When you’re trying to make money online with affiliate marketing, one of the first things you must do is find an affiliate network to work with. These networks allow you to recommend products to your audience and earn commissions when people make purchases based on your recommendations.
One network that many people choose to work with at some point in time is called Clickbank. Is Clickbank a good network to work with? In this Clickbank affiliate network review, we’re going to be looking at how Clickbank works and whether you should consider working with them to recommend products to your own audience.
What is Clickbank?
Clickbank is a marketplace that allows people to create and sell their own goods and products on a worldwide scale. They also allow affiliate marketers to recommend these products and earn commissions that can be as high as 75%. Most products are offered at Clickbank or digital in nature, but there are some that also have physical goods with them.
Clickbank was created more than 20 years ago and has been a go-to affiliate network for many new marketers for much of that time.
Who Is the Clickbank Affiliate Program for?
The Clickbank affiliate program can be a great program for various people. Typically, those who benefit most from it are newcomers to affiliate marketing, as Clickbank has very low barriers to entry, with most people being approved after applying the first time.
Even though beginners often benefit the most from working with Clickbank, many experienced affiliate marketers also use the platform as it allows them to offer digital goods to their audience and earn very high commissions promoting quality products. The key is to make certain that you are completing your due diligence to ensure the products you recommend are of the highest quality.
What Types of Products Can You Find at Clickbank?
As briefly mentioned above, most products are available at Clickbank or digital goods. These include things like e-books, digital courses including videos, software, apps, extensions, and similar products. Again, a few physical goods are available through Clickbank, but those products are typically included in a bundle alongside digital goods.
The variety of different digital goods products is what attracts many new affiliate marketers to the platform in the first place. As you can see in the image below, you can find everything from antivirus software to entrepreneur courses, cookbooks, self-help products, and much more.
Clickbank offers some type of product for almost every niche out there. The problem is that sometimes these products are not very well created, or they may not offer exactly what your audience is looking for.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t some great products available at Clickbank. In fact, in some niches, many of the top products on the market are available in the Clickbank marketplace.
For example, if you’re involved in the photography niche, there is a course called “Fro Knows Photo” that many people rave about across various photography forums and message boards all over the Internet. If you’re running a website about photography and choose to promote this product, you could earn commissions as high as $32 per sale.
How Does Clickbank Pay You?
One of the biggest concerns many people have when joining any new affiliate program is how they will get paid. With Clickbank, this is where they really shine. This is because Clickbank offers multiple payment options depending on how many commissions you’re earning.
Clickbank pays out as infrequently as monthly or as often as every week if you earn enough commissions to break through the payment threshold. The good news is that you set your own threshold amount that can range from $10 all the way up to $1 million. When you first get started with Clickbank, your payment threshold has defaulted to $100.
Clickbank has a reputation for paying out its affiliates and product creators on time. In the Internet marketing community, you very rarely hear about people who have truly earned their commissions not receiving them.
Clickbank allows you to choose whether you wish to be paid by check or direct deposit. For those choosing to be paid by direct deposit, you can be paid as frequently as every week, while people receiving checks can be paid out as frequently as biweekly.
As with many other affiliate networks, there is a delay between the time you earn commissions and the time that there available for payout. With Clickbank, the commissions you earn are paid out two weeks after you earn them. This is a very short waiting period as many affiliate networks like Amazon make you wait up to 90 days after earning a commission before receiving payment.
The main issue with Clickbank payments is that you must overcome several hurdles before receiving your first commission payout.
The Negative Side of Clickbank Payments
There are a couple of complaints that many affiliate marketers have when it comes to Clickbank. The first is that you must meet what Clickbank refers to as a “customer distribution requirement” before you’re able to receive any payments from Clickbank. This “customer distribution requirement” requires you to have a minimum of 5 sales and two different payment methods before withdrawing money from your Clickbank account.
While this sounds like a very easy requirement to achieve, for some people, this can be very challenging. This is mainly because of the requirement for you to have two different payment methods before you’re able to withdraw money. These payment methods can include American Express, Carte Bleue, Diners Club, Discover, Maestro, MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa.
There are many different payment options to choose from, but the problem that many affiliate marketers run into is that most people prefer to use payment processing services like PayPal, which can make getting the second payment method a bit of a hassle.
The good news is that you only must achieve the “customer distribution requirement” one time during the life of your Clickbank account. Once you’ve met the minimum requirements, you no longer have to worry about it and can earn commissions without any restrictions.
This policy was implemented because, during the early years of Clickbank, many people would create affiliate accounts and make purchases just to acquire a discount on goods and courses offered inside the platform. Unfortunately, this practice resulted in the limitations of the “customer distribution requirement” being put in place.
The second complaint that many people have about Clickbank payments is that you can lose your commissions if you do not have earnings for an extended period.
If you have a balance in your Clickbank account and haven’t made sales for 90 days, Clickbank begins to deduct $1 per pay period and increases this amount to $5 per pay period after 180 days of no earnings. If you go a full year without earning any commissions and still have a balance in your Clickbank account, you will be charged $50 per pay period until your account balance reaches zero.
This isn’t an issue as long as you have already overcome the “customer distribution requirement” mentioned above and you’re paying attention to your affiliate account and requesting payouts to avoid these fees.
The final issue, and perhaps the biggest one that many affiliate marketers have with Clickbank, is that there are frequent chargebacks for many products on the platform. When customers who have made purchases on Clickbank request a refund, you lose your commission just like you do on almost every affiliate platform on the Internet. The best advice to avoid this issue is to promote quality products you’ve reviewed before promoting them to your audience.
Pros and Cons of the Clickbank Affiliate Network
PROS
Low Barrier to Entry – Many affiliate networks on the Internet have traffic requirements, types of traffic they won’t accept, and other similar restrictions. When it comes to Clickbank, many of these barriers to entry are nonexistent.
Good for Beginners – Because of the low barrier to entry and large product selection, Clickbank is an optimal choice for newcomers to affiliate marketing.
High Commissions – Many products offer no Clickbank commissions ranging from 25% to 50%, with some offering commissions as high as 75%. With many products available in the Clickbank marketplace, you could earn commissions that range from $20 all the way up to thousands of dollars per sale.
Frequent Payouts – Many affiliate networks only payout monthly or even quarterly. With Clickbank, you can expect to receive weekly payments if you enroll in direct deposit and have frequent sales.
Helpful Product Creators – Many of the product creators and Clickbank have created marketing materials, guides, review copies of their products, and much more. Many of the product creators on Clickbank understand that you earn more money. They earn more money. Because of this, they are often willing to go above and beyond to ensure you have everything you need to succeed in promoting their product.
CONS
High Refund Frequency – When it comes to chargebacks and refunds, every product is unique. To have the best success, ensure that you try the product you plan to promote first before promoting it. Ensure it is a high-quality product before recommending it to anyone else. With that said, some refunds are expected; unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about it.
The Customer Distribution Requirement – Achieving five transactions using two different payment methods may sound simple, but it can be challenging for some newcomers to affiliate marketing. Many people become discouraged while they’re waiting to break through this requirement and ultimately give up before they ever receive their first commission check.
Some Terrible Products – Ultimately, Clickbank is a marketplace that allows product creators to sell their products without too much policing involved. Because of this, some products on the platform are of very low quality, and some fail to deliver what’s promised. Therefore, it’s very important that you make certain to try all the products you plan to promote before promoting them to your audience.
Poor Communication from Product Creators – While some product creators go above and beyond to ensure you can succeed with your marketing efforts, others won’t respond to you regardless of how often you try to reach out to them. If you try to contact a product creator multiple times and failed to receive a response, you may want to consider looking for another product to promote rather than moving forward with your first choice.
Clickbank Affiliate Network – a Great Platform When Use the Right Way
At the end of the day, Clickbank is a marketplace that does payout its commissions so long as you play by the rules. Once you get past their requirements, you can expect to receive your commissions on time, every time.
Best of all, many of the products on the Clickbank platform can earn very high commissions, and many people have created full-time incomes by recommending products and services offered inside of Clickbank.
Make sure you are taking the time to vet the product you’re promoting before recommending it to your audience. Don’t be afraid to ask product creators for review copies; many of them will happily allow you free access to their products because they know they’ll earn more money if you promote them.
Also, make certain that you attempt to contact product creators before recommending their products, as this will allow you to have a better grasp of their customer service capabilities.
Are You Ready to Start Making Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Clickbank is just one of the many affiliate networks on the Internet that will pay you to recommend goods and services to other people. Understanding exactly how to do this is crucial for the most success possible with affiliate marketing.
To have the most success possible with affiliate marketing, you need to follow a blueprint that has been proven to help people succeed time and time again. If you’d like to learn more about affiliate marketing and get started with a great product that can show you how to earn a full-time income online, take a moment to check out my top recommended resource.
After doing so, you can learn how to earn a full-time income promoting other people’s products, products from large retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart, just to name a few, or by simply allowing people to try new apps, games, and software for free.
The community inside of my top recommended resource is one that will support you and help you learn how to achieve your own success with affiliate marketing.
Congratulations on an objective review of ClickBank. I have never personally tried Clickbank, but I joined another affiliate program, Amazon, instead. I think that Amazon does require a lot of work for the small commissions that I get. Plus, since I am a newcomer to the affiliate marketing space, I feel that I am at a disadvantage when compared to seasoned marketers within the marketing space.
One of the things about Clickbank, though, that I fear the most is the high frequency of refunds, even though the high commission rate is an appealing element for joining Clickbank. With that said, after reading your Clickbank Affiliate Network review, I might give Clickbank another try.
Are you a member, and would you like to share what one can on expect to earn on an average per month? Thanks for sharing.
Yes, I am a member of the Clickbank Affiliate Network. Now how much you can earn with Clickbank monthly? Well, this will sound like a lame answer: but it depends on the products you are promoting, along with the amount of traffic your site is getting and your dedication.
The secret of being successful with affiliate marketing is to have a website with high-quality content, which will generate with time a great deal of traffic and of course, by showcasing high-quality products that fulfill a particular need for your audience in your niche. By doing all of this, you will earn an income online.
I have made use of Clickbank a couple of times in the past, and I can very well say that the platform is excellent. The programs there offer very high commissions, just as you have mentioned here. I have been able to make some money from it, and I think that more people should also give it a try themselves. I am an affiliate marketer, and Clickbank is a marketplace made specifically for us.
I am glad to hear that you found success with Clickbank. Even though there are many negative reviews about some of the products in the Clickbank marketplace, the good outweighs the bad, in my opinion.
Hello Sonia, I hope all is going fantastic on your side…
I have been reading a lot, and I am still skeptical about working with Clickbank Affiliate Network. As far as I know, and have seen in some reviews, Clickbank is one of the most extensive affiliate programs out there, but I heard they accept any products, including many scams.
Have you heard anything about that? I would like to have your input on the matter, as you spent quite a great time of time researching them!
Cheers, and read to you again soon!
Because Clickbank does not check the legitimacy of the product offered on its platform, therefore, you as an affiliate marketer are the one that has to be on the lookout to find scams or products that are very questionable. It is not into the mandate of the Clickbank Affiliate Network to check if every single product on its platform is legit.
This is why you need to test, review the products you want to push to your audience. Because at the end of the day, if you pick a mediocre product and promote it on your website without having done due diligence, your audience will view you as a scammer, a greedy individual. As a result, you will lose all your credibility as a legitimate affiliate marketer. So you need to choose your products wisely if you want to succeed with Clickbank an earn a full-time income as an affiliate marketer.
One of the biggest problems that I have with Clickbank is that many of the products on the platform are not really reliable, and this is quite evident by the large numbers of complaints that people have laid down on their products.
Most of the time, when I read reviews, especially the negative ones, they usually involved products from Clickbank. This doesn’t mean though that the Clickbank Affiliate Network is not legit. I bought a few of the digital products, and they turned out to be quite good.
One thing you need to remember with Clickbank and any other affiliate programs for that matter is that you need to choose the products you want to promote wisely.
Yes, there are high-quality products available on Clickbank. However, you have to do extensive research to find them and also need to review the product before offering it to your audience. By doing so, you drastically increase your chances of picking high-quality products and succeeding with Clickbank. Don’t let the high commission rate or greed be the only criteria you take into consideration when picking goods to offer to your audience.
Clickbank is overall a good platform, but I’m mostly concerned about the product quality and product testing. Whenever people have options to sell their own stuff, you can be sure there will be questionable products included (I don’t want to use the word scams), so a lot of caution is advised.
Let just say that often time, the quality of the goods on Clickbank leaves much to be desired. Like everything else, you need to do your homework and research thoroughly the product you are thinking of promoting before starting to recommend it.
I highly recommend that you contact the product creator and ask a lot of questions. If you are having trouble getting in touch with the product creator, that you should instantly raise a red flag and you should stay away from that product. Also, it’s always a good practice to test the product yourself. You must have hand-on experience with the product in order to promote it efficiently, in my opinion.
Lastly, don’t let high commissions rate guide your choices when it comes time to select a product to offer to your audience as well.