Clickbank and Google are among the biggest names in the industry. In this report we try to analyze whether they can be used in conjunction to build an online business. We start off with a brief introduction to both Clickbank as well as Adwords. We will then explore the opportunities and how best to capitalize on it.



Clickbank is the largest online store specializing in products that are electronically deliverable. This means that any product that is purchased from Clickbank will be accessible immediately after making a purchase. Most Clickbank products are downloadable and in other cases are some kind of membership-based product. The Clickbank market place showcases more than 10,000 products in various categories including home business, web hosting, education etc.

Google needs no introduction but Google Adwords maybe does: Google Adwords is the advertiser program that compliments the Google Adsense program. The text ads or more correctly the contextual text ads that you see on most sites with the title 'Ads By Google' are sponsored by advertisers (through the Adwords program) and are displayed by webmasters (via the Adsense program). The reach of the sponsored ads by Google is phenomenal. The advertisers compete for advertisement slots on sites in an auction like format where the highest bidder gets more clicks. Another feature that we will use in our analysis is that the advertiser pays for only visitors sent to his site, i.e., this is a pay-per-click advertising model.

To succeed in an online business you need two things - a product to sell and people to buy them. Clickbank provides the first while Google Adwords provides the second. In a nutshell you promote a product available at Clickbank through Adwords. Whenever you make a sale, Clickbank remits you a commission(sometimes up to 75% of the cost of the products).

There is minimal start-up costs involved. Joining Clickbank is free. You are given an user id and password. Whenever you want to promote a particular product, an unique url is generated to be used by you. Google Adwords has a start-up cost of $5 before you can start using them.

The most important activity to do to increase your chances of success is to select the correct products. Of the more than 10,000 products available you need to choose the winning product. You must identify the potential of a product before others because once everyone starts promoting the product your cost of advertising will rise which means your ROI will reduce. There are various tools available which will tell you when a new product has been released into the marketplace. For a list of some of the more popular ones visit our directory. It is then up to you to decide on the marketability of the product.

Once you have chosen a product to market, go to your Adwords secure area to start the marketing of the product. Here you need to select keywords that even though being relevant do not cost a fortune. This will involve significant research and time. But once you get the combination right, you are through.

Let us do the calculations. A product on an average costs $50 at Clickbank. At an average commission of 60%, it works out to $30. Let us assume a conversion ratio of 0.5%, i.e., for every 200 prospective customers that you send to the product sales page, one person makes a purchase without chargeback. If you have chosen your keywords intelligently and have been lucky you should have got the buyers at 5 cents a click. We will assume you got them at 8 cents a click which means for 200 clicks you would have spent $16. As the commission is $30, your profit from this transaction is $14. Not bad at all. If you could sell even one of these products every day, you would make $420 a month. With 2-3 products being marketed... you can do the math yourself.

The risks involved in this type of venture is choosing the wrong product as well as paying too much for each visitor. Even if you have a winning product you must continuously track the ROI so that you can dump the product whenever the ROI goes negative.

This system has worked for a lot of people so there is no reason why it should not work or you. But you will need to do your homework before you start off. Remember this is not a get-rich-overnight plan.