What is ClickBank gravity?
The first question asked by a new ClickBank affiliate is:
Hey, what is ClickBank gravity?
In our opinion gravity is the most important ClickBank factor, because it gives you a feeling of a product’s potential to be sold.
As said in ClickBank’s FAQ gravity is “a number of distinct affiliates who earned a commission by referring a paying customer to the publisher’s products”. ClickBank also specifies that “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”.
How is ClickBank gravity calculated?
But they haven’t told how it is actually calculated.
We found Antone Roundy’s assumptions about calculation of the gravity to seem really correct. So, here are basic points of his thoughts:
- Gravity is recalculated everyday;
- It is a sum of scores received by individual affiliates who sold at least one copy of the product for last 8 weeks;
- Each affiliate may add at most “1” to the product’s gravity;
- Each affiliate adds to the today’s gravity:
“1”: if he/she sold at least one copy of this product yesterday;
“0,96”: if last affiliate’s sale was 2 days ago;
3 days ago: 0,96^2 = 0,9216;
4 days ago: 0,96^3 = 0,884736;
n days ago: 0,96^(n-1) (n is not deeper than 8 weeks)
As an example let’s consider a product which is being promoted by two affiliates. We know that first affiliate had sold 3 copies of this product yesterday and 7 copies 2 days ago, but second affiliate had sold only one copy of the product 2 days ago. So, to find today’s value of the gravity we have to add affiliates’ scores. The first affiliate adds “1” (because he sold at least one copy of the product yesterday) and another affiliate adds only “0,96” (his last sale was 2 days ago). And the Gravity = 1 + 0,96 = 1,96.
ClickBank doesn’t give us information about volumes of the sales; however we can assume that some affiliates may sell more than one copy of the product as well.
How to use ClickBank gravity?
In our opinion you should not consider the products with the gravity less than “5” because those are not promoted by many affiliates. It may tell you this product doesn’t have a good sales page or it is not well promoted.
When you see that some product has 5-20 gravity you should check when it was released. If it is a new product you should take a look on it, because it may explode in the near future.
Gravity “20” is a definite proof of great sales page.
When gravity is reaching 20 and you are applying PPC advertising, you may bid on the keywords based on the product’s name (“product’s name” and [product’s name]). Here is the logic of such approach:
- keywords based on the product’s name have enormous conversion (sometimes 1 in 10 and even more!);
- you are pretending on the extremely targeted search traffic;
- you may pick great products right on the start of their growth.
Please use such approach only with the PPC search traffic, don’t use it on the content network.
Gravity “20-100” = These are fine products to promote.
Be sure, such products are being successfully sold and most of them have a qualitative info for customers (low level of returns). They are liquid and at the same time they don’t have a big competition. If you want to have a successful PPC advertising with them you should create a valuable landing page for your customers:
- add your own review on the product (be sure you have checked it personally);
- attach some bonuses for those customers who will buy through your link (it is crucial because there are a lot of other PPC advertisers and many people are searching for some additional bonuses when they are ready to buy);
- you should also add some e-mail subscription (try to build a business and not one-time sales).
Gravity more than 100 = huge competition.
Yea, there is a huge competition. You should not promote such products if you are a novice (if you don’t have enough money for experiments, if you don’t have any subscriber who respects your opinion).
But these products may yield significantly. You must apply all recommendations given above to succeed. You should also invent your personal methods, be unique.
Gravity graphs
Our free ClickBank analysis tool may show you historical values of the product’s gravity. They are represented as a gravity graph. To check this, select any product and open the “Basic Graphs” report.
When the product is gaining the popularity its gravity graph is climbing up. Otherwise when the gravity graph is dropping down the product is losing its popularity. When it stagnates on some level the product has got some temporary sales stability on that level.
There are a lot of factors which have influence on the gravity graphs:
- when publisher is decreasing the price the gravity may go up;
- when publisher asks his subscribers to promote some product the gravity may jump up;
- when affiliates are moving to another same product the gravity may decrease;
- when the product was publicly proved to be a scam the gravity may fall down very quickly;
- and many, many other factors.
So, sometimes take a look on the gravity graphs for the products you are promoting. Recognize if there are any sharp changes on them. Realize reasons of the changes. And take a proper action.
Homework 
We realized that you may want to take some action like homework 
Here are some simple tasks if you are interested.
1. Find products with the gravity 20-100 (tip: you may use the CBGraph’s search tool by specifying the “Ranges of factors”).
2. Select any product and look on its gravity graph (Reports: Basic Graphs).
It is the end of our first post in the “How to find the best ClickBank products to promote?” series. We’ll publish information about other ClickBank factors in the nearest days. Stay tuned. Hope you’ll enjoy