What's the best way to choose a clickbank product or niche for AM?

[Steven Knightley]

Thank you for your time.

I'm not sure how to choose a niche, I want to use clickbank but have no idea how to choose a good product/niche.

Any advice is appreciated.


Steven Knightley

[pierro]

Hi Steve, what you could do is first check out the Gravity this is the amount of competition, a good product to choose should be somewhere in the realms of, 150-200 gravity, then check out the percentage of affiliate already selling the product, you can get more information if log in to clickbank and go to the help line, plenty of useful info can be found there, try typing into google "clickbank blog" When i first started this is where I received a lot of info. Hope this helps. To your success, Pierro

[Roy Carter]

Hi Steven

There are over 10,000 products in Clickbank to choose from. If you are having a problem deciding, try to look for a niche about something that interests you, then look at the types of products that are available in that niche. – The fact that a product or niche interests you, does not necessarily mean that it is a good one to promote though.

For example just because you may be interested in breeding two-headed giraffes doesn’t mean that it’s a good niche to enter! But if you can find a niche that interests you AND it has lots of people searching for information in that niche, then fine.

Make a list of say 5 or 6 potential products that have good appealing sales pages (that would convince you to buy if you were searching for info on the subject). - It's worth spending time reading these pages to find a product with a really compelling sales page. -Don't pick a product that sells for more than $67.00 at this stage.

Don't necessarily go for the most popular sellers showing in Clickbank as these will have higher competition. There are some real gems in the pages that rank below the first 10 in Clickbank. It's also worth looking at any new products in Clickbank for your niche as well.

Then, of those 5 or 6 potential products, narrow that down to the two you think are best and have the most compelling and persuading sales pages.

That will narrow it down a stage for you and if it's a subject that interests you, then you will find it easier to promote, (but if it’s not don’t worry – we all have to promote some products that don’t interest us but are profitable nevertheless).

Try to look for products that solve an immediate need or problem if possible. 'How To' type products are usually good and in fact a good little tip for you is a method that I use personally to come up with ideas for new niches and products to create or promote.

Here's what to do...

Go to the Google Keyword Selector tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in the following one at a time...

how to

how to become

how to have

how to save

how to learn

how to keep

how to teach

how to lose

how to build

how to make

how to maintain

how to get

how to get rid of

how do I

how can I


...and any other 'how to's' you can think of. This will give you a ton of ideas for niches to look at and research.

In fact, what I have just given you with that one last tip alone are the proverbial keys to the kingdom! You could literally get enough ideas for new niches and products to create or promote to last you a lifetime!

So what are you waiting for? Get creative!

Hope that helps,

regards
Roy

[gsport11]

I agree with Pierro, although I would add to his list. Keyword and competition research is essential.

In affiliate marketing, we earn money by delivering targeted traffic to the vendor. We need to see if there is such traffic that we can attract efficiently in order to pass prospects to the vendor's page. Keyword research, especially identifying longer tail keywords with competition that is not well optimized, is key to this process.

I recommend either turning to a professional who is experienced in this sort of keyword analysis or buy (and learn how to interpret the results from) good keyword software (Keyword Elite, Market Samurai, for example).

[mikemcmillan]

I agree with what others have said. I'm not a big fan of using gravity as a measure though. You can target a product with a high gravity and, while that means a lot of affiliates are promoting it, it also means more competition.

There are some really good products with low gravities. The person may have a great sales letter but didn't have any JV partners when they put it in the CB Marketplace.

The two main things I would look at are 1. the strength of the sales letter (that's subjective, I know), and 2. what keywords you are going to target (along with their competition and search volume) if you are looking for organic traffic.

There are also some really good products on Clickbank, but they have very, very poor sales letters. I haven't done this in probably a year, but you can direct link from a review page you create to the CB order processing page for the product and thus skip the vendor's order page all together if you think your page can sell it better than theirs. Make sure you've got your CB I.D. in your link to get credit.

[Steven Knightley]

Great answers thanks everyone...hey, I can't use the thanks button yet!

[CBSnooper]

I tend to look for products that have a gravity of less than 30 and pay more than $25.

Obviously do research into keywords before that, because there's no point in picking a product that doesn't have any demand. Step 1 in marketing. Know your market.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by CBSnooper

I tend to look for products that have a gravity of less than 30 and pay more than $25.

Same here.

(For me, preferably quite a bit more than $25.)

It dismays and frustrates me that even here, people still regurgitate this ludicrous "advice" about looking for products with a gravity of 150-200. I ought to be very happy that naive affiliates are doing that, really, I suppose. As long as people continue to imagine that there's some sort of correlation between gravity and conversion-rates, or between gravity and numbers of sales, I suppose they'll keep repeating this nonsense.

Meanwhile, the two best-converting products (by far) that I've ever promoted on Clickbank both happen to have gravities in single figures (and big numbers of sales).

[GarryMSayer]

I agree with a lot of the information you've been given already. Namely pick a product with a...

A quality sales page - if after reading it all the way through and your straining at the leash to buy the product yourself, or at the very least, if you have no real interest in the product but the sales page seriously piques your curiousity, then the sales page is doing its job and likely presses all the right emotional buttons and WILL convert targeted browsers into buyers.

- Even consider buying the product yourself to make sure it does what it says on the tin i.e. Does it deliver what it says it will do on the sales page.
TIP: A lot of products don't and the refund rate will likely be quite high.

Initially, when starting out I'd recommend entering a niche market that already contains a healthy amount of eager marketers plying their trade.

Generally a buying niche that is already being marketed to has...

- A strong google adwords presence in the google searches.
- A high search volume for either the brand-name keyword meaning the name or the creator of the InfoProduct. e.g. in the make money online niche then 'Ewen Chia' or 'Optin-Profits'.
- A high search volume for the product-name keyword e.g. if you looking in the photography niche then for example a product keyword would be 'HD Camera'.

TIP: Comparing the volume of brand-name keywords and product-name keywords with the search volumes of less targeted but related terms (e.g using the above examples 'email marketing' or 'digital photography') can give you an idea of the ratio of 'buyers' to 'freebie hunters'.

Concerning clickbank gravity or 'grav' opinions are divided and detailed in many, many threads in this forum.

My thoughts are these...

Broadly, you need to find lots of high-gravity products in your niche on the ClickBank marketplace. Gravity means sales - the higher the number, the more generally affiliates are making.

However...

You can't always trust gravity.

Why?

Concerning internet marketing products, the gravity tends to be inflated because many of the customers also happen to be affiliates and know they can buy through their own link.

Contrastly, in some niches there aren't many affiliates making one sale here or two sales there, but rather a small amount of lucky affiliates marketing and generating many, many sales with just one or two affiliate promotions and one affiliate Clickbank Account / Nickname.

For example an InfoProduct may be generating $20000 + in sales with only a handful of active affilates so the gravity only shows five.

TIP: I think high gravity generally is a good sign but low gravity doesn't necessarily equal a bad niche. Be aware and be studious with the numbers on ClickBank but just don't treat them as gospel.

My two cents.

Garry.

[Pufferf1sh]

Hi, some great inormation here. Can I piggy-back Steven's original question and ask another about Clickbank statistics:

Do you find Clickbank's hop count to be accurate? I have affiliate links on a wordpress blog tracked using pretty link. Plenty of clicks are recorded on pretty link but far, far fewer over at Clickbank. Just wondering if others had experienced anything similar? Which should I trust?

My tip for the the OP is to set up a 'free' test site on some of the shortlisted keywords first. A sites such as GoArticles will let you put in an affiliate link, and so is useful to test the waters. My second tip would be to take your time when choosing your first keyword to pursue. You don't want to jump on something boring because it looks like it has good traffic, only to spend the next few months researching and writing about the history of shoe polish!

[SuzanneR]

Already some great advice here. I'll add mine:

Don't know how to go about deciding on a niche...but I like to use this affiliate product review resource to get some good statistical data on a product: R.ecommended.com - unbiased digital product reviews

[GarryMSayer]

Originally Posted by Pufferf1sh

You don't want to jump on something boring because it looks like it has good traffic, only to spend the next few months researching and writing about the history of shoe polish!

Prior to the 20th century shoe polish was only made from natural ingredients including tallow and wax. Shoe polish still contains wax and other natural ingredients such as lanolin and gum arabic but nowadays also contains chemicals such as turpentine, naptha and dye.

Shoe polish is made by furiously heating wax and fats with mineral solvents at a temperature of 127 degrees centigrade. Upon reaching this temperature the wax is stirred for about at least 15 minutes to blend it thoroughly - dye is then added to produce the colour.

What's so boring about that!?

Maybe I'm just getting old eh?

Anyhow...

The point I was going to make was if it's a niche you feel you have no real affinity for or interest in, but is a guaranteed money-maker, then you can always outsource the writing of the content.

Me?

I'm off to scrubb up on my shoe polish research.

Garry.

[Pufferf1sh]

Originally Posted by GarryMSayer

Prior to the 20th century shoe polish was only made from natural ingredients including tallow and wax. Shoe polish still contains wax and other natural ingredients such as lanolin and gum arabic but nowadays also contains chemicals such as turpentine, naptha and dye.

Shoe polish is made by furiously heating wax and fats with mineral solvents at a temperature of 127 degrees centigrade. Upon reaching this temperature the wax is stirred for about at least 15 minutes to blend it thoroughly - dye is then added to produce the colour.

What's so boring about that!?

Maybe I'm just getting old eh?

Anyhow...

The point I was going to make was if it's a niche you feel you have no real affinity for or interest in, but is a guaranteed money-maker, then you can always outsource the writing of the content.

Me?

I'm off to scrubb up on my shoe polish research.

Garry.

Garry - You are right! This has brought a whole new sheen to the shoe polish niche! Please let me know if you are affiliated with any yea olde polish products because I think I'm in. Is a thicker quality of polish obtainable with lower temperatures and longer stirring?

Another tip is to diversify with keywords which are sub-categories of the main keyword: Always good to have a good set of back ups (or 'buffers'!)