If you are looking to make money online, then affiliate marketing is a good place to start. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs continue to make a success of their businesses by only doing affiliate marketing.
If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing, I will outline what it is.
What is affiliate marketing?
In any business, whether online or traditional bricks and mortar, in order to earn an income, you will need the following:
Customers
Products or services
Marketing methods
Let’s take the products and services.
There are 2 main ways to approach this. You can either develop a product or service or you can promote somebody else’s products or services.
There is no reason you cannot develop your own product but there 2 main issues as follows:
It can absorb a lot of time and money. Product development is taken very seriously by major corporations with huge budgets. It is unlikely that many of us can compete with such resources. Therefore, it makes sense to promote an already successful product or service.
You don’t know whether it will be successful- you may have what you consider to be the greatest idea ever, but you do not know whether other people feel the same, and whether they feel strongly enough to part with their hard-earned cash.
That is why it may be better to promote an already successful product or service.
This really is nothing new as it has been the norm in many markets. If you take the case of Apple, whereas they do have their own outlets for their products, you will find lots of stores that sell the iPhone, iPad as well as other Apple products.
Many of the PC manufacturers also adopt a similar model. It is a means whereby they can promote their products to a wider market place. In fact, there are some suppliers who concentrate on what they are good at, i.e. product development, and leave the supply exclusively to channel partners.
This is what happens on the Internet, where the practice is known as affiliate marketing. However, on the Internet many suppliers supply their products through a number of portal sites, one of these being Clickbank.
If you are just starting out, I would suggest that Clickbank is an excellent place to start for the following reasons:
1 It is a well-established supplier that was formed in 1998.
Clickbank is a privately owned company with over 6 million customers worldwide, making it the 87th largest Internet retailer in North America.
Because the Internet is fast moving, you may find that some companies cannot keep up and go out of business. Although, it is not possible to guarantee the future for any organisation, the fact that Clickbank has been in existence for over 20 years and is still growing, should give you comfort in promoting their products and services.
2 They pay affiliate commissions regularly, which should give you peace of mind.
Fortunately, Clickbank is very reliable and pays out regularly. It is comforting to know that you can go online at any time and see how much commission you have earned. You can withdraw you commission as and when you want. Because we are in a global economy, it is also very useful that you can have the money paid directly to you.
The commissions can be very high as some vendors offer as much as 70%.
3 It offers digital products, which makes it easy to deliver.
You do not have to hold stock, and you do not need to find an agent who will hold your stock. When people want to buy from you, they only have to click on your unique link, and they are taken directly to Clickbank, where they download the product straight away.
It is a very good feeling to open your account in the morning to find you have made money overnight while you have been asleep.
The alternative to digital products is physical products. It is true that many people make a success out of selling physical products. They may do it through their own web sites or they promote on sites like amazon and eBay.
I have sold physical products on both these platforms and I much prefer to promote digital products.
Let me outline just a few of the reasons:
Firstly, with digital products, they are delivered automatically. The buyer clicks on a link, enters their payment details and the product is delivered
automatically to your email address. With physical products you either need to find a supplier who will hold your good or you have to deliver them yourself. If you deliver them yourself, you need to arrange for a courier to pick the goods up or you have to go to the post office or mailing point. This is all extra time, which is avoided when you sell digital products.
Secondly there are no delivery costs with digital products. With physical products, the delivery costs can be quite high, particularly if the items are bulky.
Thirdly, the margins are normally higher on digital products. As I mentioned above, the margins on digital products on clickbank can be as high as 50%-70%. It is very unlikely that you will achieve such margins with physical products. You may achieve margins of 10%, but these can be lower in competitive markets. It is worth just comparing those margins. Let’s assume you are selling a digital product with a margin of 50%. If you sold a physical product at the same price with a margin of 10%, you would need to sell FIVE TIMES as many physical products as you would with digital products, to make the same amount of money.
You can see why it can be more profitable to sell digital products rather than physical products.
Fourthly, with digital products you can earn money while you sleep or while you are away. Because the internet is available 24 hours a day and because it it’s global, you may find that people are ordering your products while you sleep. It’s a very nice feeling to wake up in the morning and find that you have earned some money.
4 There are a vast array of products to promote in lots of different niche areas.
These include:
Business/Investing
E-business & E-marketing
Employment & Jobs
Green Products
Health & Fitness
Self Help
There are many more categories, and within each category there are sub-categories.
It is reasonable to say that whatever your interest or passion, there will be a good selection of popular products available on Clickbank, particularly as they have over 50,000 products to choose from.
As we know, things move so quickly on the Internet and new markets are opening all the time. The good thing about Clickbank is that as these new markets open up, new products are added. This means that you will always be up with the trends as there is nothing worse than trying to promote a product in a declining market.
5 It is easy to join and is FREE
If you are looking to promote other peoples’ products on Clickbank, for most products it is just a matter of entering your affiliate name and you will have a unique affiliate link for any product.
Some other networks like JVZoo and Warrior Plus need to approve you before you promote products. If you are new to Internet marketing it may not be easy to be approved on these 2 platforms, which is why Clickbank is a good choice.
With Clickbank, you sign up for free. All you need is an email address, an account name and a password and you are ready to promote products.
In deciding whether to promote a Clickbank product I look at the sales page. If I am convinced to buy the product, other people may also buy it.
If you don’t like the sales page, pick another product. After all, there is plenty of choice.
Some affiliates have a number of accounts, which is permitted on Clickbank. The reason they do this is that sometimes they find it easier to track their progress if they are in a number of markets. Thus, one Clickbank account may represent one sector or one product.
6 Good sales collateral
The top vendors will supply lots of good marketing material including:
Banners, articles and email swipes
Email swipes are invaluable. When you promote a product, you may expect people to buy from you immediately. However, that rarely happens, particularly if the potential buyer does not know you. It is well-known on the Internet, that buyers may take up to 7 contacts before they decide to buy. That is why email swipes are invaluable. They save you the time it takes to write good emails. Also, the vendor is supplying you with emails that actually work and are known to convert suspects into buyers.
If you find a product that offers these you know that the vendor is serious about his/her business. In providing these, it saves you a lot of time and money.
7 Good earnings
Sometimes it takes as much effort to promote a $9 product as it does a $99 product, so you don’t want to be promoting a product where you don’t earn much money.
Personally, I look at a minimum commission of $20.
Normally the suppliers will over commission rates from 50% to 70%.
In any other business and on any other platform, you are unlikely to find commissions as generous as this.
CONCLUSION
If you are looking to make money online, affiliate marketing is a good place to start, and Clickbank is a very good choice for all the above reasons.
You may find that you are so successful that all you do is promote clickbank products.
If you would like to take this one step forward and make a good residual income from Clickbank, please watch this short webinar below to see what is possible.
Online Marketing with John Hayes 