What Is ClickBank? Can You Make Money?

ClickBank: Can Selling Digital Products Make You Money?

Do you have a digital product that you would like to sell? Have you ever thought of promoting digital products on your website or blog as an affiliate marketer? If you answered yes to either question than ClickBank may be the work-at-home opportunity for you.

What is ClickBank?

ClickBank was founded in 1998, is privately held and has offices in Colorado and Idaho. It is an Internet retail site that sells more than 50,000 digital products and has more than 100,000 affiliate marketers. When you register with ClickBank, you can either sell a product or promote a product.

If you decide to sell a product, you need to pay a one-time fee of $49.95. This is considered an activation fee. ClickBank will then work with you to decide the price of your digital product and what the commission will be for the affiliates. Once this is done, the product is put into the marketplace where affiliate marketers can choose it to promote on their sites and/or blogs.

For promoting products, affiliates select the digital products they want to promote on their websites. There are tens of thousands of products to choose from to promote. Aside from that, ClickBank allows you promote these products almost anywhere in the world. They currently serve two hundred countries and accept thirteen different types of currency as well as credit cards and PayPal.

How Much Money Can You Make?

Sellers decide ahead of time what their price point will be for their product as well as what kind of commission they want the affiliate to get. ClickBank commissions go as high as seventy-five percent. Affiliate marketers also get a combined commission if they are promoting multiple products at once. Because these products are digital, delivery is quick which means payment is quick. Weekly payments and direct deposit are both available options. There is no set amount on how much you can make. It all depends on how successful your product is in getting sold and how effective you are as an affiliate marketer to generate those sales.

ClickBank is proud to say that they are always on time with payments and have never missed a payment. However, there is a minimum sales requirement before you get your first payment. You need to make at least five sales with five different credit cards (to avoid scammers) before you get a commission from them. One thing you should make sure to do is to get the first five sales so you at least get your first payment because if you do not and you decide to leave ClickBank for a little while and then return, the money you did make leading up to those five sales may be gone and you are back to square one trying to get to five again.

Tracking Sales and Commissions

Detailed sales reporting is provided by ClickBank as well as affiliate commission tracking so you know which affiliates are selling your products and how much they are earning. For affiliates, this tracking allows them to see how much they are making for which particular products they are selling. There are also detailed sales statistics so affiliates have a better idea on which products are selling better than others when they are trying to decide on which products to promote.

Is There More Ways to Earn Money Through ClickBank?

Of course when you are talking about at-home work opportunities, there is usually some type of referral program involved. ClickBank’s referral program is based on referring additional product vendors to ClickBank, but not for referring new affiliates. If you refer a vendor who activates an account, you will get twenty percent of the $49.95 activation fee.

You will also earn five percent of the markup on each sale that your referred vendor makes for one year. A typical markup on a sale is one dollar plus 7.5% of the sale price. This means you can earn anywhere from nine cents to ninety-nine cents on every sale. So a one hundred dollar sale, for example, will get you a forty-two cent commission. However, you cannot refer yourself or any vendor who has an existing account with ClickBank.

The Cons

ClickBank has been around for fourteen years and is one of the most visited websites worldwide. But that does not mean it is not without its flaws. Here are a few issues that may not sit well with you:

1.    Affiliate marketers are allowed and encouraged to buy using their affiliate link. For sellers, this means losing a decent amount of commission. ClickBank’s fees are based on the total amount of sales so they are not concerned about affiliates doing this.

2.    A portion of the fees is charged to affiliates, which makes them the only company of its kind that splits the fees between the affiliate and the vendor. This could be the main reason they want affiliates to purchase their own individual affiliate link.

3.    There seems to be a lack of promotional tools that ClickBank provides to affiliates. They do not serve any banners for affiliates and they only supply one tracking tool that is of any use. An ad builder is available from them, but you will still need to go to a third-party vendor to get additional promotional tools.
4.    ClickBank is hoarding a lot of the marketplace with their own products that claim you will “get rich quick.” By promoting and saturating the marketplace with their own digital products, you may get a sneaking suspicion that their site is geared more towards them making money than you.

5.    When it comes to tracking inactive merchants, you are going to be on your own. After the initial account is set up, ClickBank does not check for compliance or if sellers still have their products in the marketplace. For affiliates, this means you may be promoting a product that no longer exists. And since they do not track which affiliate is promoting which product, there is no way for them to give you a heads up because they do not know.

6.    Believe it or not, you will be charged a fee if you do not sell anything. If your account is still active, but you have not made any sales, ClickBank will charge you one dollar per pay period (every two weeks) after ninety days of no sales, five dollars per pay period after 180 days of no sales and fifty dollars per pay period after one year of no sales.

Is ClickBank Legitimate?

The company has been around for fourteen years so that says a lot right there. They also have a good history about making payments which is also good news. However, you need to either have a digital product you want to sell or become an affiliate marketer. Both of these things require work. This is not one of those opportunities where you can just sign up and do nearly nothing to make money.

If you do not have an existing website and/or blog to promote a product, this may not be the right opportunity for you. If you do have a site or blog, you have to be able to properly promote the products you choose or you will never see a dime from ClickBank.

Remember, people have to purchase these products in order for you to make money—that goes for both sellers and affiliates. And as you can see, if you are not good at selling, it will actually cost you. The last thing you want when you join a work-at-home business is to owe money rather than make money.