It may be useful to recount a few things that I have learned thus far in my “make money online” journey. Let’s call this part one of what will be an ongoing series of how not to make money online.

I realized pretty early on that the fastest way I could make money online was by starting a site or blog that sold something. Since I had nothing of my own to sell I went looking for a product. I found a forum site, the warrior forum, where many of the denizens promoted digital products from the clickbank marketplace. Clickbank, in case you don’t know, is a large mall of mostly info-products. (If you found this article by typing “click bank scam” into google please keep reading.)

Clickbank carries lots of ebooks especially in the make money online area. Because these products, once they are finished, don’t really have any production or shipping costs, they offer high commissions. Someone’s latest ebook on how to make money flipping websites or whatever might sell for $47 with a 50% commission. So you’d get about $23.50 in commission for each sale.

I took one look at this and thought it was perfect. I didn’t know which ebook I should sell so I just picked a popular one. It was called Google Something and it promised to show you how to make $500 a day through google. Since I had actually read the book I didn’t know how to promote it. I ended up just making up a positive review.

I didn’t know how to rank organically for anything so I set up a PPC, pay per click, campaign. I paid around $60 for traffic and sold two copies of Google Something for a grand total commission of $47 meaning I was down $13 for my efforts.

Sounds reasonable right? Where’s the clickbank scam in that? Well, I decided, since I was losing money, to suspend my campaign and re-think my strategy. I figured once I got my check from clickbank that I’d get to work thinking of something else. Only I never got my check from clickbank. It seems that they have a policy whereby they only cut youa check after you have consummated five different sales. Well, I had only made two sales. Irritated, I simply forgot about clickbank. I got busy with other things in life and many months went by.

After some times, I had decided it was time to give this “make money online” thing another try. I thought clickbank deserved another try. I logged into my account for the first time in months. My total balance was $0. I had lost my $47. What had happened was since I had not logged into my account in some time, clickbank charged me to hold onto my commission. They took $10 every two weeks until my commission total reached $0. For my two sales, I would get nothing. So I was now out $60 for my efforts.

Perhaps not a clickbank scam, but an unfortunate reality. Nevertheless, I decided to give clickbank another try. I picked another ebook, this one about curing panic attacks and setup another blog to promote it. After learning the hard lesson with PPC, I wrote articles to generate traffic to my blog for free. Within a week or so, I had made a sale. I was stoked. But since I had not gotten five sales yet, my commission continued to sit there. I wrote more articles, but made no more sales. Where people not panicking any more?

Then, about ten days after the ebook sale, I logged into my account to find that the customer had returned his ebook. I suppose he had had a panic attack. Commissions were back to $0. I was no out about 40 hours and $60 and had nothing to show for it. So I started to re-think once again.

It was at this point that I realized the major problem with clickbank: All the stuff is crap. It’s a giant mall of digital trash. The ebooks there are frequently returned because the purchasers are frequently unsatisfied… And that is the continuing catch with clickbank.

If you think some guy can cure your panic attacks or make you a million dollars for the low, low price of $47, you are bound to be disappointed and destined to return your crap. I decided at that point, that I simply was not worth my time to sell crap. Sure, I might be able to make a few dollars (though I had done nothing thus far but lose $60) but it seemed unsustainable. I didn’t want to sell junk and that’s what for sale at clickbank.

Now, I believe in making money online and high commissions are nice but clickbank is simply rife with problems. Besides the crap factor is the fact that everyone you try to sell to already has a clickbank account so your commissions are always endanger of being hijacked. And unless you want to spend $47 or can get a review copy, how do you find a non-crap thing to sell? I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

I own blogs today that sell stuff, and I believe info-products can be great products, but I don’t sell any clickbank stuff. It’s too much of a hassle.

So, where does that leave you. If you’re making good money selling clickbank stuff, good for you. If you are just getting into the make money online game and are looking for a product to promote, I’d recommend you stay away from clickbank. Find a solid product to promote, that’s my advice. I firmly believe that promoting clickbank products is a good example of how not to make money online.