My Click Bank Review: Click Bank

I decided

to start this blog to record my experiences with online affiliate marketing, specifically with Click Bank. I learned about Click Bank (and a lot of details around online marketing) from a DOT COM seminar held by Ron LeGrand/Global Publishing. One concept they taught was affiliate marketing was an easy way into online marketing with low to no cost and could generate easy revenue. So I wanted to put this to the test.

WHAT DOES CLICK BANK DO?

Simply put, people who have a product to sell but don't want to solely do all the marketing can add their product to Click Bank. Then, people who have no products to see but with ability to market them can go to Click Bank, market someone's product, and earn a commission from each sale. Pretty straight forward.

My experience so far is that the products tend to be information based. So courses, eBooks, audio/video education, etc on many different topics. The general categories they have are:

Arts & Entertainment
Betting Systems
Business / Investing
Computers / Internet
Cooking, Food, and Wine
E-business & E-marketing
Education
Employment & Jobs
Fiction
Games
Green Products
Health & Fitness
Home & Garden
Languages
Mobile
Parenting & Families
Politics / Current Events
Reference
Self-Help
Software & Services
Spirituality, New Age, and Alternative Benefits
Sports
Travel

The mechanics of the process is easy enough for anyone to follow:

Find a product you are comfortable to promote
You will get a special URL for a landing page for the product (they seller/Click Bank will have a professional landing page for the product)
You will market this URL
Anytime anyone buys the product from the URL, you make money
Click Bank will send you a cheque every two weeks (or more) depending on your payout threshold, which can be as low as $10.

HOW DO YOU PROMOTE?

So what is the best way to promote a product? Well, Click Banks provides some general suggestions. They suggest things like:

Article Marketing
Niche Sites and Blogs
Social Media Marketing
Search Engine Marketing

They provide a bit of info on these. However, my online marketing experiences thus far is that all of this is easier said then done. You essentially need to match your product to:

the right target group
who is motivated to buy
in sufficient volumes (as you will only get a tiny percentage who buy)

DOES IT WORK?

That is what I plan to find out. I have heard of many people making decent extra income from online sources (one buddy makes $500-$1,000 a month from Google ads on his blog). But I want to see if this sort of marketing will work better.

I put my first Click Bank ad up a few months ago on a web site I have, but really ignored it to date. From that, I made $14. I also started doing some more aggressive marketing (mainly blog commenting) and I have made another $33. Not huge money, but pretty good for no cost and minimal effort. As time goes by, I will update how I am honing my abilities.

MY NEXT STEPS

I plan on learning more about the products I promote. The following are my current list of promotions. (Disclaimer - if you go to these sites and buy the products, I will make money). I plan to buy the Commission Domination product as it is training for how to use Click Bank.

Trick Photography

Digital Wedding Photography

XBOX Repair

Commission Domination

We will see where these go in the next little while. :)