Wondering what is Clickbank University? Is it a good place to find online business training material?
Clickbank University specializes in helping people create digital products to sell online.
Digital products can be eBooks, training videos, online classes…
And really – they can be about almost subject:
- Cooking, home decor, art, dance, singing, dating, poker
- Fashion, dog training, interior design, cars, golf, working out
- Talking to women, getting good deals, organizing, being funny
Just to name a few ideas 🙂
The idea is to create an online business based on your passions, hobbies, or interests and then turn it into a digital product and sell it online for a bunch of money?
It’s a fantastic idea.
And a lot of people are doing it.
Better yet, what if you could develop your digital product so that, in time you, could replace your current income, and then surpass it ten fold?
If so, Clickbank University may be the right training program for you.
After watching the infomercial produced by two young and highly successful internet marketers, Adam Horwitz and Justin Atlan, I was even more impressed.
If you haven’t heard of these guys, I’ll share a little info.
They’ve been making killer money online since they were both 17 years old in affiliate marketing – lucky S.O.B’s.
Kidding!
I’m happy for their success, and happy to learn from them. It’s amazing what talent and motivation can do for someone.
What I really like about them is that they come right out and let you know that creating a successful online business takes work, time, passion, and education.
Four things that are absolutely true in the online money making industry.
Most online programs I review are just blatant scams, pushing the same old song and dance that promises you…
- Fast and Easy Cash
- Automated Push Button Software Systems
- And Endless, Unverifiable, Success Stories
“And you know what, people eat this #### up, it’s just silly, they fall for the concept of easy online money all day long” – I digress, sorry.
BTW – Clickbank University is NOT a Scam, it’s a REAL Educational Program
But the million dollar question is…do they provide quality training and are you going to find success with Clickbank University?
I enrolled in the program, went through the Clickbank University Classes, and now I’ll give you my professional opinion, as an internet marketer, as to whether or not Clickbank University is right for you.
P.S. Take a Look at This Product, it’s Even Better.
Here’s My Top Recommended Program →
Clickbank University – Product At A Glance
Product Name: Clickbank University
Price: $47/mo
Upsells: CBU Site Builder for $297/year, $97 Advanced Masterclass
Owners: Matt Hulett, Adam Horwitz, Justin Atlan
Overall Rank: 85 out of 100
Product Overview – What is Clickbank University:
Clickbank University is an online training platform that is designed to help you learn how to create and sell your own digital products.
They also teach you how to market Clickbank products through affiliate marketing.
The program was created based on 17 years of research and experience from Clickbank, the worlds leading online marketplace for digital products.
If you don’t know what Clickbank is, it’s essentially an affiliate marketing network where you can find and promote other peoples digital products for affiliate commissions.
In the last three years, Clickbank has sold over 300 million digital products and paid out over 3 billion in commissions – Not Too Shabby.
And now Clickbank University is offering up their expertise, so you can learn how to create your own successful online business, digital product, or learn affiliate marketing too.
Check out this Clickbank University orientation video to get an overview of what they offer.
Wanna Check Out The New Clickbank University?
What I Liked About Clickbank University:
I love honest educational programs that are there to help you succeed, and I truly think that this is the intention of the creators of Clickbank University.
The training’s are presented by Adam Horwitz and Justin Atlan using easy to follow videos accompanied with related PDF’s to compliment whatever lesson you’re working on.
The videos are between 3 to 5 minutes long so they hold your attention, and are packed with tons of great information related to internet marketing and building digital products.
They discuss things like;
- How to find your passion
- Creating landing pages
- Email marketing
- Packaging your product
- Sales pages
- Creating funnel strategies
- Traffic sources, etc.
They also have live training; Webinars every week with Q&A sessions with Adam and Justin to make sure you don’t fall behind.
Overall, the training presented by Clickbank University is based on solid internet marketing principles.
They do a fine job reviewing these concepts and provide pointers from both Adam and Justin’s combined 15 years of experience, as successful affiliate marketers and digital product producers.
And Clickbank does have true success stories of real people who have made their dreams come true using Clickbank’s Marketplace to promote or sell affiliate programs.
As a matter of fact, Clickbank has over 1,000 entrepreneurs who have become millionaires using Clickbank.
Now this is somewhat misleading to tie this fact into the Clickbank University promotional video.
It’s not like these 1,000 successful entrepreneurs learned how to be successful using the Clickbank University.
But they do prove that people can be highly successful using Clickbank.
Done right, it’s possible.
And some of these successful Clickbank entrepreneurs offer you support to Clickbank University students through their Talks Page.
They share their personal success stories, offer advise, and provide you with inspiration for your new online business.
It’s still a new educational program and has already changed it’s educational platform several times since it’s inception.
This leads me to believe that the program creators are passionate about improving on Clickbank University.
Risk Free to Try – Clickbank University offers a 60 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.
They used to limit students to only one lesson per day, and since have changed this policy, so you can work at your own pace.
The reason behind this was to not overwhelm new students.
But at the same time, if you’re really trying to get your business off the ground, you want the freedom to go at your own pace.
So this is a positive change from when they first introduced the program in 2014.
Besides the training material, here are some tools that are included:
Clickbank University Tools:
The CB Site Builder
This is easily the highlight of the Clickbank University.
And can save you literally thousands of dollars using this program as a vendor/product creator.
CB Site Builder is an easy to use drag and drop style interface that allows you to build a wide variety of site, such as:
- Membership sites
- eBooks
- New product pages
- Sales pages
- Thank you pages
- And product funnels.
Take a look at the dashboard below:
- Also Clickbank University (CBU) offers a nice bonus of free hosting for unlimited product pages, with the Clickbank Site Builder, as well as your own free domain name.
You can also upload eBooks right into you product page using the Site Builder.
Then CB University will teach you how to download you eBook right into the Clickbank Marketplace, where other affiliate marketers can promote your eBook for you.
The only downside I can see with this style of website builder is if you ever want to leave the Clickbank University program, you might be out of luck trying to change hosting and may loose your various website pages.
But hey, if you’ve gotten that far in the process with your digital product, then you’ve got the skills to go out and do it on your own.
And if you’re making enough money from your CB product, and it’s paying for your CB Membership, plus making you some positive cash flow, you’d just keep it, right?
Who wouldn’t.
What I Didn’t Like About CBU – Up-sells and Incomplete Training
CBU isn’t perfect.
After I paid my $47 dollars to join the program, I was expecting a general overview of their training facility (which they do provide later).
Instead, was hit with my first UPSELL.
Right away, I was a bit disappointed to get another sales video pushing me to purchase the CB Site Builder.
Especially immediately after I finished watching the first one.
Now if you’re going to build your own digital product, then I can see the need for promotional offers.
But to hit a new student up right away with an upsell after the initial purchase – come on give me a break.
Hopefully Clickbank will change their timing on when they offer the CB Builder upsell.
Or at least just bring it out into the open in the infomercial.
I suppose that’s poor marketing skills though.
Personally I’m not a fan of up-sells, and I don’t think most people are either.
I can see the reason and need for upsells if you are selling a line of products, but with educational programs, I feel you should get exactly what you were advertised.
Who wants to be surprised with more products that you need to purchase after making your original purchase.
It just leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.
Plus they bait you into buying the Site Builder by stating that you won’t be able to get the discounted price of $297 if you pass on their offer right now.
This is completely untrue, I went back a couple of days later and was offered the same price.
A bit cheesy in my opinion, to start a new training program with a big up-sell.
And I think Clickbank University is too classy of an educational program to take this route.
The rest of the program is nicely laid out, and explains what each main top tab is and they encourage you to go through each training video and PDF.
No Free Trial Period: CBU used to offer a 7 day trail period for $1 dollar, but those days are gone.
P.S. We Offer a Free Training Series. Take a Look…
What’s Inside? The Training Material:
As stated above, Adam and Justin are training you with correct information that comes from their combined 15 years of experience and success.
But I think the program lacks complete training material, especially for people who are new to internet marketing.
What do I mean by this?
Well they do show you step by step training when it comes to using the CB Site Builder.
But with most of the topics, there is no step by step training.
For example, they teach you how to be successful with email marketing by giving you the correct concepts.
But there is no step by step training showing you exactly how to set up your email marketing campaigns, how to set up your Blog Broadcasts, or your Follow Up Series.
And that’s very important.
In other words, there’s no hand holding here.
And newbies need hand holding in my opinion, at least at first.
You need to see how an experienced internet marketer sets up their campaigns to give you the most success.
Time and time again, I heard the same question from Clickbank University students asking “How do we get traffic to our landing pages”.
They even had a weekly Q&A session on it where Justin encourages people to review the traffic strategy courses again within the program.
For traffic, they encourage you to use Facebook and YouTube, but they don’t break down the necessary steps on how to SEO your YouTube videos.
Their Facebook course is very simple, and I didn’t feel that it added much value, compared to the advise that is already available online for free.
Here’s the thing:
As an affiliate marketer, I get almost 12,000 unique page visits to this site per month.
and the site’s not that old, over 80% of that traffic comes organically through high rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
I achieve this through quality keyword research and good SEO practices.
So it surprises me that CBU isn’t teaching courses on how to write content that ranks with YouTube videos.
It seems to me that they share concepts more than practical application.
Their affiliate marketing course is based on driving traffic to a sales page, capturing emails to create a list and then selling affiliate products to your list.
This is just one aspect of affiliate marketing, they have left out so much training in this part of their program.
Granted, I liked and agree with their email marketing strategies, but where do you get the traffic, this CBU student obviously doesn’t know.
It’s one thing to understand how email marketing works, but it’s a whole other process to understand and then implement that training into your website.
I think this could be improved on by walking students through the process step by step.
What do you think?
There is no SEO training for content and that includes written content like post and pages as well as video content using YouTube videos.
And this is INCREDIBLY important. If you have a nice fancy product you want to sell, but have no traffic coming to your site, you know what that means – NO SALES
More Up-sells
I already mentioned the CB Site Builder up-sell, but they also have the $97 Advanced Masterclass up-sell. Do I really need to pay for this or should this be included in my $47/mo fee.
I think it should be included.
Clickbank University also has their own affiliate links within the training program and they make a monthly fee from their student by recommending them to use the landing page generator called Megaphoneapp.
During the Squeeze Page Training they refer you to Megaphoneapp.com and it’s obvious they are using an affiliate link where the owners of Clickbank University will make another commission off of you as their referral.
And this is where I felt somewhat disappointed with Clickbank University.
If I’m paying for an educational program, I don’t want to just be referred to another company to get my training via instant chat nor do I want more unexpected fees or up-sells.
I’d rather have someone walk me through the process, step by step, and keep the learning curve nice and simple.
Lastly…
They have a Community Section and a Giveaway Section to their program.
The community presence is pretty weak, it has 5 forum sections and doesn’t appear to be too active.
I think it’s very important to have a strong community presence in an educational program like CBU.
You can bounce ideas off fellow students and help one another as needed.
And I’m sure in time, as CBU increases in popularity, that this section will improve.
The Giveaway Section is designed to encourage CBU students to help one another for a reward.
It works like this, once per month, the winning student gets a 30 minute Skype session with Adam and Justin to help the winning student out with their own business.
Personally, if I’m working my tail off to develop an online product or business, I don’t want to feel obligated to take time off to help people just to win a 30 minute chat session with the owners.
I prefer to be able to contact the owners directly, at will, and get an answer to my questions within a short period of time. Or I prefer to ask a large community with many experienced internet marketers that will answer my question right away.
Or better yet, have a search bar loaded with 1,000’s of hours of training resources and tutorials at my disposal to use whenever I need them.
My #1 Ranked Internet Marketing Education allows me to do all of this.
I can ask the Owners, Community, or browse through 1,000’s of tutorials when I need help with something.
And the spirit of helping is ingrained into my educational program – without the bribe of a Skype session from the owners.
Maybe I’m a bit spoiled with the program I use, Wealthy Affiliate, but it never seems to run out of new material for me to learn.
The New Clickbank University 2.0:Click Here To Check Out Our Review!
Who Is Clickbank University For?
Clickbank University is really designed for anyone that wants to create a digital product.
Beginners can learn a lot about internet marketing concepts using CBU, but I think they will get frustrated with some of the classes due to a lack of step by step guidance.
The program is more suited for intermediate to advanced internet marketers.
People who already understand affiliate marketing and SEO, andt want to learn how to create and sell their own digital products.
If your an affiliate marketer who isn’t earning what you want to be earning, then you should definitely check out Wealthy Affiliate.
Get a solid foundation with internet marketing, and then if you want to create your own digital product, work with CBU.
Clickbank University Training & Tools:
Orientation: Includes 5 short videos to orientate you to the Clickbank University training platform.
CB Builder: This is a separate program with extensive training on how to use the multiple features of the Site Builder. This will allow you to create your own membership site, sales pages, and products.
It’s currently the best and most economical program available for the multiple functions it offers you.
Class: Here you’ll find the live and prerecorded Webinars that are much more extensive in duration of over an hour long. Currently they are expanding these videos and there is only one video available to watch.
Signs that Clickbank University is still developing it’s training platform.
Vendors: This section is for product creators. You will find an 8 week course loaded with information dedicated to help you create your first digital product.
Advanced: I couldn’t review this page due to the upsell that I didn’t want to pay for ($97).
But it seems to be a continuation of building traffic, advanced selling strategies, split testing and conversions, social media, and paid advertising.
Affiliates: 19 short video courses that focus mostly on building a squeeze page and capturing emails. Not very extensive training and in my opinion, very incomplete.
Talks: Again, this is pretty limited with 5 personal interviews of successful entrepreneurs who have already made it using Clickbank, not Clickbank University. They give you advise and motivational information to help you along you path with CBU.
Clickbank University Support:
On every training page within the CBU platform you will find this banner shown below to click on when you need support. I don’t know what the quality of the support is like nor how fast you will receive help.
There is also a comment section below every training to ask questions. But from what I saw, the support was coming mostly from other students and was not very consistent.
They do have an expert that pops up every now and then to help out. Again this is something I think will be improved on over time.
Clickbank University Price:
If you join CBU, you will be paying $47 dollars per month or $564/year.
I would also assume that you will be joining Clickbank University mostly to build your own digital product (I strongly wouldn’t encourage you to start with their affiliate program – it’s inferior and more expensive then my #1 Ranked Program), so you’ll be paying another $297/year. That’s a total of $861 for the year.
Not to mention the auto responders and the landing page creator you’ll need. And if you go the whole year, you’ll want the Advanced Training which will set you back another $100 dollars.
So in total, you could be looking at paying just shy of $1,500 dollars/year with this program.
Final Opinion of Clickbank University:
I think if you really want to create you own digital product, then CBU is the best option available in today’s market.
I’m a bit disappointed with the upsells and additional fees and I think this should be disclosed in CBU’s sales infomercial, but all in all, it’s a good product and worth the money.
If you have your own product idea or special skill that you want to bring to the online world, then Clickbank University is one of the better ways to go.
I’m concerned about their training on building traffic since there is no step by step directions on SEO.
I’m talking about how to do keyword research and how to write content that ranks for blog posts, landing pages, or even how to SEO your own Tube Videos.
Let’s face it, traffic is the life force of any online business.
But I really enjoyed their training sessions and you will definitely learn a great deal about internet marketing from these guys.
Instead, Try This:
As for me personally, I’m pretty happy being an affiliate marketer. I make good money off of marketing other peoples products and don’t have the stress or extra financial burden of trying to create my own products.
If that seems to be more up your alley, then I would encourage you to try affiliate marketing first. And I’d encourage you to use the program that taught me the in’s and out’s of affiliate marketing.
Plus with affiliate marketing, you are not limited to just marketing Clickbank products, you can pick any Brand Name product you desire and you have complete control over your own website and hosting.
I think you can benefit from Clickbank University due to the extensive amount of training, but if you are brand new to internet marketing, there are much better options available for less money.
To be successful in your online endeavors, you need to understand how to rank your content (remember, videos are a form of content too).
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If you have any questions or would like to leave a comment about this Clickbank University Reveiw, please do so below in the comment section and I’ll get back to you right away.
I hope you now know what is Clickbank University and that you will benefit from this review in your near future.
Clickbank University
$47 a Month
Pros
- I Believe the Creators of Clickbank Really Want Members to Succeed
- Plenty of Short and Sweet Videos that Cover Almost Every Subject
- Live Training Webinars Every Week
Cons
- Upsells Right Away.
- Aggressive High Pressure Marketing Tactics
Hey, thanks for a great article, it’s really inspiring. I’m a complete novice but I’m super keen to get started and am exploring the online affiliate marketing area. The issue I have is there seems to be so much conflicting advice about what to do and how to do it, everyone I reach out to wants to sell me a course! I was wondering if you have an opinion on ClickBank as it appears to be the biggest affiliate network out there and is trustworthy? In this article they make working from home sound so easy (site removed…) but I’m just wondering if it’s realistic for normal people like me? Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks Todd!
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for reaching out to me and it is a challenging question with so many affiliates out there marketing various online courses. The reality is that regardless of whatever you do, whether it’s affiliate marketing where you create a niche website and promote somebody else’s affiliate product or you go through clickbank’s program to learn how to produce your own digital product, it’s going to take a good amount of effort and training.
My favorite ways to make money online for most anybody out there is affiliate marketing and selling e-commerce products on Amazon. Selling on Amazon is the fastest way to make money online but it’s also the riskiest because you’re buying products, developing a brand and then dependent on selling those products to make a profit. If it works, it’s amazing and my friend took ASM’s training who I was pretty critical of when I first reviewed them. But they have some buy back options and incentives that take the risk down greatly.
Here’s my review which shares my friends story a bit, these guys are expensive, but it’s an incredible program: Amazing Selling Machine review.
However, your profit margins are much larger per product and so you’re looking at a markup of two to three times whatever the product cost you. Versus affiliate marketing via promoting someone else’s product you are looking at commissions for whatever you promote. So it’s important to pick the right products that help your niche audience with something.
Affiliate marketing is great because there is very little risk and there’s very little cost in terms of education and infrastructure. You have your domain name, a professional theme that allows you to expand your affiliate marketing business as your business grows, your education, a keyword research tool and later you can get an autoresponder.
But in order to test the waters and see if affiliate marketing is right for you, all you need is an educational system and a domain name to start out.
Now what ClickBank, they teach both affiliate marketing where you create a product and have affiliate marketers promote that product for you. And they also teach affiliate marketing where you just promote somebody else’s product. That’s the least risky and easiest way to break into the online world and start an online business.
I prefer this method because it’s the least expensive and if you get really good at ranking content and bringing in free traffic, you can sell e-commerce products, sell your own digital products, sell advertising on your site, etc. With Thrive Membership, you can even create a membership website and your own digital products.
So if affiliate marketing is your path, then I would encourage you to go with Wealthy Affiliates training because it will teach you white hat SEO techniques that will help you build a strong foundation for a long-term online business. I think their affiliate marketing training is the best out there for beginners and they also have a ton of other tools, resources, and support so you don’t need to buy a keyword research tool, hosting, ssl certifications, and other stuff related to your website.
It will probably take you several months to go through all the training course and if you take the weekly webinars you will gain so much knowledge to launch your business off correctly. Once you get some traffic, then I would invest in an autoresponder like Aweber and an opt-in system/professional theme from Thrive themes.
Thrive themes also has an educational platform where they teach you how to become a better copywriter which is essentially how to write convincing content to sell products. They also have themes that allow you to A/B test everything on your website to make sure that your site optimized for sales conversions. So they have a lot of tools that you can use to entice people to opt into your email marketing system and then from there of course you send out helpful emails with occasional marketing of products.
But you don’t need any of that yet until you get your niche picked out, domain name and start building your site. I didn’t get these services until about month 4.
So that’s the least expensive way to go. Create a niche affiliate marketing based website. Learn how to do keyword research and rank content. once you get traffic than you can get a system to capture leads as well as sell affiliate products directly on your website.
Over time as your site gets lots of traffic every day then you could decide if you wanted to add e-commerce products, create your own digital products or even your own membership website.
That is about the best that I can do to explain it all in a nutshell.
I placed links to the resources that I use in here as well as you can always take a look at my top recommended internet marketing training programs.
Best of luck, let me know if you have any follow up questions.
Cheers,
Todd
I have read your blog post and I am really excited and thankful for such great information on your Clickbank review.
Great post and review of Clickbank University 2.0. Thanks
Thanks for such a thorough review of Clickbank University. It’s something I’d been considering using, but never got around to researching. You’ve given me heaps of great info here.
Thanks again.
Hi Emily,
Your very welcome. For me, I too had been looking forward to reviewing Clickbank University. I enjoyed learning about their program and will use them in the future when I start doing my own digital products.
But one thing at a time and since I’m starting another affiliate site, my plate is full. For sure though, I wouldn’t use them for their affiliate marketing course, the Wealthy Affiliate Training Center is far superior than Clickbank when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Thanks,
Todd
It is good that you provide such a detailed review of ClickBank University… but Upsells and Incomplete Training were the only downsides you saw, Todd? Really?
You are being soooo very kind to these folks. Our training platform and tools are 2 guys in T Shirts drawing stick figures on a White Board (am I wrong). I keep thinking… “maybe they are just playing with us. Looking childish because they are so young.” But nope – the joke was on us. ALL of our training would take place this way. Not even studio quality – I could hear traffic and sirens in the background… like it was recorded in a garage. Very distracting.
We are also told throughout training “we will be letting you meet people who have actually made money…” but the only people we ever hear about are the 2 fellas drawing stick figures.
Your training is also limited to THEIR schedule (e.g., you cannot run through the course at your own pace, like an adult). This has to do with the payment offer they snag you with at the beginning. The introductory “special offer” is scheduled to end before you can really get into significant training and be locked into the “no refund” agreement.
I script digital products and “NO” – ClickBank University is not even of benefit to folks like us.
Upsells. Upsells. Upsells.
ClickBank is a viable service – ClickBank University? If it is not a SCAM – I don’t know what is.
Hi Loretta,
I’m not sure when you were a member of Clickbank University, but I was able to go in and go through tons of lessons at the same time. I think they have opened up the amount of training that you can complete or have changed this policy – Not 100% sure.
I don’t like the up-sells either, but I felt the training that I went through was honest, of good quality, and helpful.
It’s a new program and I think it’s improving. As an internet marketer, there’s no training like Wealthy Affiliate. But they also have been training people for over 10 years and the WA program has evolved over time.
Did you know that WA first was a website to teach other marketers keyword research. That’s it. Look have they have evolved in the last 10 years. They have so much quality training that’s it’s tough to compete with them.
However, if you want to make a membership site, eBook, or a digital product based on your niche in life, I think it’s a good place to start.
But I think both educations would be beneficial for all internet marketers. First you just got to get through WA’s program. But by then, you may not need or want to build a digital product.
Thanks for your feedback on Clickbank University.
Todd
Hey Todd
Great review, and a bit of an eye opener.
Its a bit disappointing to hear of all the up-sells, I think that $47.00 is enough to justify a quality training program, as Wealthy Affiliate does,
As a satisfied member of WA, although geared to Affiliate Marketing, you could still create a product, and use the methods they teach to promote, as from what you have said the traffic generation teachings are not that strong.
This is where Wealthy Affiliate excels, getting your site ranked, so not matter, what you are selling, whether it be your own product, affiliate product, or generating income from Adsense, traffic is the key.
I know you personally test and use the products that you review Todd – so to those who are new to Todds site, you can trust every word he writes.
Regards
Paul
Hey Paul,
You’re way to kind and I really appreciate your compliment. You know, honesty is a beautiful policy to live by, it’s not always easy to do personally, but for your business, online or offline, it pays huge long-term dividends.
Thanks again for kind feedback on my site and this Clickbank University Review, much appreciated.
My honest opinion after working with both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University is that both of them offer excellent knowledge when it comes to affiliate marketing. And by affiliate marketing I mean both ends of the stick, as a affiliate product producer or an affiliate marketer who is selling the product.
Both sides offer certain advantages, but if you are really serious about making money online, I would start with Wealthy Affiliate, go through all their Webinars and their Entrepreneurial Course, then I would consider working with Clickbank University if you have a desire to learn how to produce your own Digital Product.
For affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate is the clear winner.
And you are correct Paul and I appreciate you adding your expertise to the discussion, Wealthy Affiliate is tough to beat. They’ve got so much training it’s not even funny. I still have about 100+ Webinars to work through.
My advise to people who want to learn how to make money online is to start with Wealthy Affiliate, they’ve put together a low cost, high quality training program that will launch your internet career.
Have a great Sunday Paul and hope you are well,
Todd