I’m sure a few of you have already noticed that over the weekend the Google AdSense templates domain has started showing Clickbank ads. The Google AdSense team decided to ban this domain from it’s AdSense program for trademark reasons (they didn’t like the google-adsense part)! Harsh IMHO, but not a heck of a lot I can do about it beyond bitch and moan, which isn’t very productive.
I’ve been trying out Clicksor and Chitika on another site as potential replacements and I’ve not been impressed so far, (revenue does NOT match AdSense) so thought it was time to give Clickbank ads a try which in theory could make a lot more money than AdSense.
On Saturday I manually hacked my version 04 Talian AdSense Ready WordPress SEO Theme (best theme for sale on the site) to run Clickbank ads instead of AdSense ads and two days on I’ve now fully converted the theme to run Clickbank in a similar way to how the Talian theme runs AdSense (add your Clickbank username and your good to go: less than one minute to setup, any idiot could do it).
I’ve not run the Clickbank version of Talian long enough to decide if it’s going to make as much or more money than AdSense, however there’s no reason why it shouldn’t perform well.
AdSense ads vs Clickbank ads
AdSense is easy to setup, Google AdSense provides decent instructions, Clickbank ads on the other hand are a pain to setup, the code I found from Clickbank didn’t even work, so had to find a 3rd party source!!! Ignoring ease of setup when you compare potential Clickbank revenue to AdSense revenue we should see an increase for the following reasons.
Google AdSense is highly unlikely to share more than 10% of the revenue it receives (vaguely recall reading it was estimated around 8%?) from it’s advertisers. Google AdSense doesn’t publish what percentage it shares with it’s publishers, but it’s going to be relatively low.
Clickbank publishers disclose their revenue share and it can be as high as 75%, IME most products fall around the 50%+ revenue share, which from an affiliates perspective is great: most affiliate programs offer below 10%, so you have to really work your butt off to make money.
Clickbank products tend to sell for over $20 each, so a Clickbank affiliate is likely to earn at least $10 (50% revenue share) a sale on average (for the products I promote individually my average is over $25 a sale). One good Clickbank sale can easily beat a good AdSense day on a low traffic site.
This means a website owner can in theory make far more from Clickbank compared to AdSense. That’s assuming they can get sales and that’s going to depend a lot on the niche and quality of Clickbank products available 
WordPress Clickbank Theme Features
Like with version 04 of Talian AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme, the Clickbank version has all the search engine optimization features (it’s by far the best SEO WordPress theme online today) and offers many of the AdSense features, but for Clickbank.
If you’ve used Clickbank ads already you’ll know unlike AdSense ads the keywords Clickbank uses are NOT automated, you have to add them yourself which for most users will mean one set of keywords for an entire domain (not a good idea). I’ve solved this problem as follows.
On the home page and monthly type archive pages the Clickbank keywords used to determine which ads to show is the name of the website.
On single blog posts and static blog pages, the title of the post/page is used as the Clickbank keywords.
On category and tag pages, the category/tag name is used as the Clickbank keywords.
On search results pages, the search query is used as the Clickbank keywords.
I can probably add the ability to also include a custom field for the keywords, so if you build your own meta tags or something page by page you might be able to use those (I’ll need some feedback about what people use).
I’ve so far tested the Clickbank theme on two domains and they instantly gave very good results. Don’t know about you guys, but I was getting sick to death of seeing that loose fat cartoon like ad on all my AdSense running domains (blocked those ads!) and this sort of thing should not happen with my Clickbank theme.
With AdSense you are limited to preset ad unit sizes, with Clickbank you decide the precise size on an ad unit and how many ads to show. I’ve included a good selection of ad sizes that match some of the popular AdSense ad units and some unique ones like at the bottom of a single blog posts content (like on this page) you’ll find at the bottom of the main content a 540px wide ad unit with just one Clickbank ad within it. If you look at the category pages near the bottom there’s a 540 wide ad unit with 6 Clickbank ads, two rows of 3 ads (you’d have to use two AdSense ad units to get the same result). With Clickbank you can set the number of rows and columns, so you could have 4 rows and 4 columns (4×4) equals 16 ads in one ad unit!
With AdSense you are limited to 3 content ad units and 3 text link ad units. There are no limits with Clickbank, normally with AdSense I’ll have one sidebar ad, I currently have the new Clickbank theme to have 6 sidebar Clickbank ad units available (3 with a heading and 3 without a heading): on this site I’ve added three sidebar Clickbank ad units, one with a header “Related Products” with 6 ads on the top right menu, and two ad units with no headers, one with two ads and one with one Clickbank ad. The combinations are practically limitless other than I need to limit the options to a reasonable number (will probably have around 20 ad unit sizes available: happy to take suggestions).
Hit one issue so far with the ad unit colours, I’d like to include the option to choose from two colour sets so the sidebar ad units have a mustard colour background and the content ad units have a white background. Currently can only have one colour set.
I’d also like to be able to mix and match AdSense and Clickbank ad units, but that might be hard to achieve So currently it’s one theme for AdSense and one theme for Clickbank.
Clickbank Membership Site
Rather than sell this as a single product I’m thinking about selling the new Clickbank theme via Clickbank and bundling in with all the other AdSense themes in one membership site (might stop selling themes individually). Not sold products via Clickbank before, so that’s about as far as I’ve got on what the possible options are, but the good news is others will be able to promote the theme and make affiliate revenue (I’ve had more than a few emails asking for the option ).
For current customers I’ll at least give them a significant discount equal to whatever they’ve already paid me off what ever fee I decide on if they choose to upgrade.
I can’t make any promises on how long it will take for me to get everything setup, I made the mistake with Talian 04 AdSense theme to say a few weeks and it took months for me to find the time to finish it, so…
Quite excited about this theme, should make more money than AdSense, so I’ll be testing it on multiple sites and post the results.
9 responses to Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
AdSense ads vs Clickbank ads is not only a great topic but practical. One advantage of using Clickbank is many Google ads are blocked by a Firefox plugin called Adblock. Therefore, a percentage of revenue is slipping though your fingers.
Most of my friend (although they are all geeks) use this program. So when a person lands on your site and has this installed there is no chance you will make anything if you run Adsense. However, this is not the case with Clickbank.
The Clickbank theme you have now looks great. I would keep exploring other programs too besides Clickbank, but if Clickbank works use it. – Occam’s razor – entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem – (basically go with what works).
I always fear doing anything that will affect my ranking in Google(doing anything outside the guidelines).
If this works with Clickbank and has not affected your rankings I will use these themes for sure. They look good and you are in my opinion one of the few people who really know what they are doing with making money online. Further, you always seem to give more than you receive.
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
How does Talian 04 with SEO, AdSense and Clickbank all in one WordPress theme sound?
I’ve been testing the Clickbank only theme on some relatively low traffic sites that don’t make a lot of money through AdSense and the results haven’t been great, it’s very early days in the tests, because it’s low traffic and a couple of Clickbank orders would tip the scales the other way. It’s a case with AdSense you just need a click to make money, with Clickbank you need a click and the advertisers to sell the products to make money.
Because of this I decided to create a version with both types of ads available. Working on the duel Clickbank/AdSense theme right now with a test version at http://www.warcraft-world.co.uk/
Not figured it all out yet as there’s going to be issues with the main content ad (the one that floats to the right of the main content) as it would probably look awful having 2 ads (one Clickbank one AdSense) side by side.
So users will have to choose which one they want (Clickbank or AdSense via the settings). By default I’ll probably set all AdSense ads on (like the original Talian with AdSense/SEO) and most Clickbank ads turned on (floating Clickbank ad disabled).
Currently got it running via two files adsense.php, change the Google AdSense publisher id and you are good to go and an equivalent clickbank.php file where you change the Clickbank username and it’s good to go.
Will be very interesting to see how a duel AdSense/Clickbank theme performs overall.
David
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
I think that is a very good idea. Clickbank and Adsense templates all-in-one for Wordpress is ideal. Nothing like it on the web, not only for the Clickbank option but the SEO.
Clickbank pays. I have used them and it is possible to make nice fat sales, if you site is quality, not light and lame content. But you have to be able to write something and be sincere. As always I am looking forward to see the data on your 45-year-old-millionaire site.
I have about doubled my income from your theme, that is why I am such a loyal reader of your blog.
However, I very curious about other readers experiences with your theme or Clickbank. What are the pluses and minuses from Adsense vs Clickbank in some of your readers experiences? I see some feedback.
I know this is not a forum, but I am curious, how the other guys/gals are doing with Clickbank or themes etc?
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
I have to admit I’m not sure about mixing AdSense with Clickbank ads, though expect it will work well on some sites/niches and not on others (like everything we do it depends a lot on the site/niche).
I’m trying to take this into account with the new Clickbank/AdSense theme by allowing customers to have as many or as few of each type of ad as they choose (every ad can be disabled independently). I find on some sites there’s not enough advertisers to give a good selection of high quality AdSense ads to fill the 3 content type ads and for a site like that it might work to have the main larger rectangle floating ad as AdSense and a couple of Clickbank ads on the sidebar and further down the page, this way AdSense has to use the best CTR location for the best AdSense ads and you haven’t wasted the rest of the page.
What I currently have running at http://www.warcraft-world.co.uk/ is a bit over the top, (there’s 13 ad blocks on the home page, 6 AdSense and 7 Clickbank
) but it shows what’s possible.
I’ve had some really good ideas for improvements resulting from having to solve problems associated with trying to mesh two ad systems together.
For example I solved the issue of only being able to have one main floating content ad (one AdSense and one Clickbank ad together wouldn’t work space wise). Customers can select which ad (Clickbank or AdSense) is the main ad and that goes in the floating content area (highest CTR) on the site above it’s AdSense. The secondary ad goes into a lower content post on archive pages (not used on Single and Post pages: at least not yet anyway), if you look at the home page of the WOW site above there’s a Clickbank ad floating in the content of the 5th article: which post the secondary ad lands on is adjustable as well, so you could have the first 2 articles having an ad each, one Clickbank one AdSense or article 1 and 7 or 1 and 10….
I’m giving this theme a LOT of flexibility, ranging from 0 ads (so just the SEO theme) to anywhere up to about 18 ad units if all the Sidebar Clickbank ad widgets were added!
Going to try to incorporate AdSense channels better into this version if it’s still possible to use channels with the AdSense legacy code (ages since I used channels other than URL channels).
When I first made AdSense themes my PHP skills wasn’t very good, still not great at PHP, but I’m getting better and can solve many more problems now.
BTW a lot of people don’t like discussing their ad income in public especially when linking it to specific niches/sites, gives away information others can use and that can result in more competition. So we might find few share their experiences
Personally I like to hear success stories, especially if I’ve helped the person: makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside 
David
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
Here is another idea for your theme. Maybe a 403 -forbidden option in your theme that relates to the wp-admin page? Why? A hacked blog is a lost blog in Google’s eyes. You may come back someday, but it is a long slow road once you have been hack. Restricting access to the wp-admin page might help prevent this. This is an idea. Matt Cutts does this BTW.
-Automatic redirection on permalink changes? But maybe this is more a plugin thing.
-maybe something that can help with more links such as something that will display other people who link to your site and reward with back. I do not know. I think these are ideas.
I do not know if it would do any good but what about asking people if they have SEO or make money online ideas that could be added to future theme modifications. But only add the really good ones as I know it is hard work and you do not want too many cooks spoiling the broth. I think you know the most, Prelovac knows a lot too. But maybe someone else has ideas for a wish list on how the theme could be improved?
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
I’m open to any theme ideas, like the 403 -forbidden option (I’ll look into it). I’ve had a few WordPress blogs hacked, eldest son had some sites on my server and he never updated WordPress which left an old WordPress exploit open. Two days after I bought the domains from him (he went to University studying computer science! and didn’t want them) they were hacked (had sever backups, so was easy to fix)!
“Automatic redirection on permalink changes”
Some of the redirection is now core WordPress. I’ve not used this plugin http://www.microkid.net/wordpress/permalinks-moved-permanently/ but looks like it might be able to deal with other redirects not dealt with via core WordPress.
I tend not to mess too much with changing the permalink structure on a site even if I’ve made a mistake in the past (like having dates in the URL!). When I have it’s been a case of a lot of manual 301 redirects via a .htaccess file!
Your linking back idea. That’s like Trackbacks that can be posted as comments, problem with automatically linking back to sites that link to you is link spam. If you’ve used a dofollow type plugin on a WordPress blog you get a lot of very poor quality comments just for the link back.
I’m using a heavily modified version of SEO Super Comments (original created by Prelovac) and allowing dofollow links on the commenter’s URL, (I’ve added your URL to the website comment form so you can see it in action) your name at http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/clickbank-ready-wordpress-theme.html?cid=20138 is a link to one of your sites.
It’s sending out PR/Link benefit, (so dofollow) but because these comment pages are so deep (that page above will only have one link to it) the link benefit sent out is very small. In comparison if this page (the main “Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme” post) had dofollow author links and 50 commenter’s had a URL that would take a BIG chunk of link benefit from the site and damage this pages SERPs (all that anchor text that I didn’t SEO!!!).
So using the SEO Super comments plugin with Talian can give a little back to your commenter’s without too much loss to your site. Personally I don’t comment on other peoples sties for link benefit, when I do comment it’s because I want to comment on something or direct visitors to one of my sites (99% of the time it’s I want to comment).
I’ll be releasing my modified version of SEO Super Comments plugin (it will probably only work with Talian) with the next Talian update (I couldn’t get the original SEO Super Comments to work with Talian).
Got a bunch of updates to include and fully test, so could be a while before the update goes out.
Feel free to keep throwing ideas at me, you suggested I look at Clickbank ads for example http://www.45-year-old-millionaire.co.uk/affiliate-revenue-report-5022-for-december-2009.html/comment-page-1#comment-6828 wasn’t aware at the time you could have AdSense style Clickbank ads
David
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
AdSense Style Clickbank Ads Tests are not all Going well.
I’ve only done limited testing with the new Clickbank versions of Talian, (three domains about a week of tests) but not impressed with one of the tests so far.
The main reason I created a Clickbank version was for this jokes site http://www.free-funny-jokes.com/ (can get over 10,000 visitors a day, so great for testing things quickly) which Google recently banned from the AdSense program because of some of the content: I included racist jokes for SEO/traffic reasons (they are the most popular types of jokes searched for online!!) and it resulted in a lot of relevant traffic and a LOT of racist comments on the site (I gave up moderating the comments (I don’t even read the comments now) a long time ago, some people are awful!).
After the AdSense ban I moved to running Clicksor and Chitika ads, (not optimised, just quickly added to the theme code) as replacements to Google AdSense and was making less money than from AdSense (about 60% of AdSense income).
Thought AdSense style Clickbank ads would perform better, but after about a week testing later and they aren’t (made about 80% the money I made from Clicksor/Chitika from Clickbank).
I think it’s the niche/traffic (jokes) as the other two domains I’m testing Clickbank ads on (both in the money making type niche) are fairing much better, not as good as AdSense ads, but if you can’t use AdSense on a site for some reason, worth testing. There’s also adult niches you can’t run AdSense on.
As I suspected, basically some niches are going to work with Clickbank ads and others won’t.
Have made a ‘hacked’ Clicksor/Chitika version of Talian and using it on the jokes site to see what better optimised Clicksor/Chitika ads can achieve (maybe match AdSense revenue).
Gone a little over the top with what you can do with Clicksor/Chitika, so if I decided to make a Clicksor/Chitika version of Talian it won’t be that ad heavy (definitely not sure about the pop unders).
Good news is I see no reason why I can’t incorporate Clicksor/Chitika into Talian, so might be working on an AdSense/Clickbank/Clicksor/Chitika version of Talian soon
It’s about finding what works for each site and if something doesn’t work, try something else.
David
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
My pagerank finally went to a 3. I give away a lot of links on my site to folks I interview. If I only have a few links per post on my site, does it have a negative effect on my PageRank? Am I correct to think that the most effective way to increase pagerank is to have one way inbound links? I have thousands of social bookmarking links like Digg and Stumbleupon going to my site but I don’t think they get counted as inbound links??
Alexa seems to have a really low count of links to many sites. Are there answers to why that is?
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
Hi,
Thanks for the great article dude, its been very helpful in my buying some wordpress themes ready for adsense
Now I’m after some that will do the same for clickbank, so do you have a link to any sites where I can get these wordpress themes for clickbank please?
Thanks!
Clickbank Ready WordPress Theme
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