Clickbank Gravity Explained

There is a lot of misinformation regarding Clickbank gravity, that is why in this post, I am going to explain what is Clickbank gravity, how Clickbank gravity is calculated, how to use it, and the myth and truth around it.

Clickbank Gravity Explained

What is gravity?

Gravity is a number given to each of the products in the Clickbank marketplace, it takes account of 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 – a number that represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account 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” at the moment, 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 own test, this is the way I think 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 to 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 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 it has low gravity I recommend buying the product go through it and if it is something great then promote it, I am sure you can sell it, do your research.

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 1 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 that we can get an idea of the competition.

a) It does not say how successful these affiliates are. Whether an affiliate makes 100 sales or just one sale the gravity is the same.

b) Gravity is only a measure over the last 12 weeks and maybe 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 product 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 of picking a product to promote is that gravity can be easily manipulated.

The easiest way product creators manipulate product gravity score is by having a huge launch promotion, while this is totally ethical, what happens is that they bribe big affiliates with huge amounts of cash bonuses.

These affiliate will promote the product like crazy and if they can get many people promoting it some people will make sales and this will boost the gravity score.

When the next day newbies who have been told that the higher the gravity the better is the product see that huge gravity they will start promoting that product too, this will boost even more the gravity, if 1000 people promoting the product each and 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, I will recommend to go and check the sales page, make sure you know how much on average you are going to get paid per each sale, you need to see the product support page and even send them a message to see how long it takes for 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 ranking on keywords is vital.

Therefore you should be seeking a LOW gravity product indicating fewer affiliates.

The List Of Clickbank Banned Countries

The List Of Clickbank Banned Countries

We all like to make money online and Clickbank is one of the starting points for your online entrepreneurship carrier, the bad news is that not all people from all countries can become Clickback affiliates. I created a list of Clickbank accepted countries (you can read it here) and now I am going to give you the list of Clickbank banned countries list.

What are the ClickBank banned countries?

  • AFGHANISTAN
  • ANGOLA
  • AZERBAIJAN
  • BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
  • BANGLADESH
  • BURKINA FASO
  • BURUNDI
  • BENIN
  • BELARUS
  • CONGO, THE DEM REP OF
  • CENTRAL AFRICAN REP
  • CONGO
  • COTE D IVOIRE
  • CAMEROON
  • CUBA
  • DJIBOUTI
  • DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
  • ALGERIA
  • ECUADOR
  • ERITREA
  • ETHIOPIA
  • GABON
  • GUINEA
  • EQUATORIAL GUINEA
  • GUINEA-BISSAU
  • GUYANA
  • IRAQ
  • IRAN, ISLAMIC REP OF
  • KENYA
  • KOREA, DEM PEOPLES REP
  • LIBERIA
  • LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA
  • MOLDOVA, REPUBLIC OF
  • MADAGASCAR
  • MYANMAR
  • MONGOLIA
  • MAURITANIA
  • MALAWI
  • MOZAMBIQUE
  • NIGER
  • NIGERIA
  • NEPAL
  • PAPUA NEW GUINEA
  • PALESTINIAN TERRITORY
  • SERBIA
  • RWANDA
  • SUDAN
  • SIERRA LEONE
  • SENEGAL
  • SOMALIA
  • The SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC
  • CHAD
  • TOGO
  • TAJIKISTAN
  • TIMOR-LESTE
  • TURKMENISTAN
  • TANZANIA, UN REP OF
  • UGANDA
  • ZAMBIA
  • SRI LANKA

That is it, this is the list of Clickbank banned countries. If you are in the above-mentioned country, you are not capable to create a ClickBank account by being in your country. There is a way around this but that is the topic for another day.

How To Promote Clickbank Products Without a Website Step By Step

How To Promote Clickbank Products Without a Website Step By Step

As an affiliate, you can use blogging, email marketing, social media, product review pages, and many other ways to promote products and services online. In this post, I will show you how to promote Clickbank products without a website or blog step by step as an affiliate to make money online.

First, What Is An Affiliate?

 

An affiliate is someone who uses an “affiliate link” to send website traffic to a vendor’s site that sells a product. If a sale is made upon that visit, or within a set time of that initial visit, the affiliate receives a commission (a pre-determined portion of the sale price).

In the Clickbank, you’ll receive an affiliate commission if the prospect buys within 60 days of the initial visit. This is referred to as 60-day cookies (cookies is the internet term for keeping track of website visit history).

Why Clickbank?

The reason I recommend Clickbank is that they approve almost everyone to promote their products and they will pay you every Wednesday. If your country is not in the list of Clickbank approved countries, you can check out alternatives to Clickbank here.

But the information from this page can be applied to promote any affiliate product from any company, just remove the word Clickbank and put your affiliate network name and you will be set.

Without any further due, here is how you can promote Clickbank products step by step without a website.

Step 1: Create a Clickbank account

The first step is to create a Clickbank account, if do you have one you can skip this step.

To create a Clickbank account go to:

https://accounts.clickbank.com/signup/

You will find a page like this one below

clickbank-create-account

Just fill in all the required information, you need to put your real information, including your real name, your real address and your real email (I know it sounds obvious but I know people who put fake information), this will save you from troubles when Clickbank pay you in the future.

Then click next, and fill up your correct bank information, after finalizing everything you will have to confirm your email and you are set to go to the next step.

Step 2: Pick a product to promote

After finalizing the creation of your Clickbank account you will need to pick a good product to promote.

All you need to do is to login in your Clickbank account and then click marketplace, that will take you directly to the Clickbank marketplace.

clickbank

 

In the marketplace you will find a search bar, if do you have an idea of what niche do you want to promote just type it in the space ( for example I was going to promote keto diet products so I typed ‘keto’, if you don’t know yet what niche to promote just leave it in blank and then click the search icon as shown in the image below.

search

When the search results appear, click in the drop menu and choose sort by gravity

clickbank gravity

For those who don’t know, Clickbank gravity is an estimated matrix that indicates the number of an affiliate who has made a sale promoting a product in the last 12 weeks, for each affiliate who made a sale the product is given a number between 0.1 and 1 depending on when the sale was made.

All you need to do after that is looking for a product that you do want to promote, for me these are the things I look from the product.

Gravity

Most people will tell you that you need to promote products with the highest gravity, Personally, I think this is a myth because higher gravity does not necessarily mean it is a good product and because everyone and his dog preach about promoting high gravity products most affiliates especially new ones tend to promote these products and create unnecessary competition also Clickbank gravity can be manipulated.

I will say choose a product between the gravity of 10 to 50 if this is your first Clickbank promotion stick with between 20-30 if there is no product in that range you can go a little bit low or high depending on the niche.

Initial Sale

This is the amount of money you will make when people buy a certain product by using your affiliate link, I tend to choose products with initial sale equal to or above 20. This means if I make at least one sale per day I will be making at least $20 day, it is not a bad thing.

Avg $/sale

This is the amount of money you will make on average for every sale you generate if Initial sale amount=Avg $/sale this means that the product does not offer any Upsales or people just don’t buy them.

Avg Rebill Total

If this number is $0.00 means the products do not have recurring payments so you will not make any money after the initial sale, if it is bigger than 0 means it has a recurring income.

Avg %rebill

This number represents the average affiliate commission percentage for a sale, including only the rebill commission.

For me, the most important factors are gravity and initial sale, for that reason that is why I selected the second product in this list (see the image below).

But that is not all, now you have selected the product you need to check out their sales page or sales video, you need to make sure that it is a nice and clean sales page/video, no link to other websites, no gimmicks or false claim and you need to ask yourself this question, I would buy this product for myself? if the answer is yes and you have money then buy it, if you don’t have money but the answer is yes you can also promote it, but if the answer is no, don’t promote it and chose another product.

It is always good practice to buy and use the product yourself before promoting it.

 

average sale

Step 3: Get your affiliate link

So now you did all the work and you found your product, you need to get your affiliate link, this is easy, just click the promote button (the one below Avg $/sale and this popup will appear in a new window.

hoplink

In, enter your information part you should have your Clickbank nickname there, if you clicked from inside your Clickbank account it should be there by default if it is not there just type it, make sure it is correct so that you can be credited for the sales you will be generating.

Also I will encourage you to enter your tracking ID, this is optional but it is useful because it will tell you where the sale came from and it will help you to decide which traffic generating method to focus on, in this article I am going to use the blog commenting method (spoiler alert) that is why I put BC for blog commenting, you can put anything you want there.

Ather that click generate HopLink and Clickbank will generate one of the ugliest URLs you will ever see, just click to the icon in the right-hand side of your link to copy it and paste somewhere you can remember like in notepad and save it in your computer.

Step 4: Mask your link

Now you need to mask your link and in this step, you will need to use some cash, I know this guide is supposed to teach you how to promote Clickbank products without a website and for free but, you will need to spend a little amount of money.

The method we are going to use to promote this Clickbank product is called direct link, this means you send your visitors directly to the sales page or sales video, there is no presale page or landing page.

Benefits of this method

The main benefit of this method is that you will get 100% CTR, CTR means Click Through Ration, in simple words means all people who will click to your link will go directly to the sales page or sales video.

The bad part of this method is that you’re not preselling or building your list, that means you’re not building a foundation of your online business.

My recommendation is that do this method, make some cash on demand and them invest some of that money by buying hosting and some other tools to build a real business online, for starters it is a good starting point.

Why you need to mask your affiliate link

it is ugly

As you saw above, the link you get from Clickbank is very ugly, imagine a friend telling you he/she wants to check out the product your promoting and she/he wants your affiliate link, how are you going to tell him/her that my link is atfghf35ftyy.clickbank.com they will think you’re crazy, the best thing is to mask it with a memorable domain name like johnrecommends.com, assuming your name is John.

And when they click to johnrecommends.com it will take them to that ugly link.

Most websites hate affiliate links

It does not matter if you’re going to promote it on facebook, twitter, Instagram or by commenting on authority blogs, if they see it is an affiliate link, they will not let you promote it, masking it reduces that risk.

It protects you in the future

Let say you’re going to dedicate at least two hours to do the method I am going to show you, after one month you will generate a lot of clicks per day and if for any reason the vendor is out of business, you can just go in your domain registrar and change the affiliate link and promote the related product, if you don’t do this you will have to search for every place you left your link and change it, it can take days or you will lose your traffic overnight, be smart.

How to mask your affiliate link

You need to buy a domain name, my highest recommendation is Namecheap as they are a very reliable domain register company, but the initial price is around 9.

If you don’t have that amount of money you can google for ‘GoDaddy one dollar domains’ you will be able to buy a single domain for just $1.

Yes, that what it will cost you to start making money with Clickbank using this method.

So since I am using Namecheap that is what I am going to use to show you how to mask your affiliate link.

Just go to namecheap.com and type a domain name do you want to buy, it can be yourname.com or yournamerecommends.com.On my case I decided to go with ketodietlowcarb.com just be creative and don’t waste more time in this.

namecheap

Just click the search icon, if a desirable domain name is available, then add it to cart, if you don’t have an account they will ask you to create one, pay for it by using Paypal or debit/ credit card then you own a domain name for one year.

After you complete the process above you will need to log in into your Namecheap account and click domain list then manage as shown in the image below.

namecheap

Make sure that in nameservers it is Namecheap BasicDNS (it should be like this by default) and then click Advanced DNS.

dns

Click on the drop menu where it says A Record, in the menu choose URL Redirect Record as shown in the image below.

record

You will have something like in the image below, in the host, space write the symbol ‘@’, in de destination URL copy your ugly link from Clickbank and post it there, in the drop menu choose Masked and then click the save button (in the red circle).

dns

After that you will need to click add a new record then select URL Redirect Record, this time in the host space write ‘www’, in the Destination URL post the same link from Clickbank, choose Masked in the drop menu and then click save.

If everything is done right, your record should look like the image below.

host

It may take up to 48 hours to update the host records, so if you test out and it does not direct you will need to wait a bit but after than any person who clicks or types your domain name will be directed to your affiliate link.

Now let us move to the last step of this tutorial, to drive traffic.

Step 5: Use a Trojan horse traffic method to drive free traffic

I first found out about this method about three years ago, I brought a product called Operation 10K by Desmond Ong and as a bonus, he teaches this method and he calls it Trajan Horse Method.

The method is very simple and it is in three steps.

you find 5-20 authority blogs in your niche.

The simplest way to do this is to use Google, you can just Google ‘your niche+best blogs’ for example in my case it will be ‘ keto diet best blogs’

For better results I will recommend doing your search in incognito mode as if you the normal browser, Google will show you results depending on your search history and other user-related behaviors, you need to see natural results.

best blogs

Find blogs with these three characteristics

You need to find between 5-20 authority blogs that have these three characteristics, one, the blog needs to have constant updates if the owner of the blog does not update his/her blog regularly there is no need to comment on it because probably you will not get traffic.

The blog needs to allow comment with a link, this is important because we are going to live a comment and then leave our link there if they don’t let you do this don’t waste your time on them.

The third and last characteristic is that the body must have active readers, you can check this by checking if there are some people commenting on the blog or if it has many shares in social media.

As I said find 5-20 of these blogs and keep them in the notepad.

Leave a helpful, respectful comment 

You need to write a good comment, you need first to read the whole article, find some points that you can comments on, leave your comment, your name, and your link.

For example in my case, I found a blog named ketogasm.com, they meet all criteria I mentioned above, all I need to here is to write a good comment, select save my name, notify me on follow and notify me of a new post then hint submit a comment.

comment

What will happen is that if I write a good and helpful comment the owner of this blog she will approve my comment and when her readers see it, they will want to click on my name and they will be redirected to my affiliate link.

If you do on average 6 minutes per comment that means that if you dedicate 2 hours, you will be leaving about 20 comments per day and if you do this every day you will start getting a huge amount of clicks every day and for sure you will make some sales.

Question and Answers

Do this method works?

Yes, it works, I still use it to make sales and drive traffic to my blogs and I know a lot of big name marketers like Neil Patel you used this method and reported massive results.

How much money I can make from this method?

There is no guarantee how much money you can make, but in my case, I make a sale between 140 and 300 visitors to my affiliate link, sometimes I make more, it depends on many factors.

If you could post 20 comments per day in a month you will have 600 comments, and if each comment gives you 1 visitor per day this is 600 visitors per day and if you make 2 sales per day, you will be making at least $40 per day, assuming you picked a product with an average sale of $20+

Is this long term?

No, this is not a long term stratergy, but you can use this method to make at least $100 per day but it is very difficult to scale up, you will need to start building your list and probably creating an authority blog yourself.

Final word 

This is how you can promote Clickbank products without a website or blog, there are many methods you can use, I will keep posting them here.

If you like this content make sure that you subscribe to my email list to get an update on a new post and learn how to create a passive income online.

Best Clickbank Alternatives

When it comes to making money as an affiliate marketer there is no better place for beginners than Clickbank.

The reason for this is that they accept almost everyone, unless you are out of their approver zones (you can read here the list of Clickbank approved countries), and they have a wide range of products with good commissions.

But if you’re outside of the approved zone and/or do you want to diversify your affiliate promotions here are the best Clickbank alternatives.

So to cut a long story short, I am going to share the best Clickbank alternatives that may help someone like me out there…

1: JVZOO

JVZOO Best Clickbank Alternatives

This affiliate network is like Clickbank with the fact that it concentrates a lot on digital products

What I like

The main feature that I like from JVZOO is their instant commission structure, this helps a lot if you don’t have a big budget to buy traffic, I mean if you’re promoting a product that pays you instantly, you send some visitors, some of them they buy and you get paid instantly, you buy more traffic, the circle is endless.

What I don’t like

The first thing I don’t like JVzoo, is that sometimes it is very difficult to get approved, yes, in JVZoo the vendor must approve you first before you can promote their products.This can be a very challenging task for beginners.

The second thing I don’t like about Jvzoo is that if you don’t have many sales, vendors will put you on delayed commission, this can take up two 60 days to get your commissions (Once they paid me after more than 100 days of waiting).

Another problem is that Jvzoo don’t pay you the commissions, the vendor is the one who is responsible for paying you, some of them they will run with your money( There are two vendors who are out of business and never paid me my commissions, it was not big but I deserved it, some of them they will forget to pay you (like the vendor who paid me after more than 100 days, when I wrote to him, his assistant told me they forgot to pay me ).

In Clickbank, you don’t have this problem because Clickbank handles all payments to the affiliates and they never miss the payment day.

2: Warriorplus

warriorplus

WarriorPlus is the exact copy of Jvzoo, they also have instant commission feature. You will have to request permission to promote a product from a vendor just like you would do in Jvzoo, but in my opinion, Warriorplus are handling affiliate payments a lot better than Jvzoo.

WarriorPlus have a wallet system, so when an affiliate makes a sale, his/her cut of the money will be stored on the wallet and after 30 days you can withdraw it on your Paypal or by direct deposit.

3: Rakuten LinkShare

rakuten linkshare

Rakuten LinkShare offers affiliate programs from big brands, but you have to apply to promote them and it’s not always easy to get accepted. Best for those with some experience already.

Rakuten LinkShare has a lot of physical products to promote, including some big brands. If you’re new and without an established blog I will not recommend this network to you.

One thing I’d like to point out is that there are also many businesses that offer their own affiliate program. So, if you can’t find a product in one of the networks, or if you’re having a hard time getting approved … sometimes, you can reach out to a company/website and ask if they have their own affiliate network.

4: Amazon Associates

Image result for amazon associates Best Clickbank Alternatives

As one of the biggest names in affiliate programs, this could be a good site to explore. They have millions of products to choose from so your options are endless. In fact, you can promote anything that you want as long as you are an official affiliate under their program.

They only problem I have with them is that the commission is small, it is between 4 and 12%.

I know they can add up very quickly and many affiliates make millions, but if you don’t have strong knowledge in affiliate marketing, it can become a little bit difficult to run a profitable business being an Amazon affiliate.

My advice is that first learn how to promote digital product after you master the basics then go and make it big with physical products.

5: Commission Junction

Image result for commission junction

Commission Junction is perhaps one of the largest affiliate programs online besides Clickbank. This site is known for millions of products, companies, brands, and services online that one can promote.

They also cater to some of the best leading names in the market so you can choose your products like tech gears to restaurants to pet accessories. It is also one of the easiest sites to use as an affiliate.

In order to promote those products you will have to apply to the companies and sometimes it can be very difficult to get approved if you don’t have an established website.

6: ShareASale

Image result for shareasale

ShareASale is another well-known affiliate network with a lot of product options.

It is easy to join ShareASale, I remember I got accepted was I was just starting out but they need a website to get accepted.

It’s not easy to get started joining affiliate programs. You have to verify that you own your website before you can join any of them, which involves placing a key in your website’s header tag or to sign up using an email related to your website, for example, if you want to verify yourwebsite.com, you can be verified faster if you sign up with yournameatyourwebsite.com

 

7: eBay Partner Network

 ebay partner network Best Clickbank Alternatives

One of the biggest and largest programs online belongs to eBay. Besides being one of the largest online shops, becoming an affiliate for this site is an excellent choice. You get paid by commissions and can be pretty good if you own a niche site too.

8: Market Health

Image result for market health Best Clickbank Alternatives

If you’d like to promote health and beauty related products, the health market is the best place to get started. Some of the most popular categories are weight loss, men’s health, cosmetics, skin care, and sports nutrition.

It’s super easy to sign up, and the site is extremely straightforward to use. You can browse by product category, you can look at their featured products or you can sort by country/language.

 

9: PeerFly

Resultado de imagen para peerfly Best Clickbank Alternatives

Peerfly is a CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)  affiliate network, once again with high-quality offers and a great reputation, but you do have to apply and be approved.

This verification process is a really good thing, even if it takes a little more time and effort. It means that if you do get accepted, you’re in good hands.

The good thing about PeerFly is that the software is custom built, so you’re unlikely to experience downtime or other hosting related issues.

You can apply to be a publisher from anywhere in the world. PeerFly has a convenient payment options. You can even opt for weekly payments, so you won’t be waiting around to get your commissions. The site offers PayPal, Payoneer, check, wire, or ACH transfers if you live in the US.

10: In-house affiliate program

Some of the big companies they have their own affiliate program, one company that fall in this category is clickfunnels, they have one of the best affiliate program and they host it using their own script.

cf Best Clickbank Alternatives

Final word

In this list of best clickbank alternatives, I listed only 10 affiliate programs, but there are a lot out there, there is an affiliate program for everything that you can sell. Just google it.

You don’t need to join all of them depending on your niche and your business model probably you will need two or three. If by any means you can´t find a good product to promote from those networks , you can just google ‘your niche+affiliate program’ and you will find a ton of them.