For over 17 years now, Clickbank delivers lifestyle products to people from all sides of the world. Yet, Clickbank doesn’t work like any other retailer. This platform gathers digital products designed by talented entrepreneurs and places them in the hands of affiliates from all over the world.
Then, besides displaying and promoting these products on its own, Clickbank has also managed to connect thousands of hungry marketers and small business owners to the entire system. But considering you’re playing the online business game for a while, you must probably know all of these already.
Don’t stress; in today’s post, I’m going to guide you through the first steps that you’ll have to take when starting as a Clickbank affiliate. Many people have tried this opportunity and so many have failed. Being a successful affiliate marketer is not so simple; it takes time, effort, and often lost money.
Nevertheless, if you stay consistent, perseverant, and committed, you should gain the momentum you need to keep going and going up until you make it.
1. Sign-Up To Clickbank
The first thing you’ll have to do is register to the Clickbank Affiliate Network. This consists in a simple sign-up form that everyone can complete. As a matter of fact, Clickbank’s one of the only serious digital marketplaces that accepts all affiliates.
Once you’re an affiliate, you’re getting access to the entire marketplace which happens to be filled with thousands of quality products and services. The marketplace is organized into categories. Those categories fall into sub-categories, making it easier for you to find all the relevant products for specific niches.
2. Analyze The Affiliate’s Marketplace & Find Your Products
Once you’re registered as an affiliate, all the products available to be promoted become available to you. The first thing you must consider is your target audience. What products or services would benefit your target audience the most? Decide a category, then start looking at each of the products listed in that category.
When you’re scouting for products, take them one by one while ignoring their performance metrics. Pay close attention to the landing pages. They need to have a good copy, great images, and most importantly…they need to offer value to the end user.
Obviously, you wouldn’t know how much value they have until you test them, therefore start selecting the best possible products. Make a list of 2 to 5 products, then prepare several emails that you’ll later send to each of the product owners.
Ask them to give you a copy, as you’re heavily considering building a marketing strategy around their products. Most of them will agree and send you a copy for free. Analyze them well, then decide whether they’re worth promoting or not.
3. Have A Professional Website Ready For Action
A professional website is a necessity for the affiliate marketing game. A website platform offers you flexibility, resources, and the ability to control absolutely every aspect of your Clickbank business.
Without a website, you’re losing a lot of value, money, and time, as you’re never creating long-lasting connections with individuals that will happen to be your long-term, loyal customers. Here is a good example of a Clickbank affiliated website:
Without a website, you cannot build an email list. Without a website, you cannot present your full copy to the reader. And without a website, you will never be able to analyze the most important statistics that come from your website’s activity. Without analytics, improving the sales performance, for example, is extremely complicated and most often based on intuition and luck.
4. Develop An Efficient Marketing Strategy
Marketing…the roots of the engine called business. Because promoting Clickbank products is considered affiliate marketing and therefore it is an online business activity, you have to treat your marketing with much caution. A great marketing campaign always comes from a great marketing strategy.
The strategy of your future marketing campaigns should be properly built before attempting to investing any time or money in that business. Back to Clickbank now. In order to win big with this amazing digital marketplace, your marketing must be automated. How?
Well, you need to develop a working sales funnel. This could mean a squeeze page (or landing page), a freebie in exchange for contact information, an email strategy, and definitely quality content and products. The automation and the analytics are also super important, so make certain that you’re taking everything into consideration before investing time or money.
5. Build An Email List
Emails represent the surest and most convenient way of converting prospects into customers. Here’s what you really need to understand. When it comes to digital products, most potential customers have second thoughts. More often than not, they’re not going to buy at the first contact.
They might read your offer, digest your sales copy, understand that the Clickbank product(s) you’re promoting is going to be helpful to them, and even so, very few people purchase. Yet, if you have a person’s email contact, you can remind him of your product again, and again, and again.
It’s obviously up to you whether you’re being intrusive or not. When you send emails full of valuable information and only at the end you dare to promote your products again, be sure that you’re not going to receive hate. Even better, by giving value besides pushing your products, you’re going to earn the trust of your prospects.
6. Get Big On Social Media
Social media is the place to be right now. When you’re sitting on the bus, pay attention to everyone around you. I bet you’re going to see more people using their phones than people who simply stare at the window or do nothing. Social media channels are everywhere, and everyone’s using them.
What does this mean for you? Well, most of your potential customers are spending time there. Therefore, missing the party would be a terrible mistake. Start developing a professional social media presence by becoming an authority in your niche. Distribute valuable content and engage with your followers. Here is an example of a Facebook Page for a Clickbank Affiliate product:
You never know when one of your posts become viral. When something gets viral on social media, your website will be flooded with traffic. Obviously, that traffic will go through your effective sales funnel, eventually reaching the end point of the sale.
Social media and Clickbank affiliate marketing? The perfect combination! Why? Because social media is already a lifestyle for most of us. What does Clickbank try to offer? Quality lifestyle products; most of the products listed in Clickbank’s marketplace definitely fit the demographics of today’s social networks.
7. Develop A Great Content Marketing Plan
Please don’t forget about content marketing. The marketplace is changing with an amazing speed. A few years back, intrusive advertising was extremely effective. People were bombarded with thousands of ads each day. The focus was aimed at sales, sales, and sales again.
The customer wasn’t important. Well, today, things are different. Because the competition is becoming heavier in almost every niche of activity, the customer has become more important than ever. Today, we’re speaking of the so-called “educational marketing”.
Businesses from all over the place have started providing value first, only to expect the reward later. How are they valuable to the prospect? Well, through the qualitative, informative, and relevant content of all forms. Articles, videos, podcasting, infographics, and so on.
Educational marketing means educating your potential customers exactly on the matter that are in a direct relationship with your products. For example, if you’re selling an educational book to a parent with troubled kids, you’re educating him on the potential trouble their kids might get into. That was an example; you can think of any subject that is highly related to the benefits that your potential customer will receive once purchasing your products.
8. Do Paid Advertising To Add An Extra Boost
Paid advertising is a great traffic booster considering you have the budget to afford it. You can take advantage of social media advertising, SEM advertising, solo email advertising, media buying advertising, and 100 more types of advertising. I couldn’t list them all, but here’s a better resource that does just that.
The key with paid advertising is this: start small, learn how to pay attention to the right analytics, and then do your best to optimize your campaign through innovative changes. Trust your instincts but don’t you ever become subjective. A consistent paid advertising strategy will do wonders, especially when one promotes Clickbank products.
Takeaways
Earning big bucks using the Clickbank affiliate system is surely a long-term, sustainable activity. However, in order to succeed, you must treat it very seriously.
I’d say that Clickbank is a much better alternative to Amazon, for example, as your commissions will always be higher than 5 to 10%.
Off Clickbank products, you can earn up to 100% commissions. The average percentage share is between 50% and 75%. They are also strict on products, so you’ll benefit from a variety of strong choices. You can start here.
I wish you the best of luck and don’t forget that you’ll only be successful if you’re consistent and perseverant.
[Image credits – All images are from their respective websites and/or social platforms.]
Hillary Hope is a freelance writer in
Assignment Masters who specializes also in digital marketing. Hillary Hope has many years experience as a caregiver advisor and after attaining a senior level, left to pursue her passion for sharing her knowledge.
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