How To Choose Clickbank Products To Promote

When I first landed on Clickbank, I did what most beginners do. I scrolled through the marketplace, spotted a product with a big commission number, copied the affiliate link, and went straight to promoting it. I never read the sales page. I never looked at the refund rate. I definitely never thought about whether this was something I would actually feel good about putting my name behind. Predictably, I made zero sales. Not one. And the frustrating part was not the lack of money. It was realizing afterward that the product itself was the problem, not my promotion strategy.

The moment that changed things for me came from an unexpected place. My wife was pregnant with twins. I was looking at two of everything — two cribs, two sets of diapers, twice the daycare costs — and I knew I needed to figure out online income for real. That pressure forced me to stop treating Clickbank like a slot machine and start treating it like a business decision. This video and this post is about the exact vetting process I built from that experience: how to look at a Clickbank product the way a serious affiliate looks at it, not the way a desperate beginner does.

What You Will Walk Out With

The single most common Clickbank mistake beginners make (and how to avoid it from day one)
The “Mom test” filter that separates quality products from junk
A step-by-step walkthrough of how to evaluate any Clickbank product before you commit
What gravity actually tells you — and the number range that signals a real opportunity
The refund rate target you should hold every product to (5% is the ceiling, 2-3% is the goal)
How to read the affiliate tools page to spot companies that are in it for the long haul
Red flags that should remove a product from your list immediately
How to find the right offer for your audience — use the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com to match your skills to the best starting point

The Mistake That Costs Most Beginners Their First Six Months

Here is what the typical Clickbank journey looks like for most people. They watch a few YouTube videos. Someone in the video is making good money, jet-setting around Europe, eating pasta in Italy. It looks easy. They head to Clickbank, find something with a high gravity score and a 75% commission, grab the hoplink, and try to paste that link everywhere they can. Then nothing happens. No sales. Weeks go by. They try a different product. Still nothing. Eventually they decide Clickbank does not work and walk away.

I lived that exact cycle. And the thing is, the strategy was not necessarily wrong. The error was upstream. The product itself was the problem. I was promoting things I had never looked at carefully, things I would never use myself, things I certainly would not recommend to someone I cared about. The product quality matters just as much as your traffic, your email list, your landing page, or anything else in the affiliate marketing equation. Once I understood that, everything changed about how I approached the marketplace.

The Mom Test: The Simplest Filter That Actually Works

After getting burned on my first few attempts, I set a rule for myself. I would only promote products I felt comfortable with my mom using. That is it. That single constraint changed the way I evaluated everything on Clickbank. Before clicking “get hoplink,” I would ask: if my mom ended up buying this, how would I feel? If there was any hesitation, the product was out.

This might sound overly simple, but it solves a real problem. A lot of Clickbank products are technically compliant and technically profitable, and they are also the kind of thing that makes you feel a little gross when you promote them. The landing page promises something that sounds too good to be true. The email swipes are written to trigger fear and urgency in ways that feel manipulative. The guarantee language is buried in fine print. The Mom test cuts through all of that immediately. If you would not hand this to your mother, you should not put your affiliate link in front of your audience either.

The flip side of the Mom test is that you should not become so critical that nothing passes. Early in my vetting phase, I became too selective and that slowed me down. You are not looking for a perfect product. You are looking for a product you genuinely believe in, that has professional support materials, and that treats customers the way you would want to be treated. That is the bar. Not perfection.

How the Clickbank Marketplace Is Laid Out

When you log into Clickbank and open the marketplace, you will see a column of categories on the left side. These categories are your niches. Under each category, there are subcategories that represent more specific topics within that niche. Health and Fitness is one of the biggest categories. Under it you will find things like addiction, beauty, dental, dietary supplements, and diets and weight loss, among others.

Diets and weight loss is one of the highest-converting niches on the platform, and it is also one of the easiest to get wrong. You will find some excellent products in this subcategory, and you will find a lot of low-quality ones right next to them. That mix makes it a useful training ground for learning how to evaluate offers, because you get to see the full range of quality in one place and develop your eye for what separates a good product from a bad one.

When you browse a subcategory, you can sort by gravity, which is Clickbank’s metric for how many affiliates have made at least one sale with a product in a recent time period. Sorting by gravity shows you what is actually converting in the market right now. But gravity alone is not enough to make a decision. High gravity tells you the product is selling. It does not tell you whether you should be the one selling it.

How to Actually Evaluate a Clickbank Product

My evaluation process has several distinct steps, and I go through all of them before I decide on a product. I want to walk you through each one because skipping even one of these steps has cost me time and energy in the past.

Step one is the sales page. Click on the product listing and go through the sales page the way a real customer would. Watch the video if there is one. Read the copy if it is text-based. Pay attention to how the page makes you feel. Does it feel honest? Does the claim sound achievable? Or does it feel like a countdown timer and a fake scarcity message designed to pressure someone into buying before they think too hard? A clean, professional sales page that makes a specific promise and explains how it will be delivered is a green light. A page full of flashing graphics, income screenshots, and claims that sound physically impossible is a red flag.

Step two is the affiliate page. Almost every solid product on Clickbank has a dedicated affiliate page. This is where the product owner shows you the tools they have built to help you sell. Look for email swipes, banner ads, landing page templates, and any social media or paid traffic resources. A product with a rich affiliate page signals that the owner is serious about building a long-term business with affiliate partners, not just launching something and disappearing. If there is no affiliate page at all, that is a yellow flag worth noting.

Step three is reading the email swipes. Pull up a few of the email swipes provided and read them like a customer would receive them. Does the writing feel honest? Does it make sense? A good email swipe explains the problem, connects it to the product, and gives the reader a reason to click without resorting to manipulation. If the email reads like a scam, the product is probably not one you want to attach your name to.

Step four is checking the commission and EPC. For a product to be worth your time, the commission structure needs to justify the effort. On the Cinderella Solution, for example, affiliates could earn 73% or more per sale. That kind of commission means you are getting paid most of the value of the sale, which leaves real room for paid traffic or just makes your organic efforts worth more. EPC, or earnings per click, tells you how much money affiliates are making on average per click they send to the offer. Higher EPC relative to similar products in the niche is a good indicator that the offer is converting well.

Why Refund Rates Are the Most Underrated Metric on Clickbank

Most beginner affiliates obsess over commission percentages and gravity scores, and they completely ignore refund rates. That is a mistake. A high refund rate is telling you something very specific: customers are buying the product, using it, and then asking for their money back. That means the product is not delivering on the promise made on the sales page. And if the product is not delivering, you are going to damage the trust you have built with your audience every time you promote it.

The benchmark I use is this: a refund rate above 5% is a problem. The closer you get to 2% or 3%, the better. When you find a product with a refund rate in that range, it usually means customers are getting what they paid for, the product support is solid, and the sales page is making an honest promise. Those are exactly the conditions you want when you are building a long-term affiliate business where people trust your recommendations.

Clickbank shows refund rate data on the product stats page. Before you commit to promoting anything, pull that number up. It takes thirty seconds and it can save you from building out a whole promotion around a product that is going to generate refunds and complaints from your audience.

What the Affiliate Tools Page Tells You About the Product Owner

The affiliate tools page is one of the best indicators of whether a product owner is serious about what they are building. When I evaluated the Cinderella Solution, the affiliate page had landing page templates, email swipe copy, banner ads in multiple sizes, and a Facebook ad conversion kit. That is a product owner who has invested real money and time into building infrastructure for affiliates. They want you to succeed because your success is their success.

Compare that to a product where you click on the affiliate link and get a blank page, or a page with just the hoplink generator and nothing else. That tells you the product owner either launched this in a hurry, is not expecting serious affiliate volume, or does not care about supporting the people who promote their offer. That does not automatically make the product bad, but it does mean you will be doing all the creative work yourself with no support.

I look for companies that are in it for the long haul. Not the ones trying to make a quick hundred thousand dollars and move on. The products that stay on Clickbank for years, maintain their affiliate support materials, and consistently refine their sales funnel are the ones that will still be converting for you a year from now. That matters a lot when you are building evergreen content around a product.

Red Flags That Should End the Evaluation Immediately

There are certain things I see on a Clickbank product page that end the evaluation right there. No digging deeper, no giving it the benefit of the doubt. These are disqualifying in my process.

The first is a claim that is physically impossible. If a weight loss product promises you will drop twenty pounds in a week, that is not a bold claim. That is a false one. No honest product makes that promise. The moment you see something like that on the sales page, close the tab.

The second is a landing page that feels designed to confuse rather than inform. Fake countdown timers. Pop-ups that trap you on the page. “Special today only” pricing that was the same price yesterday and will be the same tomorrow. These tactics work on some customers in the short term, but they produce high refund rates, angry buyers, and affiliate accounts that get flagged. Not worth it.

The third is a refund rate above 5%, as mentioned earlier. If you find a product with a 10% or 15% refund rate, that is telling you customers are returning it at a very high rate. Something is wrong with either the product, the sales page, or both.

The fourth is no affiliate support materials at all. You can sometimes build your own creative from scratch, but a product with zero affiliate infrastructure is a product whose owner has not thought much about their affiliates. That is not a partnership worth investing in.

Not sure which type of online income fits the skills you already have?

The free Platform Proof Finder takes three minutes and matches you to the exact path that makes sense for where you are right now. Try it at finder.platformproof.com.

The 7-Point Clickbank Product Checklist

Before you commit any time or traffic to a Clickbank product, run through this checklist. If a product fails more than two of these, move to the next one.

Sales page passes the Mom test. You would feel comfortable if someone you cared about saw you promoting this.
Gravity score is meaningful. High gravity (relative to the niche) confirms the offer is currently converting for other affiliates.
Refund rate is at or below 5%. Ideally you want 2-3%. Pull this from the product stats before you commit.
Commission rate justifies the effort. For a product you will build content around, you need enough per sale to make the work worthwhile. The Cinderella Solution’s 73%+ commission is a useful benchmark for what “worth it” looks like.
Affiliate page exists and has real tools. Email swipes, banner ads, landing page templates, or paid traffic resources all indicate a serious product owner.
Email swipes sound honest. Read at least two. They should explain the problem and connect it to the solution without resorting to manipulation or impossible promises.
The company feels like it is building something long-term. Look at how established the product is on the platform. Products that have been converting for years are safer bets than brand new launches with no track record.

Honest Drawbacks: What This Process Will Cost You

I want to be straight with you: the vetting process I just described takes time. A lot more time than most beginners expect. Going through the sales page, the affiliate tools page, reading the email swipes, checking the gravity and refund numbers — that is thirty minutes to an hour per product. When you are evaluating three or four products in a niche before picking one, you are looking at two to four hours of research before you write a single word of content.

Most people skip this because they want to get to the “making money” part as fast as possible. I understand that. I felt that same pull when my wife and I were looking at double everything for our twins. But the affiliates who skip this step are the ones who end up three months in with no sales and no idea why. The research is not a delay on the path to results. The research is what creates the results.

There is also a psychological trap on the other end: becoming so critical during evaluation that you never pick anything. I fell into that for a while. Every product had some flaw that disqualified it in my mind. The goal is not to find a perfect product. The goal is to find an honest product with solid infrastructure and real conversion data. When you find that, you pick it and you start building.

Find Your X

Picking the right Clickbank product is one piece of the puzzle. But the bigger question for most people starting out is which type of online business model actually fits their situation, their time, and the skills they already have. That is what the Platform Proof Finder is designed to answer. It takes about three minutes and it gives you a specific starting point instead of a vague list of options. You can try it for free at finder.platformproof.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good gravity score on Clickbank for a beginner?

There is no universal rule, but for a beginner, a gravity score above 20 in a given niche usually indicates that multiple affiliates are actively making sales. Very high gravity (100+) means the niche is competitive. In those cases, you will need to differentiate your content rather than just putting up a generic review. A product with a gravity in the 30 to 80 range often offers a good balance of proven conversion and room to compete.

Is the weight loss niche still worth promoting on Clickbank?

Yes, but with more scrutiny than most other niches. Weight loss is one of the most searched topics online, which means consistent demand. It is also one of the niches with the highest number of low-quality products making exaggerated promises. If you use the vetting process in this post — especially the Mom test and the refund rate check — you can find solid products worth promoting. The volume of searches in this niche makes it worth the extra vetting time.

How do I find the refund rate for a Clickbank product?

Inside the Clickbank marketplace, click on a product listing to expand its details. You will see a stats section that includes the refund rate. You can also find this on some product affiliate pages when the vendor chooses to display it. The number you are looking for is ideally in the 2% to 3% range. Anything above 5% warrants a hard look at why customers are returning the product at that rate before you commit to promoting it.

Do I need to buy a product before promoting it on Clickbank?

You are not required to buy the product, but going through the customer experience yourself is one of the best ways to evaluate it honestly. Many product owners will provide a review copy to affiliates who ask. If that is not available, go through the full sales page and affiliate materials as thoroughly as possible. Promoting something you have personally used gives you a much stronger foundation for your content and makes your recommendations more credible to your audience.

What should I look for in Clickbank email swipes?

Read at least two or three of the provided email swipes and evaluate them the way a subscriber would receive them. Good swipes identify a specific problem, connect the reader to a relatable situation, and introduce the product as a genuine solution without relying on hype or manipulation. If the swipe feels dishonest, exaggerated, or would make you uncomfortable sending it to your own list, the product is probably not the right one for your audience.

How many Clickbank products should I promote at once?

Most experienced affiliates recommend starting with one product and building real traction before adding others. Splitting your focus across multiple products early on usually means you build shallow content for all of them rather than deep, trustworthy content for one. Once you have consistent traffic and a clear picture of what your audience responds to, layering in complementary offers from the same niche makes sense. One focused effort almost always outperforms three diluted ones at the beginning.

Is Clickbank still a legitimate platform for affiliate marketers in 2025?

Yes. Clickbank has been operating since 1998 and still processes millions of dollars in affiliate commissions. The platform has worked to improve product quality standards over the years and now has stricter guidelines for vendors. That said, the marketplace still contains a range of product quality, which is why vetting each product yourself remains essential. The platform is legitimate. Not every product on it is.

What is the biggest difference between a Clickbank product that converts and one that does not?

From an affiliate’s perspective, the difference usually comes down to two things: how honest the promise on the sales page is, and how well the product actually delivers on that promise. Products with inflated claims generate initial sales but high refund rates and low repeat purchases. Products that make a specific, realistic promise and then deliver on it generate lower refund rates, stronger word of mouth, and long-term conversion. The gravity and refund rate data on Clickbank often reflects exactly this difference — you just have to know to look for it.

Sources

Clickbank Marketplace: clickbank.com
Cinderella Solution affiliate page (referenced in video walkthrough, OimVztafx4I)
Lean Belly Secret listing (referenced as comparison example in video walkthrough)
Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof YouTube channel: How To Choose Clickbank Products To Promote (OimVztafx4I)