One of the more popular, if not, the most popular Affiliate Marketing company on the Internet is without a doubt Clickbank. They boast of paying their clients (marketers) "on time, every time for ten years". Clickbank is fast approaching 1.4 billion dollars paid to their clients.
Clickbank is a website for buyers and sellers of digital products, ie. software or any digital media. As a client you can buy, sell or promote all kinds of products that are hosted by Clickbank, and they aggregate the sales commision for all products transacted through their services. For example, while surfing online I came across a digital ebook that an affiliate marketer was promoting. I read the sales pitch page, became interested and purchased the product.
The product in question was of course about affiliate marketing. The author promised a no hype, no nonsense expository on the subject. So far he seems to be holding to his promise. More on this in later posts.
What piqued my interest, in addition to the subject matter was the fact that the sales pitch page offered the ebook for free, however once downloaded, I needed to purchase a license key to open and read the book. I wanted to see how this process worked so I downloaded the book, clicked on the hyper-llink within the ebook, and was taken to a Clickbank purchase page. From there I purchased the license key, entered it into the book and began reading about the author's experience and knowledge of affiliate marketing.
Sounds crazy right? I got taken, hunh... Well, maybe. But consider this, the original author was more than likely not the person who sold me the ebook. It was more than likely an affiliate of his, some annonymous person he partnered with through Clickbank who promoted the book, sold it to me and shared in the profit the book produced.
What's so amazing about that? Well, as I stated earlier, Clickbank alone has generated nearly 1.4 billion dollars over the last 10 years performing these kinds of transactions. There are thousands of companies on the Internet managing their own affiliate programs, or having 3rd party companies, such as Commision Junction managing affiliate programs for them, generating 10s if not 100s of billions of dollars anually in online revenue.
Without a doubt there are many scammers out there, preying on peoples desire to get rich quick. You can usually spot them by how fervently they tell you how easy it is to get rich online with their "easy system". The reality is, is that it takes a good deal of effort and consistency to make money online. Just try one of those easy, get rich systems and see how much effort it really takes.
Whether I got taken or not remains to be seen. As I explore affiliate marketing further, I will refer to this ebook, detailing my experiences with what it teaches. And, as the title of this blog states, I will make no positive recommendations consering it, until I've Tried It Myself!
