ClickBank Affiliate Program Marketplace — is it Better than Amazon?

What is ClickBank and how does it work?

After Amazon ClickBank is probably the best-known program for affiliates. They are very popular with Internet Marketing affiliates and have many products for their niche.

They are similar in product types to JV Zoo another affiliate marketplace. Many of the products are in the health, nutrition, diet, finance and Internet marketing niches.

Is ClickBank safe to use?

ClickBank represents primarily digital or downloadable products. These typically have high-percentage payouts to affiliates. The commissions average around 50%. You do need to be careful and closely vet all products.

There are some great products, some good products, and many crap products. You need to be sure the product and the promotional methods are appropriate for your audience. But ..

ClickBank is big!

ClickBank is involved in over 30,000 sales daily on their marketplace. The total number of registered users is over 6 million.

The ClickBank Marketplace – a Place for Digital Goods

Yes, there are a few physical goods on ClickBank but for the most part, the reason you go to ClickBank is for the digital and downloadable products.

These products include:

There are products for most niches though there is a heavy concentration on weight loss, fitness and Internet marketing. ClickBank also allows you to find and setup joint ventures to share commissions. They bring everyone together.

ClickBank brings together all of the parties in an affiliate sales-flow. ..

So why use ClickBank vs. others?

Why Clickbank?

ClickBank is not the exclusive marketplace for digital products. So why should you consider them?

ClickBank has their own vocabulary that is handy to know. Here are the ClickBank terms you will see as you evaluate products in the ClickBank marketplace …

Steps to become a Clickbank Affiliate

How much does it cost to join ClickBank?

Nothing. As an affiliate ClickBank is free to join.

If you plan to sell products as a ClickBank Vendor, you do need to pay to enroll. There is a $49.00 charge but they do not take the payment until your first product is approved. If you want an additional account it is $29.95.

ClickBank Signup

One of the great things about ClickBank is they make it very easy to signup. Just visit their affiliate enrollment page.

They except everyone with some geographic exceptions from “high-risk” countries. .

Just be sure to provide accurate information and check your email for the welcome letter. Wants you are accepted you can access your affiliate dashboard from …

ClickBank Dashboard

Once you have your account approved you can go to your ClickBank Login page to get into the dashboard. here you will see your programs, links, earnings and more.

ClickBank Payments

Payment Calculations

Additional details include:

Payment Methods

ClickBank is very flexible with their payment options.

The ClickBank Marketplace

Product selection is critical with ClickBank. You don’t want lots of returns. You don’t want to turn off your clients. You generally market ClickBank products to prospects that have arrived via a lead magnet.

Once you have the lead you don’t want to lose them to a crappy product

ClickBank is very strong in the self-help, fitness, diet etc. niches. Their top 10 selling in 2020 were led by these products – mostly in the categories mentioned.

1. 1. Leptitox — Interestingly this is a physical product — weight loss pills
   2. Cinderella Solution — 28 Day weight loss program
   3. Halki Diabetes Remedy — Weight loss program
   4. The lost book of Remedies — Herbal medicine e-book
   5. Ted’s Woodworking — A perennial top 10, woodworking plans
   6. His Secret Obsession — Guide to dating men for women
   7. Numerologist.com — Personalized numerology report for the buyer
   8. Overnight Millionaire System — Learn how rich people get rich — MMO niche
   9. Manifestation Magic — Improve your focus, attention
   10. The 12 Minute Affiliate System — Automated affiliate marketing system

Finding ClickBank Products To Promote

There are many products at ClickBank. The good news is that their dashboard is very flexible and can help you quickly find products to evaluate.

Categories

You first want to select a category. This should be topically relevant to your website if you are after SEO traffic.

Filters & Attributes

You don’t want to browse through all of the products in a category. You can apply filters and attributes to further refine your search.

Anatomy of a product

Let’s look at a product in detail. There is a lot of detail right in the condensed listing view. You can quickly scan products for the price point, recurring or not and more. There is also a link to the vendor’s affiliate page. This page will give you some idea of the quality of the program.

How do you Make Money with ClickBank?

After you choose your product you need to have a strategy to get traffic to it. Some of the sales possibilities include:

Creating a Funnel — Landing Page > Opt-in > Offer details

This is the preferred method of successful internet marketers.

There’s a saying among internet marketers, “the money is in the list”, — a cliche but relevant. Your email list is a long-term asset you can direct new campaigns and offers to. Let’s look at a typical funnel.

You will first need a traffic source, you direct the traffic to a landing or products page. On the landing/product page you have a giveaway/lead magnet in exchange for an email address. You create a campaign of autoresponder messages that build-up to the actual offer.

Step 1: Create your landing page. Whether it’s a review, article, video or otherwise, you’ll need web hosting and a tool to create the landing pages. Many marketers use WordPress and ThriveThemes for this. Others use Landing Page systems like ClickFunnels and BuilderAll. These systems allow you to set up funnels without having a website.

Step 2: Create your opt-in forms. These are the forms that will capture your visitor’s email address. You can do this with products like Thrive Leads or your e-mail service provider will have tools for this.

Step 3: Create your auto-responder series. This is the series of e-mails that you will send to people that opt-in. Your e-mail service provider will have the tools to do this.

The sales flow will go something like … A search is made that brings a user to your content or an ad brings visitors to your content. The visitor reads the article and is impressed – they subscribe to get the free offer – you get their email. You email them the free offer and thank them.  A couple of days later, you send them another valuable piece of content. Then after a few more emails, they get the offer. At this point, you have hopefully built up authority and trust. You have earned the right to ask for the order. You send them the affiliate offer and follow up emails.

A lot of vendors actually prepare email content for you. However, I would always create your own email text that is targeted specifically at your niche audience. A typical email autoresponder sequence might include …

1. Welcome email with the free product that sets expectations and thanks them for subscribing.
2. E-mail that gives a high-value product and mentions the offer briefly.
3. More high-value content email with another offer mention.
4. Actual offer e-mail. This should be optimized for conversions.
5. Follow up offer with some form of scarcity to motivate.
6. Final offer email with a transition to the next e-mail series.

In review, the entire process might look like this …

Now that you have landing pages and funnels it’s time to send traffic to the offer, but how?

Traffic

There are a few traffic options. From SEO to paid ads. Paid advertising is an advanced and risky place to start. It is easy to spend a lot of money with few results. It is best to start with SEO, Social Media, and other gorilla marketing techniques.

Organic Search/SEO

Organic Search is the backbone of most affiliate marketers. There are a few distinct advantages. Though some say the main advantage is that it’s free – it is not. You either develop content with your time (which has value) or you are hiring writers.

Launch Jacking

Launch Jacking is about getting the search traffic for a big product launch. The origins of launch jacking go back to the keyword stuffing, exact match domain (EMD), spammy link days. Before Google got smart. You would by an EMD with the product name in it, build a quick website, create some basic content or scrape the vendor site, point some spammy links at it and voila .. whenever a prospect during a product launch search for the product you were there. These were often ClickBank products.

Now Launch Jacking is less about the jacking and more about the launching. It is still a great idea to the in early in the pre launch stage with ClickBank products. See our Launch Jacking article for more details.

The drawback is that it takes time for your content to get traction. You will need a base of content and time for your site to gain authority. You will need to choose your battles and focus on keywords that you can compete for. Check out our Keywords Tools for Affiliate Marketers post to get ideas.

Paid ads – PPC

Paid adds are appealing and definitely have a place in your strategy. They bring immediate traffic to your offer. If you can devise a PPC campaign that yields a good return then great. Unfortunately, many end up spending more on ads than they get on affiliate commission.

A good use for ads is to buy some cheap long-tail keyword ads and test your funnel. This will allow you to quickly a/b test your campaign before sending to your e-mail list.

When you are ready to spend on ads I would do two types …

ClickBank FaceBook Ads

facebooks ads and boosts used to have a great reach. meaning there was a large audience that would see them. Now it is harder to get the kind of ROI on FaceBook ads that you could in early days with ClickBank. faceBook also has become stricter with their ad policies and the Internet marketing products are harder to even purchase ads for.

I would not bother boosting Facebook posts. That does not perform well. The best strategy is to create a custom audience of your visitors and email list. You may want to use that to create a look-alike audience as well. Then have a sales funnel and email campaign. For instance, you are going to get much better conversion rates from a warm lead who has already received some great free content.

Never just send a Facebook ad link to the affiliate product always use a landing page.

ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA

Creating Facebook pages, publishing content and attracting visitors once worked well. Now, Facebook has decreased their pages’ organic reach. It is very difficult to depend on organic Facebook traffic.

Other Social Media platforms are still viable for organic reach consider what will resonate best with your audience and create content and be personally active in media like.

Other Traffic Sources

It pays to have a broad mix of traffic sources. I always operate under the belief that every qualified lead matters. Some other potential traffic sources include …

ClickBank University

There is a saying in the software industry, “you should eat your own dog food”. The gist of this is if at all appropriate, use your own tools, Become your own product’s customer. It helps with future development, usability and more. Well ClickBank has done that with their own product offer. ClickBank University.

So ClickBank affiliates can sell ClickBank Training and get paid pretty well.

Is ClickBank University Legit?

Sure it is. It is a decent training program that shows people how to create products and sell on ClickBank. With $100 million in sales they are worth emulating. It doesn’t take much in the way of ideas, contacts, JV hookups etc. to justify the $47/mo. charge

Why Should You Promote ClickBank University?

ClickBank vs. Amazon Affiliate Program

Should you promote Amazon products, ClickBank products or both as an affiliate?

It depends.

Amazon and ClickBank are the two most common marketplaces for affiliates. We have an in-depth article on Amazon Associates program may want to look at.

But how do they compare?

Who has the best products? Can I join both from my country? Which marketplace pays the best commissions? Are they both good fits for my audience?

Let’s find the answers.

Amazon & ClickBank Size 

No one beats Amazon when it comes to size. They have hundreds of millions of products. Almost every household in America has used Amazon to make a purchase. You can’t beat their reach. No matter how obscure your niche Amazon has products for your audience.

ClickBank, on the other hand, is focused on online products. These are Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, plugins, themes, training courses, membership sites, etc.

ClickBank is certainly a major player. They have over 50,000 products, They do in excess of 40,000 transactions per day. They are a real company. ClickBank also has a strong focus on certain markets; diet, finance, dating, make money online (MMO) and similar.

Ease of Joining the Affiliate Program

Requirements

Both ClickBank and Amazon are very inclusive. It is very easy to start with either program. Amazon requires a website, YouTube channel or mobile app. ClickBank allows for funnels and email marketers. No website is required.

Amazon initially put new accounts in a type of sandbox. You are not given API access for instance. After 3 sales, they will inspect your site and check for any terms of service issues. If all is in order, you receive final approval and benefits like access to the product advertising API.

Terms of Service

ClickBank TOS is very standard. You can’t lie, cheat or steal – that’s about it. With Amazon, it’s a bit hazier. They are very protective of their brand. You must always be clear that you are an affiliate of Amazon’s. You must not use any content from their marketplace unless it is retrieved via the Amazon Product Advertising API. This is not available to new affiliates. There are many more rules and Amazon can be rigid in their enforcement. We keep an updated document with Amazon rules, disclosures and things that will get you banned in our Amazon Affiliate content area.

International Opportunities

ClickBank is very flexible and friendly with almost all countries. There is only one marketplace for all participants. You will have just one dashboard and product searching environment. There are some countries that are not open to new affiliates or buyers. If you are running an ad campaign you will want to exclude those countries.

The following countries were on a ClickBank banned country list a few years ago. Some of these countries may now be eligible The best way to check is in the application form which has a list of approved countries to choose from. 

Banned Countries for ClickBank

Amazon has 14 marketplaces that have Associate accounts available. Each has a separate affiliate program you must apply to. Some countries require local bank accounts and mailing address. Your affiliate link must be aligned with the target marketplace. Your affiliate link from the US Amazon site will not earn any credit in the French site.

Amazon does have OneLink which allows you to integrate the US, Canada and UK affiliate credit. In Europe, Amazon has brought together its marketplaces. You can create and manage product offers on one or more of the European websites: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es. You will need to create unique links per marketplace,

Amazon International Program Details with Links to Associate Programs

Commissions

This is where the rubber meets the road. You are an affiliate to make money and both Amazon and ClickBank can get that done. The commission structure is totally different between the two marketplaces. In the case of Amazon, there is a fee schedule based on the product category that your sale belongs too. In the case of ClickBank, the individual vendors set the commission rates. Let’s take a closer look.

Commission Structure

Amazon recently slashed their affiliate commission rates. Most products are paying 3%. Here are the old rates and the new ones to compare …

Previous Amazon Commission Schedule

New Amazon Commission Schedule

ClickBank commissions are much higher. The typical product range is 40% – 60%.

So clearly ClickBank is the better choice, right?

it’s not that simple.

Amazon converts referred traffic to sales at a much higher percentage. Particularly cold SEO traffic coming to a review article. If Amazon converts your traffic 5 x better then an 8% product on Amazon, is the equivalent earner of a 40% product at ClickBank.

If you are not warming the traffic with email auto-responder or other methods, Amazon will usually be the better fit. The exception is if you are targeting one of ClickBanks best-performing niches like; personal finance, health, make money online, etc.

Payout Methods and Schedule

Amazon and ClickBank have similar methods to pay your commissions.

Amazon Associates Commissions

ClickBank Commissions

The timing of payments favors ClickBank with weekly payments an option. They will hold back money for potential returns. ClickBank products have a fairly high return rate as there are many tire-kickers testing products knowing they can return any time in 60 days. In Amazon’s case, the commissions are held for 60 days before being paid. There is no reserve for returns since the payments come after the refund period.

Products

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. This is one of the primary reasons to be associated with them. Most of the 14 marketplaces with affiliate programs have more than 100 million products available.

Number of Amazon products by marketplace

Physical vs. On-line

Most of Amazon’s products are physical products. The product depth is staggeringly deep. Any niche marketer can find products to recommend. Amazon is also no slouch in the online music and book markets. But they do not generally selll software, training courses, SaaS services etc. This is ClickBank country.

Return Issues

Though Amazon has a very generous pro-consumer return policy, it has little impact on an affiliate. Amazon pays commissions in 60+ days so any return would have not been paid out. ClickBank selling downloadable products with a 60 day refund policy has a much higher return rate. Many consumers use these purchases as trials knowing they can be returned.

Suitability

This is the biggest difference between Amazon and ClickBank. I doubt you lose any subscribers or customers by promoting Amazon products. If you are in a conservative niche though, many ClickBank offers will send viewers running.

Marketplace Trust Factor

Amazon is unique.

Amazon has a huge trust component. With Amazon products, your job is to get the customer to Amazon. Let them do the selling. They are one of the best at creating loyal customers that convert to sales.

With ClickBank, you are dealing with individual sales pages. Some are good, some are awful with autoloading videos barking at you like a carnival pitchman. With ClickBank, you do the selling and hope the vendor page does not hurt the process

Strategies

For Amazon products, the individual commission rate and payment is low. You are making your money by having many transactions. This means the value per customer is to low to target them individually with ads. But you can convert cold traffic. You can create a niche where there are buying keywords that you can compete for. Allowing you to create content that will get traffic from search. These review and even informational articles will have comparison tables and other links to Amazon products. You keep adding content strategically and your audience from search grows as do your sales.

ClickBank is almost the opposite.

With ClickBank search traffic going to reviews typically does not convert well unless it is very focused. So specific long-tail keywords. But works better with ClickBank is warming the prospect with valuable information and establishing trust.

With Amazon you are riding their trust coattails – with ClickBank you must earn this trust. Then you can ask for the order.

Typically you would purchase traffic. This can be Google Ads, Facebook Ads, other Social Media ads, Solo eMail ads, etc. You send the ad clicks to a squeeze page. On this page, you have something to offer for their email address. A free e-book, research report, plugin or other items that are relevant and valuable. Once you have the email they are put into an auto-responder sequence. This again has more valuable content and then builds to the offer – after you have proved your usefulness.

Amazon vs. Clickbank — ClickBank Summary

If your niche is health supplements, weight loss, make money online or dating, it is a no-brainer to look at offers from ClickBank.

Many publishers and bloggers will be on a very selective case by case basis with ClickBank to protect their reputation.  If your audience is looking for technical information in a software niche and you send them Keto offers from ClickBank … they will leave you.

But if you are in their popular and successful niches you can build an entire site around ClickBank. Create sales funnels, autoresponders and warm your audience. If you can find a product that converts well for you, you don’t need the big traffic numbers of an Amazon affiliate. There are recurring revenue programs at ClickBank where you get monthly income as long as the customer is subscribed. Typical commissions are 50-60%. Upsells and additional offers often create $100+ average revenue per customer.

With ClickBank, you don’t need a massive body of content to drive SEO/Search traffic. Since the commissions are higher you can consider many more advertising options. Paid traffic can be turned on and off. If you can spend $25 to get $50 commissions with paid traffic you can then look to scale that.

Amazon vs. Clickbank — Amazon Summary

Amazon is one of the most successful companies in the world. In the case of Amazon, you would need to look at why NOT being an affiliate.

The main objection is the low commission rates vs. the time to create content and insert the Amazon products. If you have low traffic, you need to just focus on more content for SEO traffic or ad campaigns and funnels for which are not best for Amazon products.

Eye-ball effect

In a way, Amazon has characteristics of advertising. They have so much trust and convert so well that even cold traffic can be monetized. You don’t need to build auto-responders and create a close relationship with your visitors (though that always helps). Just get traffic to Amazon and you can get paid. Even if your visitor does not purchase the linked item you will be paid. Any purchase in 24 hours.

Niche Development

Many niches start out fairly narrow. This is so you can create content around keywords that you can rank for.

No matter how unique your niche Amazon will have products for you to promote.

Amazon vs. Clickbank — Conclusions

The choice is a function of knowing your audience. In the case of Amazon, there is little risk of having selected products on your site. In fact, in Amazons’ case, there is almost an advertising component. Getting even cold traffic to Amazon is a good thing. They are conversion monsters.

On the other hand, ClickBank requires more consideration. Select closely on an offer by offer basis.

Take care of your visitors. Know who they are and only present offers that are relevant.

ClickBank Alternatives

There are a few other companies that represent digital products for affiliates.

JV-Zoo

If you are looking at ClickBank products you may want to check out JVZoo. They have similar products with perhaps a few more Internet Marketing and Make Money Online offers.

You will be able to use the same product selection and sales funnel strategies that you use with ClickBank.

There are a few differences at JV Zoo. You need to be approved by each individual product creator. This can be time-consuming. Individual products owners can set your payment to delayed or instant. Usually, new affiliates will be paid on a delayed basis. This protects the product owner from returns after commissions are paid.

WarriorPlus

WarriorPlus primarily has Internet Marketing related products. They are typically Warrior Special Offers (WSO) found in the Warrior Forum. You need to be even more selective with this marketplace. These offers come form aggressive Internet Marketers so you are swimming with sharks.

Digistore24

Digistore24 is a relative newcomer in this niche but a strong. They tend to have fewer products but they are higher quality. Definitely worth a look. contender.

ClickBank Affiliate Marketplace Summary

Many vendors in ClickBank and JV Zoo are operating on the laws of large numbers. They produce mediocre products but have a large number of affiliates who each have a large number of emails and other traffic opportunities. Even a 2-3% conversion rate can create a profitable product. But there are some good products in the marketplace and you may find some that are a great fit for you.

Pick a product that solves a problem for your audience, a product you believe in. Create a landing page, an opt-in form and an auto-responder sequence of emails. Direct search traffic to a topically relevant article after performing keyword research to find topics with sufficient volume — that you can compete for. Have a great giveaway as a lead magnet, get their e-mail and fire off the autoresponder sequence.

We also have a full review on the other players in this niche:

• JVZoo Marketplace
• Warrior Plus
• Digistore24 Network