ClickBank Review: The Good, and the Bad
You’ve been into affiliate marketing and are now considering joining the Clickbank affiliate network, right? While there are tens of thousands of digital products on the Clickbank network to promote, I wish to let you know that you can promote any product of your choice and earn affiliate commissions whenever you generate sales.
After a few years of working online, blogging, and promoting affiliate networks, I considered it suitable enough to come up with a comprehensive review of this particular affiliate network. Things I came up with in this review include what you should know about the ClickBank affiliate network, whether joining the network as an affiliate marketer is worth your effort, time and resources, and what I visualize in the future of the network.
Years back, it was one of the few affiliate networks I considered joining when I was just getting started with blogging. I thought about it that I needed to build traffic to my blog first before joining any affiliate network. I was made to realize that with a search engine optimized blog, the revenue potential is enormous. So, I started posting articles and continued like that until I could see every reason to try this affiliate network out.
I was a complete novice to the blogging system far back then, and was new to affiliate marketing as well. I had no idea what the affiliate marketing system really is and wasn’t so sure if it was the right program for me online.
I came across ClickBank and read several reviews about it through eBooks, blogs and YouTube videos. Then, I gave signing up as an affiliate a consideration and saw it as one of the affiliate networks I could join along with building a passive income stream online.
I learned about Chow John – someone who happened to be one of the richest bloggers and affiliate marketers in the whole wide world. He actually promoted a series of digital products listed on ClickBank and made a lot of money from his personal blog. You can learn about him through Google. He makes thousands of dollars from his personal blog every month even till the present moments.
This review isn’t meant to make anyone buy one or more products on ClickBank in order for me to earn commissions but simply to analyze what the network is all about, who can join, the revenue potential, the good and the bad in promoting products on the network, and more.
Thus, here is what I’m about covering in this selflessly-written and completely-unbiased review of the ClickBank affiliate network.
- What do you understand by ClickBank?
- Are things on ClickBank a scam or are products on the network ideal and of great quality?
- What types of products are listed on ClickBank?
- How do you get paid as an affiliate and how frequent?
- What are the good things to know about the ClickBanknetwork (The pros)?
- What’s bad about ClickBank (The cons)?
- What’s extremely bad about the digital marketplace?
- Should you monetize your blog with ClickBank?
OK, let’s dive in!
Please note that I’m not writing this review as a vendor. Vendors leverage the marketplace to promote, sell, and host their own products.
What Do You Understand by ClickBank?
If you never knew, ClickBank is simply one of the biggest marketplaces on the internet today. The affiliate network was started by entrepreneurs in 1998 and has got more than 200 million customers from all walks of life.
You can register an account for free as a vendor on this affiliate network to promote, host, and sell all of your digital products within the network. You can perhaps join as an affiliate and generate an income from promoting a wide range of products listed on this digital marketplace.
If you want to sign up to the ClickBank affiliate network, simply log on to their official website and register an account to start promoting. It only takes a few minutes and you’re good to go.
Are Things on ClickBank a Scam or Are Products on the Network Ideal and of Great Quality?
While most of the goods are ideal, there have been some drawbacks with the ClickBank listing and hosting a lot of low-quality, low-end, and most times, scam products.
The type of scam products I am referring to here are Get-rich-quick schemes and Scam money-making programs frequently promoted via aggressive sales videos, solo ads, email templates, and more.
When it comes having all these scam and crap products hosted, ClickBank allows them. So, if you’re promoting other people’s digital products or buying an item on ClickBank, you’d have to be smart enough lest you fall victim of scams.
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t said all the products listed and hosted on the ClickBank network are scams or bad, but I’m only concerned about wasting a lot of money to the hands of scammers in respect of buying scam products through the network. When I was having a first-hand experience of this, it happened that I ordered an eBook and when I downloaded it on my PC, it was found to be a sort of rubbish book that wasn’t as described.
For the ideal stock of digital goods available on the ClickBanknetwork to promote as an affiliate, there are still a couple of reasons to leverage CB:
Here’s a full list of the digital goods that you are safe buying and promoting as an affiliate on ClickBank:
- Affilorama – Affiliate marketing certification
- Fotor (Strong digital photo editor)
- SEOPressor Connect (WordPress Search Engine Optimization Plugin)
- EasyAzon – Pro version of Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin.
- ClickBank University (Strategic training for promoting the ClickBank digital goods and other affiliate products).
While preparing to promote the digital products listed and hosted on ClickBank, note that you may promote a lot of products at the same time in order to be efficient. Just select a couple of products relevant to your industry and kick-start your promotion.
What Types of Products Are Listed on ClickBank?
As earlier mentioned, vendors are opportune to sell a broad range of digital goods, from software, eBooks, apps, website design templates, webinars, courses, guides, games, and many more. There are also a variety of products in their respective specialties and industries, such as home and garden, health and fitness, food, cooking, wine, services, software, and many more.
This implies that ClickBank is an excellent digital marketplace to find products to explore for promotion as an affiliate marketer.
How Do You Get Paid as an Affiliate and How Frequent?
If you’re just getting started with the ClickBank network as an affiliate, you need to know that checks are no longer the only available payment method for overseas affiliate members as they were in those days. Things have changed now for the better, special thanks! Wherever you’re in the world, you can get paid as a ClickBank affiliate either via direct deposit or checks.
As for the frequency of getting paid on ClickBank, it’s up to you to set your frequency to either weekly or bi-weekly, keeping in mind that payment is disbursed to you based on your set frequency.
For instance, if you set your payment threshold to $300 bi-weekly, and you are able to earn more than this amount in each payout period, you’ll get paid timely. But if you are unable to earn up to this payment threshold set by you, you won’t get paid yet, not until you’ve hit your set threshold.
However, before the payment date comes, you can change your set payment threshold to whichever amount you want manually. You can get this done through your payment settings.
What Are the Good Things to Know About the ClickBank Network (The Pros)?
Let me dive into what I consider to be good about the marketplace called ClickBank:
- 1. One of the biggest affiliate network platforms on the web, with tens of thousands of digital goods to select from in almost all specialties that can be thought about.
- 2. Well-built affiliate network. They’ve been in operation for quite some time, as far back as 1998.
- 3. Well-created knowledge base for both affiliates and vendors.
- 4. A lot of trusted products, though finding them requires a bit of research and time.
- 5. Timely direct payments to all affiliates. Payments are disbursed on time.
- 6. You have the opportunity to set your desired payment threshold in your payment settings.
- 7. Most notable goods listed and hosted on ClickBank have a money back guarantee. This is an amazing sale point and can help increase your conversions.
- 8. Useful and powerful product research, insight, and reporting tools.
- 9. ClickBank University for detailed certification on how to be successful as an affiliate with ClickBank.
What’s Bad about ClickBank (The cons)?
Okay, let’s have a look into things that I consider to be bad.
- Many of the promotional content and materials are created with scam-looking banner ads, email and sales marketing templates. In that respect, I will never ever place the product banner ads of any ClickBank listed and hosted digital product on my personal website.
- Dated looking accounts, sites, and marketplaces included!
What’s Extremely Bad about the Digital Marketplace?
- 1. So many poor-quality, valueless, and scam-looking products listed and hosted on ClickBank! The products I’m talking about include the Get-rich-overnight schemes and Make Money quickly scam programs.
- 2. A lot of free reviews of ClickBank with negative to average conclusions
- 3. A high level of bad reviews of ClickBank Affiliate on the internet!
- 4. Most low-end goods usually come with bad sales squeeze pages linked to them that seem to have been designed many years ago, and most of these pages are integrated with infinite upsells and disgusting pop-ups.
Should You Monetize Your Blog with ClickBank?
The fact is, there exists some really good products on ClickBankfrom the tens of thousands of bad ones. The problem with ClickBank is that its market orientation focuses more on quantity than quality.
Plus, its credibility and reputation are not, by any means, great. For so many years, ClickBank has allowed all sorts of low-end goods marketed and authored by scam business owners to boost their marketplace. What this has caused is that most of their customers have got a lot of bad orders sold to them which led to posting a series of bad reviews and poor ratings about the digital marketplace.
As an affiliate marketer or a blogger promoting the products listed and hosted on ClickBank, your reputation as a website owner is at stake, and any entrepreneur can be negatively impacted too. Once you find anything that is too good to be real, take it so, considering the credibility and trust you’ve built so far with your email subscribers and blog audience over the past years.
I must admit that I’ve come across a lot of buyers who unfortunately purchased fake products through the ClickBankmarketplace and, therefore, wrote bad reviews against it on forums, social media, blogs and elsewhere. One thing is that they used to refund once you request it after purchasing any product.
So, if you’re signing up to the ClickBank affiliate today as an affiliate marketer or a blogger, you need to be careful what you say about this platform on your personal blog lest it destroys the reputation and credibility you’ve been building for your brand all along.
If you can carefully study the market and walk your way through the numerous worthless products, get a couple of good products to buy or promote, buy them, use some of them (if not all), get in touch with their customer representative to find out how efficient the support and communication are, and thus write your honest and plain review of the products and its usage, I believe you can earn a living promoting such goods on ClickBank.
I need to also mention this that the market is highly competitive. The ClickBank affiliate network has been in existence for the past years, and thus there are countless reputable affiliates vying for or against promoting and funding the most prominent, profitable, and valuable products
If ClickBank doesn’t sound so safe for you to promote digital products on your site, don’t hesitate to try out the several other programs in the online business world.
I am Chris. I want to hear what you think. Please leave me your comment in the comment section below. I will reply to you as soon as I can. Please share.
You may also like to read my other posts:
