If you’re curious about the difference between being a Clickbank vs Amazon Affiliate, this article will give a breakdown of the differences between the two platforms. This should give you some more insight into which one would be the right platform for you to start out your affiliate marketing career.
Clickbank Affiliate – digital products, high commissions
As an affiliate with Clickbank, you’ll be promoting digital products that have very high commissions – many up to 75%.
Most Clickbank products are guides that the buyer can download onto their computer or digital subscription services.
Because the cost of producing digital products is much lower (no raw materials, shipping, physical inventory, etc) the product owners are able to pay their affiliates much larger commissions than with physical products.
This is good for you as an affiliate, as you don’t have to make as many sales to earn a lot of money. Also, many products have recurring commissions since they are digital subscription services. That is good because you can keep earning money on sales month after month, rather than just a one-off from a marketplace like Amazon.
Clickbank is also a good choice for beginners because it will accept basically anybody to promote their products. Many affiliate programs can be picky with who they accept – they’ll want your website to already have a certain amount of traffic and be making sales already – but not Clickbank. They’re not picky.
Here are some product examples you can find in the Clickbank marketplace:
Rocket Spanish
This product doesn’t have a recurring model, however, it’s a pretty big-ticket sale as your average commission is just over $100. If you’re promoted this product, you wouldn’t have to make a ton of sales to earn a lot of money from it.
Cat spraying no more – how-to guide. Average commission $23.
With an average sale just shy of $24, this product that is supposed to fix your cat spraying problem doesn’t have a huge commission payout, however, it’s still pretty decent. You’d only have to make 4 sales per day to earn around $100.
Keto Resources
Pretty similar to the cat spraying product – no recurring commissions but pretty decent commission for a single sale.
Reading Head Start
Lastly, here’s an example of a product that does have a recurring subscription you’d be able to earn commission on month after month, so the $135.66 is the average lifetime commission total you’d get from making one sale. If you look within the stats, the average initial sale payout is $39.23.
Language learning, dieting, animal training, educational products, gaming products – there are a lot of niches within Clickbank.
However, Clickbank is pretty limited with what you will be able to promote, as there’s not a ton of good products to find in every niche. And within the “make money online” niche – 90% of them are very low quality.
If choosing to use Clickbank, you have to be selective about which products you choose to promote.
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Amazon Affiliate – physical products, low commissions
With the Amazon Affiliate program, you’ll be promoting physical products that have fairly low commissions.
Commissions for Amazon stand between 1 – 10%, with most somewhere around 4%. You can see more detailed information in the chart below:
Certain categories are better paying – luxury beauty products, home, garden, pet products, pantry (food and household staples) and home improvement are between 8-10% commission.
However, as you know Amazon carries basically everything – the Amazon Marketplace currently has over 12 million products. So there’s just a much larger base of products to promote with them than with Clickbank.
You also get paid for everything the buyer puts in their cart, and we all know Amazon is the expert at the sales funnel.
So for example, say you have a website within the cat niche and promote this cat tower. With an 8% commission rate for pet products, you’d get $10.40 for this sale.
However, keep in mind that you also get paid commissions for everything that visitor goes on to buy on Amazon. We all know Amazon is the master at the sales funnel. So if they also add additional cat supplies, and ANYTHING else, you get a commission on that as well! Your $10 commission could turn into $20 easily.
But you’d still have to make several sales every day to add up to anything substantial. Unless you promoted much more expensive products from Amazon!
Another pro of using Amazon’s affiliate program is the trust factor – everybody has heard of Amazon. Most people have bought products from their website before and are familiar with it. Therefore, they’re very likely to go on and buy a product from Amazon.
With Clickbank, it would totally depend on what product you’re promoting as to how well it converts.
So while the commission is lower, the conversion rate will be – in most cases – higher.
So really, this will come down to what you want your niche to be and the types of things you feel comfortable promoting on your website.
Amazon and Clickbank affiliate programs: a quick summary
Amazon:
- Low commissions
- Easy to sign up and get approved
- Trusted retailer, high conversions
- Get paid for all products the visitor buys
- 24-hour cookie
- Have to make a ton of sales to earn good money
Clickbank:
- High commissions
- Recurring subscriptions
- Easy to get approved
- Less trust
- Wouldn’t have to make as many sales to earn a lot of money
Recommended Reading: Is Clickbank a Scam?
Final thoughts – Amazon or Clickbank, what should you choose?
If you’re set on promoting digital products, Clickbank is definitely a great opportunity to earn some money if you promote the right products. You won’t have to make nearly as many sales to earn a decent amount of money as you would with Amazon.
While I think Amazon has a lot of positives about its affiliate platform, the commission rates are pretty low. There are a TON of other options for affiliate programs out there, so if you’re considering using Amazon’s program I’d recommend doing a bit of research into what other options may be out there for your niche products. If you can find another platform with the same types of products for your niche, that has double or triple the commission rate, it might be worth it to check that out…
However, sometimes it can be hard to beat the highly converting Amazon sales funnel and trust that comes along with promoting their products.
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