Common Clickbank Questions - Part 2

Welcome to the “Common Clickbank Questions” article - part 2. In this 3 part series, we will be discussing common questions about Clickbank that those who are new usually ask. Even some of the more experienced Clickbank marketers may find some of the answers helpful and refreshing.

This series is based on a community thread that a Digital Point forums member started, but I’ve cleaned it up and re-wrote it a bit so it’s easy to understand, even for the folks that are brand new to Clickbank. Enjoy!

So, do I need a website for Clickbank?
Clickbank doesn’t require that you have a website. As long as you can pass buyers through your unique Clickbank hoplink, you will get credited for the sale. But if you are trying to market through pay-per-clicks like Google AdWords, you may run into problems if you are “direct linking” (sending buyers straight to your hoplink rather than through a site, and this is due to the quality score system with Adwords, more on that later!)

When do I receive my check?
Assuming you have made at least five sales with five different credit card numbers, one being a Visa and one being a Mastercard, and gone over your credit threshhold, ClickBank mails out checks on the 15th and 31st of each month.

What is Gravity?
Gravity is the number of affiliates promoting a product. Each affiliate will only ever have a maximum of 1 gravity point. If an affiliate make 500 sales in a day, this will still only add 1 gravity point. Once affiliate stops making sales gravity associated with that affiliate starts to drop slowly until is reaches zero after 8 weeks. Therefore immediate number will tell you little: Are there 30 affiliates that sold it today or were there 60 2 weeks ago and there are none now. There are websites like http://www.cbtrends.com and http://www.cb-analytics.com that keep track of the past performance and trends.

What’s the payout schedule for clickbank?
If you have reached your threshold limit, then Clickbank will post your check within two weeks after the payperiod. If you haven’t reached the limit, then you will have to wait until it’s reached or crossed. This can sometimes be frustrating (especially if you are close to the threshold, but on the other hand,  it can also be quite motivating!)

Whats the minimum payout?
The minimum threshold limit is $10. The maximum is $100000. These are the minimum and maximum values of checks.

What Are Hoplinks?
For a Clickbank affiliate to earn credit for a sale, the customer must first follow a ClickBank generated unique hoplink. The link takes the customer to the publisher’s Hoplink Target URL (their sales page), and automatically credits the affiliate with that referral if they buy.

Can I purchase products through my own hoplink?
Yes, you can do that, but you shouldn’t. Clickbank doesn’t say, that you MUST NOT do that, so you can sometimes make purchases through your affiliate link, but don’t make it a habit.

How Do I Use Clickbank Tracking?

This is the tracking URL http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.click…t?tid=XXXXXXXX

affiliate is your affiliate nickname
publisher is the ID of your product
XXXXXXXX is the tracking ID.

The code can be eight characters long, only containing alpha and numeric characters. Any tracking code longer than eight characters will not work properly. Any tracking code containing characters other than alpha or numeric values will have the entire tracking code removed from the hoplink and order process and, the TID will not show in the transaction report. Tracking codes received with upper and lower case characters will be set to all uppercase by default.

Can I direct link to Vendor sales pages in PPC (pay-per-click)?
As far as Clickbank is concerned - yes. The reason this is even a question is because when you’re running PPC campaigns, it’s not desirable anymore to link visitors directly to your hoplink. If you do such a thing, you run the risk of sky high costs per click, and also your quality score will be very low. It’s much smarter to have visitors sent to a “pre-sale”, or “soft sell” page, and then directed to the publishers hard sale page to close the deal.

How do I find best selling products?
There is no magic formula to finding hot selling products, it involves a lot of testing. Generally products that have had high gravity for long time sell more then ones with low gravity. But to be exact gravity indicates number of affiliates that made sale not number of sales. It’s possible to tell a product with low number of sales by looking at “earned per sale chart” (see www.cb-analytics.com or http://www.cbtrends.com or www.cbengine.com)

If that chart has sharp ups and downs this means that sales are so few that even single sale or return (and there are always returns) affects the overall graph. But even if you did know the number of sales, this will tell you nothing about how easy it is to make one. So again - in order to find out - you just need to try for yourself. That’s why Adwords and YSM vouchers come in so handy.

Obviously - keep the money makers and delete the ones that are not making money.

Start by searching the CB marketplace and sorting the results by popularity (the default setting) and gravity. This will give you a good indication of what is hot in a particular category.

Hot Tip - It can also be helpful to do a search on Google for a particular product name. If you notice a high number of sponsored ads in the right column for the product, then it is relatively safe to assume multiple people are making money from it (but there will be more competition). On the other hand, if you don’t notice any sponsored ads, then it could be a sign that the product converts poorly or has a high refund rate (or that it’s a new product).