I was so excited to review Clickbank University after realizing that they specializes in helping people create digital products to sell online.
Digital products can be Ebooks, training videos, online classes and can be about almost anything; cooking, home decor, art, dance, singing, dating, poker, fashion, cat training, interior design, cars, golf, working out, talking to women, getting good deals, organizing, being funny, etc.
Have you ever had an idea based on your passions, hobbies, or interests and wanted to see if you could get that product online?
Better yet, what if you could develop your digital product so that in time you could replace your current income and even surpass it ten fold?
If so, then 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.
Clickbank creators and educators Adam Horwitz (on the left) and Justin Atlan (on the right)
They come right out and let you know that creating a successful online business or product 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 playing the same old song and dance that promises you…
Fast and Easy Cash
Automated Push Button Software Systems
And Endless, Unverifiable, Success Stories
BTW – Clickbank University is NOT a Scam, it’s a REAL Educational Program
Todd, I’m Ready For Clickbank, Sign Me Up Now!
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 almost every class that Clickbank University offers and now I’ll give you my opinion as an internet marketer as to whether or not Clickbank University is right for you.
Clickbank University – Product At A Glance
Product Name: Clickbank University
Website: www.clickbank.com/university/go/
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 partially created based on the research from 17 years of 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 that you too can learn how to create your own successful online business, digital product, or learn affiliate marketing.
Check out this Clickbank University orientation video to get an overview of what they offer.
What I Liked About Clickbank University
I love the concept of an honest educational program that is 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 keep your attention and are packed with tons of relevant information related to internet marketing and building your digital product.
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 and to clear up any confusion.
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.
And some of these successful Clickbank entrepreneurs offer you support to Clickbank University students through their Talks Page.
There are currently 8 videos in the TALKS section and 6 are from successful Clickbank Entrepreneurs
They share their success stories, offer advise, and provide you with motivation 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 the Clickbank University.
Risk Free to Try – Clickbank University offers a 60 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.
Also, they used to limit students to only one lesson per day and since have changed this policy to work at your own pace.
The reason behind this was to not overwhelm new students, but at the same time, if you are 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.
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.
It’s an easy to use drag and drop style interface that allows you to build membership sites, ebooks, new product pages, sales pages, thank you pages, and product funnels.
Dashboard for Clickbank University Site Builder
Also CBU (Clickbank University) offers a nice bonus of free hosting for unlimited product pages with the Clickbank Site Builder as well as your own free domain name.
In less than 10 minutes you can have your own product page built
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 then sell your ebook for you.
The only downside I can see with this style of website builder is that if you ever want to leave the Clickbank University program, you might be out of luck trying to change the hosting and may loose your various website pages.
What I Didn’t Like About CBU – Upsells and Incomplete Training
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), but 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 described above.
Now if you’re going to build your own digital product, then I can see the need for it, but to hit a new student up right away with an upsell after the initial purchase was a bit disappointing.
Plus, I’m not, and I don’t think most people are turned on by the concept of Upsells.
Frustrated Clickbank University Student upset about the additional program that she is encouraged to purchase by CBU
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 paid for and not 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 upsell and I think Clickbank University is too classy of an educational program to go 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.
Get a 7 Day Free Trial and $47/month For My #1 Recommended Affiliate Training Program
The Training
As stated above, what Adam and Justin are training you on is correct information and comes from their years of experience and success.
But I think they are lacking complete training, especially to someone new to internet marketing.
What do I mean by this?
They explain concepts and show you the steps on how to work their CB Site Builder, but there is no step by step training on how to build traffic or how to setup auto responders for example.
Time and time again, I heard the same question from other students about How To Get Traffic To Their Sites. They even had a weekly Q&A session on it where Justin encourages people to review the traffic strategy courses within their training’s.
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 to what I already know.
As an affiliate marketer, I get almost 8,000 unique page visits to this site per month and over 80% of that traffic comes from natural searches made in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Want to Learn How to Create Organic Traffic to Your Site? Check out my #1 Recommended Training Program
So it surprises me that their isn’t any education on how to write content that ranks with your YouTube videos or Facebook Pages. They just say to do it – that doesn’t help anybody, especially if you are new to internet marketing.
Their affiliate marketing course is based on driving traffic to a sales page, capturing email to create a list and then selling affiliate products to your list.
Granted, I liked their email marketing strategies, but where do you get the traffic, this CBU student obviously doesn’t know.
Click on the photo to enlarge
It’s one thing to understand how email marketing works, but it’s a whole other process to implement that training within your website. And 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 Upsells
I already mentioned the CB Site Builder Upsell, but they also have the $97 Advanced Masterclass upsell. 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 you by recommending you use their recommended landing page generator.
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.
Click on the picture to enlarge the photo
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 Upsells.
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.
Current Community Sections at CBU
I think this is a huge factor to have a big community that you can bounce ideas off of 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 other students and as a reward, once per month, the winning student gets a 30 minute Skype session with Adam and Justin to help you out in the program.
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 for 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 questions 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 when 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 for when I need help with something. And the spirit of helping is ingrained into my educational program – without the bribe of a Skype session with the owners.
Maybe I’m a bit spoiled with the educational program I use, but that’s my opinion.
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 who want to learn how to sell and create their own digital products.
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 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. 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.
If you want to learn how to sell products without putting in the work to develop the product, you should learn affiliate marketing here and not from CBU.
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 motivation information to help you along you path with CBU.
Clickbank University Support
On every training page within the CB platform you will find a banner to click on to get support. I don’t know what the quality of the support is like nor how fast you will receive help. The banner looks like this.
There is also a comment section below every training to ask questions. But from what I saw in the Clickbank University, the support was coming from other students and not very consistent. They do have an expert that pops up every now and then to help.
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 for building 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 you’ll need and possible the landing page creator. 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 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 the way to go.
You Can Sign Up For Clickbank University Right Here
I’m also concerned about their training on building traffic since there is no step by step directions on how to write content that ranks for blog posts or on how to SEO YouTube Videos.
And 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.
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.
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 SEO and how to rank your content (videos or written posts/pages alike).
The training platform that I used to learn how to rank content is loaded with a 100 times more training than Clickbank University, costs $29/mo and has got the best community support from over 200,000 members. They’ve also been teaching internet marketing for over 10 years. The owners themselves give you personal support and guidance.
Below I’ve placed a comparison chart between Clickbank University and my #1 Recommended training program from Wealthy Affiliate.
If you want to learn affiliate marketing and not have the extra cost and stress associated with building your own product, go with Wealthy Affiliate.
If you want to build your own digital product, go with Clickbank University.
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 have benefited from this review.
Take care,
Todd
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