You started a blog and now you want to make some money. Am I right? Not many people blog for free these days. There are many ways to monetize your blog and you’ve probably heard of or tried many of them by now.

Let me introduce you to Clickbank. Maybe you are already acquainted, maybe not. Either way, read on and maybe you’ll find a tidbit or two to help boost your sales.

Clickbank is an online payment processor and affiliate marketing system. It allows you to sell other people’s stuff. When you do, you get a commission based on the terms of the product agreement.

Unlike many other affiliate programs, Clickbank is geared primarily towards digital products like downloadable software and ebooks. Before getting into Clickbank, here’s a quick detour on a couple of things to do before getting started.

If you are thinking about writing niche articles or creating a niche website, the first place to start is finding your niche. That is not what this article is about so I won’t be focusing on that. So let’s say you find some keywords that are likely to make you a profit. Now what? Well you have to find some products that match those keywords.

But not just any products. You want to promote top notch products that are going to make you a PROFIT! That’s why you are blogging, isn’t it? To make a profit.

OK. Now let’s say you have your top notch, money-maker keywords. The next step is finding the affiliate products. Clickbank is a great place to start. You can find thousands of affiliate products to sell within a variety of categories. All it will cost you is the time and energy to find the products and create your niche articles.

Take a look at how to find products that sell really well.

1. Go to Clickbank.com.
2. Click Marketplace (located at top right).
3. Type a keyword in the keywords field and click Go. You can also narrow your search by selecting a category.
4. A list of products that match your query display in a list. Each Clickbank product displays information similar to the image below.

What does all that stuff mean?

• $/sale: The amount of money you earn for each sale.
• Future $: Average rebill revenue.
• Total $/sale: Average total $ per sale, including all rebills.
• %/sale: The percentage of the product sale price that the sale represents.
• %/refd: Fraction of publisher’s total sales that are referred by affiliates.
• grav: The measure of how many affiliates are promoting the product. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affiliate paid in the last 8 weeks Clickbank adds an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last referral, the higher the value added.

The Gravity indicator will tell you how well a product is selling. So a gravity score of 100 means a product is potentially selling better than one with a gravity score of 20. What if the gravity score is off the charts, like 450? Maybe the product is selling too well and you can’t compete with that type of competition in an already saturated market. I like to stay within the 70 to 100 range for gravity. Occasionally I will go for a lower gravity number especially if the product is new to market.

Once you select a product, check out the sales page. What are they selling? Would you buy it? If no, then why would someone else? Think about that.

Other things to consider in your Clickbank adventure. Let’s say the percent of the Clickbank sale to you is $20.00. Sound good, huh? If you are using Pay Per Click (PPC), be careful and do your math. If you pay 20 cents per click and it takes 100 clicks before a single person buys the product, then you have not made any money. You will break even. Even it takes 120 clicks before someone buys the product, then you have lost money.

It will take the same amount of work to promote a product that pays $46.00 as it does for one that pays you $20.00 so choose wisely. Now if you are just blogging on about stuff, and not using PPC at all, then it doesn’t matter so much except for your bottom line.

I am proud to say that in January, The Success Space made $499.00 with Clickbank products. This total took into consideration one returned item. So get blogging and start your own Clickbank profitable niche!

What are your Clickbank stategies?