Amazon Or Clickbank For Selling Ebooks?

Sometimes you can be paralysed with choice. Which platform do you sell your ebook on? Which social site etc. There are multiple platforms, but we shall focus on Amazon or Clickbank for selling ebooks.

When you look around online you notice a huge push towards these two companies. Clickbank recognised this and created their own webpage to address the issue. Its pretty good.

What we have noticed is 2 issues that seem to be amplified online:

• Cost
• Affiliates

These seem to be the main draw for people.

If you place an ebook on Amazon and Clickbank with good keywords etc then you will find that you get little sales.

If you place an ebook on either site...what happens?

Amazon runs on a list of factors that jump you around their search. Why would they place you top of the search if you are brand new above your competitor. Whilst your competitor is going strong selling ebook after ebook? They don’t. You need to kick start the sales process first then Amazon can analyse your analytics.

On Clickbank you will find that you get lots of link backs to your page. You can also get emails from people (?bots) asking odd questions about your ebook.

Most of the link backs are spam sites/ one page websites. Some are OK in that they are category websites that place your ebook into categories with other ebooks.

Affiliates?

Clickbanks affiliates are few and far between that will do a good job in promoting your ebook. You will get link backs to your ebook but either little to no sales or lots of refunds because it has been promoted poorly. You have to actively engage with people who could become an affiliate and make their selling easier

Cost

Cost could be a winner but then we have to think about a few things first. And this is done in 2025.

Amazon gives the author 75% of the cost as long as the product is between $2.99 and $9.99 in price. You then get 75% of the cost- as long as your ebook is not that big. Then Amazon will take away a delivery change.

Clickbank on the other hand takes 7.5% and $1 of the book price. Great, so Clickbank sounds better. But what happens if you want to give affiliates money? So now you have to give 60%+ of your price to entice affiliates to sell your ebook. Now that original pricing needs to increase with the affiliate cost. Now. The question that needs to be asked is:

• If you sold your ebook on Amazon would you get more buyers at a less price
• If you sold your ebook on Clickbank for a higher price- but in reality you get less money due to affiliate cost would you get more sales?

If I sold an ebook on Amazon for $9.99 I would get $6.99. The picture below shows delivery charges being applied. Amazon charge $0.15 per MB of ebook.

If I sold an ebook on Clickbank for $10 then I would have to pay 7.5% fee and $1. This equates to roughly $8.33 for you, $2 more than Amazon.

However. You have to pay an initial Activation fee ($49.95) on every product that you want to sell and use for affiliates. If you don't want affiliates to sell your product then you can use Clickbank as a payment processor and list multiple products with them.

Affiliates

Amazon or Clicbank for selling ebooks usually comes down to affiliates.

Clickbank seems to be in the running here. More money per author, which is always nice. But online, Clickbank is noted for its affiliates. Amazon also has affiliates but for ebooks they seem to offer 4% to affiliates.

This is not much- about $0.30 per ebook sold. However Amazon has a huge reputation and high conversion rates which helps sales. If you can increase the amount of people buying the product then those 30 cents add up.

Clickbank offers the author a scale to offer affiliates. So you can offer 1-75% of the ebook price (after fees removed). But there are some issues here:

• No affiliate is going to look at an offer that promotes 1% commission
• 51-75% commissions are the most common because they reward the affiliate that is doing most of the work. It also allows higher grade affiliates to look at your products. The idea goes that if you are offering higher commissions then you will sell more ebooks so the price is worth it. Also you can sell backend products and give away a second commission ontop of the first- which increases affiliates choosing your products.

Both companies set up all the payments and it is a seamless process (Amazon checks your ebook but if you are selling on Amazon then you are automatically in their affiliate program). Clickbank makes sure your product, sales page and after sales page is up to their standards.

But you see the issues here?

What happens if you apply 70% to your $10 ebook on Clickbank. What is the profit you get?

We know we will get 8.33 with fee removed. Then we add on our 70% for affiliates. We get $2.22 in revenue.

This is much less than Amazon.

The only way around this is:

• To increase our ebook price
• To have a backend offer, so we upsell on checkout
• To have affiliate links within our ebook.

Amazon doesn't allow you do do these- apart from pair up similar ebooks.

Amazon or Clickbank for selling ebooks

One thing that we found when dealing with Clickbank is that they have great customer service and are very helpful with emails and questions. But any customer issues then you have to deal with it. You also get the customers email address. But unless customers want you to email them all the time- which might be classed as spam, you would have to ask for email sign up. This is often forgotten.

Clickbank can host your ebook if it is a certain size and is super helpful. The process to sell an ebook on Clickbank is also easy when you get the hang of it.

Amazon does everything for you, even does refunds and customer complaints etc. But the lack of information about the customer, the amount of refunds or even a way to contact the customer is a big flaw with Amazon.

You can't do a lot of selling as an author on Amazon. You can't have affiliate links within your ebook and you can't upsell unless you direct people to a link within your ebook. It is also very wise to advertise your email signup within your ebook. 

If you have an email list or some way of interacting with your audience then that mitigates Amazons no contact issue.

Right...which one then, Amazon or Clickbank for selling ebooks?

This is super hard. It can not be easily answered because your needs are going to be different that what people tell you.

But placing your ebook on both platforms will not generate instant sales- regardless of what is said. You have to generate traffic to those sales pages.

• If you want to set it and forget it then Amazon just creeps in. They do everything for you. You literally just set it up and then promote. With Clickbank you have to offer customer service and answer emails. You also need some knowledge of how to make a sales page. If you have time or that is your thing, then fine.
• Amazon is geared up to selling cheaper ebooks and offering a royalty that is fair for what they have done for you :) If you can sell multiple ebook at under $9.99 then that will be cool. If you want to group those ebooks together then you would do that on Clickbank and charge a higher price.

What we have found is that Clickbank is more directed to if you want to be a business about it. You are going to use your customer knowledge to sell more ebooks to what your audience wants.

Other payment processors like Payhip and Gumroad are similar to Clickbank (Gumroad is way easier to set up though than Clickbank). They are payment processors at the end of the day and you have to generate traffic to your product. Amazon might have a vast audience. But they might not see your ebook because there is so much product there. So again, you need traffic to be generated to your product which may kick in their search factors. 

More ebook selling platforms? Check out here.

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