I
typically trash Clickbank as a low-quality trash bin for discount
digital products worth very little money, and even less of your time.
But the website is still alive and well, and as we see with products
like Google Sniper 2.0 and Freedom Formula 8, people are still touting
it as a great place to find things to promote for your online business. I
decided to investigate further to see if it’s actually possible to make
honest money on Clickbank.
Here are the questions I hope to answer:
1) Are there any quality products on Clickbank worth promoting?
2) How much money can you make by promoting stuff from the CB marketplace?
3) How to find high converting, high paying items with low return rates
4) What does the future of Clickbank look like?
Bonus: An inside look into my Clickbank earnings
1) Are there any quality products on Clickbank worth promoting?
Yes,
but you really need to dig. And I mean really dig deep. There is a lot
of crap on Clickbank. In fact, lots of it is from several years ago, and
there’s no way to really tell when the product released, unless you
look at the gravity of the product. Remember, “gravity” is a number that
represents how many affiliates have made commissions lately. It’s not a
1/1 ratio (they don’t give the exact math), but the higher the better.
I’ve seen high gravity being 50+ and low gravity as low as less than 10.
How
do you tell the good products from the bad? This is a matter of
judgement, taste, and personal bias, but here are a few pointers.
- Up front and honest sales pitch
- Short and to-the-point product description
- Informative with little or no hype
- Up to date information
Here are some examples of good and bad products I found in various niches.
Bad Products
Good Products
2) How much money can you make by promoting stuff from the CB marketplace?
This
is the question that gets asked the most, but it’s the one with really
no answer. It depends on a lot of variables, so you can make anything
from zero to tens of thousands of dollars per month. For me personally, I
don’t make that much from Clickbank, and never have. I take in about
$100 per month. It isn’t impressive, but I’ll explain more about my
stats below.
Other people swear by CB, and a lot of “how to make money” products like Freedom Formula 8 are based solely on promoting digital information products from here.
3) How to find high converting, high paying items with low return rates
You can find this information right on the little blurb about each product.
Initial $/sale: How much money you make for each sale
Avg %/sale: The percent commission you make of total cost
Avg Rebill Total: If there is a recurring payment, the average total of all rebilled commissions
Avg %/rebill: If there is a recurring payment, the percent commission you make
Grav: How many affiliates have made commissions in the last 12 days
A
high commission, recurring payments, and a high gravity is what you
want to look for. Be sure to watch out for that gravity! I found more
that one product with HUGE commissions and rebills, but a super low
gravity. It was several years old and obviously no longer popular.
This
will also depend on your niche of course, and your particular audience.
You are the expert, so think about what your audience wants, and find a
product to match them. Here is a a popular product that can be used for
many niches.
4) What does the future of Clickbank look like?
I
think Clickbank is going to be around for a while. Digital information
products, membership sites, PDF guides and other information that can be
bought and sold on the internet is only going to grow. I give CB a hard
time because I work in the internet marketing industry so I see
horribly hyped and misleading products all the time, but there were a
few goodies I found in my research for this article. I’m not
recommending you promote these, but I just thought that they looked like
high-value products for the right niche audience.
Conclusion
Yes, you can still make money on Clickbank, but you need to choose your products carefully.
Bonus: An inside look into my Clickbank earnings
Don’t
laugh, but below I’ll show you my Clickbank earnings from the past
couple weeks. When I started out in affiliate marketing, I did a bit
better, pulling in about $600 for half of 2011 (my first year at CB),
and $1500 for the year 2012. 2013 looks like it’s going to be less than
$1200 for the year.
That
doesn’t look that bad all added up, but altogether it’s less than $100
per month, or only a few sales per week. Sometimes no sales at all! I’m
not proud of these campaigns, but there’s something very interesting to
remember about them.
I
started promoting these products in 2010/2011, and they are still
making me money, two years later. I learned a lot, and though I
definitely would NOT choose the same products I previously chose, it
seems that SOMEONE wants them and is still buying them 2 years later! I
do absolutely zero work on these websites, which means I make about
$1200 per hour promoting Clickbank products!
Don’t
take that as a green light to rush over to CB. Though you can still
make money on Clickbank as I have demonstrated here today, it’s my
personal recommendation to go somewhere else. There’s a lot of useless
stuff on that site, and if you’re not sure what to promote, it can be
hard to find exactly what you want. A beginner is better off choosing a
niche based on their personal interests and building a niche website to
fit those interests.
What Now?
I know my Clickbank earnings were pretty poor, but I actually make a full time income promoting other affiliate programs.
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