How To Make Money With Clickbank - What Really Works

I'm no "Internet Marketing Guru". I don't write steamy sales letters telling you how I turn on my computer 10 minutes a day to see how much money I've made before going back to nap under a palm tree.

I am also not a product CREATOR (yet). I'm just an affiliate like you I presume.

I'm going to tell you what I know about how to make money on Clickbank.

When you're doing that on a regular basis, your only question will be - "How can I find the next Clickbank product to sell?"

Let me tell you my happiest experience making money with Clickbank:

I'd signed up as a Clickbank affiliate ages ago. But nothing happened. I mean NOTHING. 

(Well maybe not "nothing" - for example, back when you could advertise a clickbank hoplink directly with Google Adwords, I was doing pretty well but it wasn't the kind of money I wanted. I was getting a 15% return on the dollars I invested in Google Adwords, but saw that strategy could get out of hand into negative returns very quickly. I wanted Google's free traffic to fund my affiliate earnings!)

Until one day, I kept "trying things" and something excellent happened.

For quite some time (months? a year? I don't recall) every two weeks I'd go to my my mailbox and find a Clickbank check. The amount always varied but it was always $150 - $250 or so. Given how little I did to generate it and the fact that these checks were like "free money" coming in without much work, I thought that was pretty good.

Once I started NOT earning those checks, I thought they were even more wonderful!

My wife even started asking me - "So what happened to those Clickbank Checks?" :(

I wish I could tell you it was a finely hatched plan - that way I'd look like a genius. But it was pretty much a surprise to me too.

I had been blogging for quite some time and for some reason I had investigated a particular industry. I'd seen someone advertising a business opportunity for that (offline) industry at a major website, so I wondered if Clickbank had a product in that area.

They did.

So I wrote a blog post with the imaginative title "[Product Name] Review".

Before I knew what was happening, the page had been indexed by Google and people started to visit.

And people started to buy. The product only had a $16 or so commission. But it became the basis of those checks every two weeks.

For quite some time these checks kept rolling in... until something completely unforeseen happened.

This business opportunity depended on people driving their own vehicle to make money. It was also linked to real estate.

As gas prices climbed and the real estate bubble began to pop, people became less and less interested in the field and the sales eventually went to nothing.

When you finally get something working pretty well and some money comes in, you feel good.

When it stops coming in, you feel bad. You're usually tempted to give up.

But I knew I needed to climb back on the "horse that threw me". Here's my analysis of what worked and what I'm doing to make it work again...

1. It worked because it was a real product in a real, long term industry. It was something people searched for even when the internet marketing email lists weren't hyping it... know what I mean? If a Clickbank product sells at all and is good quality, it's a likely candidate.

If Google tells you people are searching for that product name monthly, why not try it?

Remember: I'd seen a similar product advertised online elsewhere, so I knew it sold or they wouldn't be spending money. Usually that's a pretty good clue to whether you might want to sell something.

2. It worked because I wrote a review and explained why it wasn't a scam and under what conditions it might or might not work for them. Yes, I tell people when I think it's not going to work for them... just like I did in this review for an internet marketing product.

3. Something else I did for that product (and some others) was offer a bonus if they purchased from me. Some claimed it, many didn't care.

I had to deliver the bonus manually so it was a real pain. In the future I plan to offer NO bonuses or make them as effortless for me to deliver as possible! (You can click the link below to test a service that gives you free bonus ebooks in dozens of categories to give away whenever you sell a Clickbank product and then delivers them automatically.)

4. I also built backlinks to my review with other articles and postings at "authority sites" to - if possible - put my information in front of a customer's eyes several times on Google's front page. Hubpages is an excellent "authority site" for that if you care to join.

Note: I really believe in Article Marketing but don't believe you'll do as well inserting a Clickbank affiliate link in the article. Many directories don't even allow that. Instead host your review on your own web page or blog post and use the article(s) to link back to your review.

If you can do these things and are willing to test, you can probably begin making money with Clickbank.

Here's what I think you'll need to make money with Clickbank ultimately:

1. Desire. It's the desire to overcome obstacles that will let you keep moving ahead when you experience those "dips" in earnings.

2. Love of writing. I love to write so that makes it easier for me than for many people, I have to admit. (If you don't like writing, you may want to check out some writing software to assist,)

3. A blog or website to host your reviews. Ultimately, I think you're going to want to have a blog for your own reviews, especially for building backlinks. While most of your work could be on an authority site like Hub Pages, you'll still need your own hosted website for collecting email names and building your own list, for selling your own information products, or even because there are other affiliate networks that may not let you join UNLESS YOU HAVE YOUR OWN WEBSITE.

Don't worry, you can get a website for free. Here's how to find a free webhost worth using.

There are some details I haven't told you, mainly because I wanted to keep it simple here.

BUT, if you really want to make money with Clickbank, you might want to consider a bundle of Clickbank Selling Tools and Services that could make the difference between success and failure. They're here at this link:

                               How To Make Money With Clickbank

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