Clickbank
January 4th, 2010 | by admin |Clickbank- how it benefits you as a consumer.
ClickBank’s Business Model
ClickBank was founded on the idea that the Internet could be utilized to create a new and extremely effective marketing and distribution channel for digital products. ClickBank’s success is the result of bringing three key groups together in a unique way:
- Product Vendors who sell their intellectual property through the ClickBank eCommerce network;
- Affiliate Internet marketers, focused on promoting and advertising products to consumers worldwide in exchange for attractive commissions; and
- Consumers shopping for unique products not typically found in traditional channels.
ClickBank provides digital content – e-books, software, memberships and subscriptions – to consumers around the world through an expanding network of product vendors and affiliate Internet marketers. Many of Clickbank’s products are e-books and software products – which are broken down into the categories of Business to Business, Computing & Internet, Fun & Entertainment, Health & Fitness, Money & Employment, Sports & Recreation, Home & Family, Marketing & Ads, Society & Culture.
As I note below – while the money can be good with Clickbank – you might pay for it with the ‘cheap and nasty’ feel that many of it’s products have. I would strongly recommend that you carefully consider which products you link to and suggest that you (or someone you trust) has personal experience of them before recommending them to readers.
Clickbank Pros
ClickBank affiliates are Internet marketers who earn commissions by promoting ClickBank products. ClickBank’s network offers a great value proposition for affiliates including:
- Attractive commission rates
- Comprehensive tracking, analytics and reporting
- Single commission check for all sales from trusted intermediary
- Large variety of products to promote
- Dedicated client support
- No requirement to have individual contracts with each vendor
- Comprehensive fraud management
Consumers utilize the ClickBank network in order to purchase specialized, niche products and services that are typically unavailable in brick-and-mortar retail locations. Key benefits for consumers include:
- Unrivaled access to a wide variety of products and services
- Safe and secure purchasing process
- Fast and friendly customer service
- Consumer friendly policies
Clickbank Cons
• many of Clickbank’s products are quite quite cheap (although expensive) and nasty. You get a lot of get rich quick programs, dodgy e-books etc. There are some quality products in the mix – but they don’t have the best reputation among many people.
• the Clickbank affiliate interface is pretty basic. In comparison to the stats you get from programs like Amazon and Adsense it’s not very helpful.
• there are no inbuilt options for creating links automatically as there are with many other affiliate programs. I’ve heard of a variety of clickbank tools that can help with this but if you just use their provided interface all you can really create is text links.