There is a lot of misinformation regarding Clickbank gravity, which is why, in this post, I will explain what Clickbank gravity is, how Clickbank gravity is calculated, how to use it, and the myth and truth around it.
What is Clickbank gravity?
Clickbank gravity is a number given to each of the products in the Clickbank marketplace, it accounts for the number of affiliates that earned commissions promoting that product in the last 12 weeks.
Here is ClickBank’s explanation of gravity
Gravity is a performance statistic that represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that considers 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” currently 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.
How does ClickBank calculate gravity?
There are a lot of myths and speculations about how does Clickbank calculates gravity, this is because Clickbank itself does not disclose how they do it.
After researching and performing my test, I think this is the way Clickbank calculates its gravity.
- ClickBank recalculates Gravity every day
- Any vendor’s gravity is a sum of scores of distinct affiliates who have sold this vendor’s products in the last 12 weeks
- An affiliate’s score can be:
- “1”: if he/she sold at least one copy of the vendor’s product yesterday
- “0,96”: if this affiliate’s last sale was the day before yesterday
- 3 days ago: 0,96^2 = 0,9216
- 4 days ago: 0,96^3 = 0,884736
- n days ago: 0,96^(n-1)
How do you use ClickBank Gravity as an affiliate?
Personally, I think you should not promote products with a gravity of less than 20 Such gravity tells us there are only a few affiliates who have sold this product. It signals us that either the product’s sales page doesn’t work well or that too few affiliates have tried to promote this product.
Not all products below the gravity are bad, they could be new products, all I recommend is to check when it was added to the marketplace, if it is a new product keep an eye on it, it may become popular very soon.
If it has been there for a long time but has low gravity, I recommend buying the product and going through it, and if it is something great, then promote it.
What is the relationship between Clickbank gravity and the number of sales?
There is no correlation between gravity and the number of sales.
An example will show this.
Using the algorithm whereby a gravity value of 1 is given to a sale made in the current week, consider these two situations:
Product A: 100 affiliates make one sale each
Total sales = 100
Gravity = 100
Product B: 1 affiliate makes 100 sales.
Total sales = 100
Gravity = 1
So we can see that two products with vastly different gravities produce the same number of sales.
What Clickbank gravity is telling us?
On the face of it, gravity gives us an estimated number of affiliates who have recently made a sale – so we can get an idea of the competition.
a) It does not say how successful these affiliates are. The gravity is the same whether an affiliate makes 100 sales or just one sale.
b) Gravity is only a measure over the last 12 weeks and may be particularly high due to a big launch of a new product or a big promotion of an existing one.
c) The vendor may have many additional products in the Marketplace account, and the stats don’t represent the products listed.
d) To make it even more difficult to determine the true value of gravity, look at the next section.
Gravity can be manipulated
The main reason I do not recommend using high gravity as a criterion for picking a product to promote is that gravity can be easily manipulated.
The easiest way product creators manipulate product gravity score is through a huge launch promotion. While this is ethical, what happens is that they bribe big affiliates with huge amounts of cash bonuses.
These affiliates will promote the product like crazy, and if they can get many people promoting it, some people will make sales, boosting the gravity score.
When the next day, newbies who have been told that the higher the gravity, the better the product see that huge gravity, they will start promoting that product too.
This will boost even more the gravity. If 1000 people promote the product every day it is easy for at least 20 of them to make a sale, and the cycle continues.
This is the main reason that Clickbank has a lot of very bad products with very high gravity scores.
How to use Gravity as an affiliate
For me, gravity means very little. It just indicates how is the competition out there, which is not a bad thing.
I do not recommend picking a product just based on its gravity score, and I will recommend going and checking the sales page, making sure you know how much, on average, you are going to get paid per sale. You need to see the product support page and even send them a message to see how long it takes them to respond.
If those criteria are met, then you can promote the product.
You can read more about how to pick Clickbank products to promote here.
So where does gravity fit in?
If you are going to use free traffic methods for driving traffic to the Clickbank affiliate offers, one other factor you might want to consider is the competition from rival affiliates. This is especially important in search engine marketing, where a high keyword ranking is vital.
Therefore you should be seeking a LOW gravity product indicating fewer affiliates.