Clickbank Gravity Faked?

[AaronJones]

I was digging through the offers on clickbank and I became curious as to if gravity is as good an indicator as people treat it as to which products to promote.

Is it impossible for gravity to be manipulated?

The reason I ask is because it always seems that if something becomes an accepted standard of what is the best, then someone will find a way to fake or manipulate it.

I'm wondering if the product owner could do things to make the gravity appear higher so that more people will promote it.

Aaron

[mightybw]

Yes, B-hatters would often buy their own product in order to increase the gravity. Obviously using multiple identities and CCs. I usually pick by niche, or should I say keywords. More obscure niches often mean good money even if the gravity and popularity is low.

[Rob Thayer]

A product owner could have several affiliate accounts and cycle through them whenever a sale is made through his own Web site (that is, when the sale does not come from an affiliate but is "natural"). Every time a sale is made it would increase the gravity by 1. So if he was averaging 10 sales a day and using 10 different affiliate accounts, the gravity would increase by 10 for that day. If this continued for a while, I could see where the gravity score would increase quite a bit in an artificial manner.

[edlync]

I've never heard of anyone doing things to fake a gravity score because this is a scoring system that clickbank uses and I can't see how anyone can manipulate it. Since the gravity score is really an indication of how well a product is doing for the affiliates promoting that product, it would be hard to manipulate that.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Gravity can only be manipulated so much.

A product with a gravity of 300, for example, can't have 300 affiliate
accounts from the product creator. Well, it could, theoretically, but it is
highly unlikely.

Having said that, gravity is a VERY misleading indicator.

That 300 gravity COULD indicate 300 affiliates who have only made 1 or 2
sales MAX in 90 days simply because there is so much competition.

A high gravity does NOT mean easy to sell or a high conversion rate.

Ultimately, you need to test the product with your own sales process
(whatever it is you use) and see how it converts for YOU.

[Robyn8243]

There have been guides that teach how to manipulate gravity by selling your own product as an affiliate using multiple accounts.

Not sure how much of an impact you can have...you still need to be making sales, but it could be at a different price point than what is set at the Clickbank marketplace.

Robyn

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by AaronJones

Is it impossible for gravity to be manipulated?

Not only is it not impossible, but in some cases this is part of the service provided by "product launch consultants" who have a whole network of established affiliate accounts set up for the specific purpose. They're just catering to the rather unrealistic market perception that the higher the gravity a product has, the more worthwhile it is promoting it (nonsense, of course, but as long as people believe that, other people will continue offering such services and making money from them).

[bretski]

To tell you the truth, I've never had much luck promoting products with high gravity. I usually either catch them when the gravity is at 10-30 and the % refered is high...like at least 60% or more. I know that can be faked too but at least it makes me feel a little better. I also check out the page to see how much other junk is there...opt-in's tick me off and it's rare that I promote a product with an opt-in on the page. I still promote the products with high gravity on my review sites but I don't go nuts writing articles for them. I reserve that for good products that I think will fly...I get in early, get a bunch of good articles out there and promote. I have articles that are higher in search rankings than the dang product itself! LOL!

Can gravity be manipulated...I'm sure...everything can be manipulated...do I care..no...high gravity will make me promote something else.

[garyv]

There are scripts out here that can "help" raise your gravity score. But the fact is, your gravity score can not be raised unless actual sales are made. So if a product just doesn't sell, then even a script will not help to raise the gravity score. So in that sense, the gravity score is an indicator of how well a product will sell, even if a script has "helped" the score.

[Ripped]

Yes, some publishers do that. However, that is not a long term strategy. If the product doesn't convert, the gravity will stop growing at one point.
Yes you could bump a few gravity points by promoting under different affiliate accounts. But I doubt you could get a major gravity by doing it.

Even if the vendor inflates the gravity, the product still has to SELL for it to get a gravity increase.

[AaronJones]

Thanks everyone for the responses.

Aaron

[mikeyman120]

Originally Posted by AaronJones

Is it impossible for gravity to be manipulated?

No! A vendor can open another affiliate account and use that id to promote his own product thus raising his own gravity.

Mike

[fherrera]

Okay, I've had gravity and ref% explained to me but I'd like to be clear on this.

Is gravity how many people are promoting the product?

I still have no clue about ref%...I was told something about organic searches.

Can someone please clarify?

[David McGimpsey]

Originally Posted by fherrera

Okay, I've had gravity and ref% explained to me but I'd like to be clear on this.

Is gravity how many people are promoting the product?

I still have no clue about ref%...I was told something about organic searches.

Can someone please clarify?

Finding Products to Promote in the Marketplace

• $/sale: This is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale of this product. This number takes into account refunds, chargebacks, and sales tax, so it gives an accurate picture of how much you can really expect to earn from a sale over time.
• Future $: This number only applies to recurring billing products (i.e., products like memberships and subscriptions that regularly bill customers over time). This number shows the average amount an affiliate makes on all of the rebilled sales. Note that this number doesn’t include the original sale amount.
• Total $/sale: For one-time purchases, this number is the same as $/sale. For recurring billing products, it equals the average total of the initial sale plus all rebills, divided by the number of initial sales. To put it simply, for every new purchase of this product, this amount is the average you’d make in total over the life of the new customer. However, this is just an average; this amount is not guaranteed.
• %/sale: This number typically shows the commission rate for a product. It should only ever change if the vendor changes their commission rate.
• %refd: This is the percentage of sales that were referred by affiliates. This can give you an indication of how popular a product is with affiliates, and how competitive it might be to promote it.
• grav: Short for 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.

[fherrera]

Thank you for the reply