ClickBank Review (2023): Scam or Legit?

Are you looking for a ClickBank review? If you want to make money online, you might have heard of ClickBank. But you may wonder if this affiliate network is a scam.

The internet is rife with reports of scams. Affiliate marketing is particularly true in that regard.

ClickBank is one affiliate network that people like to refer to as a scam when talking about different affiliate networks.

The majority of these claims, however, come from users who have only been using the network for a short time. Furthermore, the affiliate network has plenty of positive reviews.

Then, what is the truth? Can affiliate marketers benefit from ClickBank, or is it a scam network?

To help you make a more informed decision, I have thoroughly researched ClickBank so I can tell you more about it.

At the end of this review, I’ll also share with you a platform where I’ve learned affiliate marketing skills that have enabled me to make a full-time passive income.

In this ClickBank review, I’m going to cover the following.

What is ClickBank?

Since ClickBank began doing business 17 years ago, it has built a reputation for reliability with over 200 million customers. Apparently, they’re one of the top 100 online retailers according to their own website.

This isn’t your typical affiliate network. The company focuses on products developed by entrepreneurs around the globe. 

In contrast to other affiliate networks that primarily work with large companies, ClickBank works with small business owners.

ClickBank is a marketplace where digital product creators upload their products, and affiliate marketers promote them (and earn commissions).

You can earn money with ClickBank as a product vendor or affiliate marketer, without working as hard as a stressed-out cubicle slave.

Check out these staggering figures about ClickBank:

• There are 200 million customers in 190 countries
• The 87th largest online retailer in North America
• Listed 21562 products in 276 categories
• On the platform, there are 6 million entrepreneurs
• More than 200 million dollars in sales per year

From what I can tell, this does not seem like a scam. Rather, it’s an affiliate market where you can make money.

If you are interested in promoting digital or lifestyle products, ClickBank is a good choice for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and digital content creators.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

How To Sign Up for ClickBank?

Anyone, new or old, can join ClickBank for free.

You only need to do the following to join:

• Living in one of the approved countries (U.S., Canada, etc.).
• Set your browser to accept cookies
• If you live in the U.S., you must have a Tax ID or Social Security number

If you plan to register as a ClickBank vendor, you must pay a one-time activation fee of $49.95. You pay only $29.95 for any additional accounts.

Here are the steps we need to take to sign up for an account on ClickBank.

For account creation, go to clickbank.com and click the ‘create account’ button on the top right-hand corner of the page.

Step 1: Fill in Your Personal Information

If you do not fill out all the fields, you will not be able to move on.

Click on ‘next step.’

Step 2: Provide Your Bank Details

If you’ve read the terms and conditions, you must check the small checkbox.

In the Payee field instead of your personal name, enter your business name if you want to be paid through your company.

Payments are not sent using your bank information. They simply ask for your primary bank’s name, not your account number.

After your account is created, you select a payment method.

To move on to the last step, click on ‘next step’.

Step 3: Create Your Account

You will then be asked to create a nickname.

The nickname you choose is your user ID. All customers will see it, so don’t make it too personal.

The affiliate marketing strategy expert Warren Wheeler discusses a little-known, yet powerful strategy you can use to create your ClickBank username.

The last step is to create your password. Click ‘create account’ to finalize your account after choosing a strong password.

On this page, you’ll find a customer survey. You will see your account has been activated as soon as you see it.

You are now ready to begin selling products on one of the largest affiliate marketplaces.

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What Affiliate Programs Does ClickBank Offer?

The ClickBank platform is designed for both tentative newbies and veteran digital marketers who want to grow their businesses.

Affiliate programs are available in many categories and there are numerous products to choose from:

• Arts & Entertainment
• As Seen on TV
• Betting Systems
• Business/Investing
• Computers/Internet
• Cooking, Food, & Wine
• E-Business & E-Marketing (Internet Marketing)
• Education
• Employment & Jobs
• Fiction
• Games
• Green Products
• Health & Fitness
• Home & Garden
• Languages
• Mobile
• Parenting & Families
• Politics/Current Events
• Reference
• Self-Help
• Software & Services
• New Age & Alternative Beliefs
• Sports
• Travel

Not sure where to begin? It’s okay. You can see the highly recommended products and inches on ClickBank’s Youtube channel.

In the video below, they discuss the hottest new products in 2021.

What are the Payment Methods Available Through ClickBank?

You can receive payments from ClickBank in four different ways:

Payment Method #1: Check

Paper checks are the default method of payment. You’ll receive it at the address listed in your account.

Payment Method #2: Direct Deposit

Direct deposit is offered by ClickBank to U.S. customers free of charge and to certain other countries. You’ll receive your direct deposit in one to two business days.

Payment Method #3: Wire Transfer

Wire transfers can be used to receive payments. For countries that cannot be deposited directly internationally, this is an option. (Depending on where you live, payments will take up to five days).

Payment Method #4: Payoneer

Additionally, you can get paid through Payoneer Mastercard, a free service that transfers money internationally. Your money is deposited into your U.S. bank account after you open a Payoneer account.

You can see that ClickBank offers many options. In addition, ClickBank won’t tie your account to any particular payment method.

Payment methods can be changed at any time. It’s your money, so you receive it as you wish. However, the new payment method may take up to seven days to take effect.

For one week after changing your email address or password, you cannot change your payment method. You are protected from fraudsters with this feature.

The payment threshold can be set as low as $10.

How Does ClickBank Work?

It is important to read up on the language used on ClickBank affiliate programs before you choose affiliate programs.

To master ClickBank terminology, familiarize yourself with these terms:

• Gravity – The number of affiliates who sold this product successfully in the past 12 weeks is shown here. Your chances of success with that program increase as the gravity increases. There are 600+ daily updates. If the product has at least a 50 gravity score, it is a safe bet.
• Initial $/Sale – According to this number, an affiliate’s initial sale is worth approximately $680 on average, excluding rebills.
• Avg %/Sale – The average affiliate commission percentage for an initial sale as well as rebilling commissions.
• Avg %/Rebill – In a recurring billing product, this represents the average affiliate commission for a sale, which includes only the rebill commission.

Gravity score, out of all metrics, is the most crucial. It tells you what’s hot right now. The rest are secondary metrics.

In most cases, affiliate marketers try to find the product with the biggest commission rate and highest gravity.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

4 Tips to Make Money With ClickBank

Like anything worthwhile, making money on ClickBank won’t be easy, especially at the beginning.

If you want to cash in big on ClickBank products, you’ll need creativity, trial and error, and patience.

Here are four tips to help you get started:

1. Don’t obsess over sales dollars and gravity

It is not necessarily the product with the highest gravity or Av$/Sale you should focus on. The 

competition for programs with extremely high Av$/Sale is stiffer.

They are also usually less likely to convert. Those in the middle are more likely to convert.

Strike the right balance.

2. Include relevant content in your offer

Context is essential to a successful affiliate offer. A high-performance blog post, a newsletter, or a page of products that we recommend could be the place to promote the offer.

Make it clear that you’re not simply listing resources like so many WordPress sites do. Make a post out of your recommendations. This makes the endorsements look more natural.

For specific offers, you can create a special piece of content.

3. Ensure the product and audience are a good match

The temptation to promote any top-selling program is strong when thousands of flashy products are on display.

Two reasons to resist:

You won’t make money if your offers aren’t a good match for your audience. In the end, you’ll regret having been ‘misled’ by ClickBank’s gurus.

You will wear your audience down if your offers don’t resonate. This will lead to ‘offer blindness’. Future offers won’t be accepted. Eventually, they will stop trusting you.

Make sure you join programs that will benefit your audience. Everyone wins. Your audience will appreciate your great product recommendations. You will make a lot of money.

4. Build a YouTube Channel

There are several strategies for ClickBank affiliate marketing, mostly focused on email marketing (creating and sending emails to your list), social media promotion (sharing affiliate links), and search engine optimization (producing quality content to rank on Google).

Nonetheless, there is another traffic source that e-commerce gurus overlook: videos. More specifically, YouTube.

A high-converting ClickBank funnel can be set up using YouTube, the second largest search engine.

Here’s how to do it:

• Choose the right product to promote
• Look for product-related videos on YouTube
• Find out why it’s popular by analyzing the content
• Make similar YouTube videos on your own channel
• Make a video that links to the product. 

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

Cons and Complaints of ClickBank

It’s easy to understand why some doubt the reliability of ClickBank when so many people claim that it’s a scam. 

Let’s examine the biggest grievances people post online.

1. New affiliates aren’t paid by ClickBank

Because commissions aren’t paid right away, new affiliates have been reporting ClickBank as a scam.

However, there’s a good reason for this.

New affiliates were scamming ClickBank for a period of time. This was done by promoting particular products on their affiliate websites and purchasing those products using their links. Their purchase was therefore discounted by 50-75%.

This is clearly against ClickBank’s affiliate marketing policies. Adding a must-have Customer Distribution Requirement put an end to this trend. In order to receive their first commission payment, new affiliates must refer five different purchases.

2. ClickBank’s Products are Useless

It is common for affiliate marketers to promote any product that seems appropriate for their website. Not only ClickBank affiliate marketers are at risk, but all affiliate marketers.

Where does this claim that ClickBank is a scam come from?

Due to the fact that some products on ClickBank are really worthless. However, does that constitute this network as a scam?

As an online retailer, ClickBank offers digital products. Affiliates choose which products they wish to promote, and entrepreneurs design and sell digital products.

There are some digital products that offer a great value; however, many aren’t that useful.

While Clickbank facilitates its marketplace, they are not responsible for its products. Besides, all purchases are refundable within 30 days of making them, no questions asked.

Because of this, affiliates should choose wisely which products to promote.

3. Poor customer service 

You can contact ClickBank Customer Support if you have questions about a ClickBank purchase or a charge on your bank statement. 

However, as reported by the Better Business Bureau, ClickBank sometimes takes up to seven days to respond to customer emails.

You can, however, call ClickBank directly.

If you are calling from the US, dial 1-800-390-6035. Dial 1-208-345-4245 if you’re calling from outside the United States. 

Furthermore, if you are an affiliate of ClickBank or a vendor on ClickBank, you can chat with the ClickBank Client Success team from 7:30 AM – 3:30 PM (except for US holidays) Monday through Friday. In your sales account, you can find the chat widget at the bottom right corner.

4. Inactive ClickBank Accounts are Charged. 

If you haven’t earned anything for 90 days, you will be billed $1 per day, $5 per day for 180 days, and $50 per day for 360 days.

However, that only applies if you have money in your account. Having a zero balance on your account does not make you indebted. The payment threshold I have set is just $10, so if I stop making sales at some point, I might lose just a few bucks.

Dormant Account charges are triggered only after you’ve made a sale, and then only after your account hasn’t seen a sale for 90 days. 

5. Quality Programs Face Fierce Competition. 

If you ask me, this is a good problem. Why do I say that? It is because the more competition there is, the higher will be the amount of searching as everyone is promoting the product.

Thus, if you can master advanced SEO (search engine optimization) techniques and rank your article on the first page of your target keywords, you might get sales automatically.

This is what you can learn for free from my #1 recommended affiliate training platform.

Pros of ClickBank

1. Signing Up is Easy.

Creating an account is straightforward. The process of signing up for a ClickBank account takes only a few minutes and you can start trading without filling out complicated paperwork or going through administrative hoops.

2. You Can Be Both a Vendor and Affiliate

The network is free to join. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to make money on affiliate marketing.

Most affiliate marketing networks allow you to sign up as either a vendor or an affiliate. You can participate on ClickBank both as a vendor and a marketer, so you can maximize your earnings.

3. High Commission Rates

Good Commission Rates. Commissions from ClickBank can reach 75% and even 100%. It’s also fast, so you can spend less time waiting for that you-know-what you’ve been eyeing.

You will find dozens of affiliate products to choose from in every possible niche, so your options are endless.

4. Low entry barriers

When it comes to affiliate marketing networks, ClickBank is one of the most user-friendly options. Setting up an account is free, and in just 15 minutes you can set up your first affiliate link. And unlike many other affiliate marketing networks, you do not need permission from the seller to promote anything here.

There are no red tape or confusing forms for you to fill out. Your name, country, phone number and password are all you need. After you select a product you want to promote on the marketplace, you can create a personalized affiliate tracking URL (also known as HopLink) by clicking the Advertise button.

5. Obtaining Marketing Education

You do not have to be a marketing expert to join ClickBank, although it certainly helps. Spark, an affiliate marketing training program, is available on the site. You’ll have access to high-quality training resources where you can learn everything from affiliate marketing basics to advanced topics like email marketing, copywriting, advertising, and even starting your own business.

Classes are taught by people who already know the subject well. So, for just $47 per month, you can go from being a complete novice to a competent user. What’s more, you can complete the self-study courses whenever you have time.

6. Robust Statistics & Reports

With ClickBank, you no longer have to take a chance when deciding what to advertise. Before you decide to advertise a product, you can quickly and easily view the key metrics about that product. In addition, each offer on ClickBank is assigned a Gravity Score.

The Gravity Score indicates the percentage of affiliates that have generated revenue over a 12-week period. Most of the weight of the score is based on how many products have been sold recently. If you want to know whether the product is worth marketing or not, take a look at the Gravity Score.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

Any Better Alternatives To ClickBank?

Today, ClickBank is considered one of the top affiliate programs online due to the variety of products and high payout rates – with top affiliates earning up to 75% in commission. 

It’s great news that ClickBank isn’t the only name around. Alternatives to ClickBank have helped affiliate marketing reach new heights.

Here are a few ClickBank alternatives that offer equal value.

CJ Affiliate

Affiliate programs like CJ Affiliate are among the largest around, as well as ClickBank. There are millions of companies, products, brands, and services available for online promotion at this site. 

Among the products they offer is everything from technology devices to pet accessories and restaurants.

Barnes & Noble, J. Crew, and Office Depot are among the brands represented. The commission varies depending on the program.

CJ requires you to apply for each offer like Rakuten. Even if you’ve been accepted into the network, you need to complete this step. If you’re not used to it, this can be a frustrating obstacle to overcome.

CJ continues to be the best option for buyers due to its access to large brands. Despite its age, this affiliate network continues to deal with a wide range of premium brands that do not advertise elsewhere.

ShareASale

Another site similar to ClickBank is ShareASale. Affiliates can use this site to promote thousands of products, brands, and other websites. This site has an excellent payout rate, as well as a reputation for trustworthiness.

They represent brands such as Reebok, Sally Beauty, and Etsy. Commissions vary according to the program.

Almost any type of physical product can be found here as an affiliate offer. Viator, WP Engine, and the NBA Store are represented.

Affiliates with low performance may be kicked off ShareASale for insufficient balances due to its policies. Warnings aren’t always given.

If you are interested in starting to offer physical products, choose ShareASale. With so many affiliates offers available, this network is often referred to as an alternative to Amazon.

Affiliate Window

Affiliate Window, like the other ClickBank alternatives, offers affiliates thousands of products and services to promote online. Furthermore, Affiliate Window offers affiliates of different levels of experience the opportunity to participate in a global market. There are big brands represented by Affiliate Window, including Under Armour, Burton, and HP.

Rakuten

Rakuten offers an affiliate program that is highly regarded. Additionally, they offer affiliates an easy-to-use dashboard that displays earnings, clicks, and conversions information. Eight years in a row, this affiliate network has been voted the mThink’s best affiliate marketing network.

However, this affiliate marketing network only provides commissions on direct sales, and it only deals with physical goods. It may be more convenient to choose between information and physical products on another network if you prefer this.

Moreover, this network’s affiliate registration process is more difficult than other networks’. In order to get attention from advertisers, your website must be popular. There is more information to gather and it takes longer. After joining successfully, each affiliate offer must be applied for separately.

Amazon Associates

Since Amazon Associates is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world, it is a great place to start. With millions of products available, you’re sure to find a product that appeals to your niche. As long as you’re a member of their affiliate program, you can promote anything.

Amazon has a tiered commission structure ranging from 1% to 10% per sale. The structure is based on product categories, with Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty, and Amazon Coins paying out the highest commissions.

There is a physical product for almost every need on Amazon. Even though some don’t offer the highest commissions, you can build a website around selling them.

There’s no warning when Amazon exercises its discretion. The platform can ban you without stating a reason. In spite of their high performance and good reputations, high-performing affiliates often struggle to survive.

Choosing Amazon means that you will have the flexibility of being able to sell a wide variety of physical products. Promotions for digital and physical products are endless.

JVZoo

Affiliate programs like JVZoo have a large affiliate network that has 800,000 active advertisers. Their offers may resemble those of ClickBank because they focus on digital info products.

The JVZoo affiliate network connects affiliates with vendors. Affiliations and vendor relationships are facilitated by it without interference from high up. The result is that vendors have a great deal of control over how they design their promotions and where they choose to work with affiliates.

If you choose this network, you can make use of the experience you have gained working with digital offers at ClickBank. You can use the offers to work with any content you’ve already built out for CB offers.

A unique payment option available on this network allows commission payouts to be collected instantly. Only some affiliate offers can use this feature because it must be activated by the vendor.

It will be much like switching from Clickbank to JVZoo for affiliates. You start here with a head start since CB offers the same kinds of products. When it comes to selling digital products, it might be the best choice for you.

Beginners also love this network because of its friendliness. You won’t have much trouble getting accepted here, compared to other Clickbank replacements on this list. If you do join this network, you will have access to lots of resources that will assist you in getting started.

Market Health

The health/beauty niche is the focus of Market Health, an affiliate marketing company with years of experience. The ClickBank alternative offered by this company will be different from what we are used to.

There is still a large number of products to sell, despite its narrow niche. The company managing the network also manufactures some of these health products.

Market health offers a physical product-focused network focused on health foods. Vitamins and supplements are among the products shipped directly to consumers, as are powders and creams.

Small affiliate networks have a tendency to maintain good relationships with their partners. The rates here are higher than those on some other networks because publishers with strong websites can negotiate higher rates.

If personalized attention is what’s most important to you, choose this Clickbank alternative. Affiliate networks that sell their own products are few and far between and this is one of them.

PeerFly

PeerFly is an affiliate network focused on CPA offers, with a strong user platform and well-curated offers. The products you can promote include those in many different niches including health, fashion, and eCommerce. B2B offers are also available.

On the network, commission structures and affiliate offers are as diverse as the offers. With some advertisers, you can work out revenue share deals or CPS offers.

PeerFly has fewer affiliate offers than Google AdSense, but it has plenty of offers other than those that are digital.

PeerFly’s platform has been praised by many users in reviews. With its easy navigation and rich features, it was developed in-house by PeerFly.

Choose PeerFly if you want to start promoting CPA offers (but also have the flexibility to experiment with others on the same platform), and you want to mainly generate leads. With PeerFly, these kinds of affiliate offers will be easier to find.

Advertisers, publishers, and offers chosen by this network must be serious about its rules. Affiliates starting here may find it challenging, but if your experience is decent, you will encounter fewer low-quality offers.

eBay Partner Network

A vast affiliate network similar to Amazon’s, but eBay’s affiliate program operates differently.

Unlike Amazon, eBay rewards you based on the amount of traffic you drive. It could either be a better bargain or a worse bargain, depending on the product.

In light of eBay’s emphasis on CPCs, the traffic requirements for affiliates are higher than those for most programs. The rest isn’t too hard as long as your website has traffic.

When buyers follow your link but don’t trust the website however they end up on, they might stop short of converting. There are millions of accounts on eBay, a well-known website.

CPC commissions can be earned by selling physical goods through the eBay partner network. You could promote plenty of products and some of them come with high commission rates for affiliates.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

Is ClickBank A Scam?

ClickBank is NOT a scam.

ClickBank affiliate programs are sometimes of poor quality. Overhyped junk products are easy to come by. But that’s only half the story.

It’s a megastore filled with lots of good programs too. ClickBank’s like a mega supermarket with everything under one roof.

Don’t like what you see? It’s not a problem. A different aisle awaits you. Soon you’ll find what you’re looking for.

The number of digital products available from entrepreneurs all around the world makes it easy to find the perfect one.

That’s why the platform is used by millions of entrepreneurs. ClickBank has been working with affiliates and vendors for decades.

However, your reputation ultimately hangs in the balance. Make sure you double-check other people’s products before you promote them.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing

ClickBank Review: Final Verdict

As we can see, ClickBank is not a scam. For affiliate marketers, it can be an important tool in earning money.

You may not be able to earn your main income from ClickBank, but it can contribute significantly to your affiliate marketing income.

However, if you want to take your affiliate marketing to the next level, you must learn how to drive organic traffic to your affiliate site.

The more you know about keyword rankings, SEO metrics, and backlinks, the better you will be able to compete.

All these valuable insights can be learned for free from my #1 recommended platform.

How To Make A Full-time Passive Income With Affiliate Marketing?

To make a full-time passive income from affiliate marketing, you need to master advanced SEO techniques so that you can quickly scale your affiliate business.

 My #1 recommended platform to learn advanced SEO is called Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is an all-in-one platform for building your affiliate marketing business from scratch.

When you join Wealthy Affiliate, you can get access to the first-class web hosting service, keyword research tools, community support, comprehensive training, writing tools, and other software to help you build an online business step-by-step.

You can register a free account with Wealthy Affiliate, which enables you to get started with affiliate marketing right away without paying a penny.

If you like the platform, you can then upgrade to the premium membership to get access to everything on the platform. There are no upsells afterwards.

But How Much Can You Earn with Wealthy Affiliate?

A 21-year old student from Wealthy Affiliate was able to earn $7,395 in just 1 week, which means he made more than $1k a day…all while applying what is taught inside Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate has a long history. It has been established for 15 years and there are many success stories in the past decade.

Actually, Wealthy Affiliate has more than a million members so far, so you can see how popular this platform is.

To give you more examples, here are some of the other inspiring success stories of Wealthy Affiliate members.

If you don’t trust my words, you can go to Trustpilot to see what the members have to say:

At the time of writing, Wealthy Affiliate is rated 4.8 out of 5, which is excellent. It’s incredible to get such a high rating with more than 400 reviews.

If there are only two or three good reviews, you may say they are fake reviews. But you cannot fake it when there are more than 400 reviews there. Remember, Trustpilot has a very intelligent system to detect fake reviews.

Where to Join Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate has a very simple pricing scheme. It has a free and premium membership. The premium membership only costs $49/month or $395/year.

If you want to feel about Wealthy Affiliate, you can sign up for the free starter membership here (no credit card required). You can select to be a free member with no time limit.

And as a starter member, you can get instant access to the community, live chat, over 500 training modules, 2 classrooms, networking, commenting, 1 free website, access to the keyword tool.

You can enjoy all these values without paying a penny.

So I strongly recommend you to register a free account and see it yourself.

Recommendation: Best Learning Platform For Affiliate Marketing