How to Make Money with ClickBank
Discover how to make money with ClickBank using a website or Google AdWords campaign. Essential tips for newbie affiliates looking to make money online.
July 20th, 2010 by Becky Turner
How to Make Money with ClickBank |
ClickBank is a popular affiliate platform which, as of July 2010, has generated US $11,000+ for me in passive income. If you're a complete beginner or you have tried to make money online and failed, this article will give you new insights into affiliate marketing and how to make money with ClickBank in just a few hours.
In my experience, ClickBank is a fun way to make money from home that is ethical, legal and effective - and you don't even need a website to do it.
What is ClickBank?
ClickBank is an online marketplace showcasing more than 11,000 products from sellers all around the world. The products on sale include ebook guides, audio files, computer software, health supplements, home study courses, CD and DVD series, and more.
You can make money with ClickBank by signing up as an affiliate, which means you can promote any product you like and earn a commission for every sale you make. ClickBank products offer up to 75% commission and track your sales efforts for months afterwards.
The benefits of this business model include:
- You don't need to create your own product
- You don't to worry about stocking or shipping
- You don't have to deal with customer queries
- The product vendor handles all the admin
You may recognize this process as affiliate marketing, and it is a superb way to make money online with or without a website. All you need to do it send traffic to your unique affiliate link, and let the vendor do the rest.
ClickBank Bestsellers
I first learned how to make money with ClickBank via Unexplainable Store - which to this day remains my most profitable ClickBank affiliate product.
Unexplainable Store is a creator of brainwave entrainment CDs and MP3s to listen to while you meditate or go to sleep. This effectively synchronizes your brainwaves to any desired state of awareness (alert, creative, relaxed) including highly elusive states like the ones required for lucid dreaming and deep theta meditation. I now earn 75% per sale of every MP3 download which I promote on my World of Lucid Dreaming site.
Generally, the most profitable (highest commission) products on ClickBank usually fall into the following categories:
- Online Casinos
- Pharmaceutical Drugs
- Website Hosting
- Credit Cards
- Diet Pills
- Loans and Debt Consolidation
- Computer Software
However, I don't recommend you actually target any of these products because every man and his dog already does this. The competition is fierce - meaning you will have to pay more on advertising if you don't own a website. If you do already own a successful website in these niches, then feel free to go after these lucrative affiliate products, as long as they are genuine and you believe in them.
Otherwise (especially as a ClickBank newbie) I suggest you go for more mundane but less competitive niches, such as "how to" ebooks. There are plenty of people out there searching on Google to learn how to cook delicious recipes, how to play piano, or how to do home repairs. Identify a product that fulfils a need, and you will reap the rewards.
How to Make Money with ClickBank -
If You Own a Website
Now you understand what ClickBank is all about, let's get cracking.
First, register with ClickBank for free and set up your affiliate account. Then start promoting products on your site. This is exactly how I did it:
Step 1 - I created my website about lucid dreaming and now I want to make some money from it. I sign up to ClickBank as an affiliate.
Step 2 - I search the ClickBank marketplace for relevant products, by entering the search term "lucid dreaming". I am given a list of all the dream related products with data on popularity, price and commission.
Step 3 - I pick my favorites and contact the vendors directly for a free product sample to review. If I show them my website they are usually more than happy to oblige, as they know I will make a good affiliate partner.
Step 4 - After reviewing the lucid dreaming products, I decide that my favorite is Unexplainable Store. I return to ClickBank to grab my affiliate hoplink and place this link on my website in text and banner ads.
Step 5 - Any time someone clicks on my affiliate link, ClickBank will place a tracking cookie on their computer. This ensures that if or when they finally decide to purchase, I will be credited with the commission. In the case of Unexplainable, this is on average $20 per sale.
Tips for Increasing Sales
If the above sounds too easy, I promise you it isn't - otherwise everyone would know how to make money with ClickBank hand over fist!
It does take hard work and patience before the passive income starts rolling in. Most people are put off by that initial perceived risk or actual legwork required (...and those are the ones still working 9-5 day jobs).
So, the hard part about making money with ClickBank is sending a minimum amount of web traffic to the vendor's sales page. Not every visitor is going to buy the product - in fact, it is likely to be anywhere between 1 in 100 to 1 in 500 visitors who make a purchase. The good news is, there are ways to warm up your visitors to encourage a sale. These include:
- Write your own product review - Remember I obtained a free product sample in step three? This is so I know exactly what I'm promoting. I don't want to get a bad reputation for selling crap on my websites. I test everything I sell via ClickBank because I don't want my readers to get burned. Not only is this more ethical, it's also vital if you want to make money online from repeat customers and build up a trustworthy reputation. So I encourage you to write an honest product review to give readers a feel for the benefits of the product before they are confronted with the hard hitting sales page. (Yeah, I hate those pages, but internet marketers will keep using them as long as they prove to be effective.) For an example of a product review, see my Lucid Dreaming MP3 Review.
- Use banner ads - Many ClickBank vendors offer affiliate tools to help you make more sales, such as banner adverts. I only put the most attractive and professional looking banners on my websites, and make sure I link them to my own product review. If a vendor doesn't have any banners, I make my own in PhotoShop. I'm a writer by trade, not a graphic designer, but this hasn't stopped me giving it a go. You should try it too. My first few banners were dreadful but I have got a lot better at it, and there is a huge payoff because now I can offer unique and tailored banners for any products I want.
- Use direct product links - Some vendors may just offer a single product landing page, while others have entire storefronts. If it's the latter, you should direct your hoplink to a specific product page. After all, what is it you want your reader to buy? I wouldn't drop a visitor on Amazon's homepage and hope they randomly decide to buy a DVD player. I would recommend a particular book that I have read, then deliver them to that book detail page on Amazon. (Incidentally, Amazon runs its own affiliate program and is not on ClickBank.)
How to Make Money with ClickBank -
If You Don't Own a Website
There are still a couple of ways to make money with ClickBank even if you don't own a website. Anyone can do this, right now.
First of all, put your affiliate hoplink in your email and forum signatures. It is more appropriate if you link to a dog product when writing at a dog forum, cat products in cat forums, etc. If you are a prolific forum poster, your affiliate link will be put in front of a LOT of other internet users.
Another easy way to drive traffic to your hoplink is by guest posting at article databases like Ezine Articles. The idea is you write a 400-600 word article on any topic which other authors can use on their websites. In return, you can post a link or two in your closing paragraph, either directed towards your own website or your affiliate link. There are many free article databases like this, but Ezine Articles is my preferred one.
Finally, the most powerful way to drive traffic to your hoplink is through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The most famous provider is Google AdWords. While the idea of paying for advertising may not instantly appeal to you, let me explain why this method is so effective...
Mastering Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a type of text or image advertising which appears both in Google's search engine results (Search Network), and on other people's websites (Content Network). In search results, it looks like this:
The Google AdWords blocks are highlighted in red |
Who can make these ads? Anyone. You or I can create a Google Ad in about five minutes after registering for a free Google AdWords account. (Incidentally, you can do the exact same thing with a Yahoo Search Marketing account. If you want to go full speed ahead you should really sign up with both and accelerate your most successful ads.)
The beauty of Google AdWords is they only appear when someone searches the net for a matching phrase. You have the opportunity to create a list of keywords to target your audience. So when someone searches for "dog training" they will only see dedicated dog training ads. This makes it far more likely that they'll (a) click the ad, and (b) buy the product.
You also get to set your own ad price. While Google will give you a recommended price range in order to stay competitive, you can choose whether you pay 5c or 50c per click. You can also set a daily budget which prevents your advertising costs from flying out of control.
Once you know the ropes, you can set up a very effective AdWords campaign which drives serious traffic to your affiliate link. Then it is only a game of numbers before you start making a profit.
For example, let's say you bid 2c per click and generate 100 ad clicks in a day, costing a total of $2. If those 100 clicks convert to sales at a modest rate of 1% on a product with a $20 commission, you have made $18 in profit for a small $2 outlay.
Once you know your AdWords campaign works, you can scale it up. This is easy to do; simply increase your budget and your number of keywords. By running a trial first, you limit your risk to just a few dollars, while assessing the potential profit for a larger campaign. If you start losing money, you can stop a campaign at any time and cut your losses.
Tips on Google AdWords
Speaking from experience, making money with AdWords is not something you can teach yourself overnight. There are dozens of tips and tricks that you need to know in order to run a successful campaign and make money online. But once you know how to work it efficiently, the combination of ClickBank and Google AdWords is a powerful one. It is also ideal for newbie internet marketers who don't run their own websites.
If you have a few hours to spare, try setting up a trial AdWords campaign and promoting a product on ClickBank. It wont make you millions, for sure. But it may make you an additional income stream of a few hundred or thousand dollars per month, which for many people goes a long way. It could also kick-start a broader career in affiliate marketing - and finding your own independent income sources is what this website is all about.
Final Thoughts
ClickBank is just one affiliate marketplace I've used to make money online. In future I'll write more articles on affiliate marketing, including how to create and sell your own product so that you become the ClickBank vendor and have affiliates working on your behalf! The beauty of this model is once you've created a digital product and written your sales page, the income is entirely passive. You do not even need to advertise the product on your own website or via Google AdWords (though you might) - simply list your product on ClickBank and the affiliates will sell it for you. I currently sell two of my own ebooks on ClickBank this way which creates another passive income stream... and passive income is where it's at!
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