Considering you have a fairly good digital product, does Clickbank work as well as most people claim it does? Also, how much does it cost to promote a digital product on Clickbank?
I think clickbank charges you a fee. AND before you can become a part of the clickbank marketplace you must have already sold your product on your own. With Proofs.
The last time I set up a Clickbank account for someone, they charged him a one time $49. And I don't remember them asking for proof that the product had already been sold elsewhere. This may be a very new policy but I'm almost sure it doesn't exist. If it did, half the products on there would simply disappear
Clickbank doesn't work for you, it merely provides you with the technical capabilities required to pay out commissions. You still need to put in the leg work with regards to promoting and indeed getting affiliates to promote for you, via JV's and what not. Colm
Clickbank is worth it if you have something good to sell and a good landing page to pull users. Gathering affiliates is not an easy task but once you have affiliates on your side, money will easily pile up. For $50 you can't go wrong though, not much to lose there.
clickbank is the 1st place in mind of the most affiliates when they want to make money with digital products... how well your product will sell is up to you, how good is you at marketing that product... I can see the easy way it can be done is by doing JVs and setup some PR to motivate your affiliates
If you ask over in the Clickbank forum here instead, you'll probably get even more responses from people familiar with their services.
Thanks for the advice guys! Are there any alternatives to Clickbank as far as promoting digital products? I've heard that 2Checkout.com has a way for you to promote digital products as well.
If websites such as Clickbank only provide the system for you, why not start my own affiliate program on my website? I have the following script below. http://www.twsc.biz/php_affiliate_script.php
E-Junkie offers similar services. I just started using them, so can't offer much feedback yet though. I think one of the biggest benefits to using one of these kinds of services instead of running your own affiliate program is the fact that some come with a built-in network of affiliates, making it easier for them to find your product to promote it. Also, by letting a service take care of a lot of the backend things like payments, it's less work you have to put in personally (which can be a time-saver).
What are the chances of one of those affiliate joining my program if they've never heard of it? Having a huge network is great but it doesn't seem to help out too much if nobody from the that network joins. The only benefits I can think of is that my program will be more trustworthy and it will be harder for dishonest people to hack the program.
The point is that they'll find you when searching through the marketplace when looking for something new to promote (without having to sign up for yet another program - they can do them all from one place). If you're not in the marketplace, those affiliates won't necessarily find you or want to be bothered to sign up for and track another affiliate program independently. You can still promote it in all the same ways you would an independent affiliate program to make people hear about you... you just have a foot in the door earlier on with a big group.
the WHOLE point why people put their digital products for sale on clickbank is NOT for payment processing, affiliate management or technical stuffs (yeah maybe a little, but just to a certain extent). The main purpose is to get many, many affiliates to start promoting their product. Okay, to see why you should put your stuff on clickbank you need to see from the affiliate's point of view. I'm promoting some cb products too so don't worry. . One way that is used by a large chunk of CB affiliates when they are finding products to promote is by searching through the products and look at the 'gravity' of the products. basically 'gravity' means how many affiliates have made sales with that product. That is a good measure of the profitabily and CR of a CB product in affiliates' POV. As you can see from the CB page, there are literally thousands and thousands of active affiliates that makes real money in CB (no exaggeration), actively seeking for new products to promote and make money with. All you need to do is take their attention (which could be done by getting high gravity spike, during launches for example) and boom 1000 people will start promoting your product all over the web. If you set up your own affiliate management chances are nobody would have heard about you. Even IF they find you they won't know how profitable your product might be. And since they have some other products to promote that looks profitable with reliable data elsewhere, why should they start promoting for you? Well, you may get some affiliates that do their research by researching the market first, then find the product to give it to them, in which they could find you. I do it that way, which is why I don't really mind which affiliate network I work with. But yeah, if I find another product on CB or any other aff network that is proven to be good quality and profitable, I'll go promote for them instead. From MY point of view, if your product is good, people like it, good conversion rate and no other affiliates know about it, then it's all good for me, because less competition = more money. However, from the PoV of merchants, I think you will want more affiliates to promote for you instead. Some word of advice. Anything below 50% commission in CB wouldn't get you any affiliates, unless your product's costs $100 or more and gives away at least $20-$30 in commissions. So.. Price your product to MAKE MONEY with them, not to give the customer the 'best price'.
Greg, my personal advice would be to make a one-page affiliate letter and put it on your site to entice affiliates to promote your product. Instead of running PPC ads or driving traffic to your basic sales page, you could send people to your affiliate page instead. Considering you have a well-written pitch (and a decent product in a profitable niche), you should have no problem recruiting affiliates. This is what I did for my clients in the past and I've seen it work. So called "marketing gurus" also follow this modus operandi. Cheers