Well, after almost 9 years of being a ClickBank Affiliate, I thought it was about time that I wrote my own personal review of the affiliate network site. Here's what you need to know about ClickBank, what my thoughts are on the future of the site, and whether I think signing up as an affiliate is actually worth your time, energy, and resource.
I signed up to ClickBank, as an affiliate, roughly a month after I launched my first blog back in August of 2010. So, almost 9 years ago.
Blogging was very new to me at that time, and so was affiliate marketing. I didn't have a clue what the word meant even, nor did I know what you had to do to become an affiliate marketer.
I discovered ClickBank, actually, through a book I was reading called How To Make Money Online by John Chow. It's an old book now, but I bought in on Amazon around that time too. Here's the Amazon link to that book.
John Chow, by the way, is one of the most successful bloggers in the world and from what I remember, he promoted a lot of ClickBank hosted products to make money from his blog. He probably still does today I imagine.
Anyhow, getting back to using ClickBank, I've not only promoted digital products hosted on ClickBank over the years, but I've also purchased a few of them myself. Some great products, but most of them absolute garbage!
So, here's what I'm going to cover in this personal and 100% unbiased review of ClickBank:
OK, let's get started!
Note: It's important for you to keep in mind that I'm reviewing ClickBank as a publisher/affiliate, and not a vendor. Vendors use ClickBank to host, promote, and upsell their products.
If you didn't already know, ClickBank is one of the largest sales platforms on the web. The company was founded in 1998 by entrepreneurs and has over 200 million customers worldwide.
You can signup as a Vendor on ClickBank to host, promote, and sell your digital goods in the marketplace. Or, you can signup as an affiliate and earn an income promoting the range of digital products from the marketplace.
Click here to learn more about ClickBank or to signup for a free affiliate account.
Vendors sell a wide range of digital products, from eBooks, software, website templates, apps, courses, webinars, games, guides, and much more. And in a variety of niches and industries, including - health and fitness, home and garden, cooking, food, and wine, software, and services, etc.
This means that the ClickBank marketplace is a great place to explore products to promote, as an affiliate.
While a lot of the products are genuinely good, there's always been a problem with ClickBank hosting a lot of low-end, poor quality, and sometimes scammy products.
The kinds of products I'm talking about are the notorious "Money Making Systems" and "Get Rich Fast Schemes", often promoted through tacky banner ads, aggressive sales videos, copy-and-paste sales email templates, etc.
Yes, Sir, there is still plenty of that kind of crap hosted and sold on ClickBank, sadly, you just have to be smart and look past them, if you have the time and energy that is.
Now, I'm not saying all the systems sold through ClickBank are bad, but I'm always dubious about wasting my money on any false promises when I know first hand how hard you have to work to get real genuine results with your online business. I'm sure you would agree, right?
For the genuine stock of digital products available to promote through ClickBank, there's still reason to use ClickBank as an affiliate.
Here is a list of the products that I've purchased and promoted as an affiliate through ClickBank, over the last 10 years:
And yes, all of the links above are my affiliate links, but as you can see, I'm not promoting a great deal from the ClickBank marketplace.
When I first signed up to ClickBank, the only payment method available for overseas affiliates was via check. Times have changed, thankfully, as these days you can get paid either by check or directly into your bank account.
As for how often you get paid, well, you can set this frequency to weekly or bi-weekly, bearing in mind that whatever threshold you set is met first.
For example, if your threshold is $250 bi-weekly, and you earn over this amount in each period, you will be paid on time. If you don't earn enough, you won't be paid until you reach the threshold, if that makes sense.
As I said, you can change the threshold manually in your payment settings.
OK, so let me start with what I think is great about ClickBank.
Right, let's get on with the few things that I think are bad.
The thing is, there are some genuinely reputable products on ClickBank among the thousands of rubbish ones. ClickBank's problem is that its marketplace focuses on quantity rather than quality.
In addition, ClickBank's reputation and credibility aren't great by any measure. Over the years, they've managed to tarnish their rep further by allowing low-end products authored and marketed by bad business folks to grace their marketplace. What this has done is given a lot of their customers a bad overall experience with the products they've purchased through ClickBank, and the level of customer service received after, in some cases.
As a blogger or an affiliate marketer promoting ClickBank hosted products, this can negatively impact your own credibility and your blog or affiliate website's reputation too. If you find something on ClickBank that sounds too good to be true, then it probably is, and gambling with the trust that you've built with your blog readers or affiliate customer base is not a good strategy.
I must also stress, as a paying customer, I've made a few bad purchases through ClickBank myself, but I was always refunded on every occasion. As an affiliate, I've never had any major problems with the products I've promoted over the years, but I do my research very, very carefully before reviewing and recommending any products on ClickBank on my blogs.
I've used ClickBank since 2010, I would still recommend using them but for anyone brand new to the site, please tread very carefully if you choose to signup and promote their products.
If you can trench your way through the chin high amounts of garbage, valueless products, find yourself a few good ones, purchase them, use them, contact customer service to see how effective the communication and support is, and then give your honest review of the product and its uses, I think you can make some good money with ClickBank.
I should also mention that the competition can be tough out there. ClickBank has been around for years, and so there will thousands of elite affiliates to compete against in finding and promoting the best and high-value, and profitable products.
If ClickBank sounds like as if it could be more of a headache than an opportunity, there are other plenty of reliable affiliate networks you can sign up to these days. Here's a list of them for you.
Best of luck.
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Hello Fabrizio,
Clickbank used to be a leading affiliate marketplace. But with the span of time, it becomes the place of scam products and services. In today's world, you simply cannot convert the ClickBank products to a sale. Many reputed advertisers like Longtailpro have left the ClickBank marketplace and joined the Shareasale. Thanks for share your experiences.
Regards,
Vishwajeet Kumar
Hi Vishweet, yes I completely agree with you. It seems that whoever is running the show over there these days have stopped caring entirely. Which is a shame because it just creates a bad taste for the few remaining good products hosted in the marketplace.