As one of the most popular retailers and affiliate marketplaces, ClickBank comes with a wide array of features that help you figure out how successful your campaigns are.
Profiting from ClickBank is no easy feat for beginners—you need to find out which parts of the affiliate journey matter more to your overall commission success and which ones you are free to ignore. When you first start promoting ClickBank products, everything seems overwhelming in a way that makes you question whether you’ve got what it takes to be a top affiliate.
No matter what you’re selling, be it pillows, SEO tools, exchange software, or social media marketing tools, you need to understand what each element of the funnel means and entails. If you don’t possess this type of knowledge, you are more likely to experience failure and give up on your affiliate journey before it even begins.
It’s crucial that you learn everything there is to know about how the ClickBank affiliate program functions before you dive in. The most common mistake that beginners make is setting up campaigns before getting educated on the matter. Led by the thought of getting rich overnight, they don’t pay enough attention to the relevance of understanding the platform.
To avoid getting to a dead end, you have to learn the difference between different ClickBank terms and have a thorough comprehension of them. The majority of ClickBank beginners will ask: hops or views—which one should they pay more attention to?
At first sight, it may seem like there’s barely any difference, but if that were the case, these separate terms wouldn’t exist.
What is the difference, then?
Source: ClickBank
ClickBank hops are supposed to represent a customer’s activity. To be more precise, it is the activity of a potential customer who reaches your sales page, landing page, or website through a HopLink. If you wish to filter the data, you have three options. You can filter it by:
Vendor
Customer Country
Tracking ID
HopLinks are an excellent way of making sure that all of the sales you make as an affiliate go straight to your account. All affiliates get their own link that can’t be mixed up with other ones, which ensures full safety.
If you want to create a unique HopLink for yourself, there are three ways to do that:
Create an encrypted HopLink through HopLink Shield
Create an encrypted HopLink through a product listing
Generate a human-readable HopLink
Creating a HopLink through HopLink Shield is the most common way of getting the job done. If you want to proceed with this method, do as follows:
Access the HopLink Shield
Insert your affiliate nickname and vendor nickname
Choose the ‘Encode’ option
Copy your newly-generated HopLink
Save the HopLink for promotions
Test the HopLink
If you want to create a HopLink through a product listing, all you need to do is:
Access either ClickBank Insights or ClickBank Marketplace
Search for a product you wish to promote
Choose the ‘Promote’ button in the product listing
Insert your account nickname and Tracking ID (optional)
Select the ‘Create’ option
Copy the newly-generated HopLink
Save the HopLink for promotions
Test the HopLink
If you want to generate a human-readable HopLink, what you need to do is use one of the following formats:
Format |
http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net |
https://hop.clickbank.net/?affiliate=AFFILIATE&vendor=VENDOR |
https://hop.clickbank.net/?affiliate=AFFILIATE&vendor=VENDOR |
To make the HopLink work, you are supposed to replace ‘affiliate’ with your affiliate nickname and ‘vendor’ with your vendor’s account nickname.
Once you create your HopLink, you should test it before you decide to use it in one of your product promotions.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that human-readable HopLinks are nowhere near as safe as encrypted ones. We suggest that you go for the encrypted ones to avoid any potential trouble.
To make sure that your HopLink works, it would be a good idea to test it first. If you wish to proceed, do as follows:
Click on your HopLink or enter it into your browser
Select the ‘Buy Now’ button
Go to the bottom of the order form
Check if [affiliate=yournickname]—it’s working
Check if [affiliate=none]—it’s not working
Proceed to troubleshoot if it isn’t working
If your HopLink isn’t working the way it’s supposed to once you’ve tested it, follow these steps:
Check if your nickname, as well as your vendor’s, are spelled correctly
See if your HopLink is formatted properly—it should look like this: http://SAMPLETEXT.hop.clickbank.net
Enable cookies in your browser if they’re disabled
See if your vendor’s page is down, in which case the HopLink will take you to a 404 error page
Submit a ticket in case you’ve tested all of the above, and the HopLink is still not working
Your HopLinks can be visited by people from all over the world. Thanks to ClickBank’s Payoneer integration both customers and affiliates can use the platform wherever they may be.
If you’re curious about where the biggest portion of your potential buyers is coming from, you can check it out with ease. All you need to do is filter the data in ClickBank Analytics by Customer Country.
Source: Pixabay
Once you find out where the majority of your buyers live, you will be able to change your sales pitch in accordance with your customers’ preferences. Prioritizing your target audience is going to contribute to the number of commissions you get.
Remember that most customers like things to be customized—it makes them feel special and cared about.
If you want to know what a Hop Count in ClickBank is, it’s quite simple—it represents the total number of hops or visits—in other words, that your page got through the HopLink. This piece of information is highly valuable when you want to see what the conversion rate is.
It’s likely that you’ll get lots of hops, but barely any sales. Don’t get discouraged if that happens, though—it just means that you should tweak your sales page a bit. Try to figure out what it is that drives your potential buyers away from the product.
Even if the process takes a long time, it will be worth it when it starts working.
If you’re curious to see how many hops your page has got so far, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:
Access your ClickBank account
Select the Reporting Tab
Go to the Analytics tab
Choose how you want to view the data
Customize your data
ClickBank Analytics is going to help you see the number of hops your page got each day. The graph will show how successful your sales page has been, which is an excellent way of figuring out whether your campaign is working or not.
Source: ClickBank
If you want to change things, you can also choose to view the data by date range. You’ll see the following options:
Last Week
Last Month
Week to Date
Last 14 Days
Yesterday
Today
Custom Range
Month to Date
To make things even more approachable for affiliates, ClickBank offers you to view your data through tables and pie charts. If you feel like graphs aren’t legible enough, you have the option to change things a bit in line with your preferences.
Source: Pixabay
When you first start your affiliate marketing journey with ClickBank, it’s likely that you’ll have lots of hops but no sales. This usually confuses the majority of ClickBank beginners because they don’t understand why their potential buyers keep leaving the page.
If you have 30–40 hops a day, that’s excellent. It means that your page is attracting viewers, even though they don’t end up purchasing the product you’re promoting. Don’t be too surprised if you make a single sale after every 50–60 hops. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong, so there’s no need to worry.
Even if your conversion rate ends up being 1%, you’re doing a pretty solid job. In case you’re dissatisfied with the progress of your campaign, though, feel free to change things up a bit. Consider replacing your copy, background colors, and images. Perhaps you should also consider building a landing page, in which case you can check out the ongoing battle—InstaPage vs. ClickFunnels.
Source: InstaPage and ClickFunnels
If you want to learn how to advertise ClickBank products, you should check out our blog post—there’s a lot more that goes into a successful ClickBank campaign than what you may think.
As soon as you notice that your hop count is massive and your conversion rates non-existent, it means it’s time for you to start questioning your page. Having 1,000 hops and not a single purchase is not a good indicator. What can you do about this, though?
You need to start analyzing what’s going on. The best way to go about it is to ask yourself some questions:
Am I targeting the wrong audience?
Is the font I used in the sales pitch legible?
Are the colors I chose repelling?
Does my product solve any issue for my target audience?
Am I aware of what issue it solves?
Did I make sure to include the problem-solution pattern in the sales pitch?
Do I really believe in this product?
Should I change the product or my approach?
Source: Pixabay
When you answer all of the listed questions, you will get a general idea of where the issue lies. If you don’t think you’ve found the issue, though, dig deeper into the matter.
Affiliate marketing isn’t just for anyone. Many people who work in the field will try to trick you into thinking that anyone can do it, which is true, but it’s a matter of how poorly or successfully they can do it.
One of the biggest misconceptions of affiliate marketing is that you can use it to earn thousands of dollars in one week’s time. This job requires a large portion of your time, effort, energy, and dedication. Just because you get to work from home, it doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax—money won’t just come to you as soon as you create a sales page.
If you want more of your hops to turn into conversions, you need to put some effort into your campaign. There are a few things you need to do if you want to be a successful affiliate.
Tell your buyers how your product solves their problem. | If you don’t know which problem your product solves for the potential buyer, you won’t be able to make a sale. Find out what the solution is and present it to all people who make their way to your page through the HopLink. |
Get familiar with your target group. | The product you chose to advertise probably isn’t equally suitable for all genders, age ranges, professions, etc. With that in mind, you need to find out who you’re trying to target. In other words, create your ideal buyer persona and list all of their features to make sure that you understand who they are. |
Know where to find your target audience. | If your target audience consists of 65-year-old women in Mexico, you probably shouldn’t go for Instagram. Understand that each target group uses different parts of the Internet. |
Understand your target audience’s needs, wants, and problems. | To have a deeper understanding of your target audience, you need to learn all about what they’re going through. If you want to help them with your product, you need to have a specific approach, which you will get more familiar with once you analyze your buyers. |
You can’t expect to get thousands of new hops in just a couple of days. The process may take a lot longer than you think, but you have to be patient. Most people give up on affiliate marketing during the first few weeks because they don’t earn anything off of their commissions.
You will start making money once you’ve taken the time to analyze each aspect of ClickBank. The platform functions as a separate world—it has its own terms, rules, filters, features, and more. Thinking that you know it all from the get-go is not the kind of mindset you should have as a ClickBank beginner.
Work hard, be persistent, and learn as much as you can—this is what’s going to make the biggest impact on your ClickBank hop count.
Although hops can be extensively helpful in figuring out how your campaign is performing, views may be just as important. For example, if you decide to upload a product demo or review on your YouTube channel, and it ends up getting thousands of views, you are just as likely to get one step closer to making a sale.
Both hops and views are important things you should pay attention to—but do they guarantee success? Simply put, they don’t.
Nothing can guarantee the performance of your campaign. Luckily, there is something significantly valuable that you can do, though, and that is to increase your online presence.
Choosing to stick to one method is never a good option. If you want your promotion to reach the most significant number of people, you need to make sure that you’re active across multiple channels.
Source: Pixabay
We suggest that you pay attention to the following aspects of ClickBank affiliate marketing:
Social media | Establishing your online presence through social media is going to be your best bet. Use platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram for optimal results. |
Forums | If you want to boost your off-page SEO game and get more people familiar with the product you’re promoting, you should research some forums. |
SEO | Whether you choose to do on-page, off-page, technical SEO, or a combination of all of the types matters little. As long as you incorporate SEO as a part of your strategy, you will be good to go. |
Paid ads | If you have the budget for it, you should invest in PPC. ClickBank Facebook ads can become your best friend if you do the job right. Just make sure to target your audience properly because that’s the trickiest part of the process. |
If you’re curious about how to make money with ClickBank, you should check out our latest blog post where we give you a step-by-step guide on the process.
Remember that you shouldn’t get discouraged if your sales page gets plenty of hops but no conversions—as long as you keep trying and put some effort into your campaigns, you will start making those sales in no time.
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.