About
About ClickBank
Founded in 1998, ClickBank provides digital content - e-books, software, memberships and subscriptions - to consumers around the world through an expanding network of product publishers and affiliate Internet marketers. The ClickBank network includes more than 100,000 active affiliates and over 12,000 publishers of 35,000 unique digital products. ClickBank is a privately held company with offices in Broomfield, Colo., and Boise, Idaho. The company employs approximately 45 people.
ClickBank is one of the most visited and highest converting businesses on the Internet, selling something to someone on the planet every four seconds. On an average day, ClickBank processes more than 20,000 orders from more than 200 countries around the world.
In 2007, the company exceeded sales of $1 million in a single day for the first time in its history, and that benchmark has now become a regular occurrence. ClickBank’s 2005 revenues ranked 54th in the Top 100 E-retailers, ahead of such notable companies as Saks Fifth Avenue, Disney Direct and J Crew. 2006 revenues were in excess of $200 million. Revenues have grown more than 50% from 2004 to 2006.
ClickBank’s Business Model
ClickBank was founded on the idea that the Internet could be utilized to create a new and extremely effective marketing and distribution channel for digital products. ClickBank’s success is the result of bringing three key groups together in a unique way:
- Product publishers who sell their intellectual property through the ClickBank eCommerce network;
- Affiliate Internet marketers, focused on promoting and advertising products to consumers worldwide in exchange for attractive commissions; and
- Consumers shopping for unique products not typically found in traditional channels.
ClickBank serves as the trusted intermediary for the three groups, controlling the money flow for each transaction, while providing complete transparency for publishers and affiliates alike including guaranteed tracking of sales, state-of-the-art fraud protection and a totally secure platform.
As a result, ClickBank is a closed network solution - meaning participants, primarily product publishers and affiliates, do not need to augment the ClickBank solution with other vendors. Everything they need to succeed is provided within the ClickBank network. Specifics on the benefits for each group are outlined below.
Product Publishers
The common thread of all publishers within the ClickBank network is that they have a specific expertise and intellectual property with an entrepreneurial desire to sell their products. Some key benefits for product publishers include:
- Unrivaled access to a motivated army of affiliates
- Payment of all affiliate commissions
- Instant global product distribution
- Comprehensive client support
- No need to establish a merchant account or other banking relationship
- 100% effective marketing (publishers pay for marketing exposure only when a sale is made)
- Comprehensive fraud management
Affiliates
ClickBank affiliates are Internet marketers who earn commissions by promoting ClickBank products. ClickBank’s network offers a great value proposition for affiliates including:
- Attractive commission rates
- Comprehensive tracking, analytics and reporting
- Single commission check for all sales from trusted intermediary
- Large variety of products to promote
- Dedicated client support
- No requirement to have individual contracts with each publisher
- Comprehensive fraud management
Consumers
Consumers utilize the ClickBank network in order to purchase specialized, niche products and services that are typically unavailable in brick-and-mortar retail locations. Key benefits for consumers include:
- Unrivaled access to a wide variety of products and services
- Safe and secure purchasing process
- Fast and friendly customer service
- Consumer friendly policies
ClickBank in Action
To illustrate, here is an example of how ClickBank works:
- An author writes an e-book on dieting and chooses to become a publisher on the ClickBank network. He features the book on his Web site and offers a 60 percent commission to ClickBank affiliates who successfully promote the book to end consumers.
- Twenty different affiliates feature the dieting e-book on their sites.
- Each time a visitor to any affiliate site clicks on the product link, the visitor is referred back to the publishers’ site where the product can be purchased though ClickBank and downloaded. ClickBank completes the transaction (processes the payment and screens for fraud, etc.) and pays both the publisher and the referring affiliate.
- ClickBank also processes any sales from the publisher’s Web site that are not referred through a ClickBank affiliate. In those cases, ClickBank pays the publisher only, as no referring commission has been earned.
More Information on Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting Internet-based merchants in which an affiliate (promoter) is rewarded for every sale resulting from his or her efforts. Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing Internet businesses today because it takes advantage of the intersection of three powerful and growing trends:
- The continued rise of Internet commerce.
- The proliferation of high-speed broadband to homes, making electronic distribution (downloads) of even large files fast and easy.
- The accepted change of distribution methods from physical to electronic for a wide variety of products.
The Internet continues to grow and evolve as a central, global economic hub and marketplace, as evidenced by the fact that online sales are expected to top $1 trillion annually by 2010. Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon.com, said “This [affiliate marketing] is simply the first step in the ongoing migration of the $4 trillion global retail economy onto the Net.”
