Connor BrookeI’ve read a lot of books on affiliate marketing over the years. Considering that dozens come out every single day, it’s really not too difficult. Anyways, there’s something a bit disturbing that I’ve noticed. When most of these guides are teaching you about Clickbank’s gravity numbers, they give you bad advice!
Yup- promoting Clickbank products with the highest gravity is NOT a good idea. How can I say that? Why am I going against what 95% of guides out there are saying? I have a few reasons- let me count the ways:
Reason #1: High Gravity Means High Competition
Gravity doesn’t tell you how well the product converts, or how many copies sell each month. Nope- all it tells you is how many affiliates have made sales promoting that product. And I’m sure you realize that not every affiliate promoting it will make a sale. Let’s say it’s 1/10.
So if a product has a gravity of 100, that means at least 1,000 affiliates are promoting it! Over 400? You probably have at least 4,000 affiliates promoting that bad boy. That’s insane. If half of them are doing SEO, you’re fighting against 2,000 affiliates for those #1 spots in Google. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, let’s talk about a product with a gravity of 7. Using the example of 1/10 mentioned above, that means we might have 70 affiliates promoting it. Those odds are much, much friendlier.
Reason #2: Gravity Has No Relation to Conversion Rate
If you’re an affiliate, you want to promote products with good sales pages. It just makes sense- the better the sales page converts, the more money you’ll make. But a product with high gravity may not convert well. The product owner may have taken it for granted that tons of affiliates hopped on board. When that happens, they may not bother testing new things to help the sales page convert better. Instead they just sit back and watch the money roll in.
After all, if you’re making tons of bank, why change anything? Your affiliates are doing all the hard work!
Meanwhile, a product owner with much fewer affiliates can’t afford that luxury. They’ll keep tweaking and testing the sales page until it converts like crazy. You’d be surprised at the quality of some of the “unpopular” Clickbank products. If you are sending good traffic to them, don’t be surprised to have conversions at 5-10%.
The bottom line is that looking at gravity doesn’t mean squat regarding conversions.
Reason #3: High Refund Rates Can Kill
You know those IM products with super-high gravities? Check out the refund rates on them sometime. They are amazingly high. Some reach 40-50%. Why would you want to promote something like that? It was obviously not a good product, and people jumped on the bandwagon without realizing what they were buying. Not good.
If you’re trying to build a real business, you get paid to help solve people’s problems. It’s as simple as that. If you are trying to make a quick buck but not really solve their problem, they’ll catch on and unsubscribe. That’s why you should pay attention to a product’s refund rate. This is a good way to judge a product’s quality without having to actually buy it yourself. (That said- I highly recommend buying a product before you promote it!)
Is gravity affected by refund rates? Nope. So it’s not much use here. Instead you have to look into using a service or website that tells you product refund rates.
Reason #4: One Time Offers, Upsells, Downsells, and More
This has gotten very bad in the IM field, but it is found in other niches as well. It’s getting to the point that the front end product is just a piece of candy. Once you grab the candy, thieves pounce on you to take everything you’ve got.
One reason for high refund rates is due to these marketing kinds of tactics. Making money on the backend works well if done right, but tons of product owners just abuse their customers.
A bad thing about Clickbank gravity is that it doesn’t tell you anything about how many people purchase the upsells or downsells, how much money to expect from them, if they’re useful, etc. If you send subscribers to a product just because it has high gravity, they might be in for pop-up and upsell hell. Don’t put them through that.
Reason #5: People Purchase through their Own Affiliate Links
This is a huge, huge one- especially in the IM niche. I bet that if an IM product has a gravity of 200, about 150 of those points come from people buying through their own links. Even in the non-IM niches, people purchase through their own links if they want to see the product and review it.
This alone should tell you that gravity isn’t the most useful field. So what if Profit Explosion Avalanche Membership Dynamite has a gravity of 300? It only sold a total number of 500 copies last month. Meanwhile, Actually Useful Relationship Product Y sold 5000 copies, with a much better conversion rate.
Conclusion
I know that these newbie guides aren’t solely relying on gravity to choose a product. But what I’m saying is that you should use it differently than most. Don’t promote those high-gravity products. Look at those with low gravity, have a great sales page, and quality product. Once you’ve found a few of those, you’re golden.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Tell me about it, I have a product in clickbank (remedy book) 0 gravity N/A sale, I convert at 10.87%, 0 complaints. my competitor convert at 0.45%. i dominated Google (the whole niche) every possible keyword I’m at least fifth in it. my competitor lost 2000% in his traffic (Alexa and semrush data). I simply cut their blood veins. but still they got a gravity of 18 and mine is 0 which proves that gravity is not a standard to take seriously. funny how every new affiliate in my niche promotes the same product.
I created a website to dominate yeast infection no more review. done it in 14 days. cost 350$/month on SEO (10 highly trusted PR4) income 180$/month. true that.
ok here is my two ultimate tips:
1:search for brand keywords, a good product will get brand keywords no matter what especially this one: author name book.
searches like book scam? or does it work? are red flags. it means there is a negative feeling about the product (less likely to buy).
Read the sales page. is it Good? wait! ask the vendor for EPC and conversion rate. wait don’t build it yet. run a cpc send 100 visitor from a long tail money keyword. winner! make a website, build a list and let others affiliates follow gravity.
Thank you for this advice. I’ve been selling products out of ebooks on amazon and I make like 50 to 200 a month with only a few hops with each product, but I write the books to make people want to buy the products before they even see the sales page. Anyways I’ve been looking for a way to find more hops and make more money, and 4 days ago I figured out a good idea, got 200 hops on the venus factor, no sales, switched to the fat loss factor got 259 hops, no sales. I’ve gotten sales off of only 4 hops before I didn’t understand. These are very high gravity products so I thought they would convert like crazy, but they convert insanely horribly and my traffic is INSANELY targeted. Figured I would get 5-10 sales out of every hundred hops, but over 450 hops total and not one single sale. My first AND LAST time ever promoting popular products. I have 100 hops coming in every day now, and it’s growing, and it’s targeted. I should be making money.
Nice article….was bit of confused about gravity