What is the difference when it comes to Clickbank vs Clickfunnels?
In this article I’m going to quickly outline the difference between the two.
What Is Clickbank?
Clickbank is an affiliate network and payment processing gateway.
It allows vendors/publishers (people who create products – usually info products) who want to sell them to match up with affiliates (people who promote products on behalf of others). Vendors and affiliates then sell products to customers (the people who buy the products).
You can participate in the Clickbank ecosystem in any one of those capacities. For example, you might want to sell a product you have developed and want to find affiliates to help you make more money. Therefore, you could use Clickbank for that.
Clickfunnels is a web-based software platform that helps you to create marketing “funnels”.
Marketing funnels have become a bit of a hot topic these days, but the fundamentals are simple:
Most people won’t buy from you on the first interaction they have with you. This is especially the case when trying to sell something like a training course, info product, membership or whatever.
A funnel can help you to overcome this. For example, you might run a Facebook ad to a landing page that gives away a free eBook in exchange for name and email information. From here, you drip feed out some additional content to build trust with the “lead” and then hopefully they will buy from you.
That is a funnel.
So the basic premise of Clickfunnels is that it provides a comprehensive platform for building and optimising your marketing funnels.
It has a landing page builder, autoresponder tool, and basically assists with the whole concept of funnel building.
Clickfunnels does also have its own affiliate platform (which is famous for paying high commissions) but that is a topic for another time.
I haven’t actually done a Clickfunnels review yet, but hope to do one in the near future – so stay tuned for that.
Conclusion – What Is The Difference Between Clickbank & Clickfunnels
As you can see, there is a substantial difference between Clickbank and Clickfunnels.
Clickbank is an affiliate network that brings publishers, affiliates and customers together, whereas Clickfunnels is an application that helps with the building and “automation” of marketing funnels.
A question I see asked from time to time is what is the difference between Clickbank vs Adsense (aka Google Adsense).
In this short article I’m going to answer that question for you.
The fundamental difference is that Google Adsense is an ad network, whereas Clickbank is an affiliate network.
Adsense 101
As mentioned above, Adsense is an ad network.
What this means is that a publisher (e.g. you with a website) can apply to join the network, and then if approved you can run Adsense ad units on your website.
Chances are that many websites you visit on a daily basis are part of this ad network, as it is a popular way to monetise traffic to a website.
Google pays you when people view and then click on the ads on your site, or sometimes just when people view (this varies depending on exactly what ads you have set up).
As a general rule, you need quite a bit of traffic to do well with Google Adsense. You might be lucky to earn 20 cents per click with Adsense, so you’d need dozens of clicks – and therefore many times more traffic – to make a meaningful income.
However, it can also be a fantastic monetisation option if you run a website that doesn’t have a particularly strong availability for affiliate products, or in niches where there are high CPCs in advertising (e.g. insurance).
It brings together publishers (people who create products) affiliates (those who promote products for a commission) and customers (those who buy the products).
Unlike with Adsense where you earn if someone just clicks your ad, it doesn’t work like that at all with Clickbank.
You only earn when someone buys a product through your affiliate link. You might drive 1000 clicks to your affiliate link for a particular product, but if nobody buys then you make $0!
Despite this, Clickbank does offer a number of advantages from a monetisation perspective. With a well converting product you don’t need anywhere near as much traffic as you would do with Adsense, in order to make a good amount of money.
However, you want to be wary of doing this (in my opinion) as Adsense ads may take clicks away from your Clickbank product links, which are more likely to earn you a larger sum of money.
So while you can mix the two, I generally advise against it. Others may disagree, but I think you are probably better to focus on one or the other.
Conclusion – Google Adsense vs Clickbank
To conclude, Adsense is an ad network. You apply to join the Adsense network, and if you are approved then you can run Adsense ads on your site.
Depending on how much traffic you get, what sort of niche you’re in etc, then you can earn ad revenue from people who click (and sometimes people who see) your ads.
Compared with Clickbank, you’ll tend to need a lot more visitors on your website to make meaningful money (unless you are in certain niches that have extremely high CPC). The advantage of Adsense vs Clickbank is that Adsense doesn’t require you to sell any product – people are far more likely to just click an ad than actually buy something – and it can also help you to monetise sites that might not have obviously available affiliate products.
If you’ve been anywhere on the Internet, then you’ve probably come across a Google Adsense ad. Heck, I’d be willing to bet a million bucks that you’ve probably clicked on at least one Google Adsense ad in your time.
I’ve been active and making money from Google Adsense for a number of years now. I’m the first to admit that I’m not an Adsense master, and I certainly don’t make enough from it to fly first class and drink Dom Perignon. However, I’ve had enough experience and earnings with the platform to be able to give an honest, informed opinion.
What Is Google Adsense?
As I mentioned above, Google Adsense is an advertising network. Well to be more specific, it is the publisher side of an advertising network, allowing you to run advertisements on your websites and mobile apps that can earn you money (either per click or per impression).
Google Adsense links in primarily with the Google Adwords system. In case you haven’t heard of Adwords, it’s a platform that allows advertisers to get ads to show in Google.
The most common type of Adwords ad is the “search” ad, which you will probably be familiar with. It looks like this:
However, what we are interested in is Google Display ads. They look a bit like this:
This probably looks familiar to you. In fact, you will have definitely seen ads like this (especially if you’re not a prolific user of ad blockers).
When an advertiser places an ad on the Google Display network, it can show in ad slots that have been installed by publishers on the Google Adsense network.
Basically, with Adsense you can sell space on your website where advertisers can place their advertisements through the Adwords network. All you have to do is have a website, set up an Adsense account, and then install code on to your website where you want ads to run.
Google then shows ads to your visits based on a variety of factors, such as whether your content keywords match the keywords the advertiser is bidding on, topic matching, or whether your visitors are on a remarketing list (those creepy ads that follow you around the Internet).
No, it’s completely free to join. Google make their money on the “arbitrage” of the ads. Basically, they charge the advertiser $x per click, and pay you $X-Y.
Is Google Adsense A Scam?
No, not at all. It’s one of the biggest, most-trusted and well-tested advertising networks in the world. Issues relating to Adsense and non-payment/closure of account tend to come from non-compliance with Adsense ToS. This is often the case when people stumble across a clever method of making a lot of money with Adsense but violating the platform rules. If Google catches you out they can and will ban you from Adsense, and any pending payments you have will not be paid out.
Provided you operate within the rules, you should have no worries about getting paid out on time, every time.
How Much Money Can I Make With Adsense
That’s a “how long is a piece of string” question! The amount of money you can make with Adsense depends on:
The amount of traffic your websites receives. The more traffic you receive, the more impressions and clicks your ads will get, meaning more earnings. Adsense really is a volume-based platform for most people.
The type of traffic your website receives. Traffic from organic search clicks tends to yield better results than social media traffic, for example. If you’re dependent on lower value, higher volume traffic, you’ll need to get more clicks to make an equivalent amount of moolah.
The niche/topic of your website. If you’ve got a website about picking a good personal injury lawyer, then you’ll probably get a high CPC on your ads (as advertisers will be paying a fortune for their ads). On the other hand, if you’re trying to run a generic site that is about cat memes or something like that, then your CPC will be low and you’ll need a much higher volume of clicks to make good money.
Ad placement. Placement of ads in various locations (e.g. header banner, below post content, in-post etc) can have a significant impact on impression and click-through rate, therefore substantially affecting performance. I won’t go into Adsense placement optimisation in this post, suffice it to say that there is some excellent content out there on this particular subject, and it’s something you should take very seriously.
Demographics. This is something people don’t consider, but it’s important in my opinion. Young people are more likely to use mobile devices, and also more likely to use ad blockers when browsing. Older people – potentially less tech savvy – are more likely to be on desktop/laptop computers, browse without ad blocker, and click ads.
I will say that Adsense isn’t the easiest way to make a lot of money online. It is an effective platform, time-tested and trusted and easy to set up. But because you generally need a high level of traffic to really see results, it can be quite disheartening to beginners.
What Is The Best Way To Make Money From Adsense?
In my opinion, there are two key ways to make good money from Adsense:
Build up high-quality, authority sites that draw strong organic rankings and traffic. Use the platform in conjunction with other monetisation methods as well. This is the strategy taught in courses like RankXL (which I hope to review in the near future).
Generate large volumes of traffic through social media, e.g. Facebook pages/groups, Twitter, Pinterest etc and monetize it. Often social traffic can be hard to “lock down” with affiliate offers, physical products etc if the content you are pushing is the standard viral-type content/clickbait you see across the gamut of social media. Adsense is a perfect match for this type of traffic, as it isn’t dependent on matching products to prospective customers.
When Shouldn’t You Monetise With Adsense?
This is only my personal opinion, but there are a few instances in which I think advertising with Adsense isn’t a great idea:
You’re trying to promote high-ticket affiliate products or your own products. In this case, ad banners can be distracting and reduce the likelihood that someone clicks on your affiliate links. Remember that it is much easier to make $100 from an affiliate commission than it is to make $100 from Adsense. If you’re going to use Adsense on this type of page, use it sparingly so it never takes away from the key action you want people to complete.
You’re running a professional services website, ecommerce store, or anything else that isn’t a site where you are simply trying to monetize “information”. This is a massive rookie error, but I’ve seen it done a few times. There is nothing more off-putting than visiting the website of a bricks and mortar business that has Adsense ads installed.
You already run multiple other ad types. Unless you are specifically going for the “uber ads” look, where every article is broken up into multiple pages so you can cram the ads in, you are better sticking to a couple of key ad types. Remember, many people just block ads now anyway – or they hit the back button immediately if greeted by an overwhelming crush of ads!
Conclusion
Overall, Google Adsense is an excellent platform for monetizing websites; especially if you have lots of traffic, or at least a decent volume of traffic in a niche that offers good CPCs.
Setting up an Adsense account is easy (provided you’re in a tier 1, Western country) and getting your ad code and installing it is also straightforward, particularly if you are using a CMS like WordPress where many themes now come with included ad slots.
As long as you follow the rules, there are also no worries about not getting paid on time. Remember, Adsense is backed by Google itself!
