When I first started to learn about affiliate marketing, I was flooded with information.
It was complete overwhelm… some days it still is 🙂
Information overload is a real thing, and absolutely does stop you in your tracks.
I knew that affiliate marketing was where I wanted to start – no product creation, sales pages, sales funnels or any of that to to worry about, no customer support to take care of. Let someone else take care of that, all I had to do was send traffic to the right offers.
And I also knew that Clickbank was a good starting place – and still is.
But there was simply too much info and it made it hard – damn near impossible – to act or take any action at all.
I’m sure you know what I mean if you’ve been trying this online marketing for any length of time.
But there is a way through…
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
Mark Twain
So that’s what we need to do – and here is a very brief 5 Step guide to Clickbank affiliate marketing. (I have a more in depth Clickbank affiliate guide, if you want to learn more there’s a direct download link at the end of this post)
Ok, it’s time to take action and implement step 1.
Step 1
First thing that you need to do is to sign up for free account at ClickBank.
This is a pretty simple step, and doesn’t really need much more explanation 🙂
Once you’re signed up familiarize yourself with the market place which is where all the products are listed by category.
Step 2
Find the category that best suits your niche and audience.
Clickbank has a feature called gravity… it’s complicated, but basically it means the products are ranked by individual affiliates who have successfully closed sales on these products over the last 12 weeks.
In simple terms, the higher the gravity the more affiliates promoted and the easier the affiliates found it was for them to sell.
When I’m looking for a good product, I always do and ‘Advanced Search’ and set the gravity to above 5. This is not high, but some low gravity products can still be good, and it does exclude products that are selling virtually nothing (not a good sign).
I also look for reasonable average sale $ – obviously the higher the better for you, but it must match your potential customers’ expectations. $500 per average sale is no good if you get zero sales!
I like the products that have recurring income so I look for those types of products while searching, because you make the sale once and get paid over and over again. This is one of the secrets to truly passive affiliate income, so look out for recurring income products.
(You can get a complete rolodex of recurring commission Clickbank products here).
Step 3
Once you have a list of possible products to promote you should look at the sales page and funnel of product upsells.
Does the sales page grab your attention and make you want to buy the product?
Do the products in the funnel add to the value of the front end product and will it help the buyer to achieve success?
Are they priced at a reasonable rate for your audience?
In other words if your audience is used to buying a front end product at $12.95 is the price for the ones on the list comparable?
To find this information click on the vendor spotlight or affiliate page, almost every offer has them.
Step 4
Get a review copy.
First, ask the vendors for a product review copy. You will get a contact link on the sales or JV page, and you’ll be surprised at how often you will get free review access if you ask (especially if you have an affiliate website to show some credibility).
But if you don’t get free copy, then either buy the product, or promote a different one that you have got a copy of.
The reason for this is so you can test the product before you promote it.
The last thing you want to do is promote a product with bad customer service or the product doesn’t produce the same result the vendor claims that it does.
Try each product out for yourself, and only ever promote good products. there are enough people promoting overhyped rubbish, don’t be one of them 🙂
Then make a review page or video for the ones you intend to promote.
Step 5
Once you’re ready and you have your promotion plan in place then promote your affiliate link or product review link to your audience.
Exactly how you do this is beyond the scope of this post, but one thing you MUST do is collect the emails of your prospects.
There is a right way and a wrong way to be an affiliate. The wrong way is to send your traffic straight to the vendor’s sales page.
The right way is to send it to your own website first – even just a simple squeeze page.
It is possible to be an affiliate without having a website. You can just drive traffic to the sales page (through your affiliate link). If that sales letter does its job, it will generate some sales and you will earn some commission.
But when you promote affiliate products this way, you are not building your business for the long term. You need to build up an asset that continues to generate income for years to come.
The simple fact is that the majority of visitors to any offer page, even with targeted traffic, will not buy first time. And if they don’t, then generally you’ve lost them and they will not come back.
If you can capture a visitor’s email address, (and so add them to your ‘list’) then you can stay in contact with them, and help close the sale on whatever it is that you are promoting.
Not only that, but if you build a relationship with your subscribers, you can sell to them not just once, but time and again.
Whatever the niche, build a list.
And Rinse & Repeat 🙂
Clickbank gets a bit of a bad rep, and in my experience of using different platforms, it IS slow at keeping up with the times. But it still is a good platform to use as an affiliate, especially in non IM niches, so I wouldn’t ignore it.
I hope this short post has helped – let me know what you think in the comments below.
And if you would like to learn more about Clickbank affiliate marketing, I have written a more in depth guide – you can download a copy below (direct download, no optin required).
(Right click and ‘Save as’)
