When you first start internet marketing, one of the first things that everyone tells you is to start out by doing affiliate marketing, using Clickbank products. This is, in fact, very good advice, and advice that I also give to newbies. After all, you don’t need your own product, you don’t have to worry about collecting payments, you don’t have to worry about customer queries, complaints, etc, because all that is taken care of for you. All you have to do is to join Clickbank, then get your affiliate link for the product that you want to sell. After that all you need to do is to send traffic to your affiliate link and collect your commission checks every fortnight. Sounds like the perfect solution for someone just starting your internet marketing career, doesn’t it?

Well here is the downside to Clickbank that no-one else seems to mention, and it is vital that newbies starting their internet marketing careers using Clickbank need to know! So you have made your first sale, but you haven’t been paid yet, and you probably won’t get paid. This is because there are three stumbling blocks that you need to clear before Clickbank will pay you your first check. Most people aren’t aware of these, so they never get paid, and they quit altogether, thinking that the whole thing is a scam.

The first stumbling block is the payment threshold. By default, this is set at $US100, so if your sale is less than this amount then your payment is held over until the next payment period. This is easily fixed. You can go into your account and lower this yourself, but you need to be aware that you pay a fee of $US2.50 for every check you receive so don’t set the threshold too low.

The second stumbling block is the one that kills most newbies. In the Accounting Policy there is a section called the Customer Distribution Requirement. Everyone should read this in its entirety, but here is the bad news in a nutshell.

“Clickbank will hold payment of any account balance until the following criteria is met:

* Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers and

* Sales made with two different payment methods (VISA, Mastercard, or Paypal).”

So before you can get your first check, you will need to make an absolute minimum of six sales. One through Paypal, and five through different credit cards, using both VISA and Mastercard. And Paypal purchases do not count towards the credit card purchases, even if they are processed through a credit card. So if your first five or six sales were all made through Paypal, you still need to get those five credit card sales.

And the third stumbling block is the final nail for most newbies. That is the dormant account ‘gotcha’. Even if you have a positive balance, if you haven’t received a payment check for some time, your account is considered dormant, and you start to get charged a fee of $US1.00 per payment period after 90 days, $US5.00 per pay period after 180 days, and $US15.00 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity. So even the commissions that you have earned are not safe, you can lose them as well!

Before you start your career as a ‘Clickbank Newbie’, you need to consider all three of these stumbling blocks, and form plans to deal with them. One of the ways that I have recommended in the past was to get some of your friends to buy products through your affiliate link, making sure that they meet the criteria above. How you did that was up to you, and if Clickbank found out then they could close your account down, but the risk was minimal.

Now, however, there is a completely legal and whitehat way of getting around these stumbling blocks, making your first affiliate commissions and getting paid! Harvey Segal, one of the best Clickbank marketers on the planet, has published a completely free (not even an opt-in required) report on how to get around these stumbling blocks and start receiving your first affiliate checks. It is a short read, only 15 pages, but full of vital info, so make sure you get a copy, read it, and take action! You can download the report  “Clickbank For Newbies” here. Incidentally, don’t be put off by the title, there is some good stuff in there for old hands like me too, including a diabolically clever viral twist in the tail, so make sure you read every word!

If you follow Harvey’s advice, you will clear all three of the stumbling blocks with no problems, and then you are on your way. Once you have received your mandatory three paper checks from Clickbank, you can request to have your commissions paid via direct transfer each pay period, so there is no chance of those paper checks going missing in the mail, and the downsides of Clickbank will just be a distant memory to you, just like me. BTW, if you are an affiliate marketer I would urge you to pass this info on to all of your friends, they will thank you for it if they are newbies too. You are also welcome to retweet it.