My epic fail with ClickBank
Are you tired of reading about success stories with people making over $20K a day?
Here’s something new: did you notice, during this month, two ads about Farmville secrets and iPhone application development? Here they are:
These two ads belong to ClickBank, an ad network which at the moment made its clients earn more than a billion dollars.
As you can see in these two pictures, I did not earn a cent.
Let’s see what happened:
The reasons behind a failure
When I signed up at ClickBank, I obviously decided to display ads having something to do with my blog… this means programming, gaming or monetizing.
The most “interesting” products I was able to find were:
* A couple of registry cleaners (??)
* A couple of PS3 scam backup system (scam because you won’t be able to play with your backups)
* A dozen ebooks about the ULTIMATE (yeah) way to make money with a blog, or with ebay, or whatsoever
* Some hosting services
The first question was: did I really want my readers to buy a useless PS3 backup system? Come on…
So i opted for a FarmVille guide, even if I am not a FarmVille fan and I hate people posting on Facebook they just found a cripple blind sheep in their damned banana field. All in all FV is a great viral game and I thought a guide would be useful for some addicted players.
The other choice was a guide to iPhone programming… why not… I have a lot of programmers among blog readers.
Why it did not work
Well, every blog has its niche readers. Programmers are quite smart… unlike blogging mogul wannabes, they won’t buy anything from one-page websites claiming to sell the “Ultimate Guide to [put your favorite topic here, obviously all uppercase]”
People like you are looking for real deals from real companies, supported by real case studies… that’s why I was one of the three most important MochiAds referral while I wasn’t able to sell a single ClickBank guide.
So it was a waste of time. Wait. It wasn’t
Thanks to my experience, if you have a programming blog you can improve your ads revenue looking for products you can really review, test and suggest, leaving “ultimate guides” to newbies.
This obviously is my personal story, and results may vary according to the niche you’re talking at.
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This post has 18 comments
Ze Ferreira
I read your blog all days and like you i’m not a farmville fan maybe the other readers are like us :)
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[...] My epic fail with ClickBank : Emanuele Feronato – italian geek and … [...]
Reece
Have you tried some flash affiliate sites?
im currently getting a similar amount of clicks
and around 3-4 lead too sales bringing me roughly $100 a month from 1 affiliate banner
CSS Showcase
I’ve had good success with Clickbank. It differs for every site depending on your topic and readers.
Trevor Stephens
Hi Emanuele!
I’ve been reading your blogs on and off for about a year now…haha but anyway, we must have started ClickBank at about the same time and I too have not made a single cent. Honestly I think it is a waste of time…but that’s just my opinion.
I love all of your posts!
I plan to go to collage for Computer Sciences and also become a Programmer like you!
I just turned 17 on March 11th!
Which is another reason why it is SO hard for me to get very far with all of these ad systems everywhere because you have to be 18 or older!
Well anyway I’m a VERY BIG fan!!!!
like you, I too do not sleep….probably the reason why I’m on and off subject here…ugh, tired!
I’m trying to keep up with about 8 different tuts of yours right now at the same time, while doing them in under 25 days.
Cool thing you posted MJW’s Avoider game tut!
:)
Welp bye!
P.S. Do you think you could suggest any good places to get ads at my age, I’m poor so I need to build a steady income soon, anything would help?
Ali
i++;
me too .. programmer .. not a farmville fan !
Andreas Renberg
So, does that mean those ads were not clicked once… ever?
I don’t really believe that is the case, as I clicked the FarmVille ad. The page I was brought to was crap, and please don’t ask me why I clicked it.
The point is I know I clicked it, and yet you got nothing from it? Are you sure there wasn’t any problem with the system?
We need to set up a national “click the ads day” where everyone spends all day on their favourite sites clicking the ads, supporting starving developers across the globe. :)
“…found a cripple blind sheep in their damned banana field.” That is hilarious. This quote is definitely going on my Facebook.
Emanuele Feronato
andreas, as you can see from the picture, I had almost 1K clicks… listed under “hop counts” report.
The real problem, as you say, was the landing page was crap, and believe me it was one of the best I’ve chosen from…
Andreas Renberg
Oh yes. I see now. At first all I saw was $0, $0, $0, $0, $0. ;)
So if I understand correctly, you only get money for how many orders are actually placed, and not how many clicks the ads received, correct?
If so, that’s a pretty nice deal for you if the items are actually worth buying. :P
Me
Ah well, you can’t win them all! ;)
b_i_d
So why choose ClickBank? There are GOOD Networks out there… ;) I make a living of coding and running community-sites (e.g. http://www.flashgames.info and http://www.gratissoft.de), so obviously I tried a shitload of networks. Many of them are like your experience with ClickBank. But these are the three that pay most of my rent and food: ;)
- For gaming-related stuff a good one is ad2games.com
- For a good collection of pretty much everything else there’s no way around googles adsense
- And of course there is Affili.net, although I’m not sure how big their international program pool is. But the german one has thousands of programs and “big players” too (no “get rich scams”).
The first two are nice because they pay good and handle everything by themselves (finding related ads and putting them on your site).
Affili.net is nice because they have a HUGE collection of pretty much everything.
Jay Hunt
I use Clickbank together with Infolinks on my Blog. You can earn a lot in Clickbank if you just concentrae more on US traffic -
Gianna Patterson
i also use infolinks on 3 of my blogs and it is also earning as much as adsense. “,~
Scott
You’re absolutely right in your assessment that your readers are not interested in this crap. Most of your clicks were probably made out of curiosity. What you could have done, since you have a high ranking website is made a post targeting these products and search traffic sent to those posts may have converted but those posts wouldn’t have fit your site.
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Luke Turner
i also signed up on infolinks and they pay better than kontera-`’
Nickitta
I am a complete newbie (2 months in IM). I made my first clickbak sale last week (and it is a repeat product). I bought a tried and tested product from an affilate. Simple
Tim
Clickbank is a good network. I personally think it’s one of the best. I’m both an affiliate and a vendor (I have a couple of products there). The most important thing is the product fit with your audience.