In this article, I will be showing you exactly how I made $500,000 through Clickbank alone as an affiliate. This is a personal success story of mine and I have the certificates and checks to prove it.
Now before I give you my Clickbank income proof and steps to replicate this:
There are:
5 quick things I need to say about Clickbank (and making money online):
1) Clickbank (CB) isn’t the only place I’ve made money through and my golden years with it were between 2009-2012. I still make sales with it and while it’s not the same as before, it’s still a nice added income to my overall profits in online marketing.
2) There are at least 2 other major affiliate networks I work and make sales from: Amazon and Wealthy Affiliate.
3) Wealthy Affiliate is actually the program I am most active with it today (After 2012, I focused less on CB and more on this program). And the profit numbers from this program are inching closer to $300,000 and will soon surpass my CB numbers.
I decided to focus more on Wealthy Affiliate because I like promoting them (they taught me how to succeed with CB and any other affiliate network, and they actually have a free membership option).
4) There are 4 steps I have followed to get the results I’ll show you with Clickbank:
The thing about these 4 steps is that I’ve also used them to make money with the other affiliate networks I talked about and they can be replicated by anyone, even if they are a beginner.
5) While I will be giving you the case studies and success stories I had with Clickbank, I know you’re probably going to be seeking to do the same and the best way in my experience for you to do this is through Wealthy Affiliate, since that is where I got the training to succeed with Clickbank.
Now let us begin!
Here is a video which explains how I got my success with Clickbank:
If you’d like to learn more, let me start/continue with the biggest success story I have to date:
Let me break it down into the specific products I was promoting (and how I was doing it)…
1) I made about $400,000 via promoting a program called:
Fat Loss 4 Idiots as an affiliate marketer.
Although the program is no longer on the network (unfortunately…), it was one of the hottest products back in the day. And I admit one of the major reasons I switched to Wealthy Affiliate and promoting them was because I didn’t find a product on Clickbank in the weight loss department that was as good at this.
With regards to Fat Loss 4 Idiots, here are several ways I made money selling this product:
1) Wrote many articles on Ezinearticles.com, sent traffic to an opt in page, gave them a free eBook on diets and promoted Fat Loss 4 Idiots there.
There was a point where this sales funnel was making me $100-$200 a day. In total, I would say this made me about $20,000.
2) I had a Squidoo lens where I was showcasing reviews of Fat Loss 4 Idiots and linking to it. The way I got reviews was I asked the list I gathered from the method above to talk about it.
This provided me with several $1,000’s in sales.
Note: Method 1 and 2 no longer work since 2011 and up because the site/s are either down, and/or it’s almost impossible to get good traffic out of them. I am mentioning this so that if you choose to copy the methods I used, that you don’t waste time. And if you need to get started with making money on Clickbank or online in general, here is where you should begin.
3) I created a personal website that was promoting Fat Loss 4 Idiots. This website ranked high on Google for search terms related to it’s method of weight loss: Calorie shifting.
It’s still up on Google today (look it up). This led me to make several $1,000 as well and in fact, after Fat Loss 4 Idiots died out, a new opportunity appeared (in 2018), which has since the switch in promotions made me an additional $1,000+ in CB earnings (see it here).
4) There was a very popular diet being promoted on televisions and I used it’s popularity to drive people to buy Fat Loss 4 Idiots. This ended up making me $200k over 2 years. Here’s more specifics about 1 page websites (and a check to prove it). And here’s a check I got:
5) Made about $50,000 promoting the same program through another popular televised product called “Pink Method”. The popularity of this product was short, but there was enough time from the point that it was aired for me to make a 1 page site and funnel people to buy Fat Loss 4 Idiots. I used Bing ads to get traffic to the site that was promoting it.
Again, all of these methods involve promoting the same program, but through different methods and in some cases using other popular products, their traffic numbers and funneling them to promote Fat Loss 4 Idiots.
Side note: Certificates from CB itself (I have 2 of them):
I still have my old CB certificates they sent me when I made them so much money and here they are:
I even once said that these 2 certificates alone would weigh more in credibility than my college degree that I got in business marketing. And many years after I graduated college, I still believe this.
2) Next we have a CB program called “YayFood”.
Unfortunately like Fat Loss 4 Idiots, this program is no longer available. But I did make a few $1,000 promoting it via the 3rd method I listed above. I basically used the same calorie shifting website and promoted both Fat Loss 4 Idiots and YayFood.
This promotion was earning me $8 a month for each sale I made, so it made sense to refer higher volumes of people as those numbers would be recurring and generate a decent, stable income.
3) Made 1 measly sale promoting Affilorama.
This is a program you can still find on Clickbank today, it is a membership site which teaches online marketing. And I actually promote it on THIS website, but I do tell people to try a cheaper, better alternative which is Wealthy Affiliate.
I’ve gotten many people into Wealthy Affiliate while talking about Affilorama, but 1 person decided to try it anyway and purchased a lot of the program’s products which earned me $350 for the sale.
4) I made a few $100 promoting a relationship book.
It was an eBook on getting your ex back by a friend of mine called Travis Sago. This guy is one of the most successful online marketers I know and this eBook was one of the biggest sellers on Clickbank. At the time I had still been using Ezinearticles.com as a traffic source, but I was funneling it to a review of this eBook and it worked out OK.
5) Made about $30,000 promoting 2 diet products: the 2 and 3 week diet.
After Fat Loss 4 Idiots “died out”, I still had interests in marketing weight loss products on Clickbank through a weight loss site. After all, my initial success online was through Clickbank and selling diet products so I didn’t want to throw this away, but I had to find a different product to promote and these 2 options presented themselves as the most popular sellers on Clickbank in the weight loss category.
While they didn’t sell as well as Fat Loss 4 Idiots, I was still able to make decent sales with them through starting a weight loss website and promoting it there. Basically what I did was I took popular diet books that were on Amazon, wrote reviews on them and funneled them to a page where I was promoting these 2 products.
The sales were up and down and I’ve been going through some tests with this lately, but overall, in about 2 years, I made about $20k doing this. Honestly, it’s been more of a frustration than success as I made the mistake of making a weight loss site instead of a niche specific site to sell this product to, so I blame myself in this case.
Another way I monetized promoting these 2 diet programs was through a niche site I talk about in this case study where I made over $1,000. It still ranks on Google and gets traffic, and the page leads people to buy the 2 week diet specifically.
By the way, as popular as weight loss niches are, let me say that if you understand this subject, you can find tons of niches and promote countless different products and programs, not just from Clickbank, but many other affiliate networks.
And to provide this, let me suggest you read this article: 50 profitable niches. I personally wrote this and explain many different and VERY cool niche ideas you can make money with.
But it’s still a success story. And here are recent checks I got from ONLY promoting these:
Some very important things I need to mention:
As you can see from the stories above, I did mention that some of the products are no longer in business. Just as much, places like Ezinearticles and Squidoo are either no longer good to use or just aren’t active anymore (like Squidoo).
If you still seek to make money with Clickbank, I can tell you there’s still tremendous opportunity to do it and rather than experiment with different options, which may or not may fall apart tomorrow, there’s still a VERY good way to make it work for you and it will continue to work for years to come.
All of the sales I made with Clickbank were through their affiliate program and if you want to see the specific methods I used to it, I wrote a blog post on the 5 methods to create affiliate marketing success with Clickbank where I detail all of them.
How to make money with Clickbank in 2020, 2021 and up:
The ideal scenario with which you can make good money is to follow that 4 step formula I mentioned above, which in case you forgot is this:
Every success story I had above always involved following these 4 steps and again, they were taught to me from Wealthy Affiliate.
It’s a great formula because it’s your site that will be the money maker, not the product.
For example: With this set up process, should the Clickbank product fall out of business (which has happened), this formula ensures your online business is still functional and able to promote a new product, be it from Clickbank or elsewhere.
So in my cases, having a website that gets traffic is the money maker because if I’m promoting a Clickbank product there and it stops succeeding, my site will still get traffic and I’ll just have to replace the previous CB promotion with something else (it could also be another CB promotion).
So the important thing is to set up a good online business that follows these steps.
And Wealthy Affiliate is one of the only programs that does this (which is why I recommend it):
Just remember that the key to making good money with CB or any other program is to have the niche website, more specifically a HUNGRY niche site. Once you have that, then finding a product to suite that hungry niches is easy. But always start from the site, not the product!
My recommended program will show you all of this.
Update: Clickbank also offers it’s own training program but Wealthy Affiliate is better.
It is called Clickbank University. When it first came out I didn’t really like what it had to teach and left. But years later, it did update.
However, I would still recommend Wealthy Affiliate instead of CB University because it’s still the best one there is for learning these things and again, it was the same program that showed me the tools to make the $500,000+ from CB.
Hey Vitaliy,
Clickbank is great for digital products and is full of the so-called “evergreen” niches. These are money, relationships, pets, dieting – I might have forgotten some others. What I would like to ask is, do you get a free trial for the products you want to promote, or you need to buy the product to try it?
Thanks for another great post!
Marios
There’s a few options in this regard Marios.
1) Certain products prior to coming out on the Clickbank marketplace get released as a pre launch to affiliates so they can market it. Some vendors will allow you to get or access the product for free prior to the launch so you can market it more intelligently.
You would need to know the vendor before hand and be on their email list though and/or on some sort of VIP list Clickbank has (which they do have, but only for top selling affiliates).
2) Theoretically you can buy the product through your affiliate link and get it for cheap, but I wouldn’t play around with this as it probably violates CB’s TOS.
3) Most of the time, you’d probably need to buy the product if you want to do a more thorough review of it.
Thanks, Vitaliy,
I’ll have that in mind 🙂
Marios
Boy this is some crazy yet inspirational stuff. $400k from promoting just one product, those are stats that anyone would be proud of. The weight loss niche is arguably the most competitive niche out there yet you still came out on top which is absolutely crazy.
I was going to ask if writing articles on those sharing pages would be beneficial today but, I just read one of your comments so I guess that they aren’t. So instead I’m wondering what one tip would you give to someone so that they can get more traffic more website to their websites/blogs? Honestly, getting even one tenth of your success would be an awesome achievement!
Hi Amhil, I’ll give more than just 1 tip:
Create your own niche website and if you already have one, read this article on exactly what to write on it to get traffic.
Secondly, keep an eye out on Google trends for high rising topics and if you find them like I did and they match something you can add to your niche site, do it, then send paid traffic to it from Bing and you may also end up making good sales from this, but even if this doesn’t work out, then the article I linked to you above will really create a stable flow of traffic for your site (and provide you with good sales).
Lol. Tiffany said it’s too bad that Fat Loss for Idiots is not around anymore, and I totally agree. But then opportunities come and go. Great article, thanks for sharing your success story with us. One question though, you mentioned that you wouldn’t even recommend using Hubspages to build a list, why?
Hubpages is not really a good authority site to get traffic from anymore Drian. They also have their own restrictions in place which limit what you can do if you post there. I actually wrote on this here and discuss the limits and why I don’t recommend Hubpages.
I’ve been following you for some time now, and I knew you had quite a lot of success selling different products online, but I didn’t really know the specifics of what sold and how you did it.
I really enjoyed reading this post and seeing how much success you’ve had throughout your years as an affiliate marketer.
I also think this shows what great work ethic you have, plus the willingness to not give up when things don’t work out how you expect them too. Keep up the great work and I look forward to reading more success stories of you in the future.
Thank you Michael!
Hey I really enjoyed this article, those are incredible successes. I do have a clickbank account but i have not used it yet. I do need to see what it is all about. I do have 2 websites but I decided to just focus on my main one until I start bringing in revenue then I will work on the second one. This is really amazing so I need to look into more opportunities I have also started writing eBooks too! Thanks for this article.
No problem Justin.
Well that was really inspiring! I read the whole thing start to finish lol. You seem pretty smart and you definitely seem to have this whole affiliate thing down to a tee. I’m happy for your success, and it’s too bad that Fat Loss for Idiots is not around anymore. Anyway, great read and i hope to see more of your success stories in the future!
Thank you! Yeah if Fat Loss 4 Idiots was still around, I’d be far more focused on a dieting blog.
Great story bud! You know, apart from the huge number of profits and your creativity in marketing, I’m amazed that you actually post the product itself! I’ve never read about any blogger revealing their specific niche, no less the exact product itself. I’m currently an Amazon affiliate and would like to venture into another program. Just wondering, what’s the average product price and profit these CB products have?
Hi Isaac, I typically share a niche site I’m working on in the present and am usually not worried about someone trying to copy the blueprint, because it takes a lot of work to do and copying it is only going to end in failure for the person doing it. I also don’t mind sharing products that have made me a lot of money in the past.
Unfortunately in the case of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots program which was the main money maker from CB for me, it no longer operates with them.
And to answer your question regarding CB products and their commission rates, you’d need to visit the site itself, look at their market place, select a category and look at the best selling products. Each one has a number attached to it which represents the amount it’ll pay it’s affiliates. This can be $10 or it can even be $100+. Some products also have recurring charges so you can get paid every month for each person who buys that product from you.
I have heard of clickback but I didnt realise the amount of money that can be made with it. Thank you for writing about it and for sharing your successes and experiences with it. I will definitely look into it, seeing as I am thinking of starting a new website that will be based around digital products.
Clickbank itself has made billions from my understand and there have been vendors who have become millionaires from creating and posting products there. It’s a VERY large organization Reyhana.
I have been sending my clickbank affiliate link to people but until now, have never made a sale. Maybe it is because I don’t have a website.
There’s a lot of reasons why you haven’t made Clickbank sales yet Charles. You haven’t really given me any details about what you’re doing, but if you really are just sharing a Clickbank affiliate link with people, that’s NOT enough to get a sale.
Before you even consider promoting anything, and that includes any affiliate promotion out there, not just Clickbank, you need to have a website, an email list, a social media channel and/or a YouTube channel that targets a niche audience.
Whichever of these options you choose, you next step is to pick a niche and then promote the Clickbank product through that channel, but even before that happens, the option you choose has to provide value to people. You can’t just promote things to people while offering 0 value. They simply won’t buy it from you.
Let me give you an example:
Suppose you promote a diet eBook from Clickbank to people and you just go around social media channels, YouTube, forums and so on, spamming the link. It won’t work!
But if you create a blog, a YouTube channel and/or some sort of email list that targets people who want to lose weight through dieting, and you actually provide the audience with useful, FREE tips and great value, then through that given value, it makes sense to promote the Clickbank diet eBook you are affiliated with.
But that’s a broad example, and honestly, if you’re still very new to Clickbank and affiliate marketing in general, my recommendation would be to learn this from Wealthy Affiliate. Their training will help you make this work.
I actually got to know Wealthy Affiliate from ClickBank. I started ClickBank first and was exploring ways to use it and stumbled across an article talking about WA relating to ClickBank. It has been months now since I went back there, the money is legit, but the products are not permanent, and if the consumer were to demand a refund, your earnings go with it as well.
Well that’s only fair Levon, otherwise, it would lead to fraudulent purchases being made. In this regard, it keeps the affiliate centered around promoting decent products.
Hi Vitaliy,
Thank you for the process that you uses to increase your sales on Clickbank. I used to use it in the past but I got disenchanted by the many times they took the products away. Not to mention the amount of charge backs that I received. I guess that was my poor judgment with the product selection.
One question on my mind though: Squidoo lenses, are they around? And do they still work? I just finished my eBook so I am going to use it to start building my list. Thank you for sharing the system that you use to increase sales.
Hi David, Squidoo is long gone, it was absorbed by Hubpages many years ago. I wouldn’t even recommend using it now nor Hubpages for that matter. It seems like you may still be depending on very old methods of list building. You would benefit from Wealthy Affiliate in this case, they’ll have you doing the updated stuff to get your site working well and list increasing.
Thanks, Vitaliy for your insight and personal experience with ClickBank. I have actually looked at it and opened an account although I haven’t done much with it since. It sounds like it takes a little due diligence to research a product on Clickbank that has a pretty good success rate. I agree with your assessment of Wealthy Affiliate,
Yeah it’s not always easy to find that good product on Clickbank, but generally the top selling ones in each category are the ones you should pay attention to.
Hi Vitaliy,
Clickbank has been for me, well, let us say more of a big miss than a big hit!. To see such a figure of half a million made in commissions is incredible! Obviously, you have done some very diligent product research and selection to find ones that are going to earn such big numbers as you have mentioned.
Care to share a few product selection tips for click bank products?
In the cases I’ve had, I found a niche topic (product) outside the Clickbank realm that was really popular. Then I looked for a Clickbank product with a low refund rate which was similar to the original product. I then compared the 2 and recommended the Clickbank one, that’s what has worked for me Derek.
The idea of $500,000 is a really mind boggling figure to me and it is definitely a goal I hope to accomplish as an aspiring affiliate marketer.
Did any of the customers that you promoted products to ever have bad experiences with the product? How do you vet these products before promoting it? I hear that clickbank is a place where scams can come up. Not to say that clickbank is a scam itself.
Well there were very few refunds requested. I’d say it was under 1-2% overall. The products I was promoting (Fat Loss 4 Idiots, for example) was very high quality and thus few people wanted refunds after getting it.
When it comes to “vetting”, each product featured on Clickbank shows you a “report card” type thing where it shows how many affiliates make sales with it and what the refund rate is. If its low and the gravity, meaning how many different affiliates make sales with it is high, it typically indicates a high quality product. At most, you can even buy the product if you’re really passionate about promoting it.
Hi Vitaliy,
This is such an inspiring article that makes me want to start immediately with a niche site and promote a hungry product on Clickbank. However, I’m in the MMO niche now and want to build this site up before I start a new one. (But it is very tempting).
Anyway, thanks I really enjoyed reading this article.
Take care!
There are a few good MMO programs on Clickbank worth exploring such as Affilorama and Chris Farell’s membership. But honestly, when it comes to this particular niche, I focus on promoting Wealthy Affiliate as it’s recurring commissions and retention rates of members is highest, so in the long run, it offers the most benefits.
Hey Vitaliy,
I have to say this post was a real eye opener for me. I have always thought that making money as an affiliate is promoting one product through search engines and trying to rank the highest for keywords searched for it.
But seeing you can use the popularity of another product could send more traffic and sales your way was amazing. So you’d say an expert affiliate marketer should be very open minded, right?
Yes absolutely Dave. You can’t just rely on having one product review rank high on Google because that itself is rare and even if you do make it, there may not always be enough traffic there to get huge sales. However, there are always big products in just about every niche market, especially hungry ones and you can always piggyback of those products and promote your own.