Hi everyone! This is Lisa here. Today I am talking about ClickBank. And I just want to say that this is a special video because it is brought to you by request, at a request from the YouTube subscriber or member. I wanted to give he or she credit because they love to message or comment on all my videos, asking me to do a video on ClickBank, because I talk about a lot on my sites and there is even a blog post on my blog where I talk about my top 7 money-makers, and ClickBank is one of them. And I never really go on to details too much about how I make money with ClickBank. So I just wanted to do that. I also want to say before I start, I appreciate feedback like that. I am really glad when people leave me a comment, tell me what they want me to talk about, because it helps me come up with things, talk about it and it helps you. There are two thousand people who have subscribed to this channel. I know nothing about a lot of you. So the more feedback you can give me, the better.
ClickBank is an electronic marketplace where there is a bunch of authors who have written PDFs or electronic books, and they are selling them from the ClickBank marketplace. So you as an affiliate, what you could do is go to ClickBank marketplace, click on the marketplace link, do a search for, say, gardening, and you will see all the e-books that were written on gardening, and below the description of the book, you can see how much money you earn by referring your visitors to that book. The reason why ClickBank is so profitable and it is so attractive to so many affiliates is that the commissions are very high. Compare ClickBank to Amazon. Amazon affiliate program pays between 4%-8%. So if you sell a $40 book on Amazon, you can only get maybe, $2 commission on that. Amazon has got to pay the publisher, the author, the shipping and handling, Amazon gets a cut, there is a third party shipping involved, and then there is you. So you are like the 6th man down the line. So that is why the commissions on Amazon are so low. But with ClickBank, you have got an electronic book, so there is no shipping and handling. The product is sent right via email, so the only people who are getting paid are the author, ClickBank, and then you. So a lot of authors or ClickBank publishers will pay you 50%, 60%, 70% commission just for referring a book from your site. So the commissions are very, very high. So use that example of the $40 book. You can earn $20, $25, and even $30 sometimes depending on how much the ClickBank author wants to pay. That’s the good thing about ClickBank. But the downside of ClickBank is that there is a lot of crap on ClickBank. I mean, e-books are so easy to create. All you have to do is get some PDF creation software. You can buy Adobe Acrobat Professional, or there are other cheaper software programs up there that will allow you to create PDF files. So it is nothing for people to just gather facts from the web and we go to take them into 20 pages and call it an e-book and slap a $50 per hour – $49.99 price tag on it and call it a day! So you have to be very careful.
I choose the products on ClickBank very carefully. If I see something that I think I want to refer it to my audience, I don’t look at just how much I am going to earn per sale, I also buy the book and review it, and make sure it is something that I want to associate myself with. Because I don’t know if you have been to ClickBank and you read the sales pages for those products, they all look the same. They are all written very salecy, very pretty – Lose Weight in 3 days! – it’s just all these crazy claims. So you have to really be careful at what products you promote, because there is a lot of junk out there. So what I really do is, I buy the book, I read it from front to back, and if it is something that I want to associate myself with or refer my audience to, then I will write a review. Depending on the book, the review may be long, it may be short. I did a review for a book on ‘My Flat Stomach Exercises Site’ and it was a pretty long review because I wanted my audience to really know that I have purchased the book, that I have read it, because there is a lot of hype when it comes to the whole weight loss thing, and I wanted people to know that this is different from so many other type of books out there, so I was very specific in my review, because I wanted my audience to know that I really did buy it. You might say, well, why would I spend money on a book and want to find out if I like it, that I have just lost $30-$40? Well, I look at it like this. It is an investment. I treat my affiliate sites like a business. Anything that I do – any money that I put forth for my business is an expense. So, yes. There are times where I’ve bought something, did not like it and just wrote it off as an operating expense on my Schedule-C Tax Form. This is what this is. There will be things you buy and you won’t need. But that is what running a business is all about. I later learnt that ClickBank has a return policy, so if you don’t like the book, you can get a refund. And it is much better to buy something and review it and make sure that it is something you want to stand by than to just say, “Oh! I get paid $70 for every person I referred and he slapped his head on my side!” And then you start referring crap and guess what, you lose your credibility. So it’s just not worth it. So, ClickBank can be a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful way to monetize your site, but you just have to be careful. Go to the ClickBank site, click on the marketplace link, browse through some books, see if there is anything that fits your topic or your theme, and if it looks like something that could help your audience, buy the book, read it, write a review, and the thing with writing a review is it will increase your chance of getting a commission because people will say, “Hey! ok, she has bought the book and she read it, and she is telling me specific things that pertain to me, and that will benefit me. So, maybe I will go ahead and buy it”, and it will increase the chances that you make a sale about that’s just throwing up a bit of ad and saying, “Hey! Buy this book. It is really good.” This is all about credibility. One of the main reasons I am able to make a full-time living online is that I have built up a solid credibility in the niches that I have chose to involve myself in. So if you want to make money, you’ve got to become that credible person in whatever topic, whatever theme that you choose. And ClickBank can be a very, very good way to monetize your website. But you just have to know how to work the system and just be honest. So, hope this helps you and I am going to go and talk a walk. It’s a nice day outside. I will see you later. Bye bye!
