ClickBank Programs

ClickBank is a marketing and affiliate program used to sell electronic products. Affiliate members of the ClickBank program publish links on their web pages to products offered through ClickBank. Whenever a customer makes a purchase as a result of following a published link, the affiliate member receives a commission for the sale.

"The ClickBank Marketplace contains thousands of products including ebooks, computer software, membership programs, entertainment, games and more - all products are delivered digitally over the web. ClickBank's more than 100,000 affiliates promote these products every day and earn money from affiliate commissions" (CBengine.com, n.d.).

Digital products are essentially products that do not exist in a tangible form but rather as electronic images stored on a file-server. When digital products are sold, they are typically downloaded from a bulletin board or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) location connected to the Internet. In some instances, digital products may be published using CD or DVD media but the typical delivery method is for the purchaser to download the product to a computer.

ClickBank acts as an intermediary for transactions in a method similar to that used by eBay. The product publisher lists the product with ClickBank, affiliates publish the links on their web pages, and customers use those links to make purchases. ClickBank handles the transactions, which means ClickBank bills the customer, then pays the publisher and affiliate from the collected funds. The transactions are secured using ccScan and no credit card numbers are stored.