It seems to me that the objective of the product developer is to get as many sales as possible in the first few days, before potential buyers figure out that the product isn’t all that good.

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in all the hype. I just received an email that told me I could make $23,546.56 in one week from the product being promoted.

I’m not the smartest person in the world, but it isn’t difficult to figure out that’s not going to happen.

In my experience, there are very few new products that live up to their hype. I’ve been disappointed much of the time, and have had to get too many refunds to count.

The only new products I even look at now are software programs that will help me improve my productivity. Even those aren’t always great. But I will take a look.

Now, if I am interested in any new product, I go to WarriorForum and search for the specific product. I will almost always find out the good, bad, and the ugly, and be able to make an informed decison.

Every once in a while I’ll find a  shill promoting the product, but it’s pretty easy to identify and discount the post.

So, my advice is to do your own homework before you get caught up in all the hype of new product launches. It’s better to know sooner than later that a product won’t do what you expect it to do.

If the gravity score is low and the product has been around for awhile, it usually means that affiliates aren’t making sales or that there’s a high refund rate.

If the gravity score is low and the product is new, you really don’t have enough information to make a decision. I’d hold off promoting the product until there is more data.

What’s a low gravity score? I’d say anything under 60 is low. I’d aim for products with gravity scores over 90 to be safe.

Should you affiliate with products that have really high gravity scores, like 400? I wouldn’t rush into that either, because such a high score means there’s tons of affiliate competition.

So where is the Clickbank product gravity sweet spot?

I look for a product with gravity between 100 and 200. That means there are enough affiliates making money with the product, but not so many that I can’t make money too.

Affiliate marketing can be very profitable, but you really do need to know the tricks of the trade. If you’re just starting out, you’ll learn a tremendous amount from Rosalind Gardner’s The Super Affiliate Handbook.

Rosalind is the queen of affiliate marketing. She’s been doing it for years now, and she really has figured out the system. She’s one of the few no-hype Internet marketer’s I’ve found, and she has a great way of presenting her material.

You can follow Rosalind’s training in The Super Affiliate Handbook, or try affiliate marketing on your own, but I guarantee you’ll reduce your learning curve if you follow her advice.

Here’s what I do to evaluate a product for profitability.

Let’s say I want to promote a dog training eBook.

I go to CBEngine and find the dog training eBook product I want to promote.

I see the sales price of the eBook is $49.95.

The publisher is offering a 75% commission, so I quickly calculate that I’ll make $37.46 on each sale. That sounds pretty good.

But then I notice that CBEngine says affiliates earn $33.96 on each sale.

Well, first of all, Clickbank takes a 7.5% +$1.00 commission off the top of every sale. (They do have to make money…)

So now the product’s sales price is reduced to $45.20.

Ok, so not so good, but still ok. Now I know why CBEngine says affiliates earn $33.96.

But, wait. CBEngine has another column, called “$ Earned per sale.” And I see that says $23.73.  

Huh? Does that mean I’ll end up with only $23.73 for every eBook I sell?

Why?

Because $10.23 of each sale goes to a refund.

A refund?

Yup. Clickbank has a 60-day return policy, which is great for the consumer. And it’s the right thing to do.

($10.23/$33.96 x 100% = 30.1% refund rate. Yikes!)

So I move on and evaluate other products. I’ll never make money with this one.

Generally speaking, any product with a refund percentage of 10% or less is worth promoting. The lower the percentage, the higher the product quality, and the more money you’ll make.

I use CBEngine to look for and evaluate all Clickbank products I’m thinking about promoting. They have a nice free version, and a paid version (at a nominal cost) that includes a lot of valuable bells and whistles. Try the free version first.

They all want me to buy their products (eBooks, software, courses) they say will help me make tons of money in affiliate marketing.

The pitch goes something like this: “I make $4,111.35 a week just by selling affiliate products…”

I click on the link in the email and go to a well-written sales letter page that builds my excitement with a lot of hype and buzzwords. 

Then, just as I’m starting to have some doubts, the promoter hits me with a screenshot of his unbelievable Clickbank sales for just one week.

The weekly Clickbank earnings screenshot looks something like this:

You’d think that at this point I’d say to myself, “Wow, this person really must have THE secret! If his product can help me make that kind of money, I must have it!”

But I don’t, because I have no idea what it actually cost this guy to earn this income. For example, if he used Google AdWords to generate the income, how much did he spend on his campaigns, and what was his return on investment? ROI is the name of the game, and I have no idea if he’s losing money on his campaigns, or if they’re incredibly profitable. 

And if he used some other means of generating this income, what was it, and how much did it cost? 

I’ve never seen the costs included in the sales pitch. 

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t make a sizeable income marketing affiliate products. You can. But, like any real business, it takes work. The money doesn’t just roll in. 

So the next time you get these emails, remember to question the earnings claims and evaluate the products they’re selling accordingly.

You can get the straight scoop on making money through affiliate marketing from Rosalind Gardner, a highly respected affiliate marketer.

In The Super Affiliate Handbook,  she’ll teach you how to pick the best affiliate programs, negotiate a commission raise, and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting. I bought her book a few years ago, and swear by it.  She recently issued an update of the book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about affiliate marketing.

There’s a better way to find Clickbank products that will provide you with the most profits…and it’s a very simple system. Just follow these steps:

• Go to Clickbank.com and search for products in your niche. Select one you’re interested in promoting   and write down the vendor’s ID.
• Go to CBTrends.com and click on “Performance Tracking.”
• Scroll down to analyze the performance of the product.

• Popularity:  If the trend is declining, the product is gaining in popularity
• Gravity: If the trend is climbing, it means that more affiliates are promoting the product
• Earned Per Sale: If the trend is climbing, you know that buyers like the product. This means the product has fewer returns and better profit margins

If these performance trends are reversed, move on. This isn’t a product that’s making money for affiliates.

There’s a great online tool I use called CBEngine. It’s free, but if you’re going to be doing a lot of Clickbank affiliate marketing, you might want to consider signing up for the pro version, which will give you a lot more detailed information about each product.