Thursday, January 29, 2009

Opening a Clickbank Account

By Graham McKenzie

Once you have decided to use Clickbank for your Internet marketing business you will need to open up an account. Though the process is the same, it is a good idea to know beforehand if you are going to be a product seller or an affiliate. If you are going to be an affiliate, you can open up the account at any time and save it for when you have found a product that you want to sell. When you are signing up as a product seller, however, it is best to wait until you have a product for reasons that will be discussed momentarily.

Start by going to www.clickbank.com and click signup on the right side. Notice how you will automatically be moved to the promote products section. This is done to make signing up more simple so do not be alarmed. All of the new users are redirected to this screen.

The next step is to enter your information into the boxes. Clickbank sends checks and does require a Tax ID (though not until after you have registered) so it is absolutely vital that you enter only correct information, as you do not want your check to be mailed somewhere else.

Once you have completed all of the necessary information it is time to choose an account nickname. Here is where being a seller or an affiliate can make a tremendous difference. When you sell a product, Clickbank uses links known as Hoplinks that redirect through Clickbank so that they can keep track of affiliates. These links are ugly. So ugly, in fact, that anyone looking at the link may think it is going to redirect them to an attack site.

As such, you need to make sure you have an account name that matches the product you are selling (because your account name is inside the Hoplink) or at least hints at it so that the link appears more legitimate. As an affiliate, the account ID can be broader, though it would still be helpful if the link matched things you are selling. It simply becomes less important.

Once you have entered all of that data you can click submit and register. You will be sent a password that is equally as ugly as a Hoplink and completely unchangeable. Because of this, it is very important that you write down your nickname and password, as the consequences of losing either of those can be dire. It is very hard to retrieve lost information.

An additional reason to record your nickname is that it's possible to create a website using an affiliate nickname, allow the website to run without interference for several years and then completely forget that nickname. This is the beauty of passive income: even if you never visit the Clickbank site, you will continue to receive checks. Unfortunately, this means it's possible to forget the ID as well, which can be a problem if you have a need to make changes in the future.

Once you have entered in the password you have officially registered. If you would like to sell a product, go to the account settings, click on my products and click add new product to get started. If you would like to become an affiliate, click on marketplace and search for items to affiliate with. Click on create hoplink, enter your nickname and you will be provided an affiliate link to sell the products.

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