Simple ClickBank question.

7 replies
I've been looking through ClickBank for potential items to sell. I am curious as to what the gravity of an item is, and whether or not it's a good indicator of the product's potential.

I am an IM newbie and am looking to start a simple affiliate site to get my feet wet. That's not saying I won't be putting effort into the endeavor, just that I am new and have learning to do. I am not going to try to accomplish every aspect of IM with this site, simply build the site, load affiliate product(s) and market the site using guerrilla style and web 2.0 techniques.

Your thoughts, input, or advice would be greatly appreciated.
#clickbank #question #simple
  • Profile picture of the author webapex
    Gravity indicates the number of affiliates who have recently made sales, affiliates with only older sales are counted as less than 1. Some gravity shows a product can be sold, top gravities probably attract more affiliates than they deserves.

    Gravity is a sort of self feeding phenomenon, some sellers fake up some gravity to seed the process. Looking at the number of affiliates sites for some products, it appears in some cases only 1/10 of the affiliates for certain products have made recent sales.
    Signature

    “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field” Niels Bohr

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3122737].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Keithsco
    Originally Posted by VoyagerMike View Post

    I've been looking through ClickBank for potential items to sell. I am curious as to what the gravity of an item is, and whether or not it's a good indicator of the product's potential.
    Gravity is the volume of SALES made OVER AN 8 - 12 WEEK TIME FRAME (CORRECTED) by different affiliates

    If I sell 10 units off 1 account gravity increases by one but if I have 10 different accounts on CB and sell 1 unit on each account then gravity increases by 10

    How do I know ??

    see http://cbcentrifuge.com/

    Its free and works well

    and on that basis in answer to your question NO gravity ( alone) is not a good indicator of a products potential

    The equation is that this is the lie that some IM'ers sell to people = only choose CB products with X amount of gravity. It is a crock but no one wants to challenge it and come clean so the cycle of BS continues

    What happens is, in the CB marketplace, how many products are you going to get sick of reviewing before you come along and go . . "ah stuff it . . I have had enough for today . . this one will do because they are all on a parr with each other anyway" . . and it has gravity of 40 or w/e

    See . . the marketplace is like a craigslist page or a forum thread . . the products get knocked off and scrolled down eventually so when a marketer comes along to do their research they scroll and sort by highest gravity - which happens to be the most units sold that week by the most amount of different affiliate accounts

    the truth is that I can have 50 accounts, have a url rotator and CB centrifuge on my main sales page, fire a whole hoard of traffic at it and make 50 sales a week and have a gravity of 50 . . but thats no indicator of whether the product is any good or not.

    what I used to do as an affiliate, way back, was choose a human need niche only (health/fitness/dating/ etc), then

    A. was the sales page presentable and would it sell me if I was in the market to buy the product
    b. was the affiliate resources any good
    c. was the product owner responsive to emails
    was the commission above $20.00 per sale
    D. Search the products and put the word "scam" on the end of it in google and see what the bad rap was.

    If everything checked out at that point I would see what the adwords were like for the product. if PPC'ers were spending promoting it you would know it was a profitable product. Otherwise gravity never came into it

    Sorry if I am repeating myself a bit but I just wanted to get it clear
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3122843].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Wedding
      Originally Posted by Keithsco View Post

      gravity is the volume of SALES made per week by different affiliates
      Wrong.

      Wow...

      Let me google that for you
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3122892].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Keithsco
        Originally Posted by Bruce Wedding View Post


        OK. Lets get it right then shall we . . . .


        Off CB: WHAT CLICKBANK SAY

        Finding Products to Promote in the Marketplace

        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 12 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.

        and:

        http://www.clickbank.com/ranking.html


        1. Gravity: Number of distinct affiliates who earned a commission by referring a paying customer to the vendor's products. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affiliate paid in the last 8 weeks we add an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last referral, the higher the value added.
        AND HERE:

        http://www.clickbank.com/blog/2009/0...ay-to-success/

        High Gravity: Sort by ‘Gravity’->’High to Low’ if you are looking for products that have a proven track record for converting well. Gravity refers to the number of affiliates who have earned a commission by promoting a particular vendor’s product(s). Therefore, if a publisher has a high gravity score, it means that the vendor has lots of affiliates earning money by promoting their product. This, in turn, should be an indicator to you that the product sells well. The downside to promoting products with a high gravity score is that you will encounter lots of competition in promoting it.

        Low Gravity: If you are looking for hidden gems and want to be one of the first to market with a product promotion, sort your Marketplace search by ‘Gravity’->’Low to High.’ This is a bit of a high risk/high reward option. Low gravity means little competition from other affiliates, so you may be able to spend less time and money promoting that product than with a high gravity product. If the product converts well, you can win big as one of the only affiliates promoting it. This is the high reward side.
        However, low gravity also means that the product either hasn’t been tested by many other affiliates or has been tested by affiliates and hasn’t converted well. Either way, it’s possible that you could be spending your time and ad dollars on a product that doesn’t sell. That’s the high risk side of low gravity.


        My mistake and i stand corrected

        thank YOU
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3123361].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author nicole1116
          The higher the gravity the more likely that it converts well. It can also be very competitive the higher the gravity. I think that a gravity of 30 or more is good to go after.

          Don't rule out really high gravity if its in a large market like weight loss. There are thousands and thousands of long tail (3 words or more) keywords in those huge markets that are relatively easy to rank for. When you get into smaller niches just check the top 10 sites ranking to see if they are too competitive before targeting those small niche keywords.
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3123409].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author rickfrazier1
    As Webapex said, gravity is an indication of affiliate sales, at least somewhat self feeding, and perhaps subject to error or even possibly faked.

    Some people think that it is good to promote a product with high gravity. This may not be good in all cases. In fact, for a newbie, trying to promote a product with very high gravity can be an exercise in frustration.

    Why? Primarily because there is so much competition. Typically, the higher the gravity, the more affiliates with huge lists that are attracted, the more sales there are, and the gravity rises... The process is almost exponential in nature.

    A general rule I like to use is unless the product is new, there should be some gravity, but if it's over 50 or 75, it may be too difficult for a newbie to attract the attention of potential buyers because the super-affiliates and other people with large lists will already be in the mix, providing higher competition.

    Depending on your marketiing methods, this may not be a big problem, but most newbies have difficulty competing with the "big guys."

    One thing to keep in mind. Just because a product has a high gravity doesn't mean it is a good product, it only means there are lots of sales. Until the buzz settles down and the returns are calculated, nobody knows the real bottom line.

    Conversely, just because a product has a 0 or low gravity doesn't mean it is a bad product, it just means it doesn't have a lot of affiliate sales. A product can be good and have a lot of direct sales (the vendor makes the sale, not an affiliate) and only recently has been added to an affiliate program, or has not yet seen much affiliate action for other reasons.

    What I'm saying is that Gravity is only one thing to look at. I feel it is much more important to become familiar with the product and only promote products that are good ones. The only real way I know to do that is to buy them first. Not necessarily a popular choice to many people, but there are so many "review" sites out there that are just text ripped from the sales page.
    Signature

    My Current WSO: Financial Independence 2012 - The Truth About Kindle Publishing

    HostGator web hosting is only $0.01 for the first month: Use coupon code HMTSpecial

    Other WSO: Protect Your Product - Prevent THIEVES from stealing your product.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3122851].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Dan Manherz
      Gravity is an indicator of how many different affiliates have made sales of that product over the last 30 days. Although it does indicate which products are selling well, it also means there is a lot of competition.

      I took one marketing guru course that actually suggested choosing a low gravity product because it had little competition and should be easier to rank for. Sometimes a brand new product may have low gravity because people don't know much about it and it doesn't necessarily mean its a bad product to sell.

      I've heard both sides and am still undecided myself.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3122911].message }}

Trending Topics