Understanding ClickBank and How This Popular Affiliate Network Works
Many new affiliate marketers turn to the ClickBank affiliate network to kickstart their business. The ClickBank Marketplace contains thousands of affiliate programs to choose from. The nice thing about the ClickBank products is that they are downloadable, digital products like ebooks and software or membership sites. This makes it easy to make good commissions on these products, as there is little overhead for the vendor.
I hope that you’re not the newbie I was… you know, going after affiliate vendors that had a high gravity for their products… and the one’s that get you the high commissions (50+ % up to 75%), to make you rich overnight.
When you’ve lived in that type of environment online, you soon learn that you have to do your research right is that you can evaluate your ClickBank vendor just right so that you can find the profitable products that will make you the money you expect from this type of affiliate network…
Sign-up and Get Your ClickBank Affiliate Nickname
The first thing that you want to do is get your affiliate nickname registered with ClickBank. This is a given…Your ClickBank nickname is your ticket into this online, affiliate marketing world if you are a newbie and don’t have a product of your own to market and sell…. In fact, affiliate marketing with ClickBank will do the closest thing to kickstart your online business that you can imagine… Through your affiliate nickname, you make your hoplink that gets you into your ClickBank affiliate account a going.
ClickBank Can Be Confusing
A lot of the terminology surrounding the ClickBank Marketplace can sound confusing when you’re not used to it…. once you do take it under your wing, well, you know what it all means and it becomes more and more familiar to you…
In the product’s listing in the CB Marketplace, you will see values listed for each product, for example:
$/sale: $13.92 | Future $: $67.42 | Total $/sale: $72.83 | %sale: 50% | %refd: 84% | grav: 103.48
Okay, the first word you need to know is Gravity, known as Grav… Gravity gives you an idea of the number of affiliates earning a commission on the product by referring a customer to the vendor. According to ClickBank, this isn’t the actual total of affiliates, but a weighted sum that reflects "affiliate value". One thing we know about gravity is that the more recent the last referral, the higher the value added, thus the higher the gravity value.
$/sale is another term you should know… This is the average sales commission over time after ClickBank has paid the refunds on the product. If the commission is 70% on a product selling for $100 and the $/sale is less than $70, then you know that some of the customers are getting refunds on the product. I think that to make money with this network, you should look for products that sell for more than $15.
%sale means the percentage of the product price that is paid out to affiliates. In the above example, the %sale is 70% or $70.
%refd means the percentage of the overall sales generated by affiliates referring customers to the vendor. In the above example in green, affiliates are generating 84% of the sales.
Future $: This value is usually blank, but when there’s a dollar value, it means that this product has recurring billing (usually a membership site).
You’ll notice in the above example that the affiliates should be receiving $36.42 for each sale, but in reality they are only getting $13.92. This tells us that there must be lots of refunds with this product, but we don’t know the exact percentage of the sales have been refunded. There is a way to find this information though. I use a service known as CBEngine Pro to find out additional information about each ClickBank product I’m researching.
CB Engine Pro: A Great Place to Start Your ClickBank Product Research
CB Engine is a website that allows easier searching of the ClickBank Marketplace. When you search CB Engine, you will notice that you are returned more results than the ten that are returned by CB itself. The nice thing about this service is that it’s an all-round ClickBank search engine and CB tracking website.
You can use it for free, but I suggest that you update to the CBengine Pro version. With the pro version you will find that you have access to the great statistics that they offer like popularity, conversion, momentum, affiliate scores, refund rate and much more…
You also will find live reports like "Brand New", "Movers and Shakers", Re-listed", "Best Gains", "Removed", and "CB Insider. And when you search for a product, the results offer loads of information into the productivity of the product and graphs so you can see how the product has been performing visually.
CB Engine is a great place to start your search for a profitable ClickBank merchant to fulfill you product needs for your market or niche.
Found a Good Merchant Product? What Next?
When you have found a product that you can market to your niche, you’re not quite done with your research. You should click through to the vendor’s sales page and check it out to see if you think it will have a good conversion rate. Confirm for yourself that the sales copy does a good job of selling the product. After reading it, would you buy the product? Make sure that the sales page doesn’t reduce your chances of making a sale.
Check for the following factors that may offer resistance to visitors clicking on the order link:
1. There are many external links or a navigation menu which distract the visitor from reaching the order page and may take them away from the sales page.
2. There are offers to subscribe to a mailing list or claim a free report which might mean that the vendor would have the visitor on a mailing list and the merchant could later follow up these leads but you would not receive commission.
3. An link to an affiliate sign-up page (usually in the "footer" of the page) where your potential customer could simply become an affiliate and purchase the product themselves and get their own commission for the purchase.
4. The merchant offers multiple payment options so if ClickBank is not chosen you do not get the commission
5. The merchant uses a pop-up upon exiting a site to convert a visitor that is leaving into a sale that does not use ClickBank and you don’t get your commission for pre-selling them and getting them to the sales page.
Any of the above may cause loss of a sales and reduce conversions that will mean profit for you.
Related Blogs and Sites
- clickbank hoplink creator | Home Based Internet Businesses, Work at Home Typing Affiliate
- eBooks from Gale: 250 ABC-CLIO Titles Join Gale Virtual Reference Library « ResourceShelf
- Affiliate Videos – Clickbank vs. Paydotcom Affiliate Marketing Great Debate | Affiliate Paradise
- Closest thing to 14th & Division that I could find…with a roundabout « My Wheels are Turning
- clickbank Q&A- I Have a hoplink, Now What? | homecenterjob
- ebooks on the niche market | homecenterjob
- The Human Touch Power Electric Perfect Chair Recliner – PC95 / PC-095 Walnut Recline Wood Base Green Leather Pads – Interactive Health Zero Anti Gravity Chair
- How To Set Up Your Clickbank Affiliate Account | The Marketing Beast
- Tears for Fears Song & Video Closest Thing to Heaven | TearsForFears.net
- Affiliate Marketing and How to Become A Clickbank Super Affiliate :Start A Home Based Business
Tags: CB Engine, ClickBank, ClickBank affiliate network, ClickBank Marketplace, ClickBank nickname, ClickBank products
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Posted: March 19th, 2010 under affiliate marketing.
Comments: 2
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Pingback from Are You Evaluating ClickBank Affiliate Programs for Maximum Profitability? | Ristvin Marketing Blog
Time: March 20, 2010, 7:11 am
[...] the example that I used in my last post on Understanding ClickBank, I found that this site receives 4,280 visitors a month. QuantCast tells me that 97% of these [...]
Pingback from What to do if the ClickBank Vendor’s Sales Page Stinks | Ristvin Marketing Blog
Time: March 20, 2010, 10:37 am
[...] I prefer option two… If you read my last post on evaluating ClickBank products for profitability, you should now know that if you have a gravity score on your ClickBank product and it is [...]
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