Online Marketing Lesson 1 - Make Money with ClickBank (The Beginner's Guide)

First off, I would like to apologize to my readers for not updating this blog more often. I was a little busy working on a new blog which will be revealed pretty soon. Also, I've been experimenting with new stuff. Every once in a while I try new ideas and sometimes it takes a lot more time than I may expect. Consequently, it's hard for me to write more articles for this blog.

This post is mainly based on what I've been doing for the past few months. I spent a lot of my time searching for the best ways to make money online. My main focus was building an effective strategy for marketing with ClickBank.

In the least likelihood of your not knowing what ClickBank is, let me explain for newbies. ClickBank is an electronic marketplace where people sell digital products. In other words, it's simply a bunch of authors selling ebooks, videos, software etc.

You can register as an affiliate and make money promoting other people's products. It's indeed very profitable and requires little work. The best part is that you don't have to create and sell your own products, or even handle payments. Basically, all you have to do is send traffic to a vendor's site. And every time a referred customer buys a product, you get paid a commission or a certain percentage depending on an arrangement. This is exactly what affiliate marketing is.

Can You Make a Decent Income Promoting ClickBank Products?
Yes, Absolutely! You can earn pretty big commissions (50-75%), sometimes even more than 100$ per sale. It's maybe not as easy as most affiliate marketers and gurus claim (especially when they want you to buy their products or their magic bullet ebooks), but it's certainly possible to make thousands of dollars on a weekly basis by simply building an effective strategy. I'm sure some of you have already seen those screenshots with massive ClickBank earnings, haven't you?

Getting Started
Not a Clickbank Affiliate yet? Well, ClickBank is extremely easy to use for both affiliates and vendors, and signing up is far from being a complicated process. As an affiliate, you're not required to have your own website and can instantly start promoting products of your choice.

Note: You can find an article about how to sign up here.

ClickBank Marketplace

Marketplace is a section of ClickBank website where affiliate can find thousands of vendors' products to promote. They are classified under 9 different categories (Marketing & Ads, business to business, etc). It is also possible to narrow searches by using the sub-categories box, the keywords' box, the sort by box, etc.

ClickBank Hoplink


Hoplink is your affiliate link provided by ClickBank. It is in the following format:

http://affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net/

The link takes the customer to the vendor's site where he or she can purchase one or more products, and the affiliate automatically gets credit for the referral.

Note: Hoplinks generated from the marketplace do not show the affiliates and the vendors' nicknames. These hoplinks are an encrypted version of the older format.

How to Choose ClickBank Products

In order to be successful with ClickBank, it's vital to promote profitable products. And there are few factors that can help you select the best ones.

Gravity, $/sale, %/refd
You should be able to understand and interpret these stats before deciding on which product(s) you want to promote.

Gravity (grav): This number gives you an idea on how popular and competitive the product is. The higher the number, the more affiliates promote that product and the more competition you have to deal with.

$/sale: This is the value you earn as an affiliate every time a sale is made through your link.

%/refd: This is the percentage of sales made through affiliates.

Now how can these three elements help you choose a product?
One of the things most marketers or gurus would tell you is to go for the first product or the one that has the highest gravity (and I know I've also said the latter in this blog). This, however, doesn't work all the time because overcoming the competition can be very hard. So unless you are an experienced affiliate marketer, I suggest you choose a product with a gravity between 20 and 100. Also, you want it to be at least $20 per sale (minimum 50% commission per sale). Finally, the percentage of referred should be less than 80%. See example below

Only Promote Quality Products

It is always important to know the product you want to promote. In some cases, you will have to buy the product yourself in order to be sure about its quality. If, for example, a site makes promises that sound too good to be true, it's advised to purchase the product, test it, and write a objective review before endorsing it. Doing this will give you more credibility, especially if you want to build a long-lasting relationship with costumers. Always remember that a satisfied consumer is more likely to buy another product through one of your links again.

Look at the sales pageThis is extremely important. The sales page should be appealing to the eye. Always choose the sites that are professionally designed or at least the ones that grab the attention of the customer for better conversion rates (more on this later). Also, you have to make sure that the page shows proof that the product really works (testimonials) and offers a money back guarantee.

Avoid “Make Money Online” Niche
Internet marketing products are very hard to sell. This is simply because there is too much competition. The internet is over saturated by moneymaking products. I suggest you stay out of that niche and take advantage of the wide variety of products ClickBank offers.

This is the end of the first part. The next part will be about how to build your strategy ;)