How to Make Money With ClickBank

Did you know that you can make money online, even if you don’t have a website yet?

It’s called affiliate marketing, and it works. You find an outstanding product online and arrange for the seller to pay you a commission for every sale that you direct to their website.

As you read this, you likely have a lot of questions, foremost of which are:

• How do I make money with ClickBank?
• Where do I find out how to make a website for ClickBank?
• Which products should I promote?
• How do vendor negotiations work?
• How will the vendor know you sent that Customer X?
• When will they pay you? And how?
• How do you know you can trust them?

ClickBank can help you promote your chosen products and enjoy a nice side income in the process. You may even be able to turn it into a full-time gig.

Thousands (if not millions) of people are making money online doing affiliate marketing, and so can you. In this article, I will show you how I make money with ClickBank. If you’ve been wondering how to be a ClickBank affiliate, read on!

What (or Who) Is ClickBank?

ClickBank is a digital marketplace with an extensive affiliate network, global presence, secure payment processing, and a dependable tracking and payout system. Founded in 1998, it appeared at the same time as personal computers became more widespread and affordable, making it one of the earliest forums for generating revenue online.

Today, ClickBank has an estimated six million registered users who produce and market, digital products like software, video, and e-books. Serving as a middleman between product vendors and affiliates, it facilitates nearly 30,000 online sales every day. ClickBank handles the tracking by using cookies and unique tracking links, so they know where the sales come from and credit the referring accounts appropriately. Making money online by doing affiliate marketing has rarely been easier!

Is ClickBank Legitimate?

When I talk to people about how I make money with ClickBank, I’m often asked, “Is it legit?”

When you hear about an excellent opportunity for making money online, you can’t be blamed for wondering if it’s legit. There are a lot of scammers out there, and if something isn’t as well-known as the Amazon Associates program or the eBay partner network, it’s reasonable to be cautious.

The answer is yes! ClickBank is completely legit, and thousands of members use it to recommend and sell quality digital products. It is one of many affiliate networks out there but has some special advantages that make it stand out to vendors and affiliates alike. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

• Easy to Join. ClickBank is newbie-friendly. To become an affiliate, all you have to do is sign up for a ClickBank affiliate account. Many other networks are so wary of potential scammers that they are hard to join. While their concern is understandable, it also makes things difficult for new affiliates.
• A Huge Variety of Products. ClickBank has approximately two dozen categories that cover thousands of products. No matter what you want to sell or promote, you’re practically guaranteed to have an opportunity available.
• High Commissions. You can earn commissions of up to 70% per product. Although it sounds too good to be true, ClickBank can support such a generous commission system because it sells digital products. There aren’t any high overhead costs that would be associated with a physical product.
• Safe Transactions. One of the first things potential vendors and affiliates want to know is whether ClickBank is safe. The answer is yes! The network is used by millions of affiliate marketers who want to make money selling and recommending products.
• You Get Paid Quickly. Many affiliate networks have a NET 30 policy, meaning that you have to wait 30 days from the moment you earn money until it’s in your hands. With ClickBank, you can be paid weekly or biweekly, which is hugely convenient when you’re running paid traffic.
• International Affiliates Are Welcome. You don’t have to live in the U.S. to be an affiliate. All you have to do is sign up with Payoneer, a digital wallet that works ClickBank’s direct deposit method.

How to Make Money With ClickBank?

People who are thinking about trying affiliate marketing often wonder how to be a ClickBank affiliate and how they can make money with ClickBank. There are two routes you can take:

• Create your own product and list it
• List other people’s products and earn a commission from each sale. Depending on the product that you’re promoting, the commission rate will vary from 5% to 75%.

Once you’ve decided which route you want to take (you can even do both), there are three steps that can lead you to your first ClickBank sale:

• The product that you’ll be promoting. Later in this article, you’ll be shown how to conduct product research.
• The funnel is the journey that your visitor takes from the moment they see your affiliate link to the time they use it to make a purchase. The different approaches will be discussed below.
• The traffic will result once you present the product and set up the journey.

If you’d prefer to learn some success strategies from affiliate marketing experts, the best place to start is through ClickBank University.

How Much Money Can You Make?

As an affiliate marketer, you can start selling and promoting right away. After your unique affiliate links are created, you can start earning commissions by directing traffic. The ClickBank dashboard lets you see your earnings in real-time.

How much you make depends on multiple factors, such as the products you work with (whether yours or someone else’s) and the methods you use to promote them. Whether you hit your first sale in days or even months, once you recognize which strategies are working for you, you can build on a successful formula.

If you don’t have a product to sell yet, don’t worry. A lot of ClickBank users start off as affiliates and become vendors later on. In the next section, you’ll learn how to make money as an affiliate, which is a more straightforward route.

Choosing the Product

If you’re not prepared to sell your own products yet, you can visit the marketplace, which features all of the available products from partner vendors. There are literally tens of thousands, so the best approach is to narrow your search until you find appealing offers that you want to promote. New affiliates or those looking to promote more products typically search by niche or popularity/gravity.

Niche

Selecting a niche that you’re interested in makes it easier to promote your chosen products. You can write ClickBank reviews and create sales videos from an informed perspective that will convince buyers.

The key is to go with a profitable niche. Those with small engagement levels will leave you struggling to make money. At ClickBank, three niches are evergreen, meaning that they will always have an eager market. They are:

• Heath and Fitness (lean belly diets, Red Tea detox, guilt-free desserts, etc.)
• Making Money Online (cryptocurrency, investing, etc.)
• Dating and Relationships (meeting people, saving your marriage, etc.)

Although it doesn’t guarantee success, selecting an evergreen niche maximizes your chances of making money on ClickBank.

Popularity / Gravity

To see which ClickBank products are being promoted the most, click the magnifying glass button next to the search bar. You’ll be able to see and review an aggregate list of products from all available categories. Then use the ‘sort results by’ drop-down menu to sort the results according to criteria like ‘popularity’ or ‘gravity.’

Popularity is self-explanatory, while gravity refers to money-making potential. A high-gravity product is one that is ‘proven,’ meaning that a lot of affiliates are making money by promoting it. While promoting a high-gravity product means that you have a guaranteed audience, you will also have a LOT of competition, so be prepared to work harder in order to stand out. A good rule of thumb is limiting your choices to a product with a gravity above 20.

Recurring Income

Some products generate recurring income, meaning that the customer continues to pay for the product. For example, they might purchase an item with a monthly subscription payment. You will continue to receive income as long as they remain subscribed. To find a recurring income product, look for a small icon that looks like two circling arrows.

Commission

As stated earlier, ClickBank commissions range from 5% to 75%. You may be telling yourself that you’ll only promote the more expensive products, but here are some facts to bear in mind.

• The higher the price for a product, the lower the commission tends to be.
• Online surveys have repeatedly shown that in most cases, people will choose less expensive products.

Instead of only choosing high-priced products in your preferred niche or gravity range, take a more balanced approach. Try to include some lower-cost items that may enjoy a higher sales volume.

Making a Decision

When you’ve found some promising options, make sure that you visit their sales pages before deciding to promote them. If their site is poorly put together or looks spammy, it’s likely not worth your time promoting them. Even if they are offering a 75% commission rate, any traffic you send is going to have the same first impression. There will be very few or no sales.

Here are some tips for selecting the right product(s) to promote:

• They should solve a problem or make the buyer’s life more comfortable or more enjoyable.
• The landing page has a video. Savvy businesses use video content as part of their digital marketing strategy, as videos are a preferred method for consumers to discover new brands.
• There should be a well-developed affiliate section with tools that you can use to promote the product(s).
• The product owner is willing to give you review access. How can you sell a product if you don’t see first-hand how it works or what it consists of?

If you are looking for more in-depth training, you can learn how to choose a product and a niche from ClickBank University’s Customer Research Course.

Once you find a good product, all you have to do is to click the “Promote” button next to it. A pop-up window will appear with your account details and unique affiliate code that points to the vendor’s sales page. When you place that link on your site and visitors buy the product after clicking through, you earn a commission on every sale.

Using ClickBank to Sell Your Own Products

Have you written an e-book or designed a course that you’d like to sell online? Making it available through ClickBank is easy!  All you have to do is:

• Sign up as a vendor. You will be charged a one-time activation fee, and the platform will take a percentage of your sales, but if you don’t want the time and expense of running your own eCommerce platform, it’s worth it.
• List your product using Clickbank’s system.
• Set the commission percentage that you will pay anyone who promotes and markets the product for you.

After you list your product in the marketplace, it becomes available to the tens of thousands of affiliates on the ClickBank network, so that they can promote it on their sites, drive traffic to your product page and hopefully generate revenue for you.

To make the most of the increased exposure, make sure that the landing page is mobile-friendly, contains exciting details about the product, and has a clear call to action. Without these essential elements, visitors will click through and then immediately leave, resulting in high traffic levels but no money.

You can get some great tips by seeing what works for other vendors. Successful tools and resources include:

• Persuasive Copy and Clear Calls to Action: The best sales pages are not only convincing: they leave you wanting more information. Some tell a story, which makes them even more appealing. The entire page will draw your attention toward the ‘Buy Now’ button and compel you to click on it. To learn more about copywriting, check out this course from ClickBank University.
• Effective Affiliate Tools: High-gravity products have dedicated pages that help affiliates get started quickly promoting their products. Tools include templates, content, and ads that are ready for immediate placement.
• Testimonials: Quality products will have testimonials and reviews from existing customers who have used and benefited from them.
• Video Sales Pages: These sales pages have excellent conversion rates because of consumer preference for video content.

The Funnel

You’ve chosen your product, or you have one to sell. Now it’s time to anticipate the journey your site visitor will take in the direction of buying your product. Understanding the sales funnel is a vital part of how I make money with ClickBank.

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a series of steps that we get our online visitors to go through so that they eventually become a lead or a customer. A general sales funnel has four to five steps. It starts with traffic. Now, this traffic can be from Social Media Ads, organic search engine traffic, or any other type of ads. The next step is creating engagement, which can be done by using one or multiple landing pages. The final parts of the funnel include connecting with the visitors and following up with them through a series of emails.

How Do We Create Funnels?

There are various platforms that can help you in building sales funnels. Over the past few years, we had experimented with at least a dozen of these platforms, and we finally settled on using ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is a very powerful software that can help you create high-converting, multistep funnels very quickly. It comes with a lot of pre-made templates and widgets that can improve your conversion rate.

You can learn more about ClickFunnels by reading my Ultimate ClickFunnels Review.

Direct Linking

Direct linking is the most commonly-used marketing strategy, especially among new ClickBank affiliates. This means that you send traffic directly to the vendor’s sales page, without using a medium like a landing page.

Direct linking doesn’t take long to set up and is easy to implement. Options include:

• Writing an article that’s related to the product, and placing a banner ad in the middle of the page or on the sidebar. Banner ads were a marketing mainstay for years, but today they tend to annoy people more than anything else (hence the popularity of ad blockers) so use them sparingly.
• Embedding affiliate links directly in the article or review text. You could enjoy decent conversion rates if you’ve done a good job building trust throughout the article, but make sure that the link stands out by using a bold or different-colored font.

Some people also add affiliate links in their email taglines or forum signatures, but this strategy tends to be more successful if you have a reputation for expertise in that area.

While still used by ClickBank affiliates (especially newcomers), direct linking is not as effective as it used to be. Today, the recommended strategy is to ‘prime’ visitors with a product review or sales page before sending them through to the vendor’s website for ClickBank.

Landing Pages

Landing pages act as a middleman between the offer and the visitor. The visitor lands on them clicks a link, and get redirected to the offer. Landing pages can be articles, ClickBank reviews, or videos.

If you already have a website that lists affiliate offers, you’re all set. If you don’t, you can set up a free ClickBank affiliate website using one of the following popular content management systems (CMS):

• ClickFunnels: ClickFunnels is more than a content management system. It allows you to build multistep funnels, and it’s one of the best tools for affiliate marketers. ClickFunnels comes with lots of templates that you can easily modify and use. It also has many widgets like timers and progress bars that can help with improving your conversion rate. It can also integrate into many other tools and platforms. To learn more about ClickFunnels, check out my Ultimate ClickFunnels Review.
• WordPress: WordPress is the most widely-used CMS in the world. There are both free and paid versions, plus custom design templates that let you craft your own unique site. Plugins are available to create virtually any kind of site. What’s really important about using WordPress websites as landing pages is having a mobile-friendly landing page that loads quickly. A mobile-friendly theme and a good hosting provider will do the job. We recommend using Bluehost.
• Joomla: If you have some coding experience, Joomla is more sophisticated than many CMS platforms. It’s great for boosting SEO because it generates SEO-friendly links in a scalable system. Remember that a fast, reliable, hosting server is also essential for creating Joomla websites as well.

If you want to know more about how to create a ClickBank affiliate website, there are several excellent training resources online.

ClickBank Reviews

Writing a ClickBank review is more time-consuming, but the potential rewards make it well worth the effort. These days, consumers take the time to research products they are interested in and read reviews before they buy something, so you have a ready-made audience.

Here are some tips for writing effective product reviews:

• Do not gush and heap on the praise, or readers will question the integrity of your ClickBank review. If you present some minor criticisms (which are, naturally, outweighed by the advantages and benefits of the product), you will be more believable.
• Don’t migrate any of the sales copy from the seller’s product page into your ClickBank review. If visitors click through and see identical blocks of text from the vendor’s sales page, they will have less confidence in your review and may decide not to buy. Remember: don’t try to sell the product. Instead, convince people that they want it. This technique is known as ‘pre-selling’- by the time they arrive on the sales page, they are ready to buy.
• Talk about your experience with the product. As stated earlier, most vendors will provide you with a free copy of a digital product for review purposes. Be specific about what impressed you, and why. If possible, make an honest comparison to other products that the consumer may already be familiar with.

Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Then answer their questions and address their fears or pain points. If you created the product, you could give them a more in-depth look at what’s inside and what inspired you to create it. This type of honesty can help you build quick and lasting relationships with customers.

Offering Freebies

Free samples are a tried and true method of encouraging sales. In the online marketplace, it can help you create an email list and continue marketing to your buyers.

Here’s how it works. You send a visitor to a landing page and offer them a freebie related to the product in exchange for their email address. This gift could be an e-book, a code for a free download, or another item of value. A few days later, you send them an email promoting the affiliate product (many vendors include so-called ‘email swipes’ on their affiliate tools page) and, unless they opt-out, you can promote offers to them again and again.

You’ll need to sign up for an email marketing platform that lets you create opt-in forms, manage lists, and send automated messages, but the ability to mass-communicate useful information to a wide audience makes it worth the effort.

Traffic

You’ve built your blog or website for ClickBank; now it’s time to bring people to it! There are both free and paid ways to generate ClickBank traffic. As long as you pair them with a relevant offer, both options can be effective.

SEO

Take the time to identify the top keywords associated with the product or products that you plan to promote and sell. Writing articles and other content that incorporate those keywords can increase the amount of traffic you get from search engines, especially if you use niche-specific long-tail keywords such as:

• “Gluten-free dessert recipes” (instead of “dessert recipes”)
• “Dead Sea salt scrubs” (instead of “salt scrubs”)

As the above examples show, long-tail keywords are more descriptive search phrases instead of one or two-word search terms. If you are planning to promote your online productivity course for writers, keyword research will probably indicate that “personal productivity course” is too competitive and you won’t stand out. However, articles on topics like “writing a novel as a busy parent” are more specific and can generate more traffic.

PPC

If you are willing and have the budget to pay for traffic, you can buy traffic from networks such as:

• Bing Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Google Adwords

While you can start getting traffic literally within minutes after your PPC campaign starts, you pay for every impression/visitor, so the stakes are higher. PPC works best when you’re selling a high-gravity product with a higher sale price. A $20 ebook won’t leave you with much profit, but if you sell a $200 product that pays a 50% commission, you can cover your PPC costs and realize a profit.

Blogging

For those who don’t have the time or inclination to maintain a website, blogging is an excellent way to make money with ClickBank. You can sign up for one of the many free blogging platforms available and customize the template so that it reflects the intended purpose, whether it be to discuss a niche topic or exclusively review products.

Once you’re set-up, you can use your blog to:

• Post compelling but honest and useful reviews of your affiliate product.
• Write how-to articles that serve as tutorial guides for more technical products. Tutorials are not only useful, but they will also help you to improve your search engine ranking.
• Offer coupon codes. Customers who want to purchase a product and see a coupon box will then search online for a code. If they find yours and use it, you will receive a commission for the sale.

You can boost your affiliate income by using affiliate links in your blog posts. For example, if you are writing about how to save money while traveling across Europe, you can add a line saying, “You can find an excellent list of affordable hostels and hotels here” and insert your affiliate link.

Social Media

Although it takes time and effort to build an active and engaged following on social media, doing so can make a positive impact on your affiliate income. Let’s review how to make the most out of the various social media platforms.

Facebook

If you have a lot of engaged followers, Facebook is an excellent platform for affiliate marketing activities. Options include:

• Facebook Pages. Facebook Pages are better for affiliate marketing than profiles because they’re more dynamic. You can track page likes, post reach, and other activities that help you understand how your pages are performing. Use your page to focus on a topic or theme, such as weight loss, self-publishing, or travel, and promote related products.
• Facebook Groups. Groups make it easy to unite people who are interested in the types of products you are promoting. For example, if your niche is self-publishing, you can write posts about the best grammar-checking tools or pitfalls to avoid, and include an affiliate link. If your group is an active one, pin posts or announcements that contain affiliate links so that they don’t get buried by newer posts.
• Facebook Ads. Social Media Ads and specifically Facebook Ads can work for you if you use them wisely. Facebook will ban people from using ads and even the platform itself if an advertisement contains affiliate links, redirects, or suspicious landing pages. Therefore; if you want to use Facebook Ads, direct marketing is NOT the way to go. Instead, use your ad to direct traffic to your landing page or free ClickBank affiliate website.

YouTube

With video being so popular, thousands of affiliate marketers use YouTube to promote their products. You write a two or three-minute script that includes the following information:

• An overview of the product
• Its features and benefits
• The problem(s) it solves
• A call to action that encourages the viewer to click on the product link in the video description section.

If scriptwriting is not something you feel comfortable tackling, you can hire a freelancer at a reasonable price.

Once the script has been written and you’ve practiced its delivery a few times, you can shoot it using your smartphone or laptop. Don’t invest in expensive video equipment and editing software until you’ve done a few videos and perfected your presentation and delivery.

Instagram

Instagram appeals to affiliate marketers who promote highly visual niches, such as weight loss, food, gardening, and sports. The basic strategy for Instagram promotion is to post interesting and attractive content on a regular basis and use appropriate hashtags. If you’re new to creating hashtags, there are free online services like All Hashtag that shows you the most popular hashtags for your subject.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, Instagram does not let you include a link every time you post a photo, so you have to get creative and think outside of the box.

You are allowed to include a link in your bio, so many affiliate marketers use it to forward people to their sites. You will need to use a service like Bit.ly to shorten your product affiliate link- Bit.ly allows you to track the number of clicks you get, which is essential if you want to perfect your campaign.

If you are always promoting the same product, the link can stay the same. You simply note in your bio that people can click on it for more information about the product. On the other hand, if you want to promote a different offering with each post, you will need to update your bio link to the newest affiliate URL each time you publish a new post.

Accounts with over 10,000 followers have the option of upgrading to the business account. One of its most attractive features for ClickBank marketing is the ability to add a swipe-up link to your Instagram Story so your followers can go to the website on the other side of your affiliate link.

If you want to take your ClickBank marketing to the next level on Instagram, generate leads by replacing your affiliate link with a link to your site. You can then collect emails and continue marketing to your followers.

Pinterest

For the longest time, Pinterest banned the use of affiliate links. That ban was later lifted, and now you can use the platform, which has a primarily female membership, to promote your ClickBank products.

To get started, click the ‘create pin’ or ‘add pin’ button and upload a pin you’ve created to promote your affiliate product. (Some ClickBank vendors have pre-made affiliate pins ready for you to use.) Veteran Pinterest marketers recommend that you use at least three different pins to promote an affiliate product to ensure that you appeal to diverse audiences.

Write a keyword-rich (but not spammy) description of the pin. Two or three relevant keywords will be sufficient. Make sure that your main target keyword appears in the following areas:

• Title of the blog post or website page you are pinning
• Pin title
• Blog post or web page URL
• Pin description

Pinterest is similar to Google in that it wants to provide its users with fresh and relevant content. By using keywords to make it clear what your pin is about, Pinterest is more likely to show your pin to someone who searches for those keywords.

Make sure that you save your affiliate pins to the most relevant and keyword-rich boards. When you share a new pin, the platform algorithm tries to determine what your pin is about based on the image used, keywords, and the boards where you save it. If you put it on a generic board that covers multiple niches, you won’t rank properly.

Twitter

A lot of affiliate marketers use Twitter to promote ClickBank products. You can create a personal account or one for your brand, although if you opt for the latter, you will need a free ClickBank affiliate website or at least a blog.

To get the most out of your Twitter marketing, focus on adding value. Don’t add your affiliate links to every tweet, or you’ll come across as spammy and turn off potential customers. Instead, link to articles on the subject and, of course, any blog posts or web content that you’ve produced. If you have a landing page, you can add it to your profile: followers who enjoy your content will check out your profile and the link,

Ready to Start?

As you can see, there is a lot to know and learn when you want to make money with ClickBank. If you’re looking for a surefire formula that’s short and sweet, there isn’t one, but all of the tips and strategies mentioned here can improve your chances of success.

To summarize:

• Choose products that solve common problems (such as being overweight, dealing with loneliness, unhappiness at work), have healthy commissions, and will appeal to your audience. Aim for items with a gravity of over 20.
• Produce content related to the products, like blog posts or website articles. All ClickBank reviews, blog posts, and articles should include low-competition long-tail keywords and be of interest to your customers. Avoid gushing or spammy descriptions.
• At the end of the article or post, offer a free gift like an e-book or code for a free download in exchange for providing their email address.
• After they sign up for your email list, send some emails with links to more interesting content. Once you’ve built trust with them, you can pitch your ClickBank products.
• Use your website, blog, and/or social media platform to do some link building. If you have the budget and a high-gravity product, you can try running PPC and Adwords campaigns to complement your content creation.

If you’ve been wondering how to make money with Click Bank, these steps can help you develop and maintain a long-term and successful strategy. It can be a lot of work, especially in the beginning, but when you commit to creating valuable content, you can use practically any traffic source, from direct linking and SEO to landing pages and social media to consistently attract traffic and increase sales.

Hopefully, you found the information in this article helpful. If you have any questions, are wondering how to make a website for ClickBank, or are interested in free ClickBank training, please don’t hesitate to reach out!