Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. Whether you are a digital nomad, stay-at-home parent, or someone who is looking for an easy and profitable side hustle – you just can’t get around affiliate marketing. And one of the biggest affiliate networks out there is ClickBank.
In this blog post, I want to show you how to make money on ClickBank as a total beginner.
- For this, I give you a step-by-step tutorial,
- Tell you what kind of products you should promote,
- Go into detail on how much money you can realistically make on ClickBank.
- And look at a few real-life examples and how much they earn with the platform.
Let’s dive right in:
Table of Contents
What is ClickBank?
ClickBank is one of the world’s biggest affiliate networks and it is absolutely legit. The platform brings together people who create products and people who want to promote these products to earn sales commissions.
Using the ClickBank marketplace is completely free and there are no minimum sales you have to make. Products range from:
- Entertainment to
- Cooking,
- Education,
- Business,
- Parenting,
- Beauty,
- Travel, or
- Sports.
These can both be digital products or physical products. With more than 4,000 items you should definitely find something you’d like to promote.
How to Make Money on ClickBank Step-by-Step
The short version: All you need to do is to register, pick the products you like, and promote them with a so-called affiliate link that is created just for you. Once someone buys the product using your link, you get paid a commission.
Let’s take a closer look at the process:
Step 1: Register
Go to ClickBank.com and click on the blue button that says “Start here”. The registration is completely free and you can delete your account anytime.
Now you need to answer a few simple questions to customize your account.
Step 2: Pick a Product
Once your account is created you need to go to the marketplace and use the menu on the left side to filter those categories you are interested in.
The top 5 bestselling ClickBank niches are currently:
- Dietary Supplements,
- Diets & Weight Loss,
- Dental Health,
- Survival, and
- Women’s Health
In our example, we want to promote fitness products. You can get a list of all of the available products by clicking in the “Health & Fitness” category and picking “Exercise & Fitness”.
Now you can either search for a specific product, use the filter on the left side or simply scroll through the list.
Here are a few important metrics you should look at:
- The term “Gravity Score” shows you how popular a product is. The higher the score, the more popular. But that also means the higher the competition. So if you are a beginner, it’s recommended you aim for a gravity score of around 15 to 70.
- The “Initial $/conversion“ number tells you, how much money people usually make when selling the product for the first time. This is without any profits from rebills or subscriptions.
- “Recurring $/rebill“ means that this is what you can earn for each rebill payment, if the offer includes recurring products, such as memberships and subscriptions.
- And the term “Avg $/conversion” shows you how much people earn on average for each conversion. It includes the earnings from all initial sales, upsells, and rebills.
Go through the list and pick a product that you are interested in and that you like to promote.
Step 3: Get Your Affiliate Link
In our example, we go for the product Hyperbolic Stretching, a video series that helps people increase their flexibility. Now we only need to click on the blue “Promote” button and on “Create Hop Link” to copy our individual affiliate link. This is the link people need to click on when they want to buy the product.
Step 4: Promote Your Link
Now it’s time to promote the product you’ve picked. There are many different ways to do so and I want to show you the most popular ones:
1. Use Social Media
If you like using Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, you could easily promote your products on your channels. You could either use your personal accounts and promote them to your family and friends or create new accounts that exclusively talk about the niche your product is in. If we look at our fitness example again, we could create an Instagram account that only posts images and stories in the fitness niche.
2. Start a Blog
Creating a blog is super easy today and doesn’t cost you anything. Simply use free platforms such as WordPress.org or Webflow. Here you can find hundreds of free templates that you can easily customize via drag and drop. Literally anyone can set up a website within minutes with these tools.
For example, you could go for the free Webflow plan and don’t need to pay anything.
Once you have registered, you can start building your blog. You can simply use the information and images, that you can find on the affiliate page of your product on ClickBank. Since it’s a blog, you should publish new blog posts regularly. In our example that would be blog posts on stretching, joints, spine, and muscle strength.
People come to your blog to read the articles and might also click on the affiliate link that you’ve placed on the website to buy the product.
If you need more information on easy-to-write blog post ideas for beginners, check out the linked article.
3. Use E-Mail Marketing
E-Mail marketing still works incredibly well. For example, you could collect the email addresses of the readers of your blog or followers on social media. Now you send regular emails to them, giving them new information on the topic and promoting your affiliate link. Just be careful to not spam your readers but provide actual valuable information before placing your link.
4. Create a YouTube Channel or Start a Podcast
Many people don’t read as much anymore as they used to. Instead, they listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos to get information or learn something new. So these channels are also a great way to reach hundreds or thousands of potential buyers.
While it may take a while to get enough traffic on your podcast or YouTube channel, you can create both options for free. Simply mention your affiliate products during your videos or audios and post the link in the description boxes. Once your traffic increases, chances are good that people will buy your products and you can earn a passive income.
Those were only 4 ways of promoting your link. There are also several other ways, for instance via answering questions on Quora or creating pins for Pinterest.
Step 5: Get Paid
Once people click on the link and buy the product, you automatically earn a commission. You can log into your ClickBank account anytime and check your reporting dashboard to see how many clicks you’ve received and how much you’ve earned so far.
As payment methods, ClickBank offers:
- Direct deposit,
- Checks, and
- Direct wire to your bank account
Depending on the method you choose you either get paid once a week or once every two weeks.
The minimum threshold is $10. Once you reach that amount, the money is sent to you automatically. You don’t need to do anything.
How Much Money Can You Make with ClickBank?
This depends on many factors like the type of product you pick and how good you are at promoting it.
For instance, if you want to make $1,000 per month and you pick a product that pays you $25 commission, you need to sell 40 products per month to reach your goal.
However, if you pick a product that pays $125 per sale, you only need to sell 8 per month to make $1,000.
Let’s look at a few real-life examples:
- Blogger Gael Breton said that in the first year he used ClickBank, he made about $37,000 without trying very hard.
- Francisco Valenzuela, at age 24, makes around $30,000 per month using ClickBank.
- And entrepreneur Sean Bagheri made more than $382,000 with ClickBank in one year.
These numbers prove that the possibilities are really endless and affiliate marketing can be a great online business. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a side hustle or a full-time income, with ClickBank you can definitely make a great income.
Pros and Cons of ClickBank
To get a better overview, let’s quickly look at the main advantages and disadvantages of ClickBank:
ClickBank Pros
- 4,000+ products to choose from
- Many products come with high commissions (around 75% of the sales price)
- Automatic payments
- Available in most countries
- Very user-friendly and easy to handle
- Low withdrawal threshold of $10
ClickBank Cons
- Old interface (platform needs an update)
- Many products and their sales pages look fishy
What Are ClickBank Alternatives?
If you don’t want to use ClickBank or are looking for additional affiliate networks to use, check out these popular ClickBank alternatives:
ClickBank Affiliate Marketing: Beginner-Friendly and Profitable
As you can see, making money on ClickBank as a beginner is not that hard at all. You don’t need to invest any money and don’t need a degree or any type of experience or skill.
You can also make a great passive income from it in the long run. And as real-life examples show, even annual six figures are possible. So if you are looking for ways to make money online, either because you want to work from home or while traveling as a digital nomad, you should definitely give ClickBank a try.
FAQs
Who can make money on ClickBank?
Literally anyone. You can make money on ClickBank if you are a student, digital nomad, stay-at-home mom or -dad, full-time employee, retiree, unemployed, or a business owner. No matter what your background is, you can use ClickBank and affiliate marketing.
Is ClickBank free?
Yes, for affiliates ClickBank is free. You can register for free and receive your individual affiliate links for your chosen products for free.
What ClickBank payment methods are there?
You can get paid on ClickBank via direct deposit, checks, and direct wire to your bank account.
What is the withdrawal threshold on ClickBank?
The withdrawal threshold on Clickbank is $10.
What is the payment frequency on ClickBank?
You can set the payment frequency on ClickBank to weekly or bi-weekly.
Is ClickBank legit?
Yes, ClickBank is absolutely legit. So far they’ve paid more than $5 billion in commission to their affiliates. I’ve also been using ClickBank for years now and never ran into an issue with them.
What skills or experience do I need to use ClickBank?
You don’t need a degree, any skills, or previous experience to use ClickBank. Affiliate marketing is a very simple and straightforward way to make money online. All you need to do is to register, get your affiliate link and you can start promoting it.
