If you are involved in internet marketing or affiliate marketing in any way shape or form you will have heard of Clickbank, the largest online retailer of digital information and software products on the web today.

You will probably also have read many tales of Clickbank affiliates making huge sums of money from promoting those products to others and in many cases these success stories are true. The most common method employed by these big earners is pay per click advertising with Google Adwords or one of its rival PPC companies. Indeed, many of these successful Clickbank entrepreneurs have gone on to make even more money by selling their systems and methodologies to other hopeful clickbank affiliates.

The fact remains however, that the majority of Clickbank affiliates, particularly those new to the world of affiliate marketing, are unlikely to see such spectacular results as these super affiliates. That is not to say that beginners should avoid Clickbank. Indeed, there are many good reasons to promote their products and over 100,000 marketers continue to actively promote and sell software, memberships and ebooks from their marketplace.

With most merchants offering commissions between 50 and 75 per cent, acting as a Clickbank affiliate can be a profitable undertaking for many, but it is perhaps a little too optimistic to believe that you will become rich overnight by doing so.

There are many good services that have sprung up to try and help affiliates to make more sales and some are quite ingenious. You can find both free and paid services designed specifically to help people make some money with Clickbank without the benefit of costly PPC campaigns or a huge mailing list.

If you are trying to make money online with Clickbank, these can be a great boost to your chances of making sales although as with anything of this nature there can be no guarantees and for those who are dead set against spending any money on marketing and advertising, the odds are always going to be against you.

If you are just looking to make some decent additional income however, Clickbank makes it simple to get started as an affiliate. It's just a matter of signing up and getting a Clickbank ID and then finding the product or products you wish to promote. With a marketplace as full as Clickbank's however, that can be a daunting task in its own right. There are currently around 10,000 products and services on offer, covering a huge range of subjects. Try selling the wrong thing, or the wrong thing to the wrong audience and you will struggle.

Some third party services, in an attempt to overcome this, have come up with Clickbank Storefronts allowing web users to search and explore through the vast inventory to find the things they are looking for. There are also services providing contextual advertising tools enabling website owners and bloggers to place text and image ads on their pages as well as search boxes and portals. Some of these are available free to Clickbank users and others require payment of a fee.

How you decide to proceed as an affiliate will depend greatly on your chosen niche, your available budget, whether you have your own site(s) or blogs and your level of experience. It is easy to become a Clickbank affiliate but perhaps not quite as easy to be wildly successful at it. With a little determination and a limited budget, there is no reason why you cannot make money. So, before rushing into an ill advised or poorly planned Google Adwords campaign, you may want to try some of these alternative methods and services first.

Once you have done your research, the important thing is to take action. You can always learn as you go along, try a few things and see what works and what doesn't. Eventually you may have the confidence to try PPC advertising, but if you are still right at the beginning of your learning curve you may want to begin with some less risky methods first.

As one of over 100,000 affiliates you may think there is little room for you, but with millions of internet users, you are still in a small minority and there is a huge market out there just waitng for you to tap into. If you have no idea what to promote, you may want to try placing Clickbank Ads on your websites, targeted to the interests of your reader demographic. There are paid services that can do this for you, but there are also some good free ones too.

Also, consider products that pay recurring monthly commissions. There are many of these in the Clickbank Marketplace and commission structures on things like membership sites are often sold on the basis of monthly fees, a slice of which goes to the happy affiliate every month. Sell once, get paid over and over. the attraction is obvious, but if you target the wrong people with the wrong offers, just because the service pays recurring commissions, you will undoubtedly see little reward. If there is a relevant one for your audience however, they can be very lucrative.

If you have a list to market to, you are already ahead of most CB affiliates, but if you don't there is no need to lose heart. At the foot of this article you will find a link to a brand new viral report which you can start to use immediately to improve the Clickbank odds in your favor. No matter what your level of experience or your success to date, there is plenty of information and assistance out there if you care to look for it. Despite the warnings of many to steer clear of Clickbank, it is still one of the most widely supported and best paying places online to work as an affiliate. My recommendation; don't be afraid to try it, you really have nothing to lose.