Ever heard of Clickbank? Want to know more? In this tutorial I will explain in depth everything you need to know about Clickbank so you can maximize its potential.

Quick Overview

Clickbank is THE affiliate network for digital products. Period. With over 10,000 products, no other network has more than they do. These products range anywhere from e-books on fixing your car to training manuals on how to start your own business. You can pretty much find an info product on anything you want to sell in just about any niche.

There a few things you might not understand right off the bat when starting with Clickbank. This tutorial I will walk you through setting up an account, finding quality products, getting your affiliate links and more.

Sign up

Head on over to clickbank.com and sign up for an account. It’s absolutely free and only takes a minute. Creating an account allows you to generate affiliate links to track sales you make. Be sure to use the “Promote Products” tab to sign up.

Note: Not all countries are available to promote Clickbank products. If you are in this situation don’t fret. Here are some other great affiliate networks to try:

Cj.com
Linkshare.com
Shareasale.com
Performics.com
ClixGalore.com

Link to Success

After you sign up you are instantly ready to get your own affiliate link for any product. This link will tell Clickbank both when it is clicked and if a sale resulted from the click. If a sale is made the earnings generated will be available for viewing in your account, showing you what product was sold and for how much, as well as the buyer’s name, email and sell date.

To find these links you must visit the Clickbank Marketplace, a database of all their products. Here you can search by various criteria to find exactly what you are looking for.

Once you find a product (we will go over finding “quality” products shortly) you need to click the “create hoplink” button. A popup window will appear asking for your Clickbank nickname and an optional tracking ID. Your nickname is the one you chose when signing up for your account. Once you submit (forget about the tracking ID for now) a link will be generated for you to use and promote the product.

Note: It’s important to use the generated link that contains your nickname. If your nickname is not in the URL you will not get credit for any sales. Quite the opposite of what we want.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Remember the tracking codes I said to forget about 2 seconds ago? I hope so. Well, Clickbank uses these to help you track your campaign performance and determine which ad groups and keywords are working best.

To activate a tracking code, simply put it in the box when creating your affiliate link as I described above. You can name your tracking ID anything you want. The easiest thing to do is name it something similar to the product. If I am promoting “kitty carriers” I would simply name it something like “kittycarrier”.

If your link converts to a sale, it will appear in your Clickbank Account Reporting under the Analytics section with the particular id attached. This will allow you to track where your sales are coming from, allowing you to target your sales to specific groups of people or niches, and showing you which ads are working best. Here are some things you can do (assume 2 ads per example) to most benefit from tracking codes and thus better profit:

Testing Ads
Keep the same keywords and landing page but change up the ad text (and use different links pointing to the same landing page)

Testing Keywords
Keep everything the same except for the keywords

Testing Landing Pages
Keep everything the same but have the landing page be different

In each of these tests, use a different tracking ID for each ad. So if I’m testing a campaign, and I want to know which keyword works best of 2 ads I create, I would name my tracking ID’s something like “kittycarrier1″ for my first ad and “kittycarrier2″ for my second.

These tests will allow you to determine which ads are working best by comparing their conversion rates based on ad text, keywords and landing pages. Tracking your ads is a powerful way to optimize sales and make a maximum profit.

Choose is or Lose it

So you probably want to know how to weed out quality products from crap. Why? Because promoting crap stinks…you won’t get a good return. Any can add products to the Clickbank marketplace, and many of these are low quality. A quick trick to determine if a product is low quality is by looking at the refund rate. If it is returned a lot, it’s probably for good reason – CRAP. If you sell something that is then refunded, you lose (or don’t get) your commission. Let’s go over some strategies to determine what’s good and what’s not.

Gravity
Gravity is a number calculated by Clickbank. It is based on the number of affiliates who make sales and the actual sales volume over the past 8 weeks. In a nutshell, high gravity means many affiliates are making money from the product, or the product is new and is receiving a lot of recognition. You shouldn’t base your decision solely on gravity though. Sometimes crap products have high gravity. Other times great products have a low gravity.

Earned per Sale
This is the average amount you’re looking to make (after refunds and other Clickbank fees) per sale. Obviously this is an estimation and won’t reflect your exact earnings. It’s pretty darn close though.

Commission
This is the percentage you can earn per sale. Note that commission percentage does not equal actual commission (due to fees).

Referral
This percentage represents the number of sales made by affiliates compared to sales made by the product owner directly. Sometimes product creators promote their own stuff, so we want to make sure we aren’t competing with them. If the ref% is over 65% you’re in the clear. If not you may have a tough time making sales.

Refund Rate
The refund rate is not given by Clickbank, and for obvious reasons. But there is an easy way to calculate it with all of the information you already have.

Let’s say you found a product that costs $37 with a commission of 50% and an earned/sale of $16.00. This tells us affiliates average $16 per sale after refunds are taken into account. Now it’s time to calculate!

1. Subtract fees

37 – 7.5% – 1 = 33.23

2. Commission

33.32 * 50% = 16.61

3. Earned to Actual

16.61 – 16 = .61

4. Refund Rate

.61 / 16.61 = .037 = 3.7%

This product’s return rate is very low, indicating it is probably a very high quality product. Sometimes this calculation will be inaccurate if the commission rate changes, but most of the time it should be fine.

A Quick Buck

One of the most popular ways to promote products is through direct linking because it bypasses having to create your own landing page or website. If you haven’t done so already, I recommend reading my post called Optimizing Adwords. It goes into depth on creating your first Adwords campaign and provides some other useful tips and tricks. Here is a quick overview if you are short on time at the moment.

To direct link to a product, simply setup a Google Adwords campaign using appropriate text and keywords. For the url, use the affiliate link you generated from one of the Clickbank products you want to promote. When someone clicks your ad they will be directed to the merchant’s already-made landing page where the user can buy the product. Make sure the display url shows the website being linked to, but not the full affiliate link text (it’s ugly and no one will click it). That’s it! You’re on your way to financial success now.

Clickbank remains a popular first affiliate networking site for many because it is so simple to use and generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions each and every day. In this tutorial we went over using Clickbank from beginning to end, pointing out great ways to separate ourselves from the uneducated internet marketers. Once you become an affiliate marketer master you may want to check out creating and promoting your own products. Clickbank is a great place to find products to affiliate market as well as get your own sold.