ClickBank: How To Sell Multiple Products From Different Websites Using A Single ClickBank Account
If you are an existing ClickBank vendor, you must realize that you can define more than one products in your account. The problem is, ClickBank only allows one Hoplink Target URL. If you want to showcase your products like a shopping cart, then that’s fine. But if you want each product to have its own website and sales letter, then you may have a problem.
Fortunately, there’s a way to work around that. By informing your affiliates to add extra data in their hoplink, you can redirect visitors to the right product pages.
Let me elaborate. When you put extra information at the back of your hoplink, ClickBank will also send that information back to your site.
Let me give you an example. When you use the hoplink like
http://affID.vendorID.hop.clickbank.net?x=productIDClickBank will redirect your visitors to
http://yourhoplinktarget.com?hop=affID&x=productIDNormally you do nothing with those extra data. But using server side programming like PHP, you can extract those data and use them back. In this case, you can use them to redirect visitors to your product sales page.
What you need to do is create a PHP file and use that as your Hoplink Target URL. If you defined your Hoplink Target URL as http://product-one.com, then you can create an index.php and put it in the root folder.
Here’s an example of the index.php.
<?php
if ($_GET['x'] == ‘1′)
{ header(’Location: http://product-one.com/welcome.php’); exit(); }
if ($_GET['x'] == ‘2′)
{ header(’Location: http://product-two.com’); exit(); }
if ($_GET['x'] == ‘3′)
{ header(’Location: http://product-three.com’); exit(); }
// default product
header(’Location: http://product-one.com/welcome.php’); exit();
?>Just a little note, because we set the Hoplink Target URL as http://product-one.com, which will call the index.php by default, we need to create another page for the sales letter page. In the example above, you see that I use welcome.php. If we don’t you can imagine visitors will be in a never ending redirect loop.
And also don’t forget, in your CB Account, you have to define the prices and thank you page for your products. Pay attention to the Item number of the left. You need to know what number your products are to create the correct pay link.
Let say that you created your second product called “Blogging Secrets”. You went inside your CB account, defined that product, set the price to $47 and assigned a thank you page. Because this is the second product, the item number will be “2″. On your sales page, where you redirect visitors to using the PHP code, you need to use the following paylink.
http://[item-number].vendorID.pay.clickbank.netJust replace [item-number] with the right item number. In this case, it’s 2, so your paylink will be…
http://2.vendorID.pay.clickbank.netWhen visitors click on that link, they will be redirected to ClickBank’s order page. You can also add some details to be shown on ClickBank’s order page by adding something like this to your paylink:
http://2.vendorID.pay.clickbank.net?detail=Blogging%20SecretsAs an affiliate, I don’t like websites that links to the affiliate page from the main site. It’ll attract unethical affiliates who will be buying from their own links. So when I am the merchant, I only tell customers about my affiliate page.
That is also the reason why I cloak my paylink, and why I use “?detail” in my paylink. When you use the “?detail” feature in your paylink, customers don’t know what your CB ID is and that will help avoid commission stealing from your real affiliates.
The next step is about informing affiliates to use the right affiliate link. I suggest you create an affiliate page for each of your products. And then, you let them know about the right link to use.
If you created, for example, BloggingSecrets.com, which is selling your second product in CB, you may want to add a page for affiliates. That could be something like BloggingSecrets.com/affiliates.php or something. And on that page, your educate your readers about how to link to you website.
If this is your second product, you need to tell your affiliates to use a link like:
http://affid.vendorID.hop.clickbank.net/?x=2By the way, as a shameless plug, I explain all these in more detail in video at my CBTrickVideos.com…
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on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 8:39 pm and is filed under ClickBank, Tutorial.
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I just wanted to say a big thank you for the information about linking affiliate details to different products within one overall web site. I had tried to work it out myself to no avail, but your page explained it so effectively.
Thank you
Avril. No problem. Glad that this helped..
Great article. I found it while searching for click bank multitools. There is another tool that readers may be interested in which has a lot more features and does not require any script coding, it is the CB-MultiTool at
cb-multitool.yes.net
It lets you banish problem affiliates, sell multiple products in one cb account, auto creates your affiliate links page and a bunch more stuff. It is worth checking out if you are a cb user.
Thanks for the article. Those who are good with php can write their own script, for me that was a little too complex so I went with this all in one solution.
Oops, that is cb-multitool.y3s.net Sorry about that typo, weird url.
That is so simple, and so well written. I thank you so very much as this really is a perfect solution to a common problem which has bugged me for almost a year now!
It will save me a bunch of cash setting up new CB accounts for special promotions etc - not to mention the hassle of getting the same products re-approved etc.
Thank you - thank you!
Jim
Hey, glad that you like it Jim.
Excellent Information!! So well set out. Solved a problem in 30 seconds flat.
Yep. Sure solved a lot of problems and some money too…
[...] Re: Clickbank questions GoldenRule - There is a useful article here that shows you how to set up multiple products using one CB account. ClickBank: How To Sell Multiple Products From Different Websites Using A Single ClickBank Account –… [...]
When I need to add second product to clickbank, I have to decide if I need to open another CB account just for affiliate selling purpose. I am so glad that I searched to find this article. This simple PHP code solution can solve the big issue for me, - no need for multi cb account, easy product management with affiliate power. Thanks!
Hi,
I have been trying to get this great little script to work but I am aways getting an error
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in the index.php on line 4
Any ideas?
[...] chuckle - you could google that question some results would be Sell Online: FAQ - ClickBank ClickBank: How To Sell Multiple Products From Different Websites Using A Single ClickBank Account –… cheers [...]
Hi, where will the ?tid tracking link go then? Most affiliates make use of the tracking link when they advertise using adwords, etc. So does the affiliate link with tid look like this:
http://affid.vendorID.hop.clickbank.net/?x=2&tid=PPCKeyword1
or
something else. Thanks!
One more question, what if item 2 is a One-Time Offer (OTO)? this should never be revealed to affiliate as product 2 since the OTO will only be displayed after buyer purchases item 1. If it is shown to affiliate, they might use the
http://affid.vendorID.hop.clickbank.net/?x=2
and it goes directly to the OTO salespage which is big trouble for you as a vendor. How do you plug this gap?
Yep, that’s pretty much it with tid.
And with the OTO and other products, let me clear this for you. The x does not need to correspond with the product ID in your Clickbank account. You are only using the x to determine where to send the visitors.
Example, x=1, sends visitors to websiteA.com, which can sell product with ID 85 in your ClickBank. x=2 will send visitors to WebsiteB.com which sells product with ID 43 in your ClickBank — it does not matter.
And when there’s no x value, or invalid x value, you send them to your default website.
can you please see if you can help with my above question?
By the way just incase you couldnt find it i was refering to this question
I have been trying to get this great little script to work but I am aways getting an error
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in the index.php on line 4
Any ideas?
Also I thought i shoudl let you know I am using Go Daddy hosting, I have had problems trying to get scripts to work on thier hosting accounts before.
@Dean if you copied and pasted the code, maybe you need to change delete and re-type the quotes in the codes. WP has a way of changing the wrong quotes into some fancy ones.
This includes quotes for the x, the number IDs and the Location.
Thanks I will try that.
Ok I have got the redirect to the origonal sales page to work when not using and extra code but when i try to go to my 2nd product page using the ?x=2 it is always a black white page.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Check your codes. I believe something is wrong. Maybe your “Location: url” is not right, or your website is not ready, etc…
I appreciate the information…but frankly this is ridiculously confusing. Eventually I’ll have a small team of programmers working for me…but leading up to that point looks like it’s going to be crazy. .. really crazy.
I’m going to hunt for a generator or plugin that does this.
LOL! Well, maybe too much for some to take in. Hmm… try and see easyclickmate.com
Thanks for this. I’ve been scratching my head about this for a while and you answered it in a jiffy. Will be sending this over to my programmer ASAP
I sent an email to Clickbank support about this, will be interesting to see if they just tell me it isn’t possible..
Hello,
Thank you for putting this information here but I have a question…for the page for your clickbank account…do you put the url of your 1 product ie…
(1) http://www.mydomain.com/cb/product1
or do you put the url of the
(2) http://www.mydomain.com/index.php
that will redirect to
http://www.mydomain.com/cb/product1
and if use #2 above what do you have to do for the clickbank setup to get it to go to
http://www.mydomain.com/cb/product2
Maybe you have already addressed this but I’m not quite getting it….
Your help is appreciate.
Can you provide more information on this?