I opened an affiliate account, now what do I do?

ClickBank affiliates earn a commission for every sale they successfully promote.
As an affiliate, your next steps are:
1. Choose which products you want to promote
2. Create correctly formatted Hoplinks
3. Place your Hoplinks to promote your chosen products

Step 1: Choose which products you want to promote
To choose which products you want to promote visit the ClickBank Marketplace. You can either use the
“Search the ClickBank Marketplace” box, click on a main category in the “List of Categories” box, or click on
the green arrows next to the main categories to browse the products by subcategories.

Step 2: Create correctly formatted Hoplinks
A ClickBank Hoplink is the method ClickBank uses to successfully track the sale and give the proper affiliate
credit. The Hoplink transfers (or links) potential customers from your promotion to a publisher’s website
while automatically crediting you, the affiliate, with the referral. If the customer then buys the publisher’s
product you will receive a commission for the sale.

After you choose a product in the Marketplace you want to promote, the next step is to create a correctly
formatted Hoplink. The simplest way to create Hoplinks is to visit the ClickBank Marketplace. ClickBank will
automatically generate the Hoplink necessary for you to promote any of the products listed.
Simply find a product you want to promote and click on “create hoplink.” Upon clicking “create hoplink,” a
window will open prompting you to enter in your ClickBank nickname. Enter your nickname and hit “Submit.”
After hitting “Submit” a window will appear with your properly formatted Hoplink created. The format for the
Hoplink is: http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net. When using the “create hoplink” feature in the
Marketplace, AFFILIATE will automatically be replaced with your affiliate nickname and PUBLISHER will
automatically be replaced with the nickname of the publisher of the product you are promoting.
In addition, below the properly formatted Hoplink an example of that same Hoplink in HTML is provided.
When using Hoplinks on your own web site you utilize HTML. Here is what a properly formatted ClickBank
Hoplink looks like in HTML (with no line breaks):
<a href=”http:// AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net” target=”_top”>CLICK HERE</a>

Again, when using the “create hoplink” feature in the Marketplace, AFFILIATE will automatically be replaced
with your affiliate nickname and PUBLISHER will automatically be replaced with the nickname of the
publisher of the product you are promoting. You must replace CLICK HERE with any promotional text or
image you prefer. Also, it’s important to make certain that the publisher’s web site either opens up
completely in the current window or in a new window. To ensure the publisher’s site completely fills the
current window regardless of whether you are using frames, keep target=”_top” in your HTML code. To open
the publisher’s site in a new window (or tab), include target=”_blank” instead.
For example, an affiliate with the nickname JANE1 wants to promote an e-book about dog training written by a publisher with the nickname JOHN2. If JANE1 clicked on “create hoplink” in the Marketplace under
JOHN2’s listing the following Hoplink would be generated: http://JANE1.JOHN2.hop.clickbank.net
There are some methods of promoting Hoplinks, for example, paid search engine marketing, which require
inputting the Hoplink without HTML. However, if JANE1 wanted to promote the dog training e-book on her
personal website, she would mostly likely utilize HTML. JANE1 would then use the example provided of her
Hoplink in HTML, replacing CLICK HERE with promotional text of her choosing:
<a href=”http://JANE1.JOHN2.hop.clickbank.net” target=”_top”>How to Train Your Dog</a>
If customers clicked on the link How to Train Your Dog and purchased the e-book from JOHN2’s web site
then JANE1 would get a commission on the sale.
A common mistake new affiliates occasionally make, is using the target URL (or publisher’s pitch page) in
their promotions instead of a Hoplink. For example, the Hoplink from the example above
(http://JANE1.JOHN2.hop.clickbank.net) ultimately takes the customer to JOHN2’s target URL with the
affiliate nickname noted at the end (http://www.johnexamplesite.com/?hop= JANE1). If you use the target
URL instead of the Hoplink in your promotions the sale will not be tracked and you will not earn a
commission.

Additional mistakes new affiliates make include using misspelled or incorrect nicknames in the Hoplink,
promoting Hoplinks with typos (for example using htp:// instead of http://), and using clickbank.com instead of clickbank.net. We strongly recommend that you test all of your Hoplinks before you start your promotions.  ClickBank can not transfer commissions from one account to another, and can not award commissions that are not automatically tracked by the system.

For every product you choose to promote you must create a properly formatted Hoplink. Please save each
Hoplink upon creation, for example start a spreadsheet or other type of document that has a list of all the
Hoplinks you plan to use in different promotions. ClickBank does not store Hoplinks for affiliates.

Step 3: Place your Hoplinks to promote your chosen products
The next step is getting your Hoplinks in front of customers who are interested in the products you have
chosen to promote. Affiliates use primarily web-based marketing methods to target potential customers and
direct them to products.

There are a variety of internet marketing methods used by affiliates to get their Hoplinks in front of potential customers. The list of possible options is too exhaustive to be covered here. Some popular methods include paid search engine marketing, content and niche sites (for example product review sites), personal web sites or blogs, and email marketing. Be sure the ways you choose to promote products is in compliance with our Client Contract and our Network Abuse Policy. All ClickBank clients are prohibited from using our services in conjunction with any form of network abuse, spamming, spyware, denial of service, or other illegal activity. Sending any email to purchased lists or lists obtained by any other method (such as
harvesting) is not acceptable. Clients may only send email to recipients who have joined mailing lists directly from their own web site.

If you are new to affiliate marketing and are unfamiliar with the above internet marketing methods there are
numerous web sites with content (both free and paid) that focus on how to get started in affiliate marketing.
The best way to find these sites is to do a search on “affiliate marketing” or any of the other terms above, for
example “search engine marketing.”

Since your success as an affiliate is important to ClickBank, we have also collected some resources that you
might find helpful in understanding how to maximize your opportunities. For more information, please visit
our Affiliate Resources page.

You can also browse the ClickBank Marketplace for help. Under the category “Business to Business” and
“Marketing and Ads,” there are several ClickBank publishers who offer products you can purchase that
provide assistance to beginner affiliates.