Clickbank Experiment-Can you trust the Product gravity score?

[salegurus]

One of the products i have been promoting on clickbank has a "supposed" gravity score of over 400. I have been promoting it for about 6 weeks with 0 sales so i decided to do some experimenting.

Because it's a product related to a popular facebook game i did the experiment via facebook ads.

I created 4 ads, 2 using CPC and CPM ads and driving the traffic to my review page of the product.
And 2 using CPC and CPM ads and driving traffic directly to the merchants sales page.

Results:
My Page - Hop Count: 261 Order Form IMP: 29 Sales: 0.00%

Merchant
Sale Page - Hop Count: 684 Order Form IMP: 94 Sales: 0.00%

I know people may click the order button to see the price or back out at last minute or maybe the funds were not cleared.
But with 684 clicks directly to the merchants salespage and with 94 people clicking the order button you would expect at least 1 sale, especially if the product has a "reported" gravity score of 400+

Products on clickbank just don't convert very well or could it be that merchants inflate the gravity score to attract more affiliates?

Anyway just a thought
Test was done over a 7 day period at a cost of $143

[Steven Wagenheim]

Gravity scores are artificially inflated through a fiendishly clever tactic.

If you knew...it would make your hair stand on end.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by salegurus

But with 684 clicks directly to the merchants salespage and with 94 people clicking the order button you would expect at least 1 sale, especially if the product has a "reported" gravity score of 400+

With respect, the logic is faulty, here. Partly for the reason Steven mentions above, of course, but also partly because there's a whole variety of other reasons why high gravity products can have particularly low conversion-rates. Personally, I stay away from high gravity products because (as Clickbank now advise affiliates openly on their site) the one thing you know for sure about a high gravity product is that it's going to be competitive to sell. Here's a little example to mull over:-

Clickbank Product A
- Sales-page conversion-rate 2.8%
- Solid product from well-known marketer
- Product has almost no refund requests
- He has 20 affiliates of whom 10 are superaffiliates who sell huge numbers of the product
- Product is easy to promote and sell
- Sales numbers are therefore very high, but the gravity figure is obviously very low (maybe around 10)

Clickbank Product B
- Sales-page conversion-rate 0.2%
- Crappy product from scammy marketer
- Refund request-rate is higher, of course
- Product had a "professional launch" with 100 "temporary affiliates" (accounts used once each to buy one product, privately refunded, and/or the figures were massaged in one of the other "customary ways")
- Product is obviously a complete and utter nightmare to promote and sell because the sales-page doesn't convert well
- Gravity figure starts out at about 110, and rapidly rises to 150/200 because gullible affiliates are attracted by the gravity figure, believing wrongly that it "validates the fact that the product is selling very well", and they all struggle and waste time/money, but eventually they obviously make 1 or 2 sales each anyway, and for this reason the gravity figure rises still further to 250/300 as the inevitable consequence of its self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obviously enough, product "B" is the high gravity product. Obviously enough, product "A" is the one for which I want to be an affiliate. These examples are in no way contrived - they're realistic and common.

A high gravity figure, in short, is surprisingly often a sign of a very high turnover of affiliates, each attracted by the high gravity figure, struggling, and eventually making one sale which boosts the gravity figure even more. It doesn't necessarily mean that anyone can realistically or profitably sell the product at all!

So, the answer to your question is "yes". You can trust the gravity figure to measure what gravity figures measure. But not to tell you how that came about, and definitely not to imply that any affiliates at all are successfully promoting the product!

I promote 13 products at the moment - soon to be 14 - and my two best-converting products, by far, out of all those, both have single-figure gravities. Some people think that's a "coincidence".

[LandoFormosa]

look also at the date the product was first introduced on CB as well as the gravity. In general, 3 digit gravity suggest high potential, but that measure in itself is not enough to determine a well converting product

[GeorgR.]

we have those discussions once in a while, really, gravity BASICALLY doesn't mean anything.

If your product(s) dont convert in say 1:60-1:85...its time to move on. Some simple don't. The ones i am promoting are *usually* converting 1:50 - 1:60 which is pretty "ok" actually.

Furthermore, there are ways to inflate gravity...and i know that some so called "gurus" do this.

[MarkFreeman]

The IM products are the worst for artificial gravity IMO.

People promote these to internet marketers ... those internet marketers buy the product through thier own affiliate link to save some money ... gravity skyrockets.

I am pretty much ignoring gravity these days and looking at the sales page, niche reseach and the affiliate tools on offer only. Oh ... and the commission of course

[innocent07]

Clickbank Experiment-Can you trust the Product gravity score?
The simple answer = No, and Dont trust it!

[NikkiG]

Call me cray but a my method for selecting a product would ignore gravity and go a little more like.

1. Check out the sales page, does it look like it will convert.
2. Buy the product to make sure it is good and delivers on the promise, plus this gives me tons of ideas for articles, upsells, or whatever.
3. Create sales funnel and send traffic and of course track.

Good product and good sales page a little more important than gravity - but using gravity would be a much faster way to pick potential products if it was reliable...but it just isn't.

[gmann46]

I did a similar test on Facebook PPC and had over 800 clicks with no sales. My conclusion is people are not on Facebook with credit card in hand waiting to make a purchase like e-bay. I spent over $200.00 and tested well known facebook games cheat sheets among other popular items. I will try again in the future.

[garyv]

The best, and just about only, way to find a reliable clickbank product is with testing. Don't limit yourself w/ what YOU think will sell. Clickbank is a mysterious market. Sometimes what looks like the tackiest page in the niche, will be the best seller. But the only way you'll ever know it, is if you give it a try.

As Alexa said above, Clickbank's gravity score should not be used as a measurement of quality. Your own stats should be your ONLY measurement of how well a clickbank product converts for you.

So what this means is that if you're going to be successful, and not lose your shirt, you have to know when to hold em, and know when to fold em. If a product is not converting for you, don't keep dumping money into it. Just move along. There are thousands of other products out there to take it's place. If you can learn how to properly fold a losing campaign, then the ones that win will more than make up for your losses.

[garyv]

Originally Posted by gmann46

I did a similar test on Facebook PPC and had over 800 clicks with no sales. My conclusion is people are not on Facebook with credit card in hand waiting to make a purchase like e-bay. I spent over $200.00 and tested well known facebook games cheat sheets among other popular items. I will try again in the future.

The trick there is to make sure that your ads are only targeting people that are going to buy your product. If you're using PPC, don't ever use words like "free" in your ads. You'll get too many tire kickers and they'll drive your ppc costs way up. Tell people w/ your ad exactly what they'll be getting, and some-times even include the cost in the ad. That way the people that aren't up for an online purchase, won't bother clicking your ad. Therefore keeping your costs down, and conversion rates higher.

[pappyy3]

Really good advice given on this thread.

When driving traffic to the vendor's sales page, make sure you identify any potential traffic leaks, such as diffwerent payment methods, mail lists, links to other sites etc.

High gravity certainly does not = quality product. Some of the highest gravity products claiming great conversions in some niches are not worth the paper (PDF) there written on (IMHO) --

[pappyy3]

Really good advice given on this thread.

When driving traffic to the vendor's sales page, make sure you identify any potential traffic leaks, such as different payment methods, mail lists, links to other sites etc.

Also critically look at the Sale Page as though you were a customer to determine is the content is compellin enough to make you want to try out the product. If not, then probably best to move on or even create your own unique pre-selling proposition for the product?

High gravity certainly does not = quality product. Some of the highest gravity products on CB claiming great conversions in some niches are not worth the paper (PDF) there written on (IMHO) --

[GeorgR.]

well this not only applies to clickbank.

I remember not long ago, i tried to market a product i the SEO niche, it was a SEO software. Keyword looked very good, product is pretty known also, but no single sale. Same with hosting products.

Some products are just DUDs and dont sell and its IMPOSSIBLE to predict this beforehand, no matter how good the product looks "in theory".

And other products simply sell constantly 1:55 and sell and sell.

The only way to manage this is to have a variety of products and observe clicks/conversions...and THEN focus on the ones which sell.

And gravity etc. does NOT tell you all this - you need to do the testing yourself.

[Andi Putra]

Gravity is just the very first indicaton of how the product is performing in the marketplace. You need to know it, but take it with a grain of salt. It's not conversion rate after all.

Always belive in your own testing. Pick an initial investment budget (maybe $300-500) if you're doing PPC, if the conversion rate's bad. Quit it. Try other products until you find a winner.

[salegurus]

Everyone's made some good comments and recommendations. I am glad my suspicions have been confirmed. Why then do most "gurus' tell newbies to only promote products with gravity greater than 20-30?

[aaallday2010]

As a Clickbank vendor, I can vouch for others on here who say the gravity is overly inflated.

My gravity is currently at 23 but I know for a fact I havent had 23 different affiliates in the last 30 or even 60 days.

I've got about 12 or so with about 4 of them getting the bulk of the sales. Theoretically I have over 70 or so "affiliates" who send me 1 or 2 visitors per day. But in the last 30 days I've received sales from 12 of them. These guys usually send a good 30 to 75 visitors per day .

So, don't concentrate on the gravity too much. There are other more important factors to look at.

[Kelly Verge]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

With respect, the logic is faulty, here. Partly for the reason Steven mentions above, of course, but also partly because there's a whole variety of other reasons why high gravity products can have particularly low conversion-rates. Personally, I stay away from high gravity products because (as Clickbank now advise affiliates openly on their site) the one thing you know for sure about a high gravity product is that it's going to be competitive to sell. Here's a little example to mull over:-

Clickbank Product A
- Sales-page conversion-rate 2.8%
- Solid product from well-known marketer
- Product has almost no refund requests
- He has 20 affiliates of whom 10 are superaffiliates who sell huge numbers of the product
- Product is easy to promote and sell
- Sales numbers are therefore very high, but the gravity figure is obviously very low (maybe around 10)

Clickbank Product B
- Sales-page conversion-rate 0.2%
- Crappy product from scammy marketer
- Refund request-rate is higher, of course
- Product had a "professional launch" with 100 "temporary affiliates" (accounts used once each to buy one product, privately refunded, and/or the figures were massaged in one of the other "customary ways")
- Product is obviously a complete and utter nightmare to promote and sell because the sales-page doesn't convert well
- Gravity figure starts out at about 110, and rapidly rises to 150/200 because gullible affiliates are attracted by the gravity figure, believing wrongly that it "validates the fact that the product is selling very well", and they all struggle and waste time/money, but eventually they obviously make 1 or 2 sales each anyway, and for this reason the gravity figure rises still further to 250/300 as the inevitable consequence of its self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obviously enough, product "B" is the high gravity product. Obviously enough, product "A" is the one for which I want to be an affiliate. These examples are in no way contrived - they're realistic and common.

A high gravity figure, in short, is surprisingly often a sign of a very high turnover of affiliates, each attracted by the high gravity figure, struggling, and eventually making one sale which boosts the gravity figure even more. It doesn't necessarily mean that anyone can realistically or profitably sell the product at all!

So, the answer to your question is "yes". You can trust the gravity figure to measure what gravity figures measure. But not to tell you how that came about, and definitely not to imply that any affiliates at all are successfully promoting the product!

I promote 13 products at the moment - soon to be 14 - and my two best-converting products, by far, out of all those, both have single-figure gravities. Some people think that's a "coincidence".

I've seen this exact same thing in a niche I'm in. I started off promoting a high-gravity product. After 500+ clickthroughs with zero purchases, I did a deep scouring of all products in the niche.

I switched to one that had a solid product with a well-designed sales page with good copy. Sorted by gravity, this product is on page 3 or so. I convert 2.6% of the traffic that hits my presell page for this product.

Sorry, but gravity isn't the metric that matters to me.

[JamesAggie]

I've once wrote articles for my product with an "okay" salespapge and articles for a top affiliate program on clickbank. I made about $300 with my program and only one sale with the affiliate program. This is why I recommend affiliate prophet. You can quickly and easily test different affiliate programs with few clicks.

[salegurus]

Just finished going through ClickBank marketplace, Found a few solid looking products with good salescopy. All have grav under 10 some less than 2. Will do some experimenting and see how it goes.

[DPM70]

Originally Posted by NikkiG

Call me cray but a my method for selecting a product would ignore gravity and go a little more like.

1. Check out the sales page, does it look like it will convert.
2. Buy the product to make sure it is good and delivers on the promise, plus this gives me tons of ideas for articles, upsells, or whatever.
3. Create sales funnel and send traffic and of course track.

Good product and good sales page a little more important than gravity - but using gravity would be a much faster way to pick potential products if it was reliable...but it just isn't.

Are you one of those Eastend gangster types? "Kray!", sorry, "Cray!"
Sorry again - couldn't resist

Honestly - thanks for the tips. I'm sloooooowly getting to grips with this Clickbank thing by reading many posts from yourself, Alexa, George, Steven et al.

Much appreciated.

[emigre]

Very useful thread, thanks to all especially alexa.

Would anyone venture to give some examples of "solid looking products" with "good sales copy" so that there's some sort of ballpark to work with.

Also, what would not so solid products be like?

[Adam G. Katz]

Our product is not on clickbank any more (we took it off clickbank, several years ago... their fees are too high). But in watching our competition, I've noticed that their gravity numbers generally correspond with our sales peaks and valleys. When their gravity goes up, we usually start getting more sales, too. When their gravity drops, our sales volume drops, too. And I'm tracking probably three other competitors who are using clickbank. It's a pretty broad niche, too.

Just my .02.

[SEOPoints]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

- Product had a "professional launch" with 100 "temporary affiliates" (accounts used once each to buy one product, privately refunded, and/or the figures were massaged in one of the other "customary ways")

This is intriguing. Would 100 purchases through 100 different affiliate links (belonging to real random ClickBank affiliates - the IDs are easy to come by)... but coming from the SAME buyer and/or IP address trigger a red flag at ClickBank? I'd think it would. Getting 100's or even 1000's of ClickBank affiliate nicknames would be easy. You can just use the one's from vendors in the marketplace (vendor nicknames are usable as affiliate nicknames). It's randomizing the buying activity to mask that it's coming from a single source that seems tricky. How do they get around that - or does ClickBank simply not care since they collect their transaction fee no matter what?

[activetrader]

I agree with all the above said.

I want to add that if you want to find good products to promote, look at the top sellers in the market place; those are the niches that sell well; next go to a remote page in ClickBank market place and find a product in the same niche with a great sales page and low gravity.

You will have a lot higher conversions and way less competing affiliates.

Also, try to find product that have as little 'leaks' as possible.

'Leaks' are outgoing links, even links to affiliate page if clearly visible can 'steal' your commissions from people getting and buying through their own links, links to the publisher's blog and other pages where customers can get lost and 'forget' to buy the product, google adsense on sales pages, banners to other or competing affiliate products placed directly on the sales page, etc.

[whateverpedia]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Gravity scores are artificially inflated through a fiendishly clever tactic.

If you knew...it would make your hair stand on end.

It would probably also shock people if they knew how easy it is to perform the "trick" that Steven is referring to.

[jminkler]

Originally Posted by salegurus

Everyone's made some good comments and recommendations. I am glad my suspicions have been confirmed. Why then do most "gurus' tell newbies to only promote products with gravity greater than 20-30?

Why do you think ?

[Skribblez]

Originally Posted by salegurus

One of the products i have been promoting on clickbank has a "supposed" gravity score of over 400. I have been promoting it for about 6 weeks with 0 sales so i decided to do some experimenting.

Because it's a product related to a popular facebook game i did the experiment via facebook ads.

I created 4 ads, 2 using CPC and CPM ads and driving the traffic to my review page of the product.
And 2 using CPC and CPM ads and driving traffic directly to the merchants sales page.

Results:
My Page - Hop Count: 261 Order Form IMP: 29 Sales: 0.00%

Merchant
Sale Page - Hop Count: 684 Order Form IMP: 94 Sales: 0.00%

I know people may click the order button to see the price or back out at last minute or maybe the funds were not cleared.
But with 684 clicks directly to the merchants salespage and with 94 people clicking the order button you would expect at least 1 sale, especially if the product has a "reported" gravity score of 400+

Products on clickbank just don't convert very well or could it be that merchants inflate the gravity score to attract more affiliates?

Anyway just a thought
Test was done over a 7 day period at a cost of $143

If you're talking about Farmville Secrets, I'm pretty much getting the same results, though not as bad as your situation. I didn't promote it through PPC or anything, just free methods, so I guess I can't really complain, but still..

It takes me about 400 hops to make a damn sale on that product. I've only made about 2 or 3 sales thus far.

[GeorgR.]

wait..let me get this straight?

You have a clickbank product which shows gravity 400ish but no sales?

[SimonHarrison]

Alexa, pretty much nailed it - gravity really is an awful measure of deciding on a product to promote.

The point about how grav can be kept artificially high by momentum is in evidence by a number of very high ranking products in various catagories.

I know one product , 2nd it's catagory that even professional PPC guys can't generate a ROI on, not via traditional Adwords, Yahoo Bing anyway.

It got up there via a lot of , "internal" promotion and newbie PPC affiliates are convinced it's a winner.

They burn through their $200 , sell maybe a copy, this happens across the board, they leave with their tails between their legs and the next lot fill in behind to do the same, propping up the gravity, making it look as if it's product affiliates are doing well with.

Wouldn't it be superb to actually see conversion ratio

I can tell you that a number of players on CB run a lot of paid traffic via different CB accounts to prop up the gravity, it's quite commonplace and actually incredibly easy to do. You can do it with something as simple as $9 URL rotator attached to loss leading PPC account.

I would say however that actually a product doesn't need to be "crappy" at all, it can actually be a very good product with a high gravity, that has a poor conversion ratio, so you can still lose your hat.

Quality product and poor conversions aren't mutually exclusive in this game.

[SimonHarrison]

Originally Posted by Skribblez

If you're talking about Farmville Secrets, I'm pretty much getting the same results, though not as bad as your situation. I didn't promote it through PPC or anything, just free methods, so I guess I can't really complain, but still..

It takes me about 400 hops to make a damn sale on that product. I've only made about 2 or 3 sales thus far.

I recently saw a CPA LP for this. I winced and laughed at the same time it was so bad, blatantly faked testimonials, hypey verbiage.

I've not seen the CB LP so can't comment but if it's along the same lines, doesn't surprise me it converts badly.