ClickBank MarketPlace Review – Choose wisely to weed out the bad products
Welcome to this Clickbank Marketplace Review.
Many of you will have heard of ClickBank as it’s the first place many of us go to when we are trying to earn money as an affiliate marketer, and the ClickBank MarketPlace is the place to go when you need a product to promote, but can you still make money with this affiliate network?
For those who don’t know what ClickBank is.
It’s what’s called an affiliate network…
…where Vendors; that’s product creators can go and upload their own product details, in this case to the ClickBank MarketPlace, which is just like a database and made available to everyone.
…and…
…where ordinary customers and affiliate marketers can go and search out these products to either purchase for themselves or promote to other people.
ClickBank.com was the first affiliate network to come on stream over 20 years ago now and was the place to go to when you were looking for great products to promote as an affiliate marketer, and why not as you can find many products in the MarketPlace with commissions as high as 75%.
Over the last decade or so many other affiliate networks have got in on the act which is great for the affiliate marketer, but for ClickBank not so great as this means less business through competition.
ClickBank is still (or so they say) one of the top affiliate networks that both vendor and affiliate marketer still use and whilst you can still find some OK products to promote it just takes a little longer, which we will go into a little later.
[Affiliate Disclosure: This Clickbank Marketplace Review has been thoroughly researched from information and testimonials that are in the public domain. This post may contain affiliate links which means we may earn a small commission, however, this won’t affect what you pay!]
Founders: Eileen Langan Barber, Dr. Tomothy Barber, Geoff Hoyl
Founded: 1998 (in a Garage)
Based in: US
Price: Free
Recommended: NO
Description: A place where many vendors still go to market their products, but for the affiliate marketer looking just to promote products can be a struggle.
ClickBank MarketPlace is the main central database of ClickBank where all the vendor products and associated information that relate to the products are stored, and available for the affiliate marketer or customer to purchase from.
This all started way back in 1998 in the early days of the internet boom, in the garage of Eileen and Dr Timothy Barbers in San Diego, California.
With over $3 billion in sales and currently over 6 million clients worldwide, operating in 190 countries, then it would appear that they are still doing something right.
How Does ClickBank Work?
Clickbank is simplified by these 3 straightforward steps!
ClickBank provides a software platform
for vendors to showcase their products usually in a digital information format, although they now include some physical products.
The affiliate marketers can sign up for a free account very easily and search through their extensive catalogue of digital and more recently physical products and promote those products by creating a ClickBank HopLink.
This basically links the Vendor-Affiliate-Customer throughout the whole purchasing process, which also allows the customers to get any refund back without any hassle provided they apply within the given time period.
Can You Still Make Money with the ClickBank MarketPlace as an Affiliate?
This is a question that is asked all the time and such a difficult one with no definitive answer, but in my opinion, nowadays you can still make money with ClickBank but you need to know what you are doing, and all is not as it used to be.
A number of years ago the ClickBank MarketPlace was the place to goif you were starting out as an affiliate marketer, where you could find some very good products across many niches to promote.
Nowadays, whilst there are still thousands of products that ClickBank markets for vendors
Most of them are only accessible through joining the many various membership sites that you can find all over the internet, and it would seem that the ClickBank MarketPlace for the customer and sole affiliate marketer is somewhat limited with products that are worthy of promoting.
I’m not sure just where the 54,000 vendors come from in the above snippet, but must be an accumulating number from when ClickBank MarketPlace first started…
Of which there are only around 160 products available to promote that have a gravity of over 19, which is a good indication and guide for selecting decent quality (or so it would seem) products that have a reasonable amount of competition. Also a good way of excluding all the crappy products too!
Gravity is a figure that represents the number of affiliates that have made a sale with that particular product but the real maths behind it are a little unclear, and not all of those products will be worthy of promotion therefore you will need to narrow it down further, along with checking out the sales pages, sales videos, upsells, down sells and a host of other things too, before you are satisfied that this is the product to promote.
Are Affiliates still plugging the same story that may well have worked a few years back?
In fact, you will find all over social media, especially YouTube where affiliate marketers declare coming from very humble beginnings, and now declaring their millionaire status (to be taken lightly of course, and don’t forget to check the date also) and all in the name of ClickBank, and that may well be true in some cases, but I think you can see that you are going to struggle to get the same results today.
Even today the same story can be heard, where instead of choosing your Niche FIRST, they use the ClickBank MarketPlace to decide that for them based on “quality” products. The product dictates the niche!
Find several related great products that you want to promote
Which will identify your Niche
Then create your website based on your chosen Niche
Create content “blog posts” 9-12 posts!
Promote on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram etc
OK, there is a little more to it than how I have just described it, but that’s the gist of it! Sounds simple, yes? Well take it from me it really isn’t, and there are many courses out there pushing this very same method!
Well, that might well have worked a number of years back but unless you can find several great products belonging to the same Niche market that is going to be profitable, then this method will not work and besides small niche websites like this tend to not work anymore.
OK, so we have seen how some affiliates capitalized on ClickBank, but now we are going to discuss how things have moved on somewhat and how Google favours sites with authority and plenty of great content!
Which is broken down it 3 steps and the 4th step comes naturally if all the other steps have been successfully mastered.
What is your passion – Choose an Interest
First off…we all have a passion for things,
whether it’s hobbies like “Dogs” maybe “Cake Making” or “Playing Golf” or maybe “Cross Stitch“.
It can be many things and a passion helps so much when developing your business.
This is normally called a Niche, which is a subset of a wider audience,
such as…
“Dogs” belongs to the broader term – Animals
“Playing Golf” would belong to – Sports
“Cross Stitch” would then belong to – Sewing
The further you go down the pecking order, in other words, find another sub-section like…
Animals – Dogs – “Dog Training” – Puppy Training – Puppy Toilet Training
…the less competition you will find which will help when promoting your business but also enough competition to make it worthwhile.
If you look deep enough you might even get lucky and find an area where you could create a sub-niche that you could exploit and over time this will become profitable.
A good place to look would be Amazon because their search engine allows you to drill down into Niches, not only that but Amazon will highlight the price so you can be better prepared. Just a thought!
OK, so you don’t have a passion, then that can come at a later date or if you need some guidance on finding a Niche.
To give you some idea of what a niche could be!
Where do people tend to go when they want answers to questions?
Yes, you guessed it Google, which covers around 87% of the search engine market share.
That’s nearly 7.5 billion (7,500,000,000) keyword phrases in one single day and they all have the potential to be a niche. That’s some crowd, right?
This is your potential audience, who are looking for answers and all you need to do is get your website in front of that crowd of people looking for advice that you are going to give them.
For our example, we will be using “Dog Training” as our Niche!!
Creating your piece of the Internet – Your Website
Now that you have decided what your Niche will be,
its now time to create your website.
I know what you’re thinking, that’s well beyond my capabilities and I wouldn’t have a clue!
Well, exactly the same response I made, but we all put up the shutters when we don’t know how to do something; right?
Instead of chilling out and saying, “well, how hard can it be?”
5-10 years ago you would have had to know a whole host of various skills, such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. What might have taken you several weeks to accomplish will take you a fraction of the time now, seriously!
we now have to start building out our business by writing content that relates to our Niche, which we decided upon earlier.
First, we need to find out what people are typing into Google that relates to our Niche, and we do this through what we call…
Keyword research – Search Engine Optimization
For this, we would use a keyword tool, that basically grabs all the data that Google stores on a database of the millions of search terms that people are keying into Google, and displays it in
various formats for us to make our life easier when selecting popular keywords which people are keying into the Google search bar. Keywords that we can use for our blog posts!
Let’s take a look at Jaaxy which we will be using for this demonstration. A great tool that can be mastered in a couple of hours that gives you all the bells and whistles without overcomplicating things.
Just to give you an idea of how many people are searching on average in a month for the keyword phrase “dog training”
That’s 25542 with the potential for 4343 if your “post” get’s to Page 1 of Google. Don’t worry that’s not as difficult as you may think!
I have added this snippet only to identify a level down, in other words, a sub-niche of the “Dog Training” Niche.
Can you see the difference from 25542 down to 5086? This is where the level of competition drops but doesn’t necessarily mean that this sub-niche is no good. On the contrary, it just means that it will be easier to compete in.
Just to give you an example. “Animals” is a broad term that covers “Dog Training” and “Puppy Training”. All the large businesses will be targeting the term “Animals” as they have all the money for marketing etc. We don’t!
Writing great content
What can I write about? Where can I get the information from?
Questions I used to ask myself, and pretty straightforward really!
Once we have decided on which keywords we are going to target, in other words, the keywords that people are typing into the search engine, then we would use those keywords as the title of our blog post.
We would research the subject in this case “Dog Training” on the internet like we do every day when we are looking for answers to questions or our next big purchase, something like a 54inch Samsung TV.
We could check out our competition and see how they are doing things, such as seeking out several websites in the same or similar Niche that are on pages 1-3 of the Google search results. There are 1000s of ways to exploit it!
Just use your imagination!
How do we make any money?
A good question and a very important one too.
We have created our content and it’s ready to be published, but one thing is missing. We need to find a product or products to recommend as part of the solution.
We look for an affiliate program that we can use.
There are 1000’s affiliate programs online that we can use and are free to join, like ClickBank although that may not be a great example. What about Amazon or just type “Dog Training” affiliate programs into Google, like so! Can you see how many the search query highlights in the results?
Check out their products, like what you see, just join their affiliate program and use the product affiliate links within your “blog posts”
Remember to check out the commission rates!
How long will this take?
Just keep writing content relating to your Niche and Targeting Keywords that people are typing into the search engines and each post you publish will attract a certain amount of traffic.
The more you write the more traffic you will attract the more sales you will make!
So in answer to your question “How long will it take?”
The harder you work the quicker you will get there remember when the traffic starts to come, it just keeps coming and coming, and the beauty about this business is that it won’t cost you a penny for traffic because this way it is all for FREE. It just takes a little time!
…and your business is running 24/7/365 and can be managed from anywhere in the world. All you need is an Internet Connection and a Laptop.
Just think of all the quality time you can get back with your family and the icing on the cake is you won’t have to answer to your BOSS!
Earn Revenue
This step comes naturally when all the above steps have been successfully implemented. This is when all your hard work has paid off!
If you are interested and would like to know more!
I wasn’t going to include this section but as ClickBank is a place that is recognized as still one of the best affiliate networks, I have highlighted what I think are the important factors that you need to know.
Pros
Free to join
It’s easy to join with no interrogating questions asked, not like some similar sites, and once you have signed up and created a PayPal account you are pretty much ready to roll.
Available in Many Countries throughout the World
ClickBank is available in a number of different languages and across many countries.
High Commission
What attracts many to ClickBank MarketPlace is the high commissions that you can find for many products, even some as high as 75%.
Recurring Offers
Many products come with recurring offers such as memberships where you are guaranteed a passive regular income.
Order Management
ClickBank handles everything regarding the order processing and the links between vendor, affiliate marketer and the customer.
Cons
Too many bad products
The back catalogue of ClickBank’s MarketPlace is full of crappy products that just will not make you any money, and it will take you a lot of research to determine which ones will and which ones won’t.
It just means that you have to be more thorough in your selection process.
ClickBank MarketPlace Review – Final Thoughts!
I remember a few years back when I first checked out the ClickBank MarketPlace there was an abundance of great products to choose from.
Don’t get me wrong there still are some good products, it just means you have to be a little more thorough in how you choose the product, that’s all.
Times move on and things have to change to accommodate the likes of Google and the way it now indexes and ranks your work through the constant changes to its algorithm, and now more emphasis is on quality content, so what you’ll find is, what did work then doesn’t work now.
What makes this business stand out above all the rest is that you can become a member for free and check it out and see if it’s for you, and you will not be asked for your credit card details either. There are no UPSELLS either!
Comments
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20 thoughts on “ClickBank MarketPlace Review – Choose wisely to weed out the bad products”
Very informative! Affiliate marketing is not for the meek, that is for sure and this is excellent information to have if you think you are going to just jump in and be an overnight success. Thanks for keeping it real!
hey Tina, affiliate marketing is a great business to get into but trying to learn this vast area without any real expert help just won’t cut it. It wouldn’t for me! Yes, you can find all the relevant information online for free but by the time you have deciphered the info, whether it is current or that the information is correct it could be a couple of years down the road. Even finding what you may think is the right training platform can sometimes not work for all sorts of reasons. Wealthy affiliate, without a doubt, isn’t that training platform. Thanks for commenting. Your support is appreciated.
Hi Mick;
Your site is very professional looking and informative, with a lot of good info, and honest evaluations. Being new to internet marketing, I found your evaluation on Click Bank quite enlightening, and pretty much convinced me, since I was considering them as an affiliate site, to maybe put them on the back burner, at least for now, and go with better choices. Thank you for all the great information, and I wish you the best!
Hey Terry, thanks for stopping by. With ClickBank, you will find some people like and some don’t for various reasons. What I hoped I didn’t do in this review was steer you away totally from this affiliate program, because it wasn’t my intention. There are still some OK products to be found, just not enough of them. All I can do is deliver the facts as they are seen and hopefully help someone like yourself not to focus too much in an area when there are a lot more alternatives to be found. Thanks for commenting.
Hi , Thanks for the article and explain in details clickbank, one of the affiliate programs that was not clear for me but you made it easy
I’m Glad i found your website and will be waiting for your next article
Thanks for the great thoughts on ClickBank my friend. I agree with you 100% that good products on the ClickBank MarketPlace are hard to come by nowadays. Something interesting that you mention is how some affiliates used to market and promote ClickBank products which I had never heard of before, but sort of makes sense when you think about it. I am not too up on the workings of the Google algorithm so I can’t comment on that but an interesting point as I have never really thought of this before. You also go on to explain in more detail how to become an affiliate marketer and I find this very interesting, especially where you mention Wealthy Affiliate. I am very interested in this and how can I join? Thanks for sharing.
Hello Mick. Fantastic review and honest. One thing is for sure it’s hard to make that 75% commission. I myself was a click bank affiliate and let me tell you it’s a struggle. Lot’s of things are very confusing and like you said they have crappy products.
I think the only ones that really make money are the ones who run click bank.
Thank you so much for this great read.
David
Hi David, I’m glad you enjoyed the post and thanks for sharing your experience with ClickBank. Vendors obviously are the ones making the money on here but I am not talking about the products that are available to us that you can see on the ClickBank MarketPlace. I would be referring to the ones that you only get access to when you join a membership site that you can find online. Thanks for your support.
Mick thanks for this review this has been very helpful. I was wondering about the current relevance and quality of Clickbank. I came across it years ago however recently returned to check it out I did find it felt very different. So appreciate you giving such a thorough rundown on it. I’ll still go check it out for myself but with a discerning eye – so thank you
Hi Fleur, ClickBank has had a lot of flack over the years and you can find some good products but they are not plentiful like they used to be. Always a good bet to check them out because you might be lucky and besides with commissions as high as 75%, anybody would be foolish not to. Thanks for your support.
Hi Mick,
ClickBank has been around since 1998? I don’t think I even knew how to send an e-mail in 1998!!
Thanks for the informative article. I took me soooo long to figure out that you had to choose your PRODUCT FIRST. Everywhere I went for information they were pushing niche first and pushing it pretty hard. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to try the other way around. Thanks for being so up-front with your info! V. helpful.
Hey Ani, The correct way would be to choose your Niche first. ClickBank affiliates used the product to determine the niche and whilst that may well have worked a few years ago when you could find many similar products to promote, but not the case now, and besides with the changes to the Google algorithm makes it all the more difficult for these small niche websites to rank. Thanks for commenting.
Very informative article. I just started affiliate marketing and made my clickbank profile yesterday, guess it’s time to look for some other programs 🙂
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Welcome to this Clickbank Marketplace Review.
Very informative! Affiliate marketing is not for the meek, that is for sure and this is excellent information to have if you think you are going to just jump in and be an overnight success. Thanks for keeping it real!
hey Tina, affiliate marketing is a great business to get into but trying to learn this vast area without any real expert help just won’t cut it. It wouldn’t for me! Yes, you can find all the relevant information online for free but by the time you have deciphered the info, whether it is current or that the information is correct it could be a couple of years down the road. Even finding what you may think is the right training platform can sometimes not work for all sorts of reasons. Wealthy affiliate, without a doubt, isn’t that training platform. Thanks for commenting. Your support is appreciated.
Hi Mick;
Your site is very professional looking and informative, with a lot of good info, and honest evaluations. Being new to internet marketing, I found your evaluation on Click Bank quite enlightening, and pretty much convinced me, since I was considering them as an affiliate site, to maybe put them on the back burner, at least for now, and go with better choices. Thank you for all the great information, and I wish you the best!
Hey Terry, thanks for stopping by. With ClickBank, you will find some people like and some don’t for various reasons. What I hoped I didn’t do in this review was steer you away totally from this affiliate program, because it wasn’t my intention. There are still some OK products to be found, just not enough of them. All I can do is deliver the facts as they are seen and hopefully help someone like yourself not to focus too much in an area when there are a lot more alternatives to be found. Thanks for commenting.
Hi , Thanks for the article and explain in details clickbank, one of the affiliate programs that was not clear for me but you made it easy
I’m Glad i found your website and will be waiting for your next article
Hey Ahmed, glad I could help. Thanks for commenting
Thanks for the great thoughts on ClickBank my friend. I agree with you 100% that good products on the ClickBank MarketPlace are hard to come by nowadays. Something interesting that you mention is how some affiliates used to market and promote ClickBank products which I had never heard of before, but sort of makes sense when you think about it. I am not too up on the workings of the Google algorithm so I can’t comment on that but an interesting point as I have never really thought of this before. You also go on to explain in more detail how to become an affiliate marketer and I find this very interesting, especially where you mention Wealthy Affiliate. I am very interested in this and how can I join? Thanks for sharing.
Hey Mitala, thanks for stopping by and glad you enjoyed the post. You can join by clicking on the link here, and I will see you on the inside.
Hello Mick. Fantastic review and honest. One thing is for sure it’s hard to make that 75% commission. I myself was a click bank affiliate and let me tell you it’s a struggle. Lot’s of things are very confusing and like you said they have crappy products.
I think the only ones that really make money are the ones who run click bank.
Thank you so much for this great read.
David
Hi David, I’m glad you enjoyed the post and thanks for sharing your experience with ClickBank. Vendors obviously are the ones making the money on here but I am not talking about the products that are available to us that you can see on the ClickBank MarketPlace. I would be referring to the ones that you only get access to when you join a membership site that you can find online. Thanks for your support.
Mick thanks for this review this has been very helpful. I was wondering about the current relevance and quality of Clickbank. I came across it years ago however recently returned to check it out I did find it felt very different. So appreciate you giving such a thorough rundown on it. I’ll still go check it out for myself but with a discerning eye – so thank you
Hi Fleur, ClickBank has had a lot of flack over the years and you can find some good products but they are not plentiful like they used to be. Always a good bet to check them out because you might be lucky and besides with commissions as high as 75%, anybody would be foolish not to. Thanks for your support.
Hi Mick,
ClickBank has been around since 1998? I don’t think I even knew how to send an e-mail in 1998!!
Thanks for the informative article. I took me soooo long to figure out that you had to choose your PRODUCT FIRST. Everywhere I went for information they were pushing niche first and pushing it pretty hard. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to try the other way around. Thanks for being so up-front with your info! V. helpful.
Hey Ani, The correct way would be to choose your Niche first. ClickBank affiliates used the product to determine the niche and whilst that may well have worked a few years ago when you could find many similar products to promote, but not the case now, and besides with the changes to the Google algorithm makes it all the more difficult for these small niche websites to rank. Thanks for commenting.
Mick,
Before I read this post I knew nothing of clickbank. This was very informative. I will definitely read this again. Thank you.
Hey Laura, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Very informative article! I am new to the industry of online marketing and this information here will help me strategize my site and my niche. Thanks!
He Kris, glad it will help. Thanks for stopping by and commenting
Very informative article. I just started affiliate marketing and made my clickbank profile yesterday, guess it’s time to look for some other programs 🙂
Hey Josh, I would still check out ClickBank because you never know, there might be a great product just tailored for your post. Thanks for commenting.