Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Explained: What Every Number Means

You found Clickbank. Thousands of products, dozens of niches, a marketplace that promises commissions on almost anything. But when you actually land in that dashboard the numbers hit you fast: average commission, initial conversion, gravity, rebills. Most people either ignore those numbers entirely or freeze trying to decode them.

In the video above, Alston walks through Clickbank from the ground up, what it is, how to sign up, what every metric in the product listing actually means, and how to tell a well-supported affiliate program from one that will waste your time. This post captures every detail so you can use it as a reference while you work inside the platform.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear understanding of what Clickbank is and how the marketplace is organized
Step-by-step directions for signing up (what you need and how long it takes)
How to decode initial conversion, average commission, and rebill numbers so you know what you will actually earn per sale
What gravity means and how to use it when evaluating products
The traits that separate a high-quality Clickbank product from a low-converting one
A real breakdown of Ted’s Woodworking and Numerologists.com, two products named in the video with actual commission numbers
The account settings you must review before promoting anything, so you do not get banned or lose commissions
A quick shortcut to find which niche matches your current skills and situation: finder.platformproof.com

What Is Clickbank?

Clickbank is an affiliate network and marketplace. Think of it as a giant catalog of products created by vendors who want other people, affiliates, to promote those products in exchange for a commission. You do not create the product. You do not handle customer support or fulfillment. You find a product, generate your unique affiliate link, send traffic to that link, and earn a cut of every sale that comes through.

What separates Clickbank from many other affiliate networks is the sheer size of the catalog. There are thousands of products spread across dozens of niches: health, fitness, self-help, business, spirituality, gardening, crafts, investing, and more. If there is a passionate audience for something, there is probably a Clickbank product targeting that audience.

Clickbank has been around since the late 1990s, which means the platform is well-established, payouts are reliable, and many of the products you find there have been tested and refined over time. That does not mean every product is worth promoting. But it does mean the infrastructure itself is trustworthy and that your commissions, once earned, will actually be paid.

How to Sign Up for Clickbank

The sign-up process takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Clickbank is available in most countries. To complete registration you will need either a Social Security Number or an employer tax ID, depending on the country you are applying from. This is for tax reporting purposes, Clickbank is legally required to report your earnings to the relevant tax authority once you hit a certain threshold, so they collect that information upfront.

Once you submit your application you will be taken to your account dashboard. From there, the most important section for a new affiliate is the Marketplace, that is where all the products live. Before you start browsing products, spend a few minutes on your vendor settings and account resources as well. Alston specifically calls this out in the video, and we will come back to exactly why that matters.

How the Clickbank Marketplace Is Organized

Once you are inside the Marketplace, you will see that everything is broken down into categories. In Clickbank’s language, category and niche mean essentially the same thing. You can browse by clicking into a category, or you can use the search bar to find products by keyword.

When you click the magnifying glass icon or type in a search term, Clickbank returns a list of products. Each listing shows you the product name, a link to the sales page, a link to the affiliate page if one exists, and a row of metrics. Most new affiliates skim past those metrics, focus on commission size alone, and end up promoting products that either do not convert or leave money on the table. The rest of this post walks through every number so that does not happen to you.

The Sales Page vs. the Affiliate Page: Why Both Matter

Every Clickbank product has a sales page. Some, not all, also have an affiliate page. These are two completely different resources and they serve different purposes.

The sales page is what your audience sees when they click your affiliate link. It is the vendor’s pitch: the argument for why someone should buy the product. When you are evaluating any product, you need to open this page and actually read it. Alston’s specific recommendation in the video is to look for products with a video sales letter (commonly called a VSL) on the sales page. A VSL is a video that walks the visitor through the offer rather than relying solely on written text. VSL-driven sales pages tend to convert at a higher rate because they hold attention longer and build a stronger emotional connection to the offer before asking for the sale.

The affiliate page is a separate resource built by the vendor to help you promote their product. Alston’s strong recommendation throughout the video: filter for products that have one, because a vendor who invested time building an affiliate page has already done a significant amount of promotional work on your behalf. A well-built affiliate page can include:

A breakdown of the offer including all upsells and what each upsell pays affiliates
Pre-made banner ads sized for websites and blogs
Email swipes, pre-written email templates for follow-up sequences to subscribers
PPC keyword lists for affiliates running paid search campaigns
Facebook ad targeting instructions: specific audience interests and demographic details
Custom landing page templates affiliates can use directly
Video content you can embed on a blog or website to increase conversion rates

The logic behind a rich affiliate page is straightforward: the more effectively you can promote the product, the more the vendor earns on the backend. A vendor who builds out a comprehensive affiliate resource library is running a professional operation and has typically invested in testing what actually works. That investment translates directly to your results.

Decoding the Numbers: Initial Conversion, Average Commission, and Rebill

This is the section most beginners get wrong. Every Clickbank product listing displays three commission-related figures, and they mean very different things.

Initial conversion is the dollar amount you earn when someone buys the front-end product for the first time. This is the number you should anchor on when projecting your income. It is the most direct measure of what one sale actually puts in your account.

Average commission (sometimes labeled “average sale”) looks higher than the initial conversion in most listings. The reason it is higher: it blends the initial sale with upsell commissions and recurring rebill revenue from subscribers. If a portion of buyers also purchase an upsell after the initial sale, and if some buyers are on a monthly subscription, those additional payments get averaged into this figure. Average commission is not what you will earn on most sales. It represents a blended best-case number that includes buyers who went further into the funnel.

Rebill is the recurring commission you earn from buyers who remain on a subscription or membership product month after month. This shows up as its own line item in the listing and represents long-term residual income from subscribers you brought in.

Here is the real example from the video, Numerologists.com:

Average commission: $13.25
Initial conversion: $11.97
Rebill: $4.41

The average commission ($13.25) is higher than the initial conversion ($11.97) because some buyers stay on the subscription and generate that $4.41 recurring payment. When you are calculating whether a product is worth promoting for a specific traffic source or content strategy, start with the initial conversion as your baseline for most transactions. Think of the rebill as a bonus that compounds over time as your subscriber base grows.

What Gravity Measures and How to Use It

Gravity is the metric that confuses new Clickbank affiliates the most. Here is what it actually represents: the number of affiliates who have made at least one sale with this product recently. It is not a total sales count. It is not a revenue figure. It is a rolling indicator of how many different affiliates are actively earning commissions from this product right now.

A higher gravity score tells you that the product is converting, real affiliates are promoting it and getting paid. It does not guarantee your results will match theirs. Your outcome depends on your traffic source, the alignment between your audience and the product’s promise, the quality of your content, and how you frame the offer. But gravity is a meaningful signal that the product is not dead on arrival and that the vendor’s offer is genuinely resonating with buyers.

Very low gravity (close to zero) can mean the product is brand new, has been tested by affiliates and underperformed, or has become so saturated in one specific traffic channel that it stopped converting there. Very high gravity (above 100 or 200) sometimes signals a competitive product space where newer affiliates will struggle to gain traction against the established campaigns of experienced marketers already working those audiences and keywords.

There is no universally correct gravity target. As a beginner, products with a moderate gravity score, high enough to confirm the product converts, not so high that you are entering a fully saturated competition, give you a reasonable starting point. Pair the gravity score with your evaluation of the sales page quality and the depth of the affiliate resources, and you will make a much better product selection decision than relying on any single number.

The Filters That Save You Time

The Clickbank Marketplace includes an attributes filter panel that lets you narrow the product list based on specific criteria. The filters Alston highlights in the video:

Physical products, toggle this if you want to promote something tangible that ships to the customer rather than a digital download or membership
Language, restrict results to products sold in the language your audience speaks
Billing type, filter by one-time purchase, recurring subscription, or dollar trial (a low entry-price offer that converts buyers into a subscription at a higher monthly rate)
Must-have affiliate page, this is the filter Alston recommends enabling immediately, because it removes every product where the vendor has not built affiliate support resources

You can also add products to a favorites list as you browse, which lets you collect and compare three or four options side by side before you commit to promoting one. This step slows you down in a useful way: comparison prevents the mistake of defaulting to the first thing that looks good.

What Makes a High-Quality Clickbank Product

Alston gives a clear set of criteria in the video for evaluating any product you are considering before clicking the promote button:

A clean, well-designed sales page that does not look outdated or visually spammy
A video sales letter on the sales page rather than a wall of text
A fully built-out affiliate page with actual promotional tools, not a blank page or a single paragraph with a link

Alston’s specific recommendation before you ever start driving traffic: sit down and watch the video sales letter all the way through. Understand what the product is promising, what kind of person it is aimed at, and what transformation or result the buyer is expecting. If you can speak to the product confidently because you genuinely understand what it offers, you will write better content, attract a more qualified audience, and convert at a higher rate than someone who grabbed an affiliate link without ever looking at what they were promoting.

Ted’s Woodworking: A Real Example of a Well-Supported Affiliate Program

To make the evaluation criteria concrete, Alston walks through Ted’s Woodworking live inside the Clickbank Marketplace during the video. This is a product in the woodworking niche, and Alston uses it as his example of what a professional, well-resourced affiliate program looks like in practice.

The commission numbers from the video:

Main offer (front end): $67 per sale
Average sale: $62.68, slightly lower than the main offer price because not every buyer takes the upsells, which pulls the blended average down

What makes Ted’s Woodworking stand out in the video is the affiliate page. Alston scrolls through it in real time and identifies every resource the vendor has built:

A complete breakdown of the main offer and all upsells, with commission amounts at each level
Custom landing page templates affiliates can use directly without building anything from scratch
Banner ads already designed and sized for websites and blogs, including an animated blinking banner specifically built to pull a reader’s eye toward it
PPC keyword lists for affiliates running paid search campaigns
Facebook ad targeting guidance: specific audience interests and demographic details the vendor provides based on what has already worked for other affiliates promoting this product
Four pre-written email swipe templates, ready to copy and paste into any email autoresponder, with a direct one-click import link for GetResponse
Embeddable video content to add to a blog or website to increase conversions without creating original video from scratch

The GetResponse import link is worth noting. It is an affiliate link for the vendor, meaning they earn a small commission if you sign up for GetResponse through it. Alston points this out transparently in the video. That is a normal and ethical arrangement, vendors often recommend the tools their affiliates need, and that referral structure does not reduce the usefulness of the resource they have built for you.

Ted’s Woodworking is the example in the video precisely because of this affiliate page depth. Many affiliates have had success promoting it, and the breadth of promotional material available from day one is a significant part of that story. When you are starting out and have not yet built your own content library, a product that hands you banners, email templates, keyword lists, and targeting data cuts your setup time substantially.

Not sure which Clickbank niche matches your actual skills and situation?

Answer five quick questions and get a personalized match at finder.platformproof.com.

Account Settings You Must Review Before Promoting

Alston makes a point in the video that most tutorials skip entirely: before you generate your first affiliate link or send a single click of traffic, go through your Clickbank account settings carefully. Specifically, look at the vendor settings and the resources section inside your account.

This matters for two distinct reasons. First, your payment and tax information must be set up correctly for commissions to actually be paid out. If your banking details or tax ID information is incomplete or incorrect, your earnings sit in a pending state until it is resolved. Second, Clickbank has specific policies about how affiliates can promote products on the platform. Violating those policies, even by accident, can result in your account being suspended or your commissions being forfeited.

Alston’s direct quote from the video: “You don’t want to do something that’s going to get you banned or potentially lose commissions.” That is practical advice that most new affiliates skip in the excitement of getting started. Spending 20 to 30 minutes reading through your account settings and the platform’s terms before your first campaign is a small investment against a much larger potential loss.

Honest Drawbacks of Starting with Clickbank

The video presents Clickbank accurately and without inflated promises, so it is worth being equally direct about the friction points new affiliates will encounter.

Product quality varies widely. Clickbank’s open marketplace model means that alongside well-made products with professional affiliate pages, there are also outdated products with weak sales pages and no support resources. Gravity and commission numbers alone do not tell you whether a product is worth your time or your reputation. You have to open the sales page yourself, watch the VSL, and make that judgment call independently.

The commission numbers require careful reading. Average commission is not what you will earn per sale. Most people who skim the listing and anchor on average commission end up surprised when actual per-sale earnings come in lower. Start with the initial conversion number and build your projections from that floor.

Generating traffic is a separate skill. Clickbank gives you the product catalog and the affiliate link. It does not teach you how to build an audience, write content that attracts buyers, run paid ads profitably, or grow a social media following. The platform is just the product catalog. The work of getting qualified people to your affiliate link is entirely on your side of the equation.

Some niches are competitive. Products with very high gravity scores are popular for a reason, but they are also being promoted by many affiliates already targeting the same audiences and keywords. New affiliates entering a saturated niche without a differentiated content angle or a specific audience of their own may find it hard to gain traction early.

A Step-by-Step Framework for Evaluating Any Clickbank Product

Based on everything covered in the video, here is a practical sequence for evaluating any product in the Clickbank Marketplace before you commit to promoting it:

Step 1. Filter the Marketplace to show only products with an affiliate page. Skip anything without one.
Step 2. Open the sales page. Does it have a video sales letter? Is the design clean and credible? Would you buy from this page based on what you see?
Step 3. Find the initial conversion number, not the average commission. That is your per-sale baseline for projecting income from this product.
Step 4. Check the gravity score. Moderate gravity suggests the product is actively converting without being fully saturated.
Step 5. Open the affiliate page and audit the tools. Email swipes, banner ads, keyword lists, and targeting guidance all reduce the work required to start promoting effectively.
Step 6. Watch the video sales letter from start to finish. Know exactly what the product promises and who it is targeting before you write a single piece of content about it.
Step 7. Add two or three promising products to your favorites. Compare them side by side before committing to the one you will promote first.

Find Your X

Clickbank has thousands of products across dozens of niches. The challenge for most new affiliates is not finding products to promote, the catalog is enormous. The real challenge is knowing which niche actually matches what you already know, what you genuinely care about, and where you have some kind of natural advantage in reaching an audience. Picking the wrong niche is one of the most common reasons people stall out in affiliate marketing before earning their first commission.

If you want a shortcut to figuring out which starting point makes sense given your skills and your situation right now, go to finder.platformproof.com. Answer five questions and get a personalized recommendation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a website to promote Clickbank products?

No. You need a way to send traffic to your affiliate link, but that traffic can come from a YouTube channel, social media, an email list, paid ads, or a blog. A website gives you more long-term control over your audience and content, but it is not a hard requirement when you are getting started. Some successful affiliates build an email list as their primary channel and never build a traditional website at all.

Is Clickbank free to join?

Yes. Creating an affiliate account on Clickbank costs nothing. You do not pay to browse the Marketplace or generate affiliate links. Clickbank earns its revenue by taking a percentage of each transaction that runs through its platform. That cut comes out of the vendor’s commission structure, not out of your earnings as an affiliate.

What countries can use Clickbank?

Clickbank is available in most countries. Alston confirms in the video that sign-up is open to most regions, but you will need to provide a tax identification number, either a Social Security Number or an employer ID depending on where you are located. There are some geographic restrictions, so check the Clickbank sign-up page for the current supported country list before you begin the application.

What is a good gravity score for a Clickbank product?

There is no universally agreed-upon target number. Gravity measures how many different affiliates have earned at least one commission from this product recently, so higher gravity means more active promotion. For beginners, a moderate gravity score, not close to zero, not in the hundreds, tends to indicate a product that is converting without being fully saturated by experienced affiliates running large-scale campaigns. The quality of the sales page and the depth of the affiliate resources matter more than hitting any specific gravity threshold.

What is the difference between initial conversion and average commission on Clickbank?

Initial conversion is what you earn when someone buys the front-end product. Average commission is a blended figure that folds in upsell commissions and rebill payments from subscription buyers. Average commission will almost always be higher than initial conversion. When you are projecting what you will earn from a product, use initial conversion as your baseline, it represents what most individual sales will put in your account, before any upsells or recurring payments add to that total.

What is a video sales letter and why does it matter for affiliates?

A video sales letter is a video embedded in a product’s sales page that makes the case for the purchase in video format, rather than relying entirely on written text. VSLs tend to keep visitors on the page longer and build a stronger emotional connection to the offer before asking for the sale. Alston recommends looking specifically for Clickbank products with a VSL on their sales page because those pages typically convert at a higher rate, which means more of the traffic you send to the page will turn into actual commissions for you.

Why is Ted’s Woodworking used as an example in this video?

Alston uses Ted’s Woodworking because its affiliate page is exceptionally well-built. It includes banner ads, four email swipe templates with a GetResponse import link, PPC keyword lists, Facebook targeting guidance, custom landing page templates, and embeddable video content. The front-end commission is $67 per sale with an average sale of $62.68. It is not the highest-paying product on Clickbank, but it demonstrates what a professional affiliate program looks like when a vendor has genuinely invested in making their affiliates successful.

What happens if you violate Clickbank’s promotion policies?

Your account can be suspended or permanently banned, and you can lose commissions that have not yet been paid out. Alston warns in the video to spend time in your account settings and read the platform’s vendor and affiliate policies before you start promoting anything. Affiliates get banned for promoting products using methods the platform or individual vendors prohibit, including certain traffic sources, misleading claims, or restricted promotional tactics. A short review of the policies before your first campaign is a low-cost way to protect the commissions you will earn once you get started.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Explained 2021,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/jtoe4tq8Gp4
Clickbank Marketplace, https://www.clickbank.com
Ted’s Woodworking affiliate listing (via Clickbank Marketplace search)
Numerologists.com affiliate listing (via Clickbank Marketplace search)