ClickBank University Review 2020
Hi everyone, welcome to my ClickBank University review! This is a review specifically of ClickBank University 2.0, which by most accounts is a significant improvement on the original version (I won't claim to have had access to the original program so I can only go by other people's reviews).
I've seen lots of ClickBank University reviews that swing wildly in favor and vehemently against the program. I would like to think I can provide a balanced and fair review, which is based on actual experience of the program. Hopefully you will find my ClickBank University review to be useful! Let's crack on.
About ClickBank University 2.0
Let's start this ClickBank University review by finding out a little bit more of the background behind the program.
What is ClickBank University 2.0?
ClickBank University 2.0 is an online training course, which focuses primarily on two aspects of affiliate marketing – learn about how to promote ClickBank products as an affiliate, and how to create your own digital products as a vendor.
Who is Behind ClickBank University 2.0?
Justin Atlan (Teaches the vendor training).
Adam Horwitz (Teaches the affiliate training).
Matt Hulett (CEO of ClickBank)
Adam Horwitz and Justin Atlan are both successful young affiliate marketers generating millions of dollars on the ClickBank platform as affiliates and product creators.
Is ClickBank University a Legit Training Program?
Let's get this out the way early, as I have no intention of using negative headlines such as “Is ClickBank University a scam?” for promotional reasons. I don't agree with that type of review. I hope that my ClickBank University review will provide an accurate and balanced overview of the program.
I can summarize this section by saying that the program is a genuine and professionally structured training program, and later in the review I will run through some of my reasoning behind that opinion.
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What is ClickBank?
I've introduced ClickBank University, but just in case there are people reading who are not familiar with ClickBank itself, let's have a really quick look at what it is.
ClickBank is a leading retailer of digital items, widely considered one of the best affiliate marketing networks for for both affiliates and product creators.
You can get started on ClickBank as soon as you are ready by signing up at www.clickbank.com.
There are other similar affiliate marketing networks out there such as JV Zoo, WarriorPlus, PayDotCom, Rakuten Linkshare and CJ Affiliate.
Hundreds of thousands of people make money from ClickBank, with billions of dollars paid out. If so many people are making money from it, why shouldn't you?
Is ClickBank free?
ClickBank is free to sign up as an affiliate. Once you sign up and set up how you will receive your payments, along with your relevant tax information, you are ready to go.
If you are a vendor looking to add your product to the ClickBank marketplace, then you will be charged a one-time fee of $49.95. ClickBank can take over once your product is uploaded and handle sales, processing and refunds. Note that there are extra charges and commissions that they will collect during this process.
ClickBank Marketplace
You can browse products by niche in the marketplace to find the products you wish to promote, and it takes seconds to get your affiliate link and start promoting.
Is ClickBank Safe To Use?
Yes, absolutely. I have seen people asking is ClickBank a scam, or sharing similar concerns. ClickBank is NOT a scam, it is a highly successful marketplace.
ClickBank Complaints
ClickBank is a good affiliate platform for both vendors and affiliates alike. However, as is often the case, for every good product there are likely to be some pretty awful ones too. If you read through a few ClickBank reviews, the presence of these poor quality products is the main complaint about ClickBank, but the same (and worse) can be said about other affiliate marketing platforms.
There are many things to consider when deciding on a product to promote, so it is extremely important to do proper research and avoid the bad products.
A Look Inside ClickBank University 2.0
ClickBank University offers the unique advantage of being specifically geared towards the ClickBank platform. This in itself gives a competitive advantage to the training program when comparing it to other programs.
Get Started with ClickBank University 2.0 Today
If you are looking for ways to make money online, or work from home, it is highly likely that you will be told affiliate marketing is the best way to go about it. So can ClickBank University 2.0 help you learn what you need to know to be successful?
As briefly mentioned earlier, the course is divided into two main sections.
The first is affiliate training, which is designed to teach you how to build an online business around selling other peoples products as an affiliate. This affiliate section was rolled out with the release of ClickBank University 2.0, as I believe it was not included in the original course. This will teach you how to how to promote and sell other peoples products, and make commissions from each sale you generate.
The second section will teach you how to create your own digital product, which you can integrate into the ClickBank marketplace, and have other affiliates sell the product for you. Alternatively, you could choose to take what you have learnt from the affiliate section, promoting and selling your own product!
ClickBank University Login & Members Area
Once you sign up, you will be provided your login details for both the University and the Q&A forum. As you arrive at the main menu you will see a bunch of tabs along the top of the screen which break down the modules of the course.
- Welcome
- Getting Started
- Vendors
- Affiliates
- Traffic
- Toolkit
As you enter each of the modules, you will find that the course is structured into convenient ‘bite-sized' videos with a week by week schedule. This is one thing I really liked about the course, it is very well organized, and the short videos should not get overwhelming for anyone.
Most of the videos that you will find throughout the course have downloadable content to accompany the video. These can contain highlights of the video, bullet notes, and things to do before moving on to the next video.
Justin and Adam have a very clear and concise style for delivering their content, which is quite different from many of the other courses you will find on the market. The pacing of the videos is consistent throughout, and the content is provided in a logical step-by-step progression.
Every video allows comments for feedback, which seems to be mostly answered by fellow students rather than course moderators. One thing I noticed here specifically was that some of comments proved that people skip or don't pay attention to the content of the videos before making derogatory comments.
I saw people complaining at times that they are not being told how to do something, when the 10 minute video explained exactly that thing clearly. Sometimes questions were asking how to do something that was in one of the earlier videos. Did they even watch anything before leaving comments?
This is a good lead-in to one of my gripes (not specifically about this course) but also is a strong recommendation for anyone looking to train in this or any similar program. It can also be a reason why people leave negative reviews. If you are going to undertake a training program, what you get out of it will be a reflection of what you put in to the course.
If the course leads you through content in a specific order there is a reason for it, don't skip or half-ass it. If you did a university degree and turned up to the final lecture of a 4 year course would you expect to pass the exams?
If you expect to have everything handed to you on a plate and do not want to put any effort in, and earn thousands of dollars a week, then this will not be the right course for you. The same will apply to any proper training course, so if this sounds like you, you will be better looking for a get rich quick scheme elsewhere.
One thing that this course offers that many others completely ignore, is developing the right mindset for success. They encourage you to organize your life more efficiently, set goals – both daily and long term – so you can progress by accomplishing those goals. Some of the advice is very simple, but it can really help just to take a step back sometimes, and these guys will help you with that.
Affiliate Training
The affiliate training is structured in an 8 week course.
- Week 1 – Affiliate Marketing on CB
- Week 2 – Understanding Affiliate Marketing
- Week 3 – Finding Your Passion
- Week 4 – The Ultimate Affiliate Funnel
- Week 5 – Free, Free, Free: Always Over Deliver
- Week 6 – Writing the Perfect Swipe
- Week 7 – The Email Blueprint
- Week 8 – Scaling and Expanding
- Bonus – Running Affiliate Programs
This section is taught by Adam, and he starts off with providing you with the very basics of affiliate marketing, and an overview of navigating the ClickBank marketplace. You will be shown how to go about finding the best niche and how to find the best products to promote in that niche.
You will then be taught some basics about traffic, and how building an email list is the best way to build your business in the long-term.
The training will then go through building squeeze pages, and about offering content and value to people who sign up for your list.
This section does push you to use their ClickBank Builder software, and this is used for their demonstrations. However, you don't have to feel forced into this, as there are other options available on the market that you can do the same thing. More on ClickBank Builder later.
You will then learn more about writing email copy, and setting up your autoresponders through AWeber's email marketing platform.
Although shorter than the vendor training, learning to work as an affiliate has the potential for quicker commissions, if training is properly carried out and implemented.
Vendor Training
This section is for those of you who are looking to create your own product.
The vendor training is structured in a 12 week course.
- Week 1 – How Everything Works + Setup for Success.
- Week 2 – Finding Your Perfect Product.
- Week 3 – Creating Your Avatar.
- Week 4 – Course Content Creation & Outsourcing.
- Week 5 – Your Perfect Upsell to Maximize Sales.
- Week 6 – High Converting Sales Copy.
- Week 7 – The “Easy” VSL.
- Week 8 – Finalizing Your Product, via Builder etc.
- Week 9 – Getting Up On ClickBank.
- Week 10 – JV Managing.
- Week 11 – Split Testing.
- Week 12 – How To Scale.
- Bonus – Selling High Ticket Products on Webinars.
This section is taught by Justin, and in a similar fashion to the affiliate section, the vendor section starts by focusing your mindset and goals. You are taken through how to research and decide what product you are going to create, figure out who your customer will be, and how you will build your sales pitch.
You will then learn how to build a course outline, create the content for your course, how to structure the course and where to outsource if you need to get some help.
A vital part of course creation is the video sales letter (VSL), and sales pages. You will be shown how to write good sales copy, and also how to structure and price your upsells for maximizing sales.
Again, their training will direct you to using ClickBank Builder for creating your sales funnel, but all the principles can be applied on other software should you wish.
As you are led through the creation of your course and getting it ready for release, they will also teach you everything you need to know to get it active on ClickBank marketplace and ready to make money!
They wrap up this section of the training by explaining how to provide valuable affiliate tools to encourage affiliates to promote your products, how to split test your sales pages and how to scale your business.
The vendor section is definitely more comprehensive than the affiliate section and contains a lot more content.
CBU Toolkit & Traffic Training
A number of different traffic sources are covered in this section of the course. They have adopted a slightly different style for the traffic section to the rest of the program. Instead of the step-by-step video lessons we have covered up until now, traffic is trained via a webinar system. Each traffic source is presented by experts in their particular fields. the webinars are typically around 1 – 1.5 hours in length. Just a few of these include:
- Facebook Advertising (Robby Blanchard)
- Instagram Influencer Shoutouts (Adam Horwitz)
- Paid search ads – Google and Bing (Fred Lam)
- YouTube Ads (Jon Penberthy)
The thing I like about this is that more are being added all the time and each of the experts are bringing different perspectives to their traffic sources. There is a lot more ‘over the shoulder' during these training sessions than in the main affiliate and vendor modules.
The toolkit area covers some of the technical skills that you will need to go along with everything else you have been taught. All stuff that you will need to know, but is more ‘behind the scenes' knowledge so doesn't really fit into the other modules.
You will learn a range of skills in this section, including:
- Setting up domains.
- Video editing for sales videos and instructional videos.
- Designing artwork, banners, promotional material.
- Setting up sales funnels with ClickBank Builder.
- Using Optimonk to increase conversions.
- Using Hootsuite to boost social media accounts.
- Outsourcing content creation.
- Split testing.
- Setting up email marketing software and autoresponders such as AWeber.
Support
ClickBank University offers a number of different ways to get help. They have live chat, phone and email support, along with Q&A sessions and the ClickBank University Forum.
Q&A SESSIONS
One great feature offered by the program is the weekly live Q&A sessions held by Justin or Adam. Usually ranging between 1-2 hours in length, the sessions will try to revolve around a certain theme each week, to try to keep the sessions focused. All previous sessions are uploaded and can be accessed any time if you can't make the live events.
The amount of information this provides to the subscriber is substantial, and will tend to answer some more of the technical questions that people may have after digesting the main course videos. There are many years worth of Q&A sessions archived that members can access.
ClickBank University Forum
In addition to the Q&A sessions, there is also the forum that is provided for all members. You can browse through thousands of threads organized by tags and categories. Chances are someone has asked a question before, so this should be a first go-to if you have a problem.
My thoughts on this were that it could have done with a little more moderator involvement in certain areas, where maybe a slightly more technical question needed to be answered. Some areas had good member contributions and advice, whereas other areas had bad advice by some members who were just looking to get their post count higher.
ClickBank Builder
This is the primary upsell that will be offered.
ClickBank Builder is ClickBank University's landing page and sales funnel building platform. It is a hosted solution, so you don't need your own website, and your pages will be located on a ClickBank Builder subdomain. However, they do allow you (and it is recommended) to purchase a domain for your brand, and you can set custom domains for all the pages you build.
It has been constructed with simplicity in mind, and setting up pages is really easy. They also made it really easy to connect your pages with ClickBank (as you would expect!). The software is a one-time purchase giving you lifetime access when purchased in addition to your ClickBank University subscription.
Your access to the Builder gives you unlimited funnels and landing pages. I think the Builder could be a very useful option if you are following the product creation path, but maybe less so if you are focusing on the affiliate side of things.
There are many other options on the market for building sales funnels, and ClickBank Builder is certainly one that might suit some people.
If you have your own website already and are looking for a self-hosted solution, then Thrive Architect is an incredibly powerful WordPress plugin that you might want to use. If this is a solution you are more interested in, it will cost $19 per month for a membership that gives you access to full suite of Thrive plugins for up to 25 different websites. If you are only interested in Thrive Architect and do not need any of the other plugins, you can buy a single website license for $67 one time fee.
If you are interested in Thrive Architect, see what it has to offer!
The other option that many people like to use for building their sales funnels is ClickFunnels. which will cost $97 per month for 20 funnels / 100 pages.
ClickBank University Pricing
ClickBank University pricing options are fairly straight forward, with a monthly subscription based system for the University itself.
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Is ClickBank University free?
No, ClickBank University does not have a free offering.
How Much Is ClickBank University 2.0?
Membership to ClickBank University 2.0 on a monthly subscription service is $47 per month.
The upsell of ClickBank Builder has 2 options which provide lifetime access to the builder software:
- 2 payments of $297 ($594 total)
- 7 payments of $97 ($679 total)
ClickBank University Payment Options
ClickBank University is itself sold through the ClickBank marketplace, and so standard ClickBank payment methods apply.
Credit cards (Discover, American Express, Diners Club, Mastercard, Visa) and PayPal are accepted as payment.
ClickBank University Refund Policy
ClickBank University 2.0 offers a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, so if you feel it is not the right program for you, there is plenty of time to make that decision.
Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts
I think it is clear that my ClickBank University review is not negative, but that doesn't mean there aren't things that I feel could be improved. Let's review some of my pros and cons.
- Unlike some programs, their focus is not to get students to sell more of their program.
- Clear and well presented bite sized videos.
- Geared towards affiliates and vendors.
- Tailored for the ClickBank marketplace.
- Weekly Q&A and regular expert interviews help to keep the content fresh.
- Good options for support.
- I would like to see more over-the-shoulder training.
- There was a lot of good information on what to do but not many practical examples of how to implement the training.
- I think their affiliate and toolkit sections could go into more detail.
- Some videos I felt were over simplified.
- More moderator activity in the forum just to control other members giving bad advice.
When choosing a training course, everyone will always have different requirements, so saying “Product X is best for you” is not always the best way to approach a recommendation. My ClickBank University review has outlined some areas where the program is strong and some I feel need more work.
The information provided in the course is very good, and with effort and dedication can be an extremely valuable program. It is definitely stronger in the product creation section, so it might appeal more to people who wish to pursue that direction.
Get Started with ClickBank University 2.0 Today
It should also be noted that as with any course available (you can't really avoid this, sorry!) there will always be extra costs. Buying a domain, web hosting, keyword research tools, email marketing platform and a funnel builder. These being just some of the basic things you will need. It is important to be aware of all these things going in to a new project so you can plan accordingly. This is obviously before paid advertising if that is a route you choose to take.
I liked a lot about this course and I really think it could help a lot of people out there. As mentioned there are a few areas that could be improved, but they do add more content regularly, meaning there are more and more reasons to get involved!
FAQ
Which program would you recommend ClickBank University or Wealthy Affiliate?
This one is very much a horses for courses type answer I'm afraid. There is good training on both, with Wealthy Affiliate offering more on the affiliate side than ClickBank University. Wealthy Affiliate does not deal with product creation whereas ClickBank University does.
However, my big dislike about the Wealthy Affiliate system is their recommendation for pretty much any new member is to put them in boot camp to go out and sell Wealthy Affiliate. So literally everywhere you look you have people recommending their #1 program to everyone. Not because the program is good, but because that is what they have been told to go out and do. So can you trust anyone who is following the Wealthy Affiliate formula?
Is it possible to make $10000 a month with ClickBank?
Absolutely, and many people make that and much more. It should be noted that not everyone will make this sort of money, and no guarantees can be made.
Is ClickBank University 2.0 worth the money?
As I have discussed earlier, there is a lot of good content in ClickBank University 2.0. For someone who wants to succeed – watches, learns and implements all the teaching in the program and uses the forums, Q&A sessions, and expert webinars, they will get their money's worth. For someone who skims content, doesn't do anything with it and expects results – no, they will not get their money's worth.
How do I cancel ClickBank University 2.0?
A simple email to their support desk is all you need to do if you wish to cancel ClickBank University 2.0.
Why am I getting too many refunds on Clickbank working as an affiliate?
The likely answer is that refunds are occurring because a product is of a poor quality, or sales and promotional material are maybe misleading. Product choice should be well researched, using all the tools available to you on the ClickBank Marketplace.
Why am I unable to sign up in ClickBank?
This might be if you are from a country that is on ClickBank's restricted list. If you are not sure, you should check with ClickBank support before doing anything.
Get Started with ClickBank University 2.0 Today
I hope you have found this ClickBank University review helpful. I have tried to compile a wide overview of the program, but of course there may be features that I have overlooked. Any opinions I have shared are subjectively mine and I fully understand that people have different requirements depending on their business and needs. Please feel free to comment below!
