I Dissected 10 Clickbank Products

[michaelzenga]

Breaking Down 10 Successful Clickbank Products

February 27th, 2009
www.michaelzenga.com

There are a lot of guides out there on how to make a gazillion dollars on clickbank. I was at a seminar recently and one well respected Internet Guru - Derek Gehl of The Internet Marketing Center, told the audience to only use black print on a white background when writing a sales page. Another guy at another seminar said only use bright colored backgrounds. Ryan Diess, a very well known Guru says to use robin’s egg blue (light blue). Which is it?!!!

I wanted write a report to help me write my own copy and decided to study 10 random high-gravity sites on Clickbank, the biggest Internet payment processor/affiliate mall for information products. Gravity is a weighted measure which reflects how well a product sells through affiliates. Simply put, if affiliates are consistently selling a product on Clickbank, it is converting. Hence, by studying the traits of successful Clickbank sales pages, we are studying Internet copywriting success. Mike Geary of truthaboutabs.com claims his site does well over $10,000,000 in business with a gravity of 350 so these products generate serious sales volume.

Taking 10 Clickbank products with gravities over 100 and create a report based on the metrics of each. Not only would this benefit my copywriting ability to have a printed sheet of what people are doing, it would also help me pick affiliate products. This guide is intended to provide some perspective in writing copy for successful clickbank products or selecting up and coming products on clickbank to promote.

The products were:

http://www.burnthefat.com/ - Gravity 174

http://www.djkshadow.com/ - Google Shadow - Gravity 416

http://infiniteincomeplan.com/ - Gravity 159

http://www.maverickmoneymakers.com- Gravity 689

http://www.ppcwebspy.com/ - Gravity 335

http://www.pushbuttonmarketer.com/ - Gravity 154

http://www.fapturbo.com/ - Gravity 880 (highest out of over 10,000 products)

http://www.truthaboutabs.com - Gravity 353

http://www.homemadeenergy.org - Gravity 130

http://www.fatloss4idiots.com - Gravity 539

Average Length

When the sales pages of the products were cut and pasted into a word document, the average length was 22.1 pages, 4175 words and 11,222 characters.

Ok, these pages are long. Contrary to what skeptics may profess, long sales letters are alive and well. A friend recently said to me “no one reads those long sales letters!” Well apparently someone does. Truth be told, the data on page length was skewed downward by truth about abs which has a 2 page squeeze page leading to a much longer traditional sales letter. Simply put, if you want to sell an information product on the internet, long sales copy generates millions and millions of dollars and all 10 of the letters we tested use long copy. The answer is clear…

Background

Internet Marketing Star Ryan Diess says that Robins egg blue as a background upped his sales over 30%. Well, 2 out of these 10 successful sites reflect his teachings. The most popular color was the traditional white with black print as Derek Gehl preached in January of 2009. Dark blue was also a popular color with 3 out of 10. Google Shadow uses a dark and rich wood grain background. There is no clear verdict here, but all else being equal, I would probably use black print on a white background with robins egg blue or dark blue borders on the side. That makes all the gurus happy!

Headline

The evidence is clear here, red was used in 7 out of 10 of the pages surveyed. 24 font made up for of the 7. Red is an attention getting color and I don’t see how you can go wrong using a 24 pt. red headline with black type and a white background. 2 of the headlines used blue and 1 used red. Diess claims Tohoma font will raise conversions over 15% and copywriting expert Drayton Bird says using Calibri in the body of a sales letter will raise conversions over 30%

Subheads

Blue was the most common subhead with 5 out of 10 using it. Typically sites use fonts for subheads about 1/2 the size of headlines.

Email Opt-In

This was split close to down the middle. 4 of the pages used an email fly in, while 2 others asked for email opt-ins on the page. 4 pages of the 10 do not use any sort of email opt in. The debate clearly isn’t solved: do you want to go for a chance at converting visitors onto your email list so you can have more shots at them? Or do you want to try for the clean, coherent message of only asking for the order. The debate isn’t solved. Personally, I like the tact that copywriters, Yanik Silver and Michael Fortin use, they make the site fade out momentarily while a flyin comes in and users can’t read the site until they read it or close it out.

Testimonials

All of the sites use testimonials as social proof is alive and well. The sites had anywhere from 3 to 10 testimonials. In some areas such as Sports Betting, the best converting sites use upwards of 25 video testimonials. Video testimonials are clearly better and more believable, but most of the sites just use pictures and written words. Only 3 of the 10 used video.

Asking For The Order

All of the sites in question asked for the order and most did it multiple times. Some even asked over 7 times. Clearly, one page sales letters, looking much like the great copywriters such as Joe Sugarman, Dan Kennedy, and John Carlton used in print, work just as well on a website.

Affiliate Pages

Clearly, all of these successful sites try very hard to make their affiliates successful. Most of the sites do the vast majority of their sales through affiliates, but in all actuality, it may be far less as authors always open multiple affiliate accounts to inflate their gravities. While one very successful Clickbank seller recently called 50% “stone age” and urged all publishers to offer 75% commissions, these 10 successful pages clearly didn’t listen. They offered between 50-75%, with most somewhere in the middle.

An increasing trend is that many publishers want email opt-ins from affiliates and this case. This is a smart move because it allows them to stay in the ear of affiliates. 4 out of 10 used email opt ins. The best pages once accessed offered a vast array of tools for affiliates - email auto-responder series, some offered up to 3,000 pay per click keywords, many offered multiple banner ads. Geary on truthaboutabs even offered what he is paying per click in general. More and more people are buzzing about using Facebook for pay per click as it allows people to target by age and demographic.


I hope this has been a useful read. The intention was to give a report simply on what successful and multi-million dollar Clickbank authors were actually doing on the page. Please keep up with my site site for more blog posts.

[jasonl70]

so - which one of them recommends gray fonts???

here's the problem with this - gravity does not say much about the sites conversion rate. Some sites simply get tons of traffic. For example: I have promoted fatloss4idiots, and the conversion rate was horrible.
I've also seen products with 300plus gravity scores after a launch with some big name jv's, which within a few months have a gravity in the single digits (and my own traffic to one of those sites converted at less then .10%).

[michaelzenga]

I agree Jason, you need to test, I just wanted to use this as a way to get started looking for successful products.

[Alp Bozkurt]

I was thinking that the highest gravity is around 300. The forex app has 880 gravitiy!

[Sandor Verebi]

Interesting reading, reflects the basic principles applied universally. Thanks for your work, Michael.

[Derek Pankaew]

Holy crap man. What an amazing analysis. Thanks a bunch.

[1bad55]

I love the research and all the detail to let us know what the top guys are doing so it can be duplicated.

[Aldiyar1]

See top 10 sites on organic search on Google, and see what average is.

[sjchiz]

Very nice analysis and thanks for sharing! I've also read/heard that one of the easiest things to manipulate for Clickbank products is the gravity so I tend to look at that with skeptical eyes.

[GeorgR.]

in regards to gravity and "sellability" of products:

I literally promoted the **** out of Maverick Money makers, this includes email campaigns, banners, and 100 daily postings on craigslist.

I made ONE sale.

I can see the same pattern with the "green energy" products as well as fapturbo and especially fatloss4idtios.

I promoted any of those products in various ways, but i think i have not sold ONE of any of those "high gravity" products.

Super-high "unnatural" gravity is an indicator that the market is overly saturated and literally everyone and their mama promotes the same product - so...gravity is NOT an indicator how well YOU will sell this specific product..it could even mean you waste time/money on something where the market is just saturated.

Also...there are some products on CB where i did filtering according to "commission blueprint" 30/100 rule.

In a nutshell: "Good" means gravity over 100 and EPC $30+

As a result i got "google adwords for free" which i HIGHLY doubt is a high quality product and a VERY obvious Scam product featuring the worst pyramid scheme ever i came across. I posted about this a week or so ago. This just in regards to the common "importance" gravity obviously has.

[Alan Petersen]

Originally Posted by sjchiz

Very nice analysis and thanks for sharing! I've also read/heard that one of the easiest things to manipulate for Clickbank products is the gravity so I tend to look at that with skeptical eyes.

Especially for IM products. A lot of folks buy the latest IM product on ClickBank using their own affiliate ID so they can get a "discount". Throw in the handful of JV partners who drive a lot of traffic and high gravity can hit the roof fast but it really isn't a good factor for picking a product that will convert well. But the sales letter analysis was interesting.

I've never seen a post that looks like an article. Looks like a copy and paste job but it was an interesting read.

[WinsonYeung]

This is a very good break through of the 10 clickbank product ! well done for that and thanks for sharing

[jasonl70]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

As a result i got "google adwords for free" which i HIGHLY doubt is a high quality product and a VERY obvious Scam product featuring the worst pyramid scheme ever i came across.

Not only i sthis going to be way off topic, but I am opening myself up to abuse here...

I bought that one

While it was HIGHLY controversial, I am not sure how you could call it a pyramid scheme.

Although I did not implement what they suggested, it did convince me to try some ads on one of my squeeze pages as a small test. I simply added some adsense to the header of the page, and not only do I get over $10 day from it, but my opt-in rates did not drop at all and are still almost 40%. It's not a lot of money, but it's still a 'free' $300+ a month...

[GeorgR.]

nope, not "adwords for free". The pyramid scheme one is "six figure income"

[jbsmith]

This type of analysis is exactly what will get you ahead the fastest.

To the aesthetic analysis, should probably add analysis of niche markets where gravity and popularity are highest (this only tells you what sells best on Clickbank network, not all-inclusive of info products), the "type" of headline (question, controversial, patterns, etc...), the price range of the products, the offer - how many bonuses, etc...

I would argue that the majority of the success of these sites will have to do with two important things...

1. The specific niche outcome targeted (fat loss, more effective PPC, etc...) and
2. The effectiveness of the sales letter including the headline, sub-head, first few paragraphs and offer

While colors, graphics, placement of order buttons, are important - they typically pale in comparison to how well you target a highly desired niche outcome and the effectiveness of your written sales letter.

Jeff

[Sheila]

Great analysis! Thanks for sharing. The similarities/differences are helpful to apply as suggestions to test. No sense knocking success.

[precious007]

A product such as Fat Loss 4 Idiots and FapTurbo are the craziest out there for the simplest of reasons. There are tens of thousands on non-converting keywords that people still use to pull in some sales.. luckily.

I've had quite an experience with Fat Loss 4 Idiots a few weeks ago and the conversion rates were horrible. Got one sale in 200 hard earned hops on my link .. and one single sale.. which is time wasting.

I don't give up on Fat Loss however it requires strong strategies and some serious money to start converting like crazy in the weight loss niche.

Alex

[4deb]

I appreciate you sharing that. I've been looking at common threads among different sites, and this really reinforces some things for me. I know nothing is black or white, but when you see commonalities, it really helps make things click

[TeamGlobal]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for sharing your useful analysis.

How would you go about analyzing the refund rates on some of these top-selling products?

All The Best,


Tony

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

Not only i sthis going to be way off topic, but I am opening myself up to abuse here...

I bought that one

While it was HIGHLY controversial, I am not sure how you could call it a pyramid scheme.

Although I did not implement what they suggested, it did convince me to try some ads on one of my squeeze pages as a small test. I simply added some adsense to the header of the page, and not only do I get over $10 day from it, but my opt-in rates did not drop at all and are still almost 40%. It's not a lot of money, but it's still a 'free' $300+ a month...

Jason,

Could expand on this? How much traffic is required to do that? $10 a day via adsense Is it in a niche you can discuss? What makes what you did successful - in your opinion?

You're right - its not much - other than a modest car payment - all for putting a few lines of code on an existing page ... 35 of those little things and you got some good scratch coming in.

[AfteraDream]

Thanx for sharing, I'm becoming a fan of analysis...

[eidoan]

Thanks for the work, interesting research.

[gerrihabib]

An interesting read, it seems that the gravity indicator on clickbank is not a conclusive way of determining whether a product if popular or not, and its doesn't seem to have a direct baring on the sales sometimes! Quite an eye opener, and a great thread, thank you for your post!

[GreatBiz]

Nice of you to share this finding. Frankly, there are many parameters to consider as well. The font and size also matters. Sometimes, it also has to do with the niche you are into. Besides copywriting, the graphics also play a part.

[gr8tocre8]

Originally Posted by michaelzenga

Diess claims Tohoma font will raise conversions over 15% and copywriting expert Drayton Bird says using Calibri in the body of a sales letter will raise conversions over 30%

I can totally see why Tahoma would increase conversions. I just set up an alternate version of one of my sales pages in Tahoma and viewed it side by side with my page in arial font. The Tahoma font is more round and looks softer. Somehow, that makes it easier on the eyes, and a bit "friendlier". Case in point:

Here's what I just said, in Tahoma font (above is in arial):

I can totally see why Tahoma would increase conversions. I just set up an alternate version of one of my sales pages in Tahoma and viewed it side by side with my page in arial font. The Tahoma font is identical except for one thing - it looks SOFTER. Somehow, that makes it easier on the eyes, and more trustworthy.

See what I mean? It's softer. Same thing with larger fonts:

Arial with 3pt size:
I can totally see why Tahoma would increase conversions. I just set up an alternate version of one of my sales pages in Tahoma and viewed it side by side with my page in arial font. The Tahoma font is more round and looks softer. Somehow, that makes it easier on the eyes, and a bit "friendlier". Case in point:

Tahoma with 3pt size:
I can totally see why Tahoma would increase conversions. I just set up an alternate version of one of my sales pages in Tahoma and viewed it side by side with my page in arial font. The Tahoma font is identical except for one thing - it looks SOFTER. Somehow, that makes it easier on the eyes, and more trustworthy.

The difference is very subtle, yet I can see how it can increase conversions. Thanks man, this is great stuff!

Regarding Calibri: I have a lot of fonts installed, but Calibri isn't one of them, so it stands to reason that there will be a lot of viewers with the same issue - which means that the sales letter will read with a default font...not sure how DB got 30% higher conversions with it?

[takingaction]

Thanks very much for your analysis!

[Daniel Soulsby]

Very useful, but always good to analysis the stats of the exact niche you are targeting, not just the big boy's, multiple small / medium products make as much as one big one.

[wannaretire]

this is great! thanks!

[Michael Fiske]

Thanks a lot for your great analysis. I think there is another element to look at here also. While I am relatively new to IM, I have 25 years experience as a business to business copywriter and account executive.

I am always aware that a website or printed piece carries two messages.

One is the copy, and of course this is a critical message.

But the second is the total graphical look or feeling of the piece. This is a message that conveys a lot of information to the reader and I am sure that this influences conversion in many ways. This is a lot more than what background color or typeface to choose. It is the whole graphic statement or message that the website makes.

It conveys: security, comfort, credibility, trust, friendliness, openness, etc.

Hard to analyze, but important.

Michael

[magneticweb]

Thank you for that observation, Michael, and thanks to everyone else on this thread for their thoughts on these important topics. It's easy to get sidetracked by paying full attention to the font - it's colour, size, and so on. You have to stand back once in a while and look at the whole page from the viewpoint of the prospective customer.

When I was growing up I was taught "You can't judge a book by its cover". But the fact remains that most people do!

[ragstworiches]

Great Post,

Most warriors I'm sure know all the points said, but always good to get a recap.

Phil

[WealthBluePrint]

i've heard that people tend to trust things that are associated with the color blue more often than not - who knows if that's true...

[Haltingpoint]

Originally Posted by Alan Petersen

I've never seen a post that looks like an article. Looks like a copy and paste job but it was an interesting read.

Neither have I...pretty shameless plug for his blog IMHO. But hey, quality content is quality content and this is good stuff.

The one thing I would caution on this is that this is not just for one niche. Different audiences respond better to different things. For example, I'd be willing to go out on a limb and guess that a product targeting male gamers would do alright with a darker background and that a product targeting young women and weightloss would be better served with brown or black text on a white background with some other feminine colors thrown in.

[Raydal]

An interesting read but not a scientific analysis by any stretch. It's OK
to seek for patterns but unless you know where the traffic is coming from
then you are still left in the dark.

Affiliate traffic skews these results because affiliate traffic often buy on
the recommendation of others rather than the website itself.

Still a good effort but I wouldn't be dogmatic about these finds.

-Ray Edwards

[jace]

Hey thanks for sharing. I agree that certain niches may have different looks they may use for their sites. For the most part though I think what you did was worth doing and very helpful. Gives a great indication of what to do. I don't think the niche thing is all that relevant, What works for one sales page (color wise) will usually work for another.

[meisters]

Hey Michael,

thanks for sharing your analysis about top ten clickbank product that make a lot of money. From this analysis, I can research about how to design web or template, write sales letter that make sales, write good headline and lot more.

Thank you again, Michael

[Frank Donovan]

Hi gr8

Originally Posted by gr8tocre8

Regarding Calibri: I have a lot of fonts installed, but Calibri isn't one of them, so it stands to reason that there will be a lot of viewers with the same issue - which means that the sales letter will read with a default font...not sure how DB got 30% higher conversions with it?

I'm not sure where the OP got the DB quote, but my guess is that Drayton Bird would have been referring to direct mail sales letters.


Regarding the analysis, I'm wondering if there are any stats on the ten worst performing CB products. Might be interesting to see if they shared any (or all) of the characteristics listed in the OP. I know I hardly ever see a heading these days that isn't red

Could just be that the top ten are all strong, well-targeted products.



Frank

[laurelwachtel]

A very useful post, and I always think its good to analyze the stats of the niche you may be specifically targeting, to determine whether or not the as small and medium products are making as much money as the biggest ones. Thank you!

[Najat Engineer]

thanks for the Great analysis really appreciate it

[DominicTFY]

Interesting... I definitely agree that analyzing other salespages are a good start. We can use different elements and ideas from the various salesletter in our own. Anyway, thank you for your effort in compiling the breakdown of the 10 clickbank products!

[arclight]

Thanks for the useful information. More of this type of research is needed.

geoff