Now that you’ve signed up for a ClickBank account, we’ll show you how to evaluate the affiliate products available on ClickBank so that you are able to choose those which are most likely to sell and earn you commissions for your affiliate marketing efforts.

Since anyone can sign up to promote their product on ClickBank, there are  products listed on ClickBank that do not sell that well.   In addition, products which are of lower quality will have higher refund rates.  As you don’t get paid a commission on sales which are refunded, you will want to avoid these products.

Fortunately, there are several key sales statistics which you can use to evaluate whether a particular product is a good choice. Below is a discussion of each:

Gravity

A product’s “gravity” is a somewhat complicated formula which reflects the number of different affiliates who have recently earned a commission from a particular product.  For each affiliate that has earned a commission in the previous 8 week period, ClickBank adds an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the product’s total gravity.  The more recent the last referral, the higher the value that is added.  A products’ gravity is recalculated daily.  Gravity does not tell you how many units have been sold but it is a good gauge of whether  many different affiliates have made recent sales.

If  the above description has your head swimming, don’t sweat it.  For your purposes, just keep in mind that the higher a product’s gravity score, the greater the number of affiliates who have made a recent sale which is an indication of the product’s strength.

However, don’t put too much emphasis on a product’s gravity.  There are inferior products that sell well and  have a high gravity score and, conversely, there are great products with little exposure and a low gravity score.  Also, the higher a product’s gravity score, the more competition you will have trying to promote it.

When you’re justing starting out, the key is to find a product with a strong gravity score but some potential keywords that don’t have too much competition.  But more on keyword research later…

As a general rule, aim to market products that have a gravity score of 20 or above and rising.

Earned/Sale

“Earned/Sale” is the amount that you can expect to make on each sale, after taking into account any refunds and fees.  For example, roughly speaking, if a product earned its affiliates $20 per sale but had a refund rate of 50%, the “Earned/Sale” for that product would be $10, meaning that for every two sales you made, you could expect to make $10 in commissions after refunds.

Obviously, a higher earned/sale is generally speaking a good thing but remember that it’s not the only thing.  If you are able to sell a high volume of a particular product, you may still make a decent amount in commissions even if the earned/sale is not particularly high.

As a general rule, look for products with a healthy ”earned/sale” of $20 or more.

Commission %

This is the percentage of the sale price that you will earn on each sale as your affiliate commission.  Generally, the higher the commission, the more you will earn per sale.  However, this obviously depends on the sale price of the product.

Note: The actual amount that you will receive in your account will be slightly lower as ClickBank deducts a small fee from your commission on each sale calculated as follows: purchase price x 7.5% – $1.00 x commission rate.  So on a $50 product with a 50% affiliate commission, the deduction from your account would be calculated as ($50 x 7.5% – $1.00) x 50% = $1.38.  The amount deposited to your account would be $25 – $1.38, or $23.62.

Ref %

Many people wrongly assume that Ref% is the percentage of sales that are refunded.  In fact, the Ref% for a particular product is the percentage of the product’s sales that are ”referred” by affiliates as opposed to sales that are made by the vendor directly.  If a product’s Ref% is 80%, that means that 80% of sales are achieved through affiliates while 20% are made directly by the vendor.

If a product’s Ref% rate is too low, it means that you will be competing heavily with the vendor who may have more resources and a bigger marketing budget.

Generally, you should aim for a Ref% of 65% or more.

Refund Rate

ClickBank does not disclose a product’s refund rate but it’s an important factor to take into account for two reasons.  First, a higher refund rate obviously indicates an inferior product with lower customer satisfaction.  And unless you are only in it for the money and don’t care about your customers, why would you want to sell people a product that doesn’t perform as advertised?  Secondly, a higher refund rate is going to kill your commissions and hurt your return on investment.

So for example, consider a product that has a purchase price of $50, a commission rate of 50% and an earned/sale of $18.00.  To calculate the refund percentage, you would do the following:

Step 1:  $50 (purchase price) – $2.75 (ClickBank fee of 7.5% minus $1.00) = $47.25

Step 2:  $47.25 (net sale proceeds) x .50 (50% commission rate) = $23.63

Step 3:  $23.63 (commission per sale) – $18.50 (earned/sale) = $5.13

Step 4: $5.13 divided by $23.63 = .217 (or 21.7% refund rate)

Look for products with refund rates of 15% or lower. Although the refund rate calculation seems complicated at first, you will get proficient at it with some practice. 

As an aside, when analyzing and choosing ClickBank products, I personally use an awesome software program developed by Brad Callen called Affiliate Elite which allows me to uncover literally hundreds of profitable products to promote in just a matter of a few minutes. In my opinion, it really gives me an unfair advantage over other affiliate marketers.

Check out the following video where I show you how to find killer Affiliate Products using the Affiliate Elite research tool.

For a limited time, you can try Affiliate Elite for a full 30 days for just $4.95.

The Bottom Line

In summary, as a new affiliate marketer, look for ClickBank products that have all or most of the following characteristics:

1. Gravity of at least 20 (the higher the better as a general rule);

2. Earned/Sale of $20.00 or higher;

3. Ref% of 65% or higher;

4. Refund rate of 15% or lower;

5. Strong momentum (if using Wealthy Affiliate ClickBank research tool).

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Note:  Don’t be overwhelmed by all of this information.  It may sound confusing at first but you will soon discover that it is all fairly simple.  Again, the key is to get in there and get going with it!  Do some research before choosing your product but don’t fall into the analysis paralysis trap!  Set aside a couple of hours to do your research and then make a decision on what product you want to promote and then get on with the business of promoting it.

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