So yesterday I made my first clickbank affiliate sale. I hadn’t really expected it. I had put a link as an after thought on one of my sites and low and behold someone purchased something. It was kind of exciting. Although the downer is, I don’t get paid until I earn more money. That’s the bummer about clickbank affiliates or any other affiliate program. You have to meet a certain threshold. Like with adsense it’s a $100. Meeting a threshold isn’t really too big a deal if you are going to focus on something. The key is figuring out how to make money with it. Should you be a clickbank publisher or clickbank affiliate marketing guru?
When you make a sale without doing any additional work, I think that makes the case for being an afffiliate. If it goes with the content you are already writing, I’d definitely do that as well. One thing I’ve already done is add their little widget to one of my sidebars on another site. But the way I made my sale was through an image link I made for the product on my site. I didn’t endorse it. I didn’t tell people that they should go check it out. But made it available.
Back to my question, should you be a vendor or a affiliate. Personally, I think you should be a creator of the products. The first reason is that no one can steal you commission (yes it happens). Because you are the creator, you always get paid. But creating these books is a job and I don’t want to do it unless they meet a certain standard.
The first thing I wondered was just how much of a return I would get if I was the publisher:
- There is a $49.95 activation fee
- There is a $1.00 charge per sale
- There is a 7.5% charge per sale
- There is a $2.50 charge per check they write. I couldn’t tell if direct deposit was free but something tells me know.
Here is a clickbank calculator. So for example if I want to sell a $12.00 book I will net $10.10 assuming I did not split a commission. If I made a sale through an affiliate, and gave them half I’d make $5.05. But, let’s be honest. Any clickbank affiliate marketing would have to net someone at least $25.00 or so. My thinking is that if I do start writing these, that, I’d be looking to do all of the promotion myself. If I set them up, I’d be selling direct and not pushing clickbank affiliate programs. But, my main theory is that it’s really hard to write a whole package of material but it is easier to write smaller reports to get to that point.
Which leads me to my next action. I am still trying to and am adding:
- Brainstorm ideas for reports to sell
- What kind of format and schedule that I can create
Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have any experience with clickbank, share it here if you would.
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