Clickbank

Clickbank is the premier digital download company on the net, successful with INFO producers in particular, because it has an integrated affiliate system. That means that INFO (book or video) producers can:

create a product
build (or have built) a sales page website
register at Clickbank

...and through:

your own opt-in list
alliances with other list owners or
advertising in relevant ezines

...within a few short weeks, you could have hundreds of affiliates selling your product for you.

Intro to Clickbank

At the other end of the stick, though, Clickbank is a means by which you, the man in the street, can make sales of thousands of different products in hundreds of niches by advertising them. Many people used to make great Clickbank money from Google Adwords doing exactly that but with:

an exponential increase in costs because of Google's surge in popularity
Google's capacity to suspend any ad campaign that's using the same affiliate link as another for the same keyword (a policy instigated so Google's users receive a greater choice) &
the pricing out of many squeeze (grab your email) pages from Adwords campaigns

...Clickbank Marketing has dropped off considerably.

However, if you're smart (I'll be providing a report about just that in November 2007) and do your keyword research, you may well be able to purchase clicks for only $0.05-0.10 cent clicks and you can still do pretty well. There are two huge problems, though:

Clickbank has no quality control on the products it presents in its marketplace and many of them are pretty shoddy, so you should really know what INFO product you're advertising &
the internet community is far more sophisticated these days than in the past. They don't fall for the direct marketing hype and even if they do, they are much happier to ask for Clickbank refunds

Working Clickbank The Smart Way

If you know how to read Clickbank's stats, there's a pretty good way to you can minimize the risk of promoting products that tend to be returned.

N.B. Clickbank's fee per sale is $1 + 7.5% of the sales price.

If you head over to the Clickbank Marketplace and perform a search on any product, you'll see some stats. Here's one for the frequently advertised Paid Surveys

Paid Surveys costs $69:

Clickbank receives $1 + 7.5% X $69 = $7.17

Merchant receives 62.83

Affiliate receives (in this case) 75% = $47.12

However, in the Clickbank marketplace the $earned/sale figure for Paid Surveys is presently only $21.25, when it might be expected to be $47.12. That indicates 55% of purchasers are asking for a refund...and it wouldn't be a great product to promote via PAID advertising.

On the other hand, SEO Elite (a software product which I promote) is $167:

Clickbank receives $1 + 7.5% X $167 = $13.45

Merchant receives $153.55

Affiliate receives (in this case) 56% = $95.01

In the Clickbank marketplace, the $earned/sale is presently $79.71 $/sale for SEO Elite. This indicates that about 16% of purchasers are asking for a refund, which is far better than Paid Surveys, so it's obvious that SEO Elite would be a better product to promote via PAID advertising.

However. if you promote Clickbank products via a website and receive FREE search engine traffic, as I do, it can certainly be worth your while. N.B. Clickbank authors and software developers will sometimes give you a FREE copy of their work if you have a relevant niche site. You can always ask, I do!

You can also promote Clickbank via posting articles, formerly known as Bum Marketing, which has now mutated into what I describe as Bum Marketing 2.0

I'll be expanding this Clickbank section in 2008 but for now I'm only going to introduce you to two great products that can help you develop your business:

1 CB Engine PRO an awesome collection of ever-changing stats, dirt cheap, considering that they can save you hours of research time and plenty of wasted advertising dollars. These stats can give you a pretty good indication of which products to promote and which you shouldn't bother with

2 If you become a successful Clickbank merchant or affiliate, CB Accountant will organize all your sales data in ways that will greatly increase your efficiency