Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is ClickBank?

ClickBank is one of the largest distributors of digital products; they handle online payments and manage the network of affiliates that promote products that are offered by more than 10,000 vendors who use ClickBank to sell their products. ClickBank does not own the products; instead, ClickBank allows the vendors to use the ClickBank affiliate network to sell their products.

Q: Who are ClickBank Affiliates?

ClickBank affiliates are people who are making money by selling products listed in ClickBank marketplace and earning commissions for each sale. They are also making money as resellers - they get paid when they refer other affiliates and vendors to ClickBank network. Becoming a ClickBank affiliate is easy and does not cost money. Also, joining ClickBank takes a couple of minutes. All you need to do is to fill out a form and wait for the confirmation email to arrive to your mail box. What is noteworthy is that you do not have to be a resident of US, Canada, or EU, ClickBank basically accepts people from all countries as affiliates. You can find the clickbank affiliate sign up form here.

Q: What would I need to Start Promoting ClickBank Products?

You do not need anything special to start making money as a ClickBank affiliate. There is absolutely no need to purchase any software or tutorials. All information is readily available on the ClickBank web site and on hundreds of the Internet forums such as forums.digitalpoint.com, clickbanksuccessforum.com, and many others. Moreover, I'd say - DO NOT BUY any of those "make millions overnight without lifting a finger" tutorials as they are all BS.

Also, you do not have to learn advanced web technologies. The basic knowledge of HTML and CSS or an HTML editor like Microsoft Front Page or Dreamweaver is enough to create affiliate (or sometimes called landing) pages.

What you would need is a Web hosting. The good news is that Web hosting is NOT expensive. I'd recommend you to use dreamhost.com - I've been with them for a number of years before I moved my sites to a dedicated server. They charge you around 7 dollars a month and give you plenty of storage space and bandwidth for your web sites.

Q: How do I Get Paid?

ClickBank pays generous commissions when a product is sold though your affiliate link (hop link). Every time a product is sold through your link, you are paid anywhere from 5% to 75% of the product price. Since some products cost up to 200$, you could actually make 150$ per sale. Of course, the majority of the products are priced in the range of 40$ to 100$ and pay 50% in commissions. Still, making 20$ to 50$ per sale is quite good.

ClickBank pays its affiliates twice a month. This means that once you become a clickbank affiliate and learn how to sell products, you will be receiving nice amounts of money in your mail twice a month. After all, who would not want to receive a check like this?

Q: How Often is ClickBank Marketplace Updated?

The ClickBank Marketplace database is updated DAILY. We download the updated ClickBank Marketplace feed file and convert it into a database format the moment it becomes available on ClickBank.com - There is absolutely NO delay in making data available and you are getting the Latest Available Data taken directly from ClickBank Marketplace XML feeds.

Q: How to View the ClickBank Products' Historic Trends?

A: Every ClickBank affiliate and vendor has a nickname. The nickname is used by ClickBank to track the sales. The format of a hoplink is:

http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net

Where AFFILIATE is the nickname (ID) of an affiliate and VENDOR is the nickname (ID) of a vendor.

To get the performance history for a particular vendor, you need to take the VENDOR nickname, enter it into the "Enter the Vendor ID" text box, and click the "Get Performance Trends" button.

If you do not know the product ID, then you can use either Browse ClickBank Marketplace or Search ClickBank Marketplace pages to find the product that interests you.

Q: What is the "Last Seen in the Marketplace" Date?

This date shows if the product is still listed in the Marketplace. If the last three Marketplace XML feeds do not have the vendor listed, then the "Last Seen in the Marketplace" date will be displayed in RED color, indicating that there might be some kind of a problem with the vendor. ClickBank policy states that there must be at least one sale during any given month for a vendor to be listed in the Marketplace.

Q: What is on those Graphs and how are they Useful?

The graphs represent the change of values over time. There are at least seven graphs displayed for each vendor:

The first six graphs are for the popularity, gravity, earned per sale, referred, percent per sale, and commission trends for the values taken from the main category.

The rest of the graphs are the popularity trends for all subcategories the vendor is listed in. Only the popularity values are calculated on a per category basis. All other values are the same across all categories the vendor is listed in.

Q: How to Interpret those Graphs?

• Popularity: the lower the popularity value, the more popular the product is with affiliates. The best popularity value is 1. If you see an increase in popularity value, this might be an indication that a vendor in question is not doing something right; e.g. stealing affiliate commissions (this is an extreme example). Note: some products do not have a rating assigned yet. Those products are listed as the least popular products.
• Gravity: the higher the value, the higher the competition in terms of a number of affiliates promoting the product.
• Earned Per Sale: this is a dollar value per sale. The higher the value, the more an affiliate earns per sale. A decline is an indication of a high rate of return – customers buy the product and request refunds because they are not satisfied with it.
• Percent Per Sale: this is a percent value per sale. The dollar affiliate commission depends on the price of a product. The high percent per sale value does not mean the high dollar amount per sale. This value changes only if a vendor changes the payout rate.
  
  Example: Product A - percent per sale - 75%, product price - $10, affiliate earns - $7.5 (not considering ClickBank charges). Example: Product B - percent per sale - 25%, product price - $100, affiliate earns - $25 (not considering ClickBank charges).
• Commission: Similar to Percent Per Sale.
• Referred: This is a percent value of sales referred by affiliates and sales made by a product vendor without the help of affiliates.