How to Find ClickBank Products to Promote
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The Internet is full of stories on how to make a fortune through affiliate marketing. While many of these stories are greatly exaggerated, there are indeed ways to earn money by promoting other company’s products. However, it is crucial to use the right platform.
ClickBank is among the most popular online marketing platforms, with thousands of products waiting for you to promote them. In this guide, we’ll help you understand the benefits and the risks of using ClickBank and the steps you need to take to find the best products to promote.
WHAT IS CLICKBANK?
So, what is ClickBank all about and why has it become such a prominent platform in the online affiliate marketing sector?
The company was founded in 1998 by Tim and Eileen Barber. ClickBank is essentially an online marketplace for digital information products. Users, which the platform refers to as vendors, who create digital content can use the platform to connect with affiliate marketers. The marketers can pick the digital products they like and promote them to consumers. In return, they will receive part of the profit.
For example, if you are a vendor who has created online lessons to learn a language, you can upload your product information on the ClickBank platform. Affiliate marketers can pick up the product and start promoting it on the vendor’s behalf. For example, if you have a website about moving to another country, you might want to add ads for products such as language courses on your website.
The way affiliates and vendors make money on the site is different. The affiliates typically advertise digital products on their website, usually via a link to the seller’s landing page. If a person clicks the link and ends up buying the product, the affiliate will receive a certain percentage of profit. On the other hand, the vendor benefits from having more affiliates promoting the product, as this should increase the sales of his products.
Look at the following figures to get an impression of ClickBank’s size:
- Total number of marketplace listings is over 13,000
- Total number of unique products on the platform is nearly 7,000
According to ClickBank, the platform also has:
- 200,000,000 satisfied customers,
- 300,000 digital marketers promoting products,
- generated over $3 billion in sales.
Moreover, the platform is available in around 190 countries, so it provides opportunities for businesses on a global scale.
Here’s a video of one success story for promoting products:
The pros and cons of using ClickBank
Like most online marketplaces, ClickBank comes with specific benefits, as well as a few downsides. Before you consider listing your product on the platform or start browsing for products to promote, consider the following points.
The pros – wide variety of products, global reach, reliable and easy to use
First, ClickBank is clearly a big player in the market and thus, you can expect to find all sorts of products on the platform. It has 260 different product categories ranging from computers and garden to lifestyle and politics. Whatever your area of expertise is, you are likely to find a product to promote.
It isn’t just the availability and range of products that can be beneficial. The global reach makes the marketplace a great spot for affiliate marketers in a number of countries.
The site also benefits from a huge user base, which has helped to create a trustworthy and reliable platform. Online marketing can be quite tough, especially for beginners, as there are plenty of frauds and inauspicious deals out there. ClickBank has gained a good reputation and it includes a great customer support platform, which ensures you can solve problems easily.
Finally, ClickBank is easy to use. Once you set up your account, you don’t need to worry about technical issues. Instead you can just focus on making those sales.
The cons – tough competition, not all products are high-quality
Of course, with a large user base comes the issue of tougher competition. Finding the best products won’t be easy and you might end up promoting a product that has already many other marketers.
Moreover, not every product on the site is worth spending time and money. The quality control could perhaps be a bit more rigorous and you need to do your research to ensure you don’t end up promoting inferior products.
5 STEPS TO FINDING CLICKBANK PRODUCTS WORTH PROMOTING
With the above in mind, it’s important to spend enough time selecting the right products. You don’t want to waste your time and energy on products which won’t sell (for example, because of low quality). You should also carefully consider which products are worth the effort, even when the product itself is superb (you don’t want to spend a lot of time promoting a product with a below average commission).
The five steps below will help you to identify the right product and navigate through the ClickBank platform.
Step 1: Identify a niche that fits your expertise and interest
Before you start promoting products, you need to identify the products you want to promote. Affiliate marketing is sales. If you don’t have the passion and knowledge to promote, you won’t make any money.
It’s important to define a niche product category, not just to increase your chances of success, but also to limit the time you spend browsing the products. We mentioned earlier how the platform has over 13,000 listings, which means you can’t go through all of them.
The products you sell should not only be products you understand, but you should also be able to promote them authentically. Therefore, detailed knowledge about the sector will be beneficial. It’s much easier to devise strategies for products you understand and which you are enthusiastic about, rather than market products from a sector that doesn’t fit to your expertise and interest.
Therefore, you should ask yourself the following questions before you begin browsing:
- What product categories am I most excited about?
- What are my strengths for promoting these specific products?
Step 2: Consider your sales channels
Two popular ways of promoting ClickBank products are:
- looking for products to promote and to build a website around them.
- searching for products to promote on your existing blog or website.
If you are looking for products to review on your blog or to add on your website, think carefully what type of products would fit the site. You don’t want to promote products, which have nothing to do with the website, as your customers are unlikely to be interested.
The products you promote should be advantageous to your site visitors. If the products relate to your site, your visitors are much more likely to find the products interesting as well – after all, they are already reading about the topic on your website! This enables you to start making sales quicker.
For example, if you have a website about health and wellbeing, you should find a specific niche product in this sector. You don’t want to promote new mobile phones, if you only talk about smoothie recipes.
Step 3: Create a list of suitable products
Once you’ve narrowed down the niche category, you can head down to ClickBank and the Marketplace section of the website. You also want to create a simple spreadsheet to help you list suitable products and make comparisons and product selection easier later on.
Your spreadsheet should include a spot for the following categories:
- The product name
- The gravity of the product (will be explained later)
- The price of the product
- A link to the product information page
If you want to look around a few different categories, create a spreadsheet for each category. For example, if you are interested in Business and Technology categories, have a separate spreadsheet for each.
The list is not yet a definite guide to which products you’ll eventually choose, it just helps you narrow down the search and return to looking at the products later on. At first, you need to get an overview of your opportunities.
As you open the Marketplace on the website and click on your desired category, you’ll probably end up with a range of products. Don’t start blindly going through this list, but narrow your search for products using the right search parameters.
ClickBank sorts out the products by popularity as a default option, but gravity is the metric you should be focused on. You can select gravity from the drop down button for sorting out the products.
What is gravity? In short, it’s a number that shows the number of affiliates making sales with the specific products. Essentially, the more people making money with the product, the more proven the product is in terms of success. Gravity isn’t an all time score, but it shows the product’s performance in the last 12 weeks. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about picking products that were a hit two years ago, but not anymore.
However, higher gravity also indicates that there is more competition in this sector. That’s not necessarily bad, because it also indicates that there is high demand.
Now that you have the products sorted by gravity, you can start selecting suitable options, filling in the information on the spreadsheet. At the start, you want to pick products with a stable gravity (around 100). This means the products are popular and proven to generate sales.
Step 4: Compare the key metrics to find the best product
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t pick just a single product to promote in each category, but aim to have a few products on each category. However, in order to know which ones are worth the effort, you need to compare certain metrics.
ClickBank offers quite a bit of information regarding products. The metrics available for each product include:
- Initial $/sale: highlights the average revenue marketers make per sale
- Average %/sale: the percentage of the sales price marketers receive as commission on average
- Gravity: the number of marketers that have sold the product within the past 12 weeks
- Average rebill total: the average amount of money the marketers take as a commission as a result of rebills (i.e. resale of the product)
- Average %/rebill: the percentage of rebills paid to the marketer on average
It is important to pay attention to all these metrics, but two of them stand out when you are making the decision:
- Gravity – You want to pick products with enough gravity, without necessarily focusing solely on the higher end of gravity.
Remember that a lower gravity score doesn’t automatically mean the product is not worth promoting. After all, it could be a new product (not picked by other’s yet) or it’s such a niche product that others might not have found it beneficial (while you might be the right person to promote it). Therefore, also check other aspects of the product before making the final decision. - Commission – Commission, which is expressed as a percentage per sale, tells you how much money you can make for each sale. You generally shouldn’t opt to promote products with a low commission, as you might not receive your money’s worth. Ideally, products with around 50% commission are beneficial for affiliate marketers.
Keep in mind that the product’s profitability for you isn’t just about the commission. You should consider any other additional costs you might have for promoting the product when calculating your profit.
These additional cost include anything from maintenance costs of the website, additional promotional material, such as filming YouTube videos, to bidding on AdWords, and so on. It’s crucial to understand the costs of promoting in order to figure out the real profit margin.
When you find products with the right sort of gravity and commission, add them to your list. You can later compare the products in the spreadsheet based on the average commission. This can help you find a sufficient mixture of products with different gravity scores.
Step 5: Research the vendor’s pitch
Finally, once you have a list of interesting products, you need to examine the product in more detail. Products with appropriate commission, and promising gravity scores, aren’t necessarily a perfect fit for your sales pipeline. As mentioned at the start, you want to select products that excite you.
You can view the vendor’s product page by clicking the product link. Different vendors have different sales pages, with a varying degree of information. You definitely want to promote products with plenty of information as.little information indicates low quality.
Whether the vendor has a product video or description, you want to examine it before you choose the product. Consider the information by focusing on the questions you asked in steps one and two.
- Do you feel excited about the product? Is it something you might use yourself?
- Do you have ideas on how to promote it? Would it make a great blog post, a review video or perhaps a fantastic ad?
- Is it a proper fit on your website? Will it fit your niche? Does it look authentic and natural on your site?
- How would your visitors benefit from the product?
If you find it easy to answer these questions, you have found a suitable product for your website. If on the other hand, the product seems rather weak or dull, you probably don’t want to waste your time on it.
Additionally, the product pitch page also comes with helpful resources to promote the product. These can be valuable help in starting with your promotional campaign. Note that if the vendor provides promotional material, you need to carve out less from the commission to create it it by yourself.
Above all, do your research to ensure the product is legitimate. You don’t want to promote an inferior product and you definitely don’t want to defraud your visitors.
THE BOTTOM LINE – FIND A PROMISING PRODUCT THAT FITS YOUR EXPERTISE AND INTEREST
With the above steps, you can have a great selection of suitable products ready for promotion. Remember to focus on your strengths as a marketer and pick products that fit your niche. After you find genuinely exciting products, you need to pay attention to the finances. You don’t want to waste your time and energy on products, which won’t provide a robust return.
Spend enough time browsing through the products and don’t be afraid to do additional research on the vendor.
Furthermore, even when the product is proficient, you still need to know the secrets of promoting it. So, don’t just add a banner on your website! You can find help online, if you’re new to affiliate marketing.
Over time, promoting products will become naturally to you, if you follow the above steps and pick products that are exciting and profitable in the first place.
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