How To Start Affiliate Marketing With Clickbank

There are a large number of ways to get started with affiliate marketing, from zero cost ways, creating affiliate marketing blogs and using Amazon affiliate program ad even a few ways to get started without a website at all. A lot of these styles will require some sort of affiliate network, such as ClickBank, Amazon or even Legendary Marketer.

Today we will be focusing on how to start affiliate marketing with Clickbank. There are many different ways of doing this and some are more effective than others.

This guide will walk you through the process, of setting up your new account, how to discover products, the best kinds of products to promote, and of course, places you can promote. 

These hints and tips can be used elsewhere, with other platforms, so be sure to transfer them to other places.

What is Clickbank?

If you are new to affiliate marketing, then you may not know what ClickBank is, or you may have started your journey on other clickbank alternative sites. 

ClickBank is one of the OG's of the affiliate marketing network space, essentially acting as a marketplace for vendors to upload their products, for affiliates and marketers to pick up and promote as they wish. 

Acting as a go-between between vendors and affiliates, they offer the tracking, checkouts and stats to help both sides. 

The marketplace covers a variety of niches, with hundreds of products, and is one of the reasons it has become so popular for new affiliate marketers looking at getting into promoting products online. 

From physical products that you may seen on TV, or in stores, to digital products such as course, eBooks and software, ClickBank will usually have something that can be promoted using your chosen traffic strategy (more on that later).

How to sign up with clickBank?

Signing up and getting started with ClickBank is pretty straight forward, but there is one point you want to be aware of, and that is the country you preside in. 

ClickBank over the years have reduced the countries that they allow to sign up, quite similar to how Legendary Marketer works, and one of the reason you do see a lot of ClickBank alternatives appearing, looking at catering for some of these countries. 

From experience, places such as India, Africa, Russia and China are usually off limits to ClickBank, so if you do live here, you are going to have to look into other platforms.

Depending on your niche looking at sites such as E1U, which allows you to sell their products for them, even selling via Crypto if you want or sites such as DigiHealth24 or Warrior+ who seem to have more relaxed views on the countries they allow.

If you are in the A-OK zone, then simply head on over to ClickBank.com and follow their simple set up wizard

The process should only take a few minutes, and ClickBank now offer a single dashboard to house a number of different affiliate ID's

Quite useful if you are in difference niches, or want to have different ways of tracking what you are doing and promoting. If you have older ID's or separate IDs from before they did this, or before you knew they did this, you can link those accounts. 

One day I will remember to link my old accounts. 

One day.

I try to choose affiliate ID's that are associated too particular websites, though of course it is entirely up to you how you do it, others simply like to have a nickname or something they have used elsewhere. 

After you have set your nickname/ID up, it's time to get a payment method sorted.

You will need to select your ID under the accounts tab. It will take you to your particular account that you want to set up.

There isn't a central way to sort payment methods out for all ID's. Annoying, but worth keeping in mind. 

Navigating And Understanding ClickBank

Once you have your new ID sorted, it's time to start working your way around ClickBank, thankfully they have made it pretty easy. 

Clicking the 'Affiliate Marketplace' button on the left hand side, will take you to the standard ClickBank overview that many people recognise. 

The main place you are going to want to spend your time, will be the marketplace, and the vendor tool pages (not to be confused with the vendor settings). ClickBank have added all their tools and menus under 2 menu/tool bars. These can be found at the top of the standard ClickBank page that many people are familiar with. 

There are a number of useful tools or areas, and a few not so useful, depending on what you are going to use ClickBank for. The vendor settings isn't going to be that useful for affiliate marketers. 

ClickBank Knowledge Base

If you are new to Clickbank, then this area can be really useful. The knowledge area houses a fair amount of content, including FAQ's, big ClickBank announcements, starter resources and even information on getting started with affiliate marketing, or becoming a vendor.

You can search through the ClickBank knowledge base, either using the tabs, or putting in keywords and questions. 

The Marketplace

The most important place if you are going to succeed with ClickBank affiliate marketing, the marketplace is how you find products, tools and services to promote. 

This tab will be your one stop shop on ClickBank to help you find that winning promotion. This tab actually takes you to the marketplace area, from here you can then either search with keywords, or start to narrow down further based on categories and niches. 

ClickBank has a large number of categories, that cover a variety of different niches and areas, from Arts & Entertainment all the way to Travel, self Help and Sports. 

This is the reason why ClickBank Marketplace is usually mentioned as a great place to start to find products to promote. If you select one of the categories, for example Education, you will then be shown sub categories. 

Each sub category can then be selected, with a different set of products being shown. 

Some vendors will provide you with links to their affiliate pages, which can contain tools, marketing materials, videos and examples of reviews or articles. Not all of them provide these tools or pages, so keep an eye out for ones that do. 

Under each listing you will find a 'My Stats' section, which for me is empty, as it's a brand new account and I am not promoting these products. As you start to promote products, you will start to see number of hops (essentially how many clicks on your links), sales and refunds. 

You can also see symbols underneath the listings, for example you can see above that Human Anatomy is

• Written or Created in English
• It has a one time payment option
• A recurring payment plan (possibly an ongoing subscription service)
• Upsells (possibly selling other courses, or additional material)
• A tools or affiliate help page
• A vendor spotlight (this means you can find a little more about the vendor and what they do)
• A mobile targeted URL link option 
• Multiple hoplink/landing page targeting options (some vendors create different landing pages for different audiences)

As you will see, some vendors provide more tools, resources and information than others. 

We will dig a little deeper in how to find products below, or ways in which to choose decent products to promote.

Reporting

To be successful in affiliate marketing, it's useful to understand the numbers and to read the data or the information being given by affiliate tools and marketplaces. 

ClickBank have a number of different reports, as well as housing information such as paychecks, transactions and even your vendor information (if you happen to sell items on clickBank).

Most of the time, an affiliate will care about the main 'Number of hops per day' report, as it provides a pretty decent overview of what is happening day to day, and also fees a much larger 'HopsBy Vendor' report below. 

The hops by day allows you to see the number of clicks, how many sales you have made per day or even refunds and chargebacks on sales. 

This report fees the more useful, all in one report below, that provides details on everything you have done over the last 14 days. as you can see from the image, there are 15 items or 15 products on a new site that are currently being clicked on. Each one is getting 3 - 6 clicks across the last 14 days.

Using that information and the graph above, you can see that there are 3 days of spikes when the most clicks happen (literally pulling in 42 of the 49 clicks). Which looks a few of the pages have started to do what I call the Google dance (Google deciding on where these new pages should fit in the rankings). 

At the moment, I can see that none of these clicks have resulted in a sale yet, so I will of course have to start creating more content around these products, possibly focusing my efforts on the two products getting the slightly higher hits. Though of course, it's a little early to be predicting this type of report when you are just starting out. 

Account Settings

Finally, another tab that is useful to look at, especially if you have individual accounts is your account settings, here you will find the individual settings for this current affiliate ID. 

You can set payment methods and limits per ID. For example, my new affiliate ID is paid monthly, and the payment threshold is the standard $100. As currently it is not earning money, as seen above. Though an older ID is set to pay out weekly, after $50 is earned, as it can quite easily hit that milestone every week. 

Finding The Best Product To Promote On ClickBank

When it comes to using ClickBank, there are a lot of random, and to be honest, crap products. Ideally, you want to be promoting the decent, high quality products that people will want to purchase. 

Not some shady, slightly dodgy looking website that might make your potential customers or leads run the other way. Here are a few tips on how to find the best products to promote on ClickBank. 

High Gravity

ClickBank uses a it's own metrics to determine how 'Hot' a product is, or how many affiliates are promoting it at any one time. This is called the 'Gravity' or a product. 

 The actual number is simply an approximation, and doesn't mean a whole lot, other than a higher number, indicates more sales. 

Take the above two products, Flat Belly Tonic currently has a gravity of 641, according to ClickBank this may indicate that roughly 641 affiliates have made a successful sale, usually within the last 14 - 30 days. 

Biofit currently has a gravity of 326, which again is pretty high, and again doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own. Out of those two products, you may choose to go with Flat Belly Tonic, simply because 641 is bigger than Biofit, which is what a lot of people do. 

If you compare it against something like, 6 Week Shred Fat Burning Workout Program, which currently has a a gravity score of 0, then this gravity scores becomes more useful. 

Picking the 300 - 600 gravity product, over the 0 gravity product, makes a lot of sense, showing you that people are having success promoting and selling this product. 

Of course, there may be a number of reasons why a product has 0 gravity, from the product no longer being available, the product (or science) falling out of favour, or simply because trends have moved on. 

You will find in certain niches that some products will gain huge amounts of traction, hitting high Gravity, and then a few weeks later, they crash and sit around the 25 - 50 mark. 

Longevity & Trends

Another metric to use when it comes to finding decent products is how long a product has been around. Products that have a number of years under their belt, usually show that they are useful, trustworthy and can be a great product to promote. 

As of now, the Fat Shredder Kick Boxing / Acidaburn has been around since 2016, and has a 45 - 55 gravity across the the last 30 days. This shows that the product is stable, has a decent history and is converting. 

Affiliate Tools & Resources

When I choose new products to promote, I will always look to see if the vendor has provided tools or extra resources to help you promote and succeed with their product.

Some will also give you access to Affiliate Managers, these guys and girls will go out of their way to provide even more information for you to succeed with. 

Many will give access to their tools, to ensure you have actually used, read or understood what they are selling. 

For me, the more tools, or resources a vendor provides, the better or more comfortable I am promoting them. I will always ensure I can get review access (it usually means it's limited to 2 weeks) to ensure I am reviewing and talking about products I have actually seen and used.

What Is The Best Product To Promote On ClickBank?

This is a tricky one, especially as there are hundreds of products on ClickBank, in an ever growing variety of niches. 

The best product to promote, will always be the one that you 'get on with' the most within your chosen niche. That may be the latest product that has just launched within a particular niche, or an old faithful that has been around for the last 5 or 6 years and converts at a steady % each month. 

Take into account the tips mentioned above will help you choose your own 'top ClickBank product to promote'.

Getting Your ClickBank Links And Setting Them Up

Once you have found a product that you want to promote, it's time to grab your special affiliate link. These links are tied to your account and allow ClickBank to correctly link sales to you. ClickBank will call these 'hoplinks', which is the term they use when it comes to clicks on links and even sales. A hoplink, is just an affiliate link. 

Generating your link is quick and easy, and takes about 2 clicks. 

First, find your chosen product, and click the large 'Promote' button. This will open up a a new window. 

Once you have clicked the 'Promote' button, you can choose to add additional Tracking ID's, these are useful if you promote products in a variety of different places such as YouTube, PPC or Blogs. 

As most of my links are housed on Blogs, I rarely use these, and only really get used if I want to track certain pages or guest links etc. Once you are happy with the link, once again click the Generate Hoplinks button, this will create you a special, one off affiliate link. It will usually look like a jumble of letters and numbers, but that's fine. If you want, you can use a tool such as Linkr to cloak or make the link look a bit prettier. 

How To Promote ClickBank Products

There are a number of ways to promote ClickBank products, and every style has it's pros & cons. A lot of the time the niche can determine the best way to promote the product, especially as some products or niche audiences usually search for, or research products on certain platforms. 

But, don't let that deter you, any of the below ideas can be a great way to get started when it comes to promoting ClickBank products. 

Blogging & SEO

A staple for many affiliate marketers, blogging, website creation and article writing has been around for many years, becoming a reliable, and at times stable way to promote and talk about affiliate products. 

Blogging, or content creation is a style of affiliate marketing that can take a while to get going, with Google or big search engines sometimes taking weeks, months or even years to truly place your content in front of the chosen audience. 

It can be a 'cheap' way of getting started with affiliate marketing, usually costing around $100 or so to be set up and ready to go, including hosting, domains and even additional tools that you may need. I would always recommend doing some Google searches to understand if people are looking for the products you wish to promote, or if people are trying to search for solutions to their problems and reading articles (as apposed to YouTube, which we will come onto in a second). 

One of the best parts about blogging is that a single site can promote or talk about a variety of different products, even pitching 1 against another, while earning commissions on both. 

If you are interested in learning how to build and grow your own blog, check out BlogFocused. An in-depth guide to creating your own successful affiliate marketing blog. 

YouTube/Vlogging & SEO

A style that I see as very similar to blogging is that of YouTube, the only major difference is that it usually involves more visual aspects (you can do articles with lots of images, but they can take ages to load or become slow). 

YouTube works really well for products, services or items that need to be see, or are visually appealing. For example health and fitness products (people like to see before/afters) or food focused services. 

It can of course work well with pretty much any niche, as people like to consume their content with video and audio. One reason I state that YouTube & Blogging are so similar, is that Google ranks videos, much like it ranks websites and articles, though it is usually 100x faster at ranking a video than it is a new fresh article. 

I would recommend checking out The Collector (learning about launch jacking) or Spencer Mechams Affiliate Secrets 2.0 who goes into using YouTube (as well as other styles).

As with Blogging, it can be quite cheap getting started with YouTube, with screen recording software costing $0 (OBS) or a decent webcam + microphone set up costing roughly $100.

Creating Free Ebooks 

An odd one for many, but creating a free eBook that provides something useful and helpful to its readers is a brilliant way of also promoting products. Of course, this style works really well while combined with another traffic venture, such as blogging, social media or even using sites such as Quora or Pinterest. 

I would recommend checking out tools such as DropFunnels, ClickFunnels or even GrooveFunnels to help build the landing pages or capture pages. If you are using a website, then you can use plugins such as Thrive Suite or Elementor.  

Using Email Lists

Another style that can work well on its own, but usually works best when combined with another style. Email marketing is a great way of promoting a large number of products, to an ever expanding audience. 

Subscribers are usually more 'turned on' towards promotions and products, depending on why they signed up, most subscribers are not afraid to look at products or promotions that are sent to them. 

Email lists can be built via solo ads, paying others to run campaigns (or using their own email lists) to help bolster yours. You can also build them organically, offering free eBooks or information in exchange for email addresses, via Facebook, Quora or Pinterest. 

Utilising your blog or YouTube is another way of building a list, having links or buttons to again offer free information in exchange for an email uses your existing audience. 

Social Media

Social media comes in a variety of different flavours, and can be a great place to find your potential audience. From creating mini 15 second videos, to running 4 hour live workshops, social media really does run the gauntlet of decent niches. 

Promoting clickbank products on social media is brilliant if you want to show yourself off or get to know your audience, and can work in unison with other styles such as emails, funnels or blogging/vlogging if you want. 

When it comes to social media, you should always focus on solving the problem, not just straight up promoting the products.

Promoting ClickBank Products On TikTok

A crazy way to get into Affiliate Marketing, and a style that Legendary Marketer has really jumped on, especially with their 15 Second Leads training. TikTok can help new affiliates go viral within days, or hours, and get their account/videos in front of thousands or millions of eyeballs. 

Videos are typically a few seconds long, running to around 15 - 30 seconds long. Taking the form of short, quirky videos that can show people cool features of tools you use, funny bits of info that you might have just learnt or listicle style videos that show Top 5 or Top 10 items. 

Some of the best affiliate marketing focused TikToks provide a huge variety of videos, it's not just all about trying to promote a product, but really focus on helping the audience with a problem that they have. Be it changing a tyre, adding new rows to an excel spreadsheet or learning how to change the camera setting on a phone, the world really is your oyster on TikTok. 

The target audience on TikTok are usually the younger crowd, with a lot of 16 - 22 year olds, so be sure to highlight any age restrictions on products if you mention them. 

Promoting ClickBank Products On Facebook

A huge untapped market, with a few billion active users, and covering a huge rage of audiences and niches, Facebook can be a gold mine.

From past experience, I have found that building authority, being active in groups and becoming the 'go-to' guy for answers or solutions is a great way of being able to promote ClickBank products via Facebook.

Simply posting links or just saying 'check this product out' will not end in a long term solution, especially spamming them within groups, and will end with you being removed from the groups. 

If you want to really learn how to succeed with Facebook and building an authority within your chosen niche, I would recommend checking out SAA. The training and course really drills home the importance of building an audience, rather than trying to spam people. 

Promoting ClickBank Products On Instagram

A style that I have tried in the past, with some success, Instagram is a style that can work across different niches. From past experience, it works a lot better with 'visual' products or niches, whereby a potential customer or lead can 'see' a product, change or improvement. 

Depending on the niche, sites such as Fiverr can be used to create hundreds of images, quotes or interesting photos which can then be slowly drip-fed to an Instagram page over a number of days, weeks or even months. 

These can then be intertwined with images of products or solutions to help build up a rich picture for your Instagram account. 

The downside is that Instagram only has 1 place for links, so a bridge page is the best option to ensure you are capturing leads, or having a 'user friendly' link associated on the account, as apposed to a straight up affiliate link. 

A bridge page can also allow you to show different products or a pre-sales page, if you believe people will be warmed up already.  

Promoting ClickBank Products On Pinterest

Another visual social media site, Pinterest does really well with fitness, baking and even health, especially as the audience and market is heavily female focused and naturally these niches do well. 

Pinterest allows you to add links into 'Pins' though they have cut down on Affiliate links, so running these with Bridge Pages, YouTube Channels or Blogs work a lot better, essentially seeing Pinterest as an additional traffic source. 

This social media platform can take a while to get going, with accounts needing to have hundreds of pins (and re-pins) to start seeing traffic, clicks and views. 

Running Paid Ads

Finally, a style, that once mastered can be like turning on a money tap. Paid Ads get your sales pages, bridge pages or straight up affiliate pages in front of customers instantly. 

Paid ads allow you to target your adverts to particular interests, keywords or audiences, depending on the platform used. Networks such as Instagram or Facebook allow you to target particular pages, or interests. Whereas Google or Bing Ads focus more on keywords and phrases. 

Some networks such as Google Ads don't allow you to use ClickBank affiliate links, because the links are scrambled and then unscrambled when a user lands on a sales page, some ad networks see these as 2 different URLS, and that it may be a hijacking attempt. 

To get around with, talk to your affiliate manager or product owner and see if you can get a raw affiliate ID, such as clickbankproduct/ID. 

Paid ads can be expensive, and an easy way to run up hefty bills if you are not careful, with networks such as Google ads and Facebook running ads, and then charging you after. Always be careful with Paid ads, and ensure you start of slow, until you start to see a profit. 

How To Start Affiliate Marketing With Clickbank - Final Wrap Up

ClickBank is still a decent place to find products and services to sell via affiliate marketing methods.

There are a growing number of ClickBank alternatives for those who can't sign up or have difficulty finding products, but for a large majority of people they will find something that hits the mark. 

Always remember that ClickBank is just a network, it's a marketplace for finding products, nothing more, nothing less, so don't get stuck at this stage. 

The traffic methods mentioned above, and even picking up the 'hot products' can be used on a variety of networks and marketplaces and affiliate marketing can be used across so many different niches and styles. 

Do you have any more ideas or tips? Drop them below.