Questions about ClickBank

I had someone on one of the boards I fequent ask about this, so I thought I would share my answer here. This following is to the best of my knowledge.

On the clickbank thing, the advertisers do have an agreement with YM, but it is not something special, anyone with a website can get the same deal. Heck, you don't even need a website, you could bid for keywords on google adwords and do it that way.

Clickbank gathers together a list of companies willing to pay a percentage of sales etc. for customers brought to their sites. You sign up with clickbank, pick which products or services you would like to promote. They provide linking code for you to use on your website to drive customers to the advertiser website. In the link there is a unique code that identifies that customer as having been "delivered" by you. If they buy something you get a percentage based on the individual terms that advertiser has set forth. Clickbank gets paid by all the advertisers, takes their share, and cuts one check to you. This is not a "bad" system. It cuts down on the management headache for web masters.

I think the problem some people have with this is they feel that STA YM has misrepresented this to the common affiliate who is not as familiar with the internet programs out there. I don't think I had that big of a problem with this. If you have a lot of traffic coming to your site it would be foolish to pass up on what is essentially free money. You get enough people through, someone is going to click on those links and buy something. All you have used up is a little screen real estate.The perception was though that YM was negotiating dedicated deals with companies and loads of cash were to pour into the YM coffers and it just doesn't appear to be the case. The other aspect I think too was that was taking months to "set up" these deals when in reality you can be signed up in just a few minutes.

Now, all that said, take it with a grain of salt, I don't pretend to be the expert in these matters nor did I pay too close attention to the discussions on it because as I said I didn't have that big a problem with it.

posted by steve_o @ 3/15/2006 07:29:00 AM