This review of Clickbank University is probably unlike any you’ll read and this is because:
- I was a member (I left because I found better places to teach me how to make money, ironically through Clickbank).
- I was actually a top affiliate for Clickbank for 2 years.
So the review you’ll get here is pretty in-depth and honestly, Clickbank University is pretty good, but there’s better options.
Quick Report on Clickbank University:
Creator: Clickbank.
Price: $47 a month (as of 2018).
Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.
I enjoyed going through this program and having personally dealt with this organization and done business with it before, I know for a fact that it’s not a scam and is a legitimate place but it does have certain issues that need to be improved upon, including it’s support, the level of training it provides and a few other things.
Overall, I like the program and have rated it favorably.
Like I said, there are some parts that I believe could have improvement, but I’ll get to all those details in this review. But you should also know this:
Clickbank University in a nutshell:
It is a training program that teaches you how to become a successful vendor and/or affiliate marketer with Clickbank (CB) itself. Training goes over things such as:
- Taking your knowledge and turning it into an informational resource to sell on CB.
- Creating a website to sell your product through.
- How to market your product and have affiliates sell it for you.
- Training goes over SEO, PPC, JV’s (Joint Ventures), list building.
- And more.
A majority of the training within this program is in video format. Some training tools have PDF guides available, but not all. This is a mixed bag if you prefer video training over reading or vice versa.
Additionally there is a community where members can share information, make partnerships, share advice and become acquaintances. There is also an option to communicate with both the support staff of CB University and it’s main people, Adam & Justin. The community is growing which is very good.
Overall the amount of information you get within this program is very vast and it is very easy to understand most of it. Beginners to online marketing should have no problem with this program (understanding the lessons and what to do).
My quick success history with Clickbank summarized:
As I’ve said before, I’ve done business there and in fact, I’ve made $500,000 on Clickbank promoting some of their products.
I love this program and that money I made helped me pay for school and enjoy other awesome benefits.
However, while the opportunity to make money came from Clickbank itself, the training I got to actually achieve those results came from elsewhere.
The training I received came from a program called Wealthy Affiliate, and it taught me the key ways to make money online as an affiliate marketer, which I applied to promoting stuff on Clickbank.
To this day, I still promote products from that place and as long as they keep evolving, I’ll keep promoting what they have inside.
But I have to say that if you wish to have success with Clickbank or promoting anything online, the very same Wealthy Affiliate program I suggested is the best choice to learn how to do this too:
The real purpose of Clickbank University:
So just to show proof that I did join this place, I’ve included a receipt to the right:
But to the point (purpose), I believe CB wants to have more affiliates promote it’s products so they in turn can make more money, but the good news is that with the very favorable commission rates there, it’s a win-win.
You see, CB University is a part of Clickbank itself, which is a business where people who have products to sell (Vendors) can have affiliates (middlemen) sell those products for them. Clickbank is the business which connects these 2 groups together and keeps a small portion of the profits made by both parties. This is how they make money.
The benefit of Clickbank is that it usually has very high commissions being offered to promote products. Their customer service is good, their support is excellent and the opportunity within this program certainly does exist.
I’ve personally been doing business with them as a vendor & affiliate for a number of years. They are always polite, pay people on time and answer questions promptly.
Here are things Clickbank University can improve upon:
No program is perfect, and frankly, not even Wealthy Affiliate, my top rated program is either (although it gets closer and closer every time), but regarding Clickbank specifically, here are a few things I though could use improving:
1) There are a lot of products within CB that I would personally consider low quality.
Those products have a high percentage of refunds. In fact, I’ve reviewed a few of them on this site and called Clickbank out on it for that. Now this isn’t a reflection of Clickbank itself, but rather the sleazy independent vendor who wanted to join CB and make money with them.
What is good in regards to this con is that CB is making improvements to their service. Currently they rank products on certain measurements which does sort of “filter out” the bad programs. But still, I have found that they let too many low quality products in and they need to make better filters.
2) One “complaint” I have is that much of the training within the program is very broad and could be a lot more developed.
For example they offer you some great ideas whether as being an affiliate marketer or vendor, but at the same time, they don’t offer a lot of these ideas of don’t explain other various ways to succeed within the field.
It’s sort of like they give you a plan A and in some cases a plan B approach to certain things, but what happens if that’s not for you or there’s no ways to. I really believe they need to offer more in-depth training on things like:
- SEO
- The importance of keywords and how to find them.
- More overall methods to generate sales as an affiliate/vendor.
I know from experience with CB that they are working to constantly add/improve their business so I’m almost certain that this will be done sometime. Regardless, the main purpose of Clickbank University is as I said earlier to help you become successful with CB itself whether as an affiliate or vendor and I do believe it works.
Inside the members area of Clickbank University:
Here is a screenshot of what you’ll see when you enter this place:
Now let me give you a summary of each place:
Home: You get a welcome message and are told where to go and what to do next.
Orientation: Helps you set up a profile as a member of Clickbank University. You also get some good starting tips.
Site Builder: Currently it’s in the process of being finished so it’s not up yet but this feature will help you build sales pages very quickly if you are going to be a vendor for Clickbank.
Beginners: 8 courses, each 1 week long that walk you in a step-by-step way on how to become a vendor on CB. You will basically learn how to take a passion/hobby, find your niche, make a sales page out of it and market it on CB. Most of the training within this area are done in videos.
Advanced: Gives you more lessons on being a successful vendor with Clickbank.
Affiliates: Teaches you how to become a successful affiliate with CB. You learn how to do list building, PPC & SEO advice is given in addition to social network marketing tips. On this part, I didn’t really agree with what they said about SEO. They were giving a short video talking about the benefits of doing backlinking.
There are many ways to do backlinking, good & bad. What they explained was OK, but I just believe there are much better ways to do SEO. My only issue with this part was that some of the training isn’t exactly “complete”. I think it could use more work and I’m sure they’ll be making improvements soon.
Live Classes: Just as the name suggests, you get to see classes hosted by CB elites where they share tips. There’s also recordings of previous classes also available. When I looked, there were only 2 recordings. This is because they are still new.
University Talks: It’s actually similar to the Live Classes feature as Adam & Justin talk to you about their experiences online here.
Done for you: They say they’ll build a website for you based on your interest and help you set it up. There is no set price for this offer which is technically a good thing. You basically select how much you’re willing to spend on this. This will range from $500-$10,000.
On a personal note, I strongly feel there’s no need to use any king of done for you type services as you can do this on your own. As long as you have proper guidance, you can become very successful without investing a lot of money to have someone do it for you. Plus you’re also in full control if you do it on your own.
Community: Basically a forum type feature where you get to communicate, introduce and partner up with people who are also members of CB University. You can share information, creating JV’s and more. It’s a good feature of the program as it helps people support and guide one another.
Pros:
- Very much oriented to newbies.
- A community option available to communicate with fellow members.
- Ability to rate training and ask questions of support on each lesson.
- Good support from what I’ve seen.
- Training ranges from all sorts of important aspects of online marketing: PPC, SEO, Vendor/Affiliate, List Building & more.
- Originally it was priced at $97/month, but now it’s $47/month. Learn more.
- There are many benefits of doing business with with CB as a vendor or affiliate.
- Clickbank itself is an honest company with great support.
Cons:
- Some of the training could be improved upon by adding more options and tutorials.
- I feel there could be better details on some of the lessons as a few felt a little too broad for me.
Final Rating: Clickbank University
Green Light (It’s legit!)
5 out of 10 stars. Good overall program, legitimate and a FAR second to my #1 recommendation Wealthy Affiliate.
Final thoughts:
I really liked Clickbank University. It is NOT a scam and has good training. I did learn a lot of new things.
What I do know about Clickbank from my experience with them in the past is that they are an honest company and are striving to achieve betterment of themselves so the cons that I did notice within the program are things I’m sure they are working to improve upon.
That being said, I still believe that Wealthy Affiliate is far better in terms of price, support and training (and all the freebies like 2 websites):
But in spite of all that, CB University is still a program I would definitely recommend to anyone (as a second alternative) who is either getting started in internet marketing, wanting to take their passion to the world and do business. There are MANY benefits of having an online business whether as a vendor or affiliate and it doesn’t have the same red tape you’d encounter in the offline world.
If you have any questions about this program, please let me know and I will be more than happy to answer it :). I hope this review has been helpful to you.
Update: 5/27/18: 2 reasons why my top pick beats Clickbank University:
So ever since I first reviewed CB University, and said it was second to my top pick, a lot of things have changed:
1) CB University has evolved a bit since the last time I covered it. It offers more valuable stuff now in terms of training.
2) But in terms of evolution, my #1 recommendation has evolved too, and by a lot I must say. It now holds over a million members, has even more training to offer and people can check it out for free.
Overall the original gap between the 2 programs that I mentioned has actually widened a bit. While CB University is good and has evolved, it has not evolved as much as my #1 recommendation has.
I upgraded my rating of CB University from 6 out of 10 stars to 7 out of 10.
But I also upgraded my #1 recommendation, Wealthy Affiliate, from 9 out of 10 stars, to a perfect 10 out of 10. That’s how good it’s gotten.
While I like both programs, I can tell you that Wealthy Affiliate will give you better training, more tools and a bigger community to get support from, including access to professionals like myself who work online full time. Learn more about Wealthy Affiliate.
And as I said before, you can actually use the training inside Wealthy Affiliate to promote Clickbank products. The beauty of this is that the training itself there is very open ended so you can choose to promote CB products, Amazon products, or any other affiliate network you wish to do business with, the system works all around and like I’ve said before, using the training inside Wealthy Affiliate, I’ve promoted numerous Clickbank products, with amazing success over the years.
Hi Vitaliy,
I recently had some experience with CBU, so I thought I would chip in. I am not a big fan of video marketers probably because they tend to over exaggerate most of the time and that was what I encountered in their training from the beginning.
More importantly, they spend a lot of time telling what one should do INSTEAD OF showing you how to do it right. The only time they go into details like the step-by-step is when they walk through the Clickbank Builder, an upsell product they want you to buy for $297.
The training still focuses on squeeze page building technique which can be a bit misleading for newcomers and I feel it doesn’t always apply the same way for all the niches. The Q&A forum wasn’t that impressive either. Many questions were left unanswered and you can actually read a lot of negative feedback right there. Yet the team doesn’t seem to do anything about it.
Doesn’t look like they have improved on anything. It’s still the same 2.0 version, four years after this review was published.
Thank you for the update Cathy! I will adjust the review based on this comment! It was indeed a long time since I looked at CBU and it appears based on what you said, that the quality has eroded since I was a member.
I have heard of CB before but I did find out that they allowed too many low-quality products, so I didn’t bother to sign up to promote them; I didn’t want to promote products, or even make money on products that are low quality. I would not be able to sleep at night!
However, I am glad that they are improving things and as such, this training for CB is looking more attractive! I will definitely be looking further into this program!
They always had that issue with low quality products Reyhana, but it didn’t change the fact that CB itself is a completely legitimate business. You just need to find good products to promote there and I will say, there were always there, and lately it’s gotten better.
Excellent review. From what I have read, this would be more suited to some one who is experienced with online marketing than a newbie. The reason I say this is the cost of a website. I do not remember seeing anything about owning your own domain with ClickBank. You did a very good job of explaining CB to us. It was very informative and accurate. I appreciate the amount of time and effort that you put into the research necessary to write such a good review.
Jerry
Hi Jerry, I do believe CBU talks about creating websites within the training, it’s just been a long time since I logged into it and I haven’t been a member for a long time.
Wow, thanks for this wonderful review of CBU. I had actually received an invitation email from them not too long ago. While I will say it is tempting and after reading this review, it has increased favor-ability in my eyes, I still prefer to stick with where I’m at right now which sure you probably know what that is. What kind of products do they teach is best to sell at Clickbank?
It’s whichever products best fit your niche topic Brian, that or creating your own products and hosting it on the CB network.
That’s good to know. You said there are a number of low quality products listed on Clickbank. Does it seem like most of these products are in the MMO niche? It really is surprising that Clickbank would allow a lot of low quality products on their platform especially if there are a lot of refunds and unsatisfied customers. I guess it gives someone else a chance to really shine with a better quality product.
I could be wrong on this, but I do believe that there is a criteria on CB in which your product cannot have above a certain refund rate, otherwise it is taken down from their marketplace. But CB doesn’t exactly go around and look through each product as deeply as they want and even if they do, it’s a subjective thing on whether or not it’s good, so they let the affiliates promote it and see if people refund it or not, then determine by those numbers if it’s worth keeping on their network.
But what you said about bad products going away and others popping up to make up for it is true. I have to say in regards to your question on if the lowest quality products on CB are generally in the MMO niche, I’d say not really. I actually reviewed some good ones over the years:
Chris Farrell’s Membership.
Affilorama.
Clickbank University 2.0.
Niche Profit Classroom.
Those are just 4 of possibly others out there. But still as good as they were, the better choice in every circumstance was Wealthy Affiliate and it’s not part of the CB network.
Thanks for your honest review of Click bank University. Before joining Wealthy Affiliate, I was accepted as an affiliate with Clickbank. Well, I forgot everything about it and just focused on the training at WA, built two websites on different niches and started filling them up with relevant content.
It never really occurred to me that I can actually promote Clickbank products in my websites. I’m just wondering if my account with them is still active because I haven’t sold any of their products yet. What do you think?
I don’t see why not Alice, training in WA also does include using Clickbank and being an affiliate for them.
Great review. I have always wondered about Clickbank university and whether or not the information provided can just be found on the web (with enough research).
This type of training is important and valuable, as for a new person putting all the pieces together and finding information can be quite overwhelming. This is really good for people who want to eventually create their own digital product for other marketers to promote.
Do you know if there is similar type of training (for affiliate marketers) who are starting out and don’t necessarily want to spend as much money?
Hi Cem. Affiliate marketers will get more benefit out of Wealthy Affiliate in my honest opinion. You can at least get a lot of free training there whereas with CBU, you have to pay right away.
I have paid my monthly fee in ££ Sterling and upgraded and subscribed to the Click bank University Website Builder and have yet to receive any lo-gin details and I am about to claim refunds
I recall their website builder wasn’t up just yet John when I was a member. I would submit a support ticket and ask about this. Clickbank provides great customer support and as for the website builder itself, I wouldn’t wait on it. You can either buy your own domain and make a WordPress site there OR use this tool that I really like: Site Rubix. Check it out.
Thanks for this Vitaliy.
I joined Clickbank some time back but didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Recently I started getting curious about how to go about creating my own products. I got a link through to some of the Clickbank University promo videos and then came across your Youtube review. Really great review and it’s good to hear there’s a lot of good quality training in there.
$97 per month isn’t cheap though. If it’s good material, it could be worth it. Will have to have a think on it. Your information has been a great help to get started though. Thanks!
Not a problem Colm. Glad to see the video helped you. Having had experience with putting up a product on Clickbank before, I can tell you that there’s a lot of pros:
There is a small 1 time fee.
Set up is pretty simple. They basically provide you with special links you add to your sales page which will get you a check out cart.
Customer service is good.
Basically it’s easy to get started.
However there are certain cons:
You need to have a good email list of people making sales for you in order to rise in the ranks against other people in your field on Clickbank’s marketplace. If you can, you can certainly make a lot of money doing so.
The good news is that the training at CB University which goes over becoming a vendor talks about the most successful methods the richest vendors on CB use so you can try to apply it to your business so in that sense, the training is good. It’s also surprisingly simple.