ClickBank Review

ClickBank is one of the affiliate networks that we have mentioned in one of our recent articles, where we tackled the best affiliate marketing networks. If you’re tired of platforms that don’t pay you enough or whose cookie doesn’t last enough, ClickBank might be right up your alley. 

In today’s post, we’re looking at everything you might ever want to know about the ClickBank affiliate marketplaces — from the pros and cons to how you can be paid, whether the company’s customer service is any good, and lots of other things that you should consider before becoming a ClickBank affiliate. 

ClickBank Review

With a history spanning over twenty years, ClickBank is perhaps one of the oldest affiliate networks out there nowadays. It’s been used by millions of affiliates in the past and it’s mostly appreciated by marketers and bloggers. 

What’s interesting about ClickBank affiliate marketing is that despite the amount of time that the company has been around and despite it having lots of attractive features, its reputation might have slightly been hit in the past several years. 

Unlike other networks that basically do the same thing, ClickBank also gives you the opportunity to utilize it as a platform where you can promote your products and give affiliates the chance to make some money, too. 

You can sign up as a Vendor. From the information we found about it, it seems that promoting ClickBank products in the digital space is the best way of going about things if you want to start using it as a Vendor. 

What can you promote via ClickBank?

If you are an affiliate and have a blog or website that you are looking to monetize through various means, including using affiliate links, banners, and other marketing tools, this is the section for you. 

There is a truly impressive variety of products that you can find on the ClickBank app and that you can then recommend to your blog audience. For example, you have the option of promoting digital products like templates, courses, guides, and a even eBooks or software. 

But there’s also the option of you recommending actual physical products to your blog readers. As for the specific niches, there are many of them, but you’ll mostly come across products in areas like home and garden, fitness, food and cooking, or health. 

And here comes the part where we have to note a complaint that we have come across from various bloggers that have also reviewed ClickBank in the past. It seems that the platform allows Vendors to sign up much too easily, which means that if you’re looking for good-quality ClickBank products to promote, you might be in for a nasty surprise. 

The reason for this is that even though there is a screening process in place, some Vendors might get accepted and they could promote a variety of pyramid schemes on the site. 

Unfortunately, some bloggers might fall into that trap and recommend them to their audience even without realizing what they are doing — so you have to pay a lot of attention when you’re on the platform and make sure that you strictly recommend products and services sold by very large and well-known companies. 

How to promote ClickBank products

If you do find something that you think would be worthy of your blog readers’ attention and hard-earned cash, you can start promoting it. 

Although the interface looks like something straight out of the 90s, you’ll find that it’s quite easy to use. Finding the right products might take some time, especially since it’s said that the keyword feature doesn’t work too well and that after 2-3 pages of a search term, it starts drifting away and showing you irrelevant results. 

Probably the best thing about the network is that every result includes some data on which you can effectively base your decision to promote those products or not. We’re referring to the following:

  • Initial $/sale
  • Avg $/sale
  • Avg Rebill total
  • Avg %/Rebill 
  • Gravity

All of these stats obviously mean different things but you might have been able to tell what they refer to. The one that’s somewhat unique is the ‘gravity’ one, which deals with how good a product’s conversion is. The higher that figure, the better. 

It will probably take you a bit of time to separate the wheat from the chaff and we recommend devoting a whole day to finding the right products and services, especially in the beginning. 

On the upside, you will be able to use the automatic categories that already exist on the platform, and they range from anything like Arts & Entertainment to Computer/Internet and Spirituality, New Age & Alternative Beliefs. 

Once you have finally discovered something that you actually want to recommend to your readers, all you have to do is to click the ‘Promote’ button and once a pop-up window loads, click on ‘generate hoplinks’. You can use that link in your buttons on your site (we recommend a very easy-to-use plugin called MaxButtons for this). 

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So, the next question on your mind might be the following: Okay, but what other promotional materials are there and how can I take advantage of them? Well, you might be disappointed, but it actually very much depends on each vendor. Naturally, for world-known brands, you’ll always come across at least a number of different marketing tools like banners and everything else — but for smaller ones, you will only be able to use your affiliate links and your creativity. 

Something else that you can do is to actually reach out to every vendor individually and ask them to give you access to a number of banners (to which you can obviously add your affiliate links). 

There’s no guarantee that you’ll get a reply to your email, though, but based on the information that we found on this, it seems that vendors do a pretty good job of communicating with affiliates, at least in general. 

How do ClickBank pay you?

When it comes to how ClickBank pays its affiliates, what we’d like to note are two things — the payment methods and the frequency of payments. 

If you’ve been using affiliate marketing for a while now to monetize your blog or site, you probably know that there are programs and networks out there that will make you wait for 60 days before paying you what you made in a specific month. For example, if you become an Amazon Associates affiliate today, you’ll be paid for what you make this month only 60 days in the future (or more, if the date isn’t anywhere near the end of a month). 

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Fortunately, this is not an issue when it comes to ClickBank. In your ClickBank account, you can select between a monthly and a bi-monthly schedule, so you can get your money during the same month.

It still takes some time for your commissions to be accepted and everything else, so you can still expect a 4 to 6-week waiting time at the beginning of your journey. But once that’s sorted, you can be paid monthly or bi-monthly depending on your personal preferences. 

Read more: Systeme.io affiliate program

The second aspect we’d like to address in this section is the payment method. To date, there are only two ways of getting your money from ClickBank — direct deposit or cheque. If you are not based in the United States and you do not want to deal with the hassle of the cheque being delivered and everything else, you can use alternative methods like Payoneer.

When it comes to Paypal ClickBank does not offer this payment method, so we thought we’d clearly state this. 

Reasons to use ClickBank

There are several significant reasons to opt for ClickBank, especially if you’re looking for an affiliate network that allows you to come across multiple merchants and types of products and analyze all of your stats in one place. 

First of all, it’s a rather large platform, so the variety of products and services is just as large. It’s also worth noting that compared to other options out there, ClickBank always pays on time, so you do not have to expect any nasty surprises in this sense. 

And finally, they even have a so-called ‘ClickBank University’ which basically consists of training courses that can teach you how to become a better affiliate via ClickBank. However, the training is not going to assist you in generally becoming a better affiliate — it’s mostly geared at people who want to use ClickBank. 

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Are there any reasons not to use ClickBank?

Yes. In the past several years, because of the issues that we mentioned with heaps of trashy and spammy products or services, the platform has acquired quite an impressive number of negative reviews.

Some of the promotional tools (especially the landing pages) not only look very old and dated in terms of design, but might also give off the impression of scams — which is why ClickBank has also received negative reviews on sites like ConsumerAffairs.com. 

In other words, you have to be very careful when finding products on this platform. If something sounds too good to be true, there’s a high likelihood that it’s just that. And the last thing you might want would be to lose your loyal blog readers just because you’ve recommended a disastrous product to them. 

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JVZoo vs. ClickBank

If you have recently come across JVZoo and you’re trying to understand whether or not it’s better or worse than ClickBank or can even be compared to it, this is the section for you. 

JVZoo is similar to ClickBank in many ways, including the approval process. None of these two platforms are going to ask you for detailed traffic information, so getting approved is a breeze. 

In terms of user experience, we’d argue that the first is better than the second, but that’s probably also because the ClickBank website’s design is taken out of the 1990s. 

Whether or not JVZoo is better for you actually depends on your niche. If you’re in the digital space, you can definitely use it to your advantage. But if you’d like to recommend physical products to your blog readership, ClickBank is a better choice. 

Another difference between the two is how you can be paid. As previously discussed, with ClickBank, you have just two choices — cheque and direct deposit. That is not the case with JVZoo, since you can also be paid through Paypal and obviously, Payoneer, too, besides the two payment methods that ClickBank offers, as well. 

On the downside, JVZoo has a waiting period of up to 90 days for people that haven’t yet generated 50 sales. And if you can’t manage to do that, you will simply not be able to benefit from the instant payment option, ever. 

The payment threshold is also different when it comes to the two networks. On ClickBank, you can be paid when you make just $10 from commissions but JVZoo asks you to generate at least $50 in commissions before you’re able to withdraw your money. 

Read more: Builderall affiliate program review

In the end, it all comes down to what your blog or website is about, how interested your audience is in purchasing various types of products/services, and the type of features you appreciate most in an affiliate network. 

We’d say that ClickBank is still a winner in a debate on whether JVZoo is better at this time, but that could obviously change in the future. 

How to delete a ClickBank account

If for one reason or the other you’ve come to the conclusion that this affiliate network is not the right one for you, you can simply delete your account with just a few clicks. 

Go into your Account Settings tab, click ‘Edit’ from the right hand corner, and then select ‘Close Account’. You will be asked for a reason you are deleting your account, too. 

Read more: How to buy premade affiliate websites

Final thoughts

Despite its problems and negative reviews, ClickBank is still a good option for affiliates. You do have to do your best to separate the wheat from the chaff both in terms of merchants and in terms of the products that you will be recommending on your blog or website. 

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author avatar
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years. In this time I have gained extensive knowledge in the subject of SEO and have build up a wealth of experience in SEO and other digital marketing services.

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Craig Campbell

I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.

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