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Someone hacked Clickbank's gravity system?

by dabuzz
8 replies
Hey gang..

So I came across a popular product at Clickbank
(smartpcfix)

What caught my eye was - they only pay a 1% commission to affiliates!
(Most top offers pay 75%)

So it makes sense that only 5% of their sales are referred by affiliates.

But then why are they listed in the top 100 highest gravity products at Clickbank?

Gravity is directly linked to the number of affiliates (that make a sale).

Since they don't have many affiliates - how come they've a high gravity?

Have they cracked the gravity algorithm??

Are they gaming the system?

Whats going on?
#clickbank #gravity #hacked #system
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Maybe people are just buying it through their own hoplinks (since ClickBank allows that)? With IM-related products (I'm not saying this is one), that "only happens all the time", and when it does, each individual sale adds 1.0 to the gravity score. So those products have high gravities and often pretty low sales?

    Or maybe its commission-level changed very recently?

    Or maybe the vendor was silly enough to use one of the black-hat services that "massages" gravity, not appreciating that high gravities put some serious, pro-affiliates off?

    (Or maybe there's some other, more likely explanation that I've totally overlooked?).

    .
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    • Profile picture of the author dabuzz
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Maybe people are just buying it through their own hoplinks (since ClickBank allows that)? With IM-related products (I'm not saying this necessarily is one), that "only happens all the time", and when it does, each individual sale adds 1.0 to the gravity score. So those products have high gravities and often pretty low sales?

      Or maybe its commission-level changed very recently?

      Or maybe the vendor was silly enough to use one of the black-hat services that "massages" gravity, not appreciating that high gravities put some serious, pro-affiliates off?

      (Or maybe there's some other, more likely explanation that I've totally overlooked?).

      .
      Alexa it's not an IM related product.

      It's some kind of windows error fixing software:
      Fix Windows Errors and Optimize PC - SmartPCFixer

      .........

      Also - people who buy with their own hoplinks account for a very very small portion of sales.

      Most people have no clue how to do that.

      And even if they do - and even if Clickbank allows that (and so does Amazon btw) - the incentive to do is very low.

      Because you need $100 in earnings and 5 sales with 2 different type of payment methods to even qualify for a payout.

      So this thing is def. not responsible for the high gravity.

      Something else is going on that we haven't thought of.

      Yet
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        Alexa it's not an IM related product.
        No, I know - I said this: that's why I tried some other explanations, too. Thought maybe they're not very convincing, either.

        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        people who buy with their own hoplinks account for a very very small portion of sales.
        (Apart from with IM-related and MMO-related products!).

        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        Most people have no clue how to do that.
        Fortunately for affiliates, ClickBank's Customer Distribution Requirement more or less prevents people from becoming affiliates to buy through their own hoplinks. But in IM-related/MMO-related niches in which some of the customers are already ClickBank affiliates, it's a huge problem.

        However, we've both already specified that this one isn't IM-related or MMO-related.

        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        And even if they do - and even if Clickbank allows that (and so does Amazon btw) - the incentive to do is very low.
        I know that ClickBank allows it. It's very common.

        I thought Amazon expressly prohibited it, but maybe that's changed since I looked.

        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        Because you need $100 in earnings and 5 sales with 2 different type of payment methods to even qualify for a payout.
        Well, not quite. (You can set the earnings as low as $10, if you want). But clearly people who are already distributors (as is the case with IM-related and MMO-related products) buy through their own hoplinks and have a big incentive to do so.

        Originally Posted by dabuzz View Post

        Something else is going on that we haven't thought of.
        Well, call me a skepchick but my suspicion is/was that the vendor was gullible/ill-advised enough to try one of the various "fiddles" that people do (or a black-hat service that does them), because he imagined that affiliates would be attracted to high gravity. Some are, of course. The catch is that the serious, pro-affiliates who make almost all the sales aren't at all! This is why artificially increasing a product's gravity can so easily increase affiliate numbers but significantly reduce potential sales (by attracting the wrong affiliates and putting off the right ones). The commission may have changed very recently? In other words, the 1% commission you're seeing now doesn't match the gravity, which was measured over the previous 8 weeks? Maybe. 1% is the minimum, and is what vendors who don't want affiliates sometimes use, and/or they can simply elect to white-list affiliates and then decline them all. But I agree that they're "funny numbers".

        .
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        • Profile picture of the author KirkMcD
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          I thought Amazon expressly prohibited it, but maybe that's changed since I looked.
          They still prohibit it.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Has the commission always been 1%?

    It isn't unheard of for crooked affiliate programs to change the payout after they get a lot of affiliate links out there.
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  • Profile picture of the author dariusdarius
    Instead of high commissions, they only give 1%?

    Weird. But this might also be a mistake. Because let me tell you this.

    When I check my clickbank stats, I can see that my recurring billing product that offers around 20$/month to affiliates shows me that the average rebill is 1%.

    The fact is that it should show me the rebill in $$ not %

    So what I want to say is that maybe they will not offer 1% and it was only a mistake from clickbank's side.

    Darius Vaduva
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Some vendors who don't really want affiliates set their commission-level to 1%, as that's the lowest ClickBank allows. Some people (including people who won't or can't use PayPal themselves) want to use ClickBank purely as a payment-processor, rather than as an affiliate network.

      That wouldn't account for this product's gravity, but ClickBank's Marketplace statistics (including commission-levels) are updated continually/daily, while gravity is measured over an 8-week period and therefore changes only gradually.

      .
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      • Profile picture of the author Harvey Segal
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        Some vendors who don't really want affiliates set their commission-level to 1%, as that's the lowest ClickBank allows.
        It's the minimum for an existing account but you can set commission for a new account to 0%

        .
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