can see exactly what your visitors will be seeing. I highly suggest thoroughly reviewing each landing page before using any link because the last thing you want to do is send someone to a crummy company.
And finally, the thing I like about ClickBank is that you only have to make $10 to get paid. And adding onto that, each merchant lists exact information about their products, including how much the item(s) sell for, how likely it is to make a sale and more. This is pretty cool for certain products you may wonder about. It really make making a decision easy.
Also, ClickBank does have a referral program that allows you to make long term money off of every person who signs up under your link. The dididens are rather small but they can add up. Here’s how there referral system works:
$10 sale = $0.09 commission
$20 sale = $0.13 commission
$30 sale = $0.16 commission
$40 sale = $0.20 commission
$50 sale = $0.24 commission
$100 sale = $0.42 commission
$150 sale = $0.61 commission
$200 sale = $0.80 commission
$250 sale = $0.99 commission
So imagine the possibilities if you have a few people who really find success in the ClickBank program – you could earn an extra $50 or more every month just in commissions. Not to mention that in addition to your base referral earnings, you automatically earn 5% of ClickBank's markup on every sale made by that publisher for a full calendar year after their initial signup date.
Now lets discuss the things I dislike about ClickBank. Although I have personally had success with C.B. I have really been bothered by a few things. First, they have a lot of almost bogus merchants. Now I don’t mean “scam companies”, such as the ones you find online that are out to deceive you, but I do mean companies that charge people for information that is available 100% free of charge elsewhere. For example, there’s tons of paid survey companies available through ClickBank but the user has to pay a fee to sign up. Then there’s tons of Google Adsense companies that tech you how to make money from Google – more info that is available for free online, etc. However, I guess if people are willing to pay for services that they don’t need to pay for it would be their fault for buying, right?
I suppose the only reason I have a hard time swallowing this is because I remember when I first embarked on my online money making adventure I didn’t know where to turn. I debated trying out some of these companies that so many people suggested (just to get referral money, which I was not aware of). Luckily I decided not to invest in any of them and now I’m glad I didn’t waste my money. So it would just make me feel guilty telling someone else to do something I know is not worth their hard earned income.
The second thing I dislike about ClickBank is that there aren’t any html banners available for the merchants. Instead you get individual referral links for each product. This can be good because you don’t have to break up any html banner codes to get link codes but at the same time, it’s not as attractive to have text links in your sidebar as it is to have high quality banners.
