I get this question like crazy from my friends who learned to do affilaite marketing from me:
As an affiliate would you rather promote Amazon Kindle or Clickbank ebooks?
As a beginner with Amazon associate programs you get 4% commission on each sale, after the seventh sale you get 6% … even if you are making a ton of sales each month … still you get 8.5% commission. Given that each kindle book sells for an average of $10, that’s 40-85 cents per sale. Is it at all worth it?
To make the picture a little more clearer, we are comparing with Clickbank equivalent where you get on average 50% commission on stuff that sell for $40 on average. This is a whole different animal here.
Still the picture is not clear.
You also need to know that when people visit Amazon.com whatever they buy from the site you get commission on it. So if you send them to an ebook about cars and they end up buying a sweatshirt you still get the commission. Clickbank products, on the other hand, only give you commission if this particular item sells. If they buy something else even if it is another clickbank product you get nothing.
Another factor to consider is that Amazon is a trusted marketplace, while Clickbank products are individuals with different, and definitely inferior to Amazon.com in terms of reputation. This makes a difference in conversion rates within the 10-fold range. Amazon’s product pages are designed to convert, while this conversion ability of Clickbank products varies greatly from product to another, but never as good as Amazon’s.
Finally, there is another factor that makes a huge difference on your decision whether to promote an Amazon Kindle ebook or comparable item from Clickbank. It’s the availability of Amazon’s associate program in your country or state. Some states and some countries’ residents are not allowed to join Amazon’s associate program because of the kind of taxes and paper work required from Amazon every time they issue you a commission check.
I hope you can decide on your own now, but as a beginner and when possible I recommend that you start with Amazon. Little by little your commission checks will grow bigger. At the same time track and split test your conversions. I have some sites that make me way more money from Clickbank products than when I had only Amazon links on them. Eventually I removed Amazon links completely from those sites.
Other sites are only making me money from Amazon and the Clickbank product I was promoting on them never converted. It all comes down to testing.