Many affiliate marketers who use Clickbank as an affiliate network for products that they want to promote often have a hard time understanding the process. While it’s definitely one of the easiest networks to choose products from, understanding the Clickbank marketplace and choosing the right product that will be profitable for you can be confusing.

In order to choose the right products to promote from Clickbank, it might be more of a benefit to you in having certain standards or conditions. Basically, knowing what products you want to promote is one thing, but choosing products that will be more profitable for you will eventually save you valuable time and effort.

To begin with, some of the key features that you should pay attention to are competition, whether or not the vendor has a sales letter, commission structure, product price, and the all-encompassing gravity score.

Out of those features, one area always seems to confuse many affiliates, especially those who are just starting out… and that is the gravity score.

So, what the heck is a gravity score?

Well, Clickbank explains it as a certain number of individuals/affiliates that have earned an actual commission through the referring process and in result the referred customer paid for a specific product from a vendor. This is not an actual total but more of a weighted sum. It represents every affiliate who was paid during the previous eight-week period. Now, this is where it gets a little tricky. For each affiliate they add some amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the totals. And, more recent referrals mean a higher value will be added.

None of this has any bearing on the total amount of sales for any given product. It seems kind of confusing, doesn’t it?

Well, let’s bring this down a few levels so everyone can have a better understanding. In simple terms, if the gravity score is high it usually signals that affiliate marketers are making sales and earning commissions from individual products.

So, in reverse, a lower gravity score will often demonstrate that a product is not selling well.

Ultimately, the gravity score can play an important role in deciding which products you’ll be successful with at promoting.

Let’s go over a brief example of how the gravity score works. For example, if a product shows a score of 225, that simply reflects 225 affiliates who’ve referred customers and made a sale for a given product within the previous eight weeks.

Just remember, that does not demonstrate individual total sales that are made by each affiliate. For instance, 225 affiliates could have made one sale each or maybe 25 affiliates each had 9 sales. There’s nothing that gives out that information. Another thing to keep in mind, products with a higher gravity score can often signal competition from other affiliates.

Competition from other affiliates can be both good and bad. If a large group of affiliates are promoting within the same circles, the opportunity to make money from a given product can prove to be challenging. From this information, it’s obvious that a high score demonstrates a worthwhile product to promote. And, if you’re confident enough to mix with the competition, start promoting those products with higher gravity scores. One thing is for sure, there’s some kind of market where people are buying the products.

In wrapping this up, don’t put off or neglect some of the other Clickbank products that are available even if their gravity score is lower. Some of the products can be a valuable solution for your promotional efforts. One thing to keep in mind, some products with lower gravity scores can often mean less competition for you. But, as stated above, keep to a set of standards and limit yourself when making choices. That means, put a limit on products that you choose with a gravity no less than 20 or 25.

When you have a better understanding of what you’re looking for and what the Clickbank gravity score is and how it actually works, you’ll have more confidence in the products that you choose to promote.