The first decisions a new affiliate needs to do is choose an affiliate network. You will want to find a network with a good range of product choices, decent commissions, good support and easy to use. Founded in 1998 and has now grown to over 12,000 digital product vendors and over 100,000 active affiliates. Processing over 26,000 transactions daily, and averaging over 700,000 unique visits a month, Clickbank has grown into a major player in the affiliate network market. Your first look you will notice that everything is straight forward requiring only basic address and contact information. The advantage for affiliates is the requirements when you first sign up. Not requiring pre-approval like many networks, With Clickbank anyone can sign up and start promoting. This is great for beginners who are unable to point to an existing website or programs they are can promote. Clickbank also allows affiliates from over 150 countries to sign up – which is more then most. The first thing’s you will want to do is have a look through the Clickbank Marketplace. As I stated above Clickbank has thousands of products that you can choose from. However it is important to take your time in choosing which one to promote. While there are some really high quality products on Clickbank, there are also a lot of sub-par products that should be avoided. One thing to do is check the “gravity” score of a product. The gravity is essentially a calculation that takes into account how many different affiliates have made a sale in this product in the past 8 weeks; the higher the number the better. Most affiliates recommend that you aim for a gravity of at 30 or more. In addition to the gravity, there are a number of other statistics for each product – these are; * $/sale: This is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale of this product, including refunds, charge backs, and tax. * Future $: The average amount an affiliate will make from recurring billing of a single sale after the initial purchase (recurring billing only). * Total $/sale: For one-time purchases, this number is the same as $/sale. For recurring billing products, it equals the average total of the initial sale plus all re-bills, divided by the number of initial sales.* %/sale: Commission rate * %refd: This is the percentage of sales that were referred by affiliates. All this information gives you a snapshot picture of the products – how much you are likely make and how competitive it is. Clickbank has a straight-forward tracking system – there are two kinds of affiliate links you can use; encrypted or standard. Clickbank also has encrypted HopLinks that hide the vendor ID and affiliate ID. Understandable you may want to hide your affiliate ID, but a redirect is a much cleaner way to bring clients. Also it’s important to remember that if someone buys through your link, you affiliate ID will be visible on the payment page. Some merchants set up more sophisticated set-ups for their affiliate programs through Clickbank. Most affiliate marketers recommend setting up affiliate links in the original un-cloaked format. This is just a personal preference, but it is way easier to troubleshoot any problems if you can see what the code actually is! Clickbank pays out commissions every two weeks. One advantage of Clickbank is that you can choose the payment starting point which can be set to as low as $10 – so there is no waiting around if your $1 below the threshold. Payments can be posted by check or direct deposit is available to United States and includes 17 other countries . However in order to qualify for direct deposit you have to receive three paper paychecks within any 12 week period – which can be frustrating at first, but once you qualify you’re set. Commissions on Clickbank are generally good with many over 50%. This means you are rewarded for your efforts in other words if you work you get paid. Now because Clickbank is also a payment network, they process the payment of sales, Clickbank is considerably good at preventing fraud. Merchants aren’t able to try and trick you out of sales (unfortunately this does happen) because Clickbank gives you your cut straight out of the payment. The best advantage of Clickbank is how easy it is to become a merchant. They provide good support material and it’s not expensive to get started. While this might seem out of reach for beginners, you’d be surprised how easy it is to create a product and start selling it. Now Clickbank has an extensive Help Center, with frequently asked questions and informative articles that cover most of the information you need to know to start your affiliate business. There is also a video library with useful video tutorials and a frequently updated blog that provides up to date information, news and advice. In addition they do have a contact form for direct requests. One downside Clickbank has no direct way to contact the merchant unless the merchant provides contact details. However most merchants will have affiliate pages on their site – usually located at www.merchantsitename.com/affiliates, so I recommend looking through their site and seeing if there’s any affiliate resources. So Clickbank is a great network, with simple and easy to use system, easy sign up and good support. While there are a few things that could be improved, overall Clickbank is a really accessible network that should be perfect for people first getting started in affiliate marketing. 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