Empire builders, one of the great benefits of running an online business is that there are many ways to generate multiple income streams. Some of them are relatively passive. That means you can pretty much just “set it and forget it” while still dedicating most of your time to your main business. Affiliate marketing with Clickbank is one of the best examples of this type of online income.
I want to emphasize that it shouldn’t be your only project. But affiliate marketing is a fantastic opportunity for just about anyone. Whether you have an established ecommerce business or are just getting started, I’m going to teach you how to make affiliate marketing with Clickbank.com work for you.
Why Affiliate Marketing With Clickbank Is the Icing on the Cake
I have a long history with affiliate marketing because this was actually the strategy I used to earn my very first dollar online. This was 13 years ago when I was a freshman in college and just beginning to dip my toes in the world of making money on the internet. My experience with affiliate marketing really opened up my mind to how the whole process of making money online works. So much has changed since then, and many methods are simply outdated. But affiliate marketing with Clickbank is still an excellent source of extra income in 2021.
If you don’t know anything at all about affiliate marketing, you can think of it like this:
An ecommerce business is trying to promote its products. But instead of spending all its marketing dollars on Facebook ads or something similar, it pays someone like you to promote the products. Affiliate marketers use a designated link, and they get a cut every time someone uses that link to purchase the product. Since the companies only have to pay when you actually make a sale for them, affiliate marketing is potentially a more effective source of traffic for them. In other words, these companies WANT you to succeed.
Of course, the problem with affiliate marketing is that you’re not working toward building your own business or creating your own assets. You’re really helping someone ELSE build their business. I recommend you take control of your ecommerce business by selling your own physical products or digital products. Even better, sell a combination of both. Then you can layer on the extra income from affiliate marketing as the icing on the cake.
Choosing a Product to Promote With Affiliate Marketing
If you already have an ecommerce business and a built-in audience online, affiliate marketing is designed to fit in perfectly with your current niche. There’s literally an endless amount of products out there that you can be promoting. There are affiliate marketing offers for every type of consumer and in almost any market. For example, if you’re already selling fitness equipment or fitness-related information, you can promote a complementary product that has to do with fitness. The key is to find a quality product that people will actually be interested in. You really don’t want to go out there and promote something random that you’re not familiar with. Definitely try the product and learn as much as you can about it before recommending it to your audience.
If you haven’t gotten your business off the ground yet or maybe don’t even have a niche, you can choose an affiliate marketing product by thinking about your own interests, passions, and hobbies. I always recommend you use that as the starting point. Are you into video games, cooking, computers, or travel? These kinds of topics are typically evergreen. That means there’s always plenty of digital and physical products being launched in these niches. Choosing a popular topic is what makes it a scalable business with plenty of opportunities for you.
Using Clickbank.com for Affiliate Marketing
The place I love to use for affiliate marketing is Clickbank.com, and you can set up your account completely free. I’ve used all the different platforms out there for affiliate marketing. Clickbank.com is the best one, especially if you are looking for recurring affiliate marketing offers. That means you sell a subscription product that will go on to pay you a cut every single month. That’s the kind of excellent passive income you really need, and Clickbank.com is great for tracking those kinds of offers.
I did a live demo showing you how to use Clickbank.com to find some great offers, but it’s very simple to use. Log in and head to the Marketplace tab to sort through all the different affiliate products that are currently available. There’s a ton of different categories, and you want to choose the ones that are most relevant for your niche.
How the Math Works on Clickbank
Sticking with the fitness space, maybe you decide you want to promote a weight loss supplement. Head to the weight loss supplements and compare all the different options. Clickbank.com provides crucial information to help you choose the right product, like the average percent conversion. They also provide a Gravity rating. This is calculated by Clickbank’s algorithm to show how well a product has been selling over the last 12 weeks. As an example, Okinawa Flat Belly Tonic is a superstar product with a high Gravity rating and a high average percent conversion. If you drive traffic to your affiliate link for this product, you would be earning an average of $132.51 for every sale. Those are the kinds of stats you want to see for a product you would potentially promote.
Again, you want a quality product that’s doing well and that will give you some nice commissions. In my case, I do also make an effort to find subscription services that will be paying me every month. That’s free money in the bank!
Affiliate Marketing With Clickbank Case Study: Custom Keto Diet
As part of the live Clickbank.com demo, we took a deep dive into one product with great potential for affiliate marketing. Custom Keto Diet is one of the top sellers in the Keto diet niche, a category that’s definitely hot right now. This product is also a subscription service, which is excellent. You can see on their profile that Custom Keto Diet pays their affiliates $21.31 every month for each purchase made from your link.
Every business on Clickbank.com will have a variety of great resources to help you sell their product. The better you can do, the more sales you can generate for them. Custom Keto Diet is a great example of this because they truly offer everything you need to promote the product. If you decide to market Custom Keto Diet, the first step is to generate your own unique link and head over to their page for affiliates. This is where you can learn much more about the product and also get a wealth of content that will help you promote it. You can find a ton of slick, professional images of the product to use for social media, blog posts, and anything else. They also have testimonials of the product, videos, and even fully-written email templates you can blast out to your list.
So it really is that simple and easy with affiliate marketing. Whether you’re choosing Custom Keto Diet or a product in a completely different niche, Clickbank makes it easy; you’re not going to have to go create your own offer stack images or anything like that. You just go in and use their content in a way that makes sense for you.
Why Paid Ads and Affiliate Marketing Don’t Mix
The affiliate marketing business model is obviously much easier when you already have an established business in a specific niche. You simply leverage your audience and existing infrastructure to make some extra money. If you’re a newbie to ecommerce, the big temptation with affiliate marketing is to try to use paid ads to drive traffic to your affiliate link. But I’m telling you right now — because I don’t want you to lose a bunch of money — that it’s really hard to make that kind of business work. Some people can manage it, but it’s rare.
The reality is that your profit margins from earning a commission are way too slim for using paid ads. The business you’re trying to promote is ALREADY running those ads on Google, Facebook, Youtube, and everywhere else. You’re basically going to end up competing against them for those clicks. That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s not profitable for you. The business you’re promoting will make the numbers work much better than you can with your 50% commission.
The Bootstrap Method of Affiliate Marketing With Clickbank
If you really want to make your first dollar on the internet through affiliate marketing With Clickbank, you need what I call the Bootstrap Method. You’re basically pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps with the compelling content you make to market the product. All you have to do is purchase the product and then use it. You can even potentially write to the business on Clickbank.com to ask if there’s a discount code for affiliates. Obviously, choose something you believe in and something that’s relevant to you. Then, make a video on Youtube reviewing the product. Be as thorough and interesting as you can. If possible, make it a journey. Cover multiple days of your progress using the product, how your thoughts evolve, etc. Post a link to your affiliate link in the description box!
Create the same content in the form of a blog, and again add your affiliate link. Now you’re in a position to begin ranking when people are searching for reviews of that product. This is something consumers do all the time, organically. Getting some commissions that way is the absolute best way for someone without a business to begin making money with affiliate marketing.
Consult With the Pros
There’s so much more about how creating a fantastic income online. Register for the FREE Ecommerce Empire Builders webinar, and begin building your empire today! You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel for frequent business tips and insights for affiliate marketing with Clickbank, dropshipping, and more.