Clickbank refunds and %'s

[threatlevelorange]

When I look for products to promote under "marketplace" I see the grey line that says:

$/sale: $31.78 | Future $: - | Total $/sale: $31.78 | %/sale: 75.0% | %refd: 93.0% | grav: 19.46

what does all that mean? Do 93% of purchases get charged back?

[Darth Executor]

refd stands for referred by affiliates, not refunds.

[kelvin yeo]

The %refd is not refunds, its the percentage referred ie how many percent of the total sales were brought in by referring affiliates, in this case 93% was thru affiliates and 7 were by the merchant directly.

Hope this clears it up.

[Daniel Molano]

Originally Posted by Darth Executor

refd stands for referred by affiliates, not refunds.

Yup, that's right.

There is no way of really knowing the refund rate of products, those tools that claim to do so are BSing you. CB does not disclose that information.

I know because I have tried many.

One claimed one of my products had a 60%+ refund rate, when in reality it was below 15%.

And for another one of my products, it claimed a 4% refund rate, when it was around 25%.

[mikeyman120]

$/sale: $31.78 - This is how much you get for selling product.

Future $: - Tells you if it is a recurring product and tells you basically how much you will get per month if people stay members.

%/sale: 75.0% - The percentage of the sale you get

And someone else can explain the gravity as I still don't completely get the number.

Mike

[garyv]

Daniel is right, there's no way of knowing the refund rate, other than asking the merchant (if he/she is honest). There are calculators out there that claim to be able to do it. But they are very inaccurate, especially if the vendor is selling more than one product under the same clickbank ID.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by mikeyman120

%/sale: 75.0% - The percentage of the sale you get

But remember that what you're getting 75% of isn't the sale price. It's 75% of (92.5% of the sale price less $1).

Originally Posted by mikeyman120

And someone else can explain the gravity as I still don't completely get the number.

It's actually far more complicated and potentially misleading than people realise.

It's a measurement of the number of affiliates who have each sold the product during the previous monitored 8-week period, weighted in inverse proportion to the time elapsed since their sale. (So, if you like to look at it as "averaged out over the 8 weeks", which will usually be a reasonable approximation for a high-gravity product, each 4-week-old sale will constitute 0.5 points of that gravity figure). You can read more on their web site, where they say, about gravity: "this number represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 8 weeks. Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are “hot” at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product."

[threatlevelorange]

Can I capture their email address? I noticed that some offers are opt-in...that means I will be giving them a free email address, right? They buy it later and I don't get credit. Should I stay away from opt in advertisers?

[threatlevelorange]

Originally Posted by alexa_s

But remember that what you're getting 75% of isn't the sale price. It's 92.5% of the sale price less $1.



It's actually far more complicated and potentially misleading than people realise.

It's a measurement of the number of affiliates who have each sold the product during the previous monitored 8-week period, weighted in inverse proportion to the time elapsed since their sale. (So, if you like to look at it as "averaged out over the 8 weeks", which will usually be a reasonable approximation for a high-gravity product, each 4-week-old sale will constitute 0.5 points of that gravity figure). You can read more on their web site, where they say, about gravity: "this number represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 8 weeks. Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are “hot” at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product."

Where does 19 points rank in terms of competition?

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

Where does 19 points rank in terms of competition?

Gravity of 19, you mean? That's a "low gravity product" probably with little competition.

19 is a gravity figure at which I'd be very happy to promote a product, myself, if it's a good product and if I think the sales-page is good, and converting. Those two things matter more to me than anything else.

[kelvin yeo]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

Can I capture their email address? I noticed that some offers are opt-in...that means I will be giving them a free email address, right? They buy it later and I don't get credit. Should I stay away from opt in advertisers?

Thing is you can't capture the emails as thats something only the merchant can do. What you can do is to opt-in yourself, then when you get the merchant's emails, click through to the order page to see if your affiliate id is intact. Some merchants will make sure they do, some will try to steal that sale away from you. So best to test...

[kelvin yeo]

Originally Posted by alexa_s

Gravity of 19, you mean? That's a "low gravity product" probably with little competition.

19 is a gravity figure at which I'd be very happy to promote a product, myself, if it's a good product and if I think the sales-page is good, and converting. Those two things matter more to me than anything else.

Agree with Alexa on this. These are the "gems" that everybody else chasing the high gravities would miss...

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

Should I stay away from opt in advertisers?

Personally, as an affiliate, I wouldn't normally touch a product with a vendor's opt-in on the sales page. I know that many Warriors who are professional affiliates agree with this.

To my great surprise, I've been discovering recently that there are also a few who disagree with it (though I must say, with absolutely no disrespect to anyone at all, that their logic hasn't even begun to convince me).

This very point has been discussed in a lot of threads over the last 3 weeks or so, and this probably isn't the time/place to revisit it all!

[mikeyman120]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

Can I capture their email address?

Yes, It is a good idea to do that. The super affiliates do that.

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

I noticed that some offers are opt-in...that means I will be giving them a free email address, right?

Yes you will unless you subscribe them first and then there is a chance they will not opt in again either way you can email them with your link.

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

They buy it later and I don't get credit.

If they buy it within 60 days and your link for that product was the last they clicked you will get credit.

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

Should I stay away from opt in advertisers?

Oh boy here we go again! No you shouldn't stay away from the honest vendors just the shady ones. So you may have to subscribe to their autoresponder to see what they send to be sure. Some people on this forum said they have found a vendor trying to overwrite affiliates cookie and that's not cool. But remember most people will not order on their first visit to a site an an autoresponder lets you keep in touch with them so they can buy later.

Ok, I'm done!

Mike

[Daniel Molano]

Originally Posted by alexa_s

Personally, as an affiliate, I wouldn't normally touch a product with a vendor's opt-in on the sales page. I know that many Warriors who are professional affiliates agree with this.

To my great surprise, I've been discovering recently that there are also a few who disagree with it (though I must say, with absolutely no disrespect to anyone at all, that their logic hasn't even begun to convince me).

This very point has been discussed in a lot of threads over the last 3 weeks or so, and this probably isn't the time/place to revisit it all!

Do you also disagree with squeeze pages (before sales page) and exit pop-ups on sales page?

Because when it comes to my products, squeeze page traffic has around a 50% higher conversion rate than direct sales page traffic.

Simply because I get to push the sale via e-mail in hundreds of ways.

And exit pop-ups have increased overall conversions by about 10%-20%.

Those benefit both me and my affiliates. And I'm talking about 3 different niches, this applies to all of them.

[Christophe Young]

Funny you bring this up. When I first started with Clickbank I also thought that %refd: meant "percent Refunded." I went to my listing and saw something like %refd: 40% and freaked out. I thought it was saying I had a 40% refund rate when I knew I've had NO refunds at all!

I eventually figured out what it really means. Maybe CB should change the abbreviation.

[Lloyd Buchinski]

Something I've wondered about. In the op the refd% is 93 and the vendor sells 7%. Why does the vendor sell through CB? Is it part of their tos? Wouldn't he/she save on the CB fees by setting up their own site for their own sales? Or is it just a lot more simple to take advantage of the CB setup, with the payment system already set up.

But even then I suppose there must be vendors who do have their own site for their own sales and CB wouldn't even know how much they are selling. Would they?

I did seriously consider 'baffled' as a forum user name.