Clickbank Affiliate Marketing vs eBay Affiliate MarketingClickbank Marketing vs eBay Marketing David Glen
April 01, 2008
Since the launch of Amazon.com in 1995, the number of affiliate
marketing programs offered on the internet has grown enormously.
Although Amazon.com was one of the pioneers with their affiliate
program, other affiliate providers such as eBay and Clickbank now
arguably offer a more diverse and profitable affiliate program.
The eBay Affiliate Program
Put
simply, eBay launched their affiliate program to obtain more targeted
traffic to their site. Originally many webmasters used the eBay
affiliate program simply to make additional revenue from their existing
web site. This has changed recently with an advancement in the quality
of RSS feeds leading to a number of different affiliate store scripts
flooding the market. These affiliate store scripts have created a new
phenomenon where new eBay affiliates establish an affiliate store as
the primary purpose of their web site and then add relevant content.
EBay affiliates are now creating web sites that are established
primarily to make affiliate commissions and not necessarily to provide
useful and relevant content for the visitor.
My eBay Affiliate Store
I
have an interest in golf and established my own eBay affiliate golf
store called davesgolfstore.com using an eBay affiliate store script
called Build A Niche Store. I provide my own web site content and have
a direct feed of products from eBay. Every product listed on eBay under
the golf category is displayed on my site in real time. When somebody
clicks on a set of golf clubs listed on my site they are taken directly
to eBay. If they place a successful bid I receive a commission from
eBay ranging from 20-65% of eBays income. When I refer a new customer
to eBay who makes a successful bid I receive a commission up to $24.
The one downside of being an eBay affiliate is that you rely heavily on
generating organic traffic from top listings on the search engines. The
average commission I receive per sale is between $1-2. These
commissions are quite small and it makes it difficult to use other
traffic generating methods such as pay per click advertising. Given the
search engines constantly update their page ranking algorithms, the
inherent risk is it becomes difficult to generate consistent traffic as
you rely heavily on organic searches.
Clickbank Affiliate Program
Clickbank
offers an affiliate program that is primarily associated with promoting
digital products that are predominantly ebooks. Similar to eBay,
ClickBank has a diverse range of products to promote over a number of
different categories across a range of interests and hobbies. The
primary difference between Clickbank and eBay relates to the
commissions paid per sale. Clickbank affiliates can earn between 25% to
75% per sale price while eBay commissions are based solely on eBay's
revenue per sale and not the total sale price of the item. The majority
of eBooks available on Clickbank are "How To" type ebooks. Historically
these types of ebooks sell in high volumes and suit the internet given
buyers generally have instant download access to the ebook they
purchase. Given the digital nature of Clickbank products , promotion
does involve providing more content rich web sites as potential buyers
generally require more information before they make a purchase. Buyers
take a different approach to eBay where generally the majority of goods
purchased are still "hard goods" and most buyers already have an
understanding of what they are purchasing.
Clickbank or eBay - You Decide?
There
are more resources online when it comes to making money on Clickbank as
opposed to making money with eBay affiliate marketing. Wealthy
Affiliate.com is one of the more popular making money with Clickbank
resources available on the internet while Build A Niche Store is now
commonly used amongst eBay affiliate marketers. If you are willing to
provide a content rich site, promoting Clickbank products can be very
profitable given the higher commissions received where as eBay
affiliate marketing is more suitable for those who don't necessarily
wish to develop content rich sites and prefer to promote traditional
type "hard goods".
Running a web site that is established
primarily to make affiliate commissions is some what a floored concept.
A web site should be created for the purpose of providing relevant and
useful content to the visitor, and then relevant affiliate and non
affiliate links can be provided to the visitor to help them further
with their search.
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