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A Survey Of The ClickBank Marketplace
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If you have not come across the ClickBank marketplace before you may be asking yourself
what exactly is it? To understand what it is, you need first to appreciate that ClickBank itself
is a financial transaction facilitator for merchants who sell digital goods. That is, ClickBank
helps online merchants with their credit card processing. Moreover, ClickBank restricts itself
to transactions that only involve digital goods. So a merchant can sell, ebooks, software,
or anything else that can be downloaded directly from their site. No physical goods
can be purchased via ClickBank payment forms.
ClickBank decides on one or more appropriate categories for each product or service it accepts into its network, and presents the accumulation of categorized offerings as the ClickBank marketplace. Shoppers can visit ClickBank's site and peruse the listings. However, there is one noticeable drawback to this experience. There are no product images to help the shopper determine the nature of the products, and the product description itself is restricted to about 100 characters or less. This makes the ClickBank marketplace very unattractive to shoppers who might surf the ClickBank site. Addressing this problem was part of the morivation behind ClickBank Hotshots. But this drawback to the ClickBank site design is not really of any consequence to ClickBank itself, because it does not make its money from shoppers that come directly to its web site. Instead, it survives by charging processing fees on the thousands of sales that are herded through its site each day by its large network of affiliates. The Importance Of ClickBank Affiliates When ClickBank laid out its business plans, it made some very smart choices. First, it decided to deal exclusively with digital goods. This means that delivery times are very short--of the order of a minute or two. This allows impulse buyers to make a purchase on the spot. Secondly, because the overhead on the distribution of digital goods is small, merchants can generally afford to offer their affiliates hefty sales commissions. ClickBank affiliates can earn as much as 75 percent of the sale. This means it is very easy to find affiliates willing to promote the products and services found in the ClickBank marketplace. It is the existence of these affiliates, who work hard to connect customer and merchant, that is responsible for ClickBank's success. No purveyors of physical goods, who reward their affiliates with sales commissions that rarely exceed 10 percent, can expect the kind of motivation that inspires ClickBank affiliates. The Quality Of ClickBank Products Now, because anyone with a computer that connects to the internet can create so called info-products, literally anyone, without any credentials whatsoever, can offer their goods through the ClickBank marketplace. This can be good, and it can be bad for the end consumer. There is no doubt that some really great products can be found by inspired authors who are harnessing the power of ClickBank affiliates to enable them to make a living on the web. But there are also a great many less sophisticated types out there who are pushing absolute drivel. The end result is that you need to tread carefully when surveying the ClickBank marketplace for goods. Being unable to easy discern the good from the bad was one of the reasons that inspired the creation of ClickBank Hotshots, where it is possible to submit reviews of items in the marketplace so that offers can learn from your experiences. Some products sell extremely well, and deservedly so. Others succeed, fueled more by the hopes and fears of consumers looking for a step up, rather than by a sound understanding of the true nature of the product being purchased. For this reason, refund rates on ClickBank products can be very high. To save yourself wasted time and expense buying the wrong item, be sure to check whether reviews are available before going ahead and making that purchase. You will not regret spending that little extra time to do so. Use the search engine on ClickBank Hotshots to find the kind of item you are interested in. If it has been reviewed by consumers, it will have a rating displayed next to it. Popular ClickBank Categories ClickBank offers over one hundred different categories of digital goods, with each product typically occurring in half a dozen of these. Here are the main categories, ordered from highest to lowest number of dollars spent within them each month: Money and Employment, Marketing and Ads, Entertainment, Business, Computers and Internet, Culture, Home and Family, Health and Fitness, and finally, Sports and Recreation. The Money and Employment category is far and away the most popular category, with 50 percent more revenue paid out in commissions to affiliates than its closest rival, the Marketing and Ads category. This is not the least surprising, as these two categories are chock full of products that revolve around the theme of money. How to make it. How to makes lots of it. And how to do it with the minimum of effort. These concerns are apparently widespread and people are only too willing to hand over money if they think they will be getting what is advertised. Some of the most bizarre offerings can be found in the Culture category. If you are looking to learn the art of tarot card reading, or you want to spend your evenings astral traveling to the stars, then that's where you should head. Not my cup of tea, but then I always was a square. Culture is also where you can learn the art of seduction from some very questionable self-proclaimed casanovas, or pick up Spanish lessons, or search public databases for dirt on that no good louse of a son-in-law your daughter picked up somewhere between graduating and taking home her first paycheck. Yes, Culture is all about doing the things you wouldn't want the neighbors to know about. Somewhere in the middle of all this, is the Home and Family category. Here is where you learn how to groom your dog, how to sell your house, buy a house, learn to cook, learn to parent, and a hundred other of those day-to-day activities we typically put off until the weekend. Summary Like most marketplaces, ClickBank offers a veritable smorgasbord of offerings, ranging from the low-end half-baked products from the minds of wishful thinkers, right on up to carefully planned and executed products that sell well year in, year out. How to figure out what is what? Well, that's what ClickBank Hotshots is all about. Come on in and get started! |
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