ClickBank is a cornerstone of affiliate marketing, particularly in the internet marketing niche. They specialize in downloadable products, which is what most internet marketing products are. And a single ClickBank signup is all you need to be able to promote products from thousands of different sellers.

One of the challenges is finding good products to promote.

The standard method is to go to the ClickBank marketplace, browse the niche you want to promote to, and pick products with high "gravity". Gravity is a measure of how many affiliates are making money promoting a particular seller's products. (Find out exactly how ClickBank calculates gravity).

If you're willing to promote any product, sight unseen, I suppose that may be an effective method of picking "winners". But there are a few problems with it.

Which Way Is It Moving?

A product may have high gravity, but which direction is its gravity moving? A product that hasn't sold a single copy in a month could have a gravity score of 300 today if its score was 1000 a month ago.

ClickBank will tell you today's score, but not a product's history. For that, you have to go to a 3rd party site like Instant Affiliate Accelerator. There, you can see graphs like this:

This particular graph is for a product whose gravity is dropping, but it's still making sales. If the yellow bars were the same height as the green or barely higher, that would indicate that it's making few, if any, new sales. Yellow bars lower than the green would indicate a product that's getting more returns than new sales.

From what I've seen, most of the products with high gravity scores on ClickBank had successful launches recently. They have a huge initial surge of sales that typically lasts about a week. Then sales grind almost to a halt, and their gravity scores begin a long, slow slide, as the impact of the initial launch on their score diminishes over time.

Reader Comment:
Terry Schierer said:
Great post as usual. The video sure brings the point across that all that glimmers isn't gold. I wonder what the record is for number of exit pops on one web site? Terry
(join the conversation below)

So a high gravity score doesn't necessarily mean that the product is selling well now -- just that it's sold well within the last month or so.

Is It Any Good?

If a product's gravity score mostly came from the initial launch, then it may say more about the quality of the launch than the quality of the product itself. If the product itself is weak, you'll damage your own credibility if you promote it.

Picking a product to try out based on its gravity score may be a fine idea, but until you've checked it out yourself, it's a risky way to choose products to promote.

What Kinds of Products Rank High on ClickBank?

The other day, Terry Dean posted a video where he skims the sales pages of the top 10 "E-Business and E-Marketing" products on ClickBank. You'll have no trouble spotting a significant trend. Some of them may be fine products -- I haven't tried them, and neither has Terry -- but the warning signs are pretty clear:

In Conclusion...

If you're going to promote ClickBank products, rather than blindly grabbing affiliate links for those with the highest gravity scores, use gravity as a starting point, check which direction it's trending, check out the sales page, and if everything looks good, try the product out for yourself.

You'll avoid a lot of monkeys that are parading around emperor's robes, and you'll be in a position to give a qualified recommendation to your audience.