Forum

[Yowza1]

Hello all...

Brand spankin' new newbie here and my very first post!! Ok, so I've spent a total of about ten hours looking things over reading, watching videos, etc. etc.

Just off the top of my head...I'm thinking my first website will be in the golf niche. (Why? I can't get enough of the game!) So, when reading about finding affiliate products to promote in Clickbank, Mark mentions that he looks for products with a gravity of a least 30 to be considered profitable. I go to Clickbank, pull up ALL the products in the golf category and was totally dumbfounded!! I sorted the results by "gravity." The first product was 66.00, the second product was 21.61, and it declined from there. What??? Are you kidding me??? Golf products, especially self-help, have got to be a multi-billion dollar a year industry. My question...how in the world can there be so few affiliate golf products with decent "gravity" numbers to promote?? Am I totally missing something here?

Thanks to all

 

[sabasc3]

I too am a new member of Affiliorama, and would like to learn more about "gravity" in clickbank etc.
I noticed that the training video How To Find Affiliate Programs mentions that gravity numbers can be manipulated. How, inflated to look better than actual?
Thanks,
Scott

 

[SirMatts]

While Clickbank is a very good place to start out due to the easyness and great commissions. Sometimes you will not find products to promote in a certain niche. But there are a ton of affiliate programs to promote nowdays in any niche imaginable you have just learn a bit how to search in google. You could start with typing golf + affiliate program into google.... in the footer area of sites you will often see the affiliate programs and how to join it. Then you can expand to other affiliate networks such as CJ, Shareasale, linkshare, paydotcom and so on. there are a multitude of programs to promote... the % commision will not be as good as on clickbank for most of the part thou. So you might wanna go for higher price items if your commision is only going to be 10%. Depends how you look at it.

 

[sabasc3]

I like your suggesttion, SirMatts, to search for
golf affiliate program
You could also try:
golf referral program
since some sites use the word referral instead of affiliate.
Scott

 

[Yowza1]

Is it even worth promoting products or sites that only offer 5, 6 or even 10% commissions? Simple math, 10% commission on a $100 sale is only $10. Yes, these lower commissions usually mean the sites or products are more established, but is it really worth it?

 

[jmpruitt]

that is why we usually recommend info products. you can make some money from the low commission products, but you have to drive a lot of traffic to really make good money at it.

that being said, I know a guy who recently did a $12 product and did over 4k in sales in one day...if you build a list and they are responsive, you can do it, but it takes work and a bit of time to get there.

 

[Yowza1]

James is it? I must say I've spent a lot of time just reading forum posts and you, my friend, are a walking, talking Affilopedia. All your posts are informative and I would just like to thank you for the time you spend helping all of us "newbies." Please keep up the good work!

 

[jmpruitt]

LOL, thanks. Most of it I learned here. I got to give back to what was given to me when I started o ut.

 

[stefan1601]

@Yowza1: I agree with you wholeheartedly about James. He has helped me a lot too.

About gravity, Mark may recommend 30 and above, but you'll find other succesfull internet marketer that suggest less than that, yet they still can build a succcesfull affiliate site. I'd say 20 is still pretty doable; that means you'll have less competitor to deal with. You might even rank for the
"product-name review" keyword quite easily

 

[gradyp]

It really shouldn't be too big of a problem. Mark recommends having at least one that is 30+, but they don't all have to be. The more you have that are, the easier it might be to get sales, but you don't have to have all of them over 30.

Grady

 

[EvoBilly]

Mark said to have at least 1 or 2 products that are 30 or higher you can use some lower gravity ones just makes it easier when starting to know that its a proven seller, the gravity is the number of affiliates that made a sale that week, so depending on when you checked it, it can go up and down, just a note though gravity is not the total number of sales as each affiliate could have sold 100+ of that product in the week and it will still only count at 1 gravity.

 

[Yowza1]

Here are the gravity numbers for the top 4 golf products offered in Clickbank:

Product #1) 65.73
Product #2) 20.86
Product #3) 10.83
Product #4) 6.07

Would this be a good example of using these products to build a review site off of? For instance, Product #1 gets 5-stars, #2 gets 4-stars, etc., etc.?

 

[gradyp]

You could do that. However, I think Mark picks his "main" product that he wants to promote and gives that one 5 stars. Then, he picks 3 or 4 other, supporting, products and gives them 4 or 4 1/2 star ratings, recommending them as the "Best ____ product" where the blank is what that program focuses on.

For example, he'd have one general guide and one of his others would be the "Best Cure Your Hook or Slice Guide".

Grady

 

[backhoe48]

Another handy site to use in association with clickbank is CB engine. It gives you all sorts of information on current CB products as well as new products etc.
find it here. http://www.cbengine.com/

 

[Yowza1]

Ok backhoe48 or anyone, here is a big newbie question.....ready? What are the advantages/disadvantages, if any, of promoting brand new products, or, products that have very low gravity ratings?

 

[kajm]

Hi Yowza
For what its worth I like getting a product that nobody else has or has yet. About 18 months ago I approached a company and asked if they had an affiliate program. They were thinking about it and within a couple of weeks I was selling 2 or 3 of their products per day with a $35 commission all from free traffic. They then put their product into various cpa networks and my sales crashed. My conversion rates have gone way down to where I only sell 5-10 sales of their product per month with the same traffic (although they now pay $55/sale) If I was PPC I would be getting killed. I had the same with a clickbank product. When I started I was selling 2 or 3 per week, paying $22. I don't know what the gravity was then, it was back in 2004/5 and I didn't knwo what gravity was. The gravity of the product is now the highest in its category. I still have the product because I like it but sell nothing for 2 or 3 months and then will sell 10 items within a week. I figure somebody has just blown their PPC and I'm getting the traffic. I rank #1 in google for a range of 2 word keyword phrases in this niche so get plenty of traffic to play with. I really should spend more time testing etc...

Gravity to me means sales but also competiton. I run adsense on this site and it seems to perform inversely proportional to my affiliate products.
I'm still learning but my thought is even if a product is new, if you like the product, believe the product is right for your readers go with it.
Kevin

 

[jmpruitt]

the advantage is in low competition for the keywords for the specific product, and in not too many affiiates wlling to take a risk on an unproven system. you can make a killing on low gravity products with some good search rankings and traffic.

 

[markling]

Gravity is a rule of thumb, it isn't the main thing, but it's the best thing for a newbie to look at.

The real key (assuming the product is good) is that it has great salescopy that will convert visitors to sales. Often products with a gravity of 5 or even 0 will have those factors in place, they just might not have kicked into orbit yet, but I've found it difficult to teach newbies how to look out for those factors that lead to high conversion rates so I just tend to tell them to look at gravity as it's a good rule of thumb (ie others are successful promoting that product, therefore you know that it converts to sales if the right traffic is sent to the sales page).

The other thing you need to consider about the golf niche is that you might only need to sell a few 'info product' guides and you might make more money selling stuff like golf clubs, golf balls and so forth.

You should also consider CPA networks for golfing offers.