Q: How to view the ClickBank products' historic trends?
A: Every ClickBank affiliate and vendor has a nickname. The nickname is used by ClickBank to track the sales. The format of a hoplink is:
http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net
Where AFFILIATE is the nickname (ID) of an affiliate and VENDOR is the nickname (ID) of a vendor.
To get the performance history for a particular vendor, you need to take the VENDOR nickname, enter it into the "Enter the Vendor ID" textbox, and click the "Get Performance Trends" button.
If you do not know the product ID, then you can use either Browse ClickBank Marketplace or Search ClickBank Marketplace pages to find the product that interests you.
What is the "Last Seen in the Marketplace" date?
This date shows if the product is still listed in the Marketplace. If the last three Marketplace XML feeds do not have the vendor listed, then the "Last Seen in the Marketplace" date will be displayed in RED color, indicating that there might be some kind of a problem with the vendor. ClickBank policy states that there must be at least one sale during any given month for a vendor to be listed in the Marketplace.
What is on those graphs and how are they useful?
The graphs represent the change of values over time. There are at least seven graphs displayed for each vendor:
The first six graphs are for the popularity, gravity, earned per sale, referred, percent per sale, and commission trends for the values taken from the main category.
The rest of the graphs are the popularity trends for all subcategories the vendor is listed in. Only the popularity values are calculated on a per category basis. All other values are the same across all categories the vendor is listed in.
How to interpret those graphs?
Popularity: the lower the popularity value, the more popular the product is with affiliates. The best popularity value is 1. If you see an increase in popularity value, this might be an indication that a vendor in question is not doing something right; e.g. stealing affiliate commissions (this is an extreme example). Note: some products do not have a rating assigned yet. Those products are listed as the least popular products.
Gravity: the higher the value, the higher the competition in terms of a number of affiliates promoting the product
Earned Per Sale: this is a dollar value per sale. The higher the value, the more an affiliate earns per sale. A decline is an indication of a high rate of return – customers buy the product and request refunds because they are not satisfied with it.
Percent Per Sale: this is a percent value per sale. The dollar affiliate commission depends on the price of a product. The high percent per sale value does not mean the high dollar amount per sale. This value changes only if a vendor changes the payout rate.
Example: Product A - percent per sale - 75%, product price - $10, affiliate earns - $7.5 (not considering ClickBank charges).
Example: Product B - percent per sale - 25%, product price - $100, affiliate earns - $25 (not considering ClickBank charges).
Commission: Similar to Percent Per Sale
Referred: This is a percent value of sales referred by affiliates and sales made by a product vendor without the help of affiliates.
|
