How to Create a Landing Page for Affiliate Marketing & Clickbank

You signed up for a Clickbank product, grabbed your hop link, and now you are staring at a blank screen wondering how you are supposed to send traffic anywhere. You cannot just post a raw affiliate link and expect conversions. What you actually need is a landing page that collects an email address first, redirects the visitor to your affiliate offer second, and keeps the look and feel so consistent across both pages that the visitor never senses a seam. This post walks you through exactly how to build that page from scratch inside ClickFunnels, choosing a product, matching color schemes, wiring up the email capture form, and setting up the Thank You page where the actual commission happens.

The whole system is simpler than it sounds. You pick one Clickbank product filtered by gravity, match its colors on your landing page, add a clean email form with one button, and redirect confirmed subscribers straight to your hop link. That sequence is what email marketers call a bridge funnel, and it is the reason Alston keeps coming back to it: email marketing converts at roughly twice the rate of sending cold traffic directly to an affiliate sales page, because most people need five to twelve touch points before they pull out a credit card.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear definition of what a landing page, opt-in page, squeeze page, and sales page actually are (they are all the same thing)
A step-by-step walkthrough of how to pick a Clickbank product using the gravity metric
The congruence principle explained: why your landing page colors must match your affiliate offer colors exactly
How to build a drag-and-drop email capture page inside ClickFunnels without any coding
How to wire your hop link into a Thank You page so commissions fire automatically after someone opts in
Why keeping the page deliberately basic converts better than a feature-heavy design
What to do after you collect an email so you can retarget subscribers over time across multiple products
Not sure which niche or platform to start with? finder.platformproof.com matches you to the right starting point in under two minutes

What a Landing Page Actually Does

A landing page in this context has exactly one job: trade a free resource or promise of value for a visitor’s email address. It is not a blog post, not a sales letter, and not a product demo. Every element on the page exists to move the visitor toward typing their email and clicking submit. Everything else is noise.

Landing page, opt-in page, squeeze page, and sales page all get used interchangeably in the affiliate marketing world. They are the same concept: a focused single-purpose page with no navigation, no sidebar, and no exit ramps. When you hear any of those terms, picture the same thing: headline, email field, submit button, done.

Some Clickbank products ship with a pre-built landing page you can download and use immediately. The problem is that pre-built page is generic and shared by dozens of affiliates promoting the same product. Building your own, even a simple one, lets you control the message, match your content’s tone, and stand apart from the crowd of affiliates sending identical traffic to identical pages.

Picking a Clickbank Product: Gravity Is Your Starting Filter

Before you touch a design tool, you need a product. Log into Clickbank’s marketplace and go to a category. In the video Alston uses the eBusiness and Marketing category, though the process applies to any niche. The most reliable first filter is gravity.

Gravity on Clickbank is a score that reflects how many affiliates have made at least one sale with that product in a recent period. A higher gravity means more affiliates are earning commissions, which is a strong signal that the product converts. It does not mean it converts for everyone in every traffic situation, but it is a much better starting point than picking a product at random.

In the example Alston walks through, the top result in eBusiness sorted by gravity is a product called “Make Money from YouTube with No Filming.” The commission per sale clocks in at $35.69. That is a real number, not a rounded estimate. Before building a single page, Alston clicks through to the vendor’s sales page and notes two things: the color scheme (red, black, and white) and the headline language (“Discover how to generate a regular income”). Those two details drive every design decision that follows.

Congruence: The One Design Rule That Overrides Everything Else

Congruence in marketing means the visual and verbal experience stays consistent as a visitor moves from page to page. If your landing page is bright pink and the affiliate offer your visitor lands on after opting in is red and black, their brain registers a mismatch. That subconscious signal reads as suspicious. Conversion rates drop even when nothing logically changed.

The fix is simple: open the vendor’s sales page, note the dominant colors, and replicate them exactly on your landing page. In this case that means red, black, and white as the only three colors on screen. The headline on the landing page should mirror the language on the sales page closely enough that visitors feel they followed a single continuous thread, not that they clicked somewhere random.

This principle extends to the Thank You page as well. Once someone enters their email and hits submit, they land on your Thank You page. That page should carry the same color scheme. The button that leads to your hop link should be red. The background should be white or black. Nothing about the page should signal “you have left the experience you just opted into.”

Setting Up the Funnel Inside ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is the tool Alston uses for landing page creation throughout this tutorial. It is a drag-and-drop funnel builder that does not require you to write a line of code. The platform lets you select from existing templates, modify them visually, connect email integrations, and point the Thank You page to any URL including a Clickbank hop link.

Inside ClickFunnels, you start by clicking “Add New” in the funnel section and selecting “Collect Emails” as your funnel type. Give it a name that identifies the campaign, in the example this is labeled “Clickbank” with a tag like “CB funnel.” From there the platform asks you to choose between building from scratch or selecting a template.

Alston’s recommendation is to borrow an existing template and modify it rather than building from zero. A template gives you the structural bones: a section, a row, a headline placeholder, and an email input field. You adjust the colors, swap the headline copy, and strip out anything that does not directly serve the opt-in. That workflow takes significantly less time than dragging in every element manually.

Building the Opt-In Page: Keep It Deliberately Basic

Once you have a template open in the ClickFunnels editor, the modifications are minimal on purpose. Here is the exact sequence Alston walks through:

Headline: Replace the template headline with something that mirrors the affiliate offer’s language. In this example he pulls the phrase “Discover how to generate a regular income” directly from the Clickbank vendor’s page and adapts it for the landing page headline. Keeping the language close to the source page is part of the congruence strategy. You are not writing original ad copy here; you are echoing the promise the visitor is already interested in.

Color adjustments: Change the background and button colors to match the affiliate offer. Red buttons, black or white backgrounds. ClickFunnels lets you click any element and pull up a color picker, so this takes about thirty seconds per element.

Email input field: The template will have an input field configured for first name. Change it to email address only. You want as few fields as possible. Every additional field you ask a visitor to fill out reduces your opt-in rate. Email only is the standard for cold traffic.

Button text: Use something action-oriented that connects to the promise. “Enter your email to learn the secret of their success” is the example from the video. The copy sets an expectation that gets fulfilled on the Thank You page and in your follow-up email sequence.

Remove distractions: If the template has extra sections, images that are not relevant, or anything below the fold that is not the opt-in form, delete them. Alston is deliberate about this: modern internet users are distracted. Music, extra graphics, multiple scroll sections, and competing calls to action all give people reasons to click away before they opt in. A page with nothing on it except a headline, an email field, and a button outperforms a page with beautiful design and five sections almost every time.

What Goes on the Thank You Page

The Thank You page is where the Clickbank commission actually has a chance to fire. After someone opts in, ClickFunnels redirects them to this page automatically. Your job is to make that page do two things: confirm the opt-in and send the visitor to the product.

To wire up the hop link, you open the Thank You page in the ClickFunnels editor, select the main button, and set the button action to “Go to URL.” Paste your Clickbank hop link into that field. Every visitor who clicks the button on the Thank You page now hits the affiliate sales page through your tracked link. If they purchase, you get the commission, in this example $35.69 per sale.

Alston also adds a YouTube video to the Thank You page as a trust-building bridge. A short personal video where you say “Thanks for signing up, your free guide is on the way, click the button below to get instant access to the product I recommend” adds a human element that pre-sells the affiliate offer without being pushy. It also gives visitors something to watch while their free resource is presumably being delivered to their inbox, which keeps them on the page longer and increases the chance they click through.

The Thank You page button text in this example is “Click here to get your free email marketing guide.” That text connects back to whatever lead magnet or free resource you promised on the opt-in page. If you promised a guide, deliver the guide alongside the affiliate offer. Never promise something on the opt-in page and then ignore that promise on the Thank You page.

Not sure what to sell or which landing page to build first?

Answer six quick questions and get a specific starting point matched to what you already know at finder.platformproof.com.

Why Email Marketing Outperforms Direct Affiliate Traffic

Alston makes a specific claim in this video worth stopping on: email marketing converts at roughly twice the rate of sending cold traffic directly to an affiliate offer. The mechanism behind that is the follow-up sequence.

Most visitors do not buy on the first visit. Research frequently cited in direct response circles puts the number of touch points required before a purchase somewhere between five and twelve. If you send someone directly to a sales page and they leave without buying, they are gone. You have no way to follow up, no way to retarget them with a different angle, and no way to build the trust that converts a skeptic into a buyer over time.

With an email address in your list, that same visitor becomes a lead you can contact again tomorrow, next week, and next month. You can send them the follow-up email that addresses the objection they had. You can introduce them to a second Clickbank product in the same niche. You can point them back to your YouTube videos to build familiarity. Every email you send is another touch point, and touch points compound.

This is also why Alston emphasizes starting email marketing as early as possible, even before you have optimized your affiliate content strategy. The list you build today becomes the asset that pays you repeatedly over the months and years ahead. An affiliate link that no longer converts can be swapped out. A relationship with 5,000 email subscribers who trust your recommendations cannot be replaced overnight.

Saving and Testing Your Funnel

Once you have built both pages inside ClickFunnels, Alston walks through the save-and-preview workflow. In the ClickFunnels editor, clicking “Save” locks in your changes and prompts you to name the page. The name you enter here can appear in search results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing if the ClickFunnels page is publicly indexed, so use a descriptive name rather than leaving the default template name in place.

After saving, click “Preview” to see the page exactly as a visitor would see it. Walk through the entire flow yourself: enter a test email address, click submit, verify you land on the Thank You page, and click the affiliate button to confirm it redirects to the correct Clickbank sales page through your hop link. If any step breaks, fix it before sending a single visitor to the page.

The shareable link for your landing page is visible in the ClickFunnels dashboard. That is the URL you will drop into your YouTube video descriptions, pin to your social profiles, or use in any other traffic source. You can also run that URL through a URL shortener to make it more click-friendly, though Alston notes this is optional rather than required.

Honest Drawbacks of This Setup

ClickFunnels carries a monthly cost. At the time of the video, the entry-level plan was not cheap for someone just starting out. If cost is a barrier, there are free or lower-cost alternatives like Mailchimp’s landing page builder, ConvertKit’s free tier, or Google Sites with a redirect. They are less polished and less integrated than ClickFunnels, but they can accomplish the same core function: collect an email address and redirect to a URL.

Gravity is a useful starting filter but not a guarantee of fit. A product with high gravity in the eBusiness category might be oversaturated with affiliates, which means the audience has seen similar pitches dozens of times. High gravity buys you confidence in conversion rates but not freedom from competition.

Congruence is required but not sufficient. Matching colors helps, but if your traffic source is sending visitors who are interested in something unrelated to your affiliate offer, no amount of color matching will fix the disconnect. Make sure the content that drives traffic to your landing page is topically aligned with the product you are promoting. A YouTube video about how to make money on YouTube should be funneling visitors toward a product about making money on YouTube, not a generic make-money-online program with no YouTube angle.

Email deliverability requires maintenance. Collecting an email list is only valuable if your emails actually reach inboxes. Using a reputable email service provider, sending content people want, and keeping your list clean by removing inactive subscribers are ongoing tasks. An opt-in page that collects emails but never delivers on its promise trains subscribers to ignore your messages, which defeats the entire strategy.

The Step-by-Step Playbook

Here is the complete sequence compressed into actionable steps:

Log into Clickbank’s marketplace and open your target category
Filter products by gravity and open the top result’s vendor sales page
Note the dominant colors, headline language, and commission amount
Generate your hop link from the Clickbank affiliate marketplace
Open ClickFunnels, create a new funnel set to “Collect Emails,” and choose a template
Replace the headline with language that mirrors the affiliate offer’s promise
Set all button and background colors to match the affiliate offer’s color scheme
Reduce the form to email address only, remove all non-essential page elements
Build the Thank You page with the same color scheme, a short thank-you message, and a button linked to your hop link
Optionally add a 60-second personal video to the Thank You page to pre-sell the offer
Save, name the page descriptively, preview the full flow, and test with a real email submission
Copy the landing page URL and drop it into your content wherever you send traffic

Find Your X

The landing page system in this video works once you know what you are promoting and who you are sending to it. The harder question for most people is figuring out which niche, which platform, and which product type actually fits their existing knowledge and schedule. If that decision is still fuzzy, finder.platformproof.com runs you through a short diagnostic and returns a specific starting recommendation based on your answers, not a generic list of options.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need ClickFunnels specifically to build a Clickbank landing page?

No. ClickFunnels is the tool Alston uses in this video because of its drag-and-drop editor and built-in template library, but you can build the same basic opt-in page with free tools like Mailchimp landing pages, ConvertKit’s free tier, or Carrd. The core requirements are an email input field, a submit button, a redirect to your Thank You page, and a clean design with no distracting navigation. Any tool that delivers those four things will work.

What is a Clickbank hop link and how do I generate one?

A hop link is the unique affiliate URL that tracks sales back to your Clickbank account. When a visitor clicks your hop link and purchases the product, Clickbank records the transaction and credits your account with the commission. To generate one, log into Clickbank, find your chosen product in the marketplace, click “Promote,” enter your Clickbank nickname, and click “Generate Hoplinks.” Copy the resulting URL and keep it somewhere accessible because you will paste it into your Thank You page.

What does Clickbank gravity actually measure?

Gravity is Clickbank’s proprietary metric that reflects how many affiliates have earned a commission on a product within a recent rolling time period. A gravity score of 100 means roughly 100 different affiliates have made at least one sale recently. Higher gravity signals that a product is actively converting for real people, which makes it a safer starting point than a product with a gravity score in the single digits. It is not a measure of total sales volume, just affiliate breadth.

Why does congruence matter so much between my landing page and the affiliate offer?

When a visitor follows a link and lands on a page that looks completely different from what they expected based on where they came from, their brain flags the mismatch as suspicious. Even if they cannot articulate why, they feel like something is off. That feeling translates into clicks away from the page and lost conversions. Matching colors, maintaining consistent headline language, and keeping the visual flow smooth removes that subconscious friction and keeps the visitor moving through the funnel.

Why should the opt-in page have almost nothing on it?

Every additional element on a page is a potential distraction. Extra images, long text blocks, sidebars, footer links, and embedded videos all give a visitor somewhere else to look instead of typing their email and clicking submit. Landing page optimization research consistently shows that simpler pages with fewer options convert at higher rates for cold traffic. The goal of the page is one action. Design everything else out of the way of that one action.

How many touch points do most people need before they buy from an affiliate link?

Alston cites five to twelve touch points in this video. That range comes from widely referenced direct response marketing data and matches what most email marketers observe in practice. A touch point is any interaction: an email, a YouTube video, a social post, a retargeting ad, a reply to a message. Most people who eventually buy from you will not do it on their first exposure. The email list you build through your landing page is the infrastructure that makes those follow-up touch points possible without you having to pay for additional cold traffic each time.

What should I include on the Thank You page besides the affiliate button?

At minimum the Thank You page should confirm the opt-in, tell the visitor to check their inbox, and present the affiliate offer through a clearly labeled button. Optionally you can add a short personal video that thanks the subscriber, previews the product, and gives them a reason to click through now rather than later. You can also add a link to your free digital asset if you promised one on the opt-in page. Keep the same color scheme as the landing page and the affiliate offer. Do not add navigation menus, unrelated links, or anything that might pull the visitor away from clicking the affiliate button.

Can I promote multiple Clickbank products with one email list?

Yes, and this is one of the main advantages of building an email list rather than sending traffic directly to a single affiliate offer. Once someone is on your list, you can recommend multiple products within the same niche over time. You can also introduce them to products in adjacent niches if your relationship with the subscriber is strong enough. The key is to deliver consistent value in every email you send so subscribers stay engaged and trust your recommendations. An email list that is always pitched with no useful content in between will churn fast. One that mixes useful information with occasional product recommendations builds the kind of trust that sustains long-term affiliate income.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How to Create a Landing Page for Affiliate Marketing & Clickbank,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/Hzz14Z92Z2U
Clickbank Marketplace, gravity metric definition, help.clickbank.com
ClickFunnels, drag-and-drop funnel builder, clickfunnels.com