All ClickBank Statistics and Terminology Explained

As a beginner affiliate marketer, there might be many ClickBank statistics and terminology you aren’t entirely sure of. Understanding them is important because they can help you make better decisions on how products perform and which products to promote.

Below, we’ll explain all of them and how you can apply them to different situations.

ClickBank General Terminology

• Vendor: An individual or company that sells products.
• Affiliate (Marketer): An individual or company that promotes vendor’s products and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make.
• Buyer: An individual or company who purchases products.
• Marketplace: A place where vendors provide information about the products they offer, and affiliates can find them to promote.
• Commissions: The amount of money that affiliates earn from the sales they make.
• Master Account: a feature that allows users to link multiple ClickBank accounts in order to easily manage all operations and transactions in a central location.
• Tickets: Messages or emails between a customer and a customer support team that get recorded.
• Clerks: Additional users added to ClickBank accounts that can help manage tickets or provide customer support.
• Account Nickname: A unique identifier that allows for all transactions related to an account (vendor or affiliate) to be accurately tracked. 
• ClickBank ID & CBID & Affiliate ID & Vendor ID: Outdated terms for the “Account Nickname.”
• Payment Threshold: The minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn before getting paid.
• Check: A payment method under a written form instructing a bank to pay a specific sum of money to a recipient.
• Direct Deposit: A payment method where funds are directly transferred to a payee’s bank account, usually electronically.
• Payment Frequency: The amount of time between commission paydays (Weekly or Bi-weekly).
• Instant Notification Service/INS: a service that notifies you of transactions within the ClickBank system for your account, such as sales, rebill, refund, etc.
• Marketplace Feed: A file containing an XML representation of the ClickBank marketplace intended for individuals who want to have access to the full marketplace without having to “scrape” it from the site.

ClickBank Marketplace Statistics And Terminology

Each ClickBank product comes with various statistics.

• Gravity: A relative ClickBank-generated stat indicating how many affiliates have successfully promoted a product. In general, the higher the score, the better the offer will convert. However, as a beginner, choosing products with gravity between 1 and 50 might be a better idea. This provides you with offers that have the potential to convert and aren’t too competitive at the same time.
• Initial $/conversion: The average commission an affiliate initially earns for each conversion to the vendor’s offer (not including rebills). It’s a good idea to choose products with a low initial $/conversion (less than $50). It usually means a low upfront cost for your customers. Therefore, you have a better chance of making sales.
• Avg $/Conversion: The average commission an affiliate earns for each conversion they make, including earnings from initial sales, upsells, and rebills.
• Recurring $/Rebill: The average commission an affiliate earns for each rebill (like a monthly or yearly subscription) of a product. When you have some experience, aim for products with a recurring billing model and high average $/conversion so you can make big profits.
• Cat: The category a product is in. The best categories to find profitable products (in order) are Health & Fitness, E-business & E-marketing, Spirituality, New Age & Alternative Beliefs, Self-Help, and Cooking, Food & Wine. These categories usually contain high-quality products with a low refund rate. They are also relatively easy to promote and not vulnerable to certain rules and laws (For example, Betting Systems are usually prohibited on most social platforms).
• Date added to marketplace: The first date a product appears inside the ClickBank marketplace. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to evaluate newly added products to find hidden gems.
• Rank: A hidden statistic based on a combination of factors, including overall sales volume, affiliate-generated sales, and affiliate commissions to sort products.

You can also find products based on certain attributes:

• Physical: This indicates whether a product is physical or digital.
• Upsell: Indicates whether a product has upsell flows. An upsell is an additional related product to the initial offer aiming to get customers to spend more.
• Language: A product can come in different languages. You can use this attribute to narrow down products in the language that you want.
• One-time: Includes products that are only billed for once.
• Recurring: Products that have recurring billing like monthly subscriptions.
• $1 Trial: Products that customers can try for $1 in a short period of time.
• Affiliates Tools Page: A webpage that contains resources such as images, email templates, or keywords to promote products more effectively.
• Support For Mobile Traffic/Mobile HopLink Target URL: This indicates whether the vendor has provided a mobile version of their landing page. When someone clicks on an affiliate link, ClickBank will automatically detect the device type of that person. If it’s a mobile device, they will be redirected to the URL’s mobile version for a better user experience.
• Affiliates Require Approval: Products that require affiliates to be approved before promoting.

ClickBank Affiliate Page Terminology

• Joint Venture/JV contract: An agreement between business entities for mutual benefit. 
• VSL/Video Sales Letter: A video that pitches vendor’s products.
• Email Swipes/Email Templates: Examples of high-performing emails that can be sent directly to customers.
• Front End: The first product that a new customer buys from a vendor.
• Back End: Additional products that a customer will buy over the time they remain a vendor’s customer.
• Funnel: A set of steps that someone goes through before taking action, such as giving out email addresses or purchasing a product.

ClickBank Sales Statistics And Terminology

Inside ClickBank Account homepage, you can see a quick overview of your sales performance:

• Weekly Sales Snapshot: A quick overview of your weekly sales.
• Daily Sales Snapshot: A quick overview of your daily sales.
• Transaction Quality: A combination of different statistics that allow for a quick peek into the quality of the account’s transactions.
• Current Sales: The total amount of earnings and the number of sales in the current month.
• Current RFND: The amount of money that has been paid out in refunds and the number of refunds that have been issued in the current month.
• Current CGBK: The amount of money that has been credited from your account due to chargebacks, as well as the number of chargeback transactions that have occurred in the current month.
• RFND/Sales Count: The percentage of the number of sales that have been refunded out of the total sales in a month.
• CGBK/Sales Count:  The percentage of the number of chargebacks to the number of total sales in a month.

ClickBank provides various analytics statistics to help you comprehensively evaluate product sales performance:

• Hops/Hop Count: The number of clicks your ClickBank affiliate marketing link receives.
• Order Form Impressions/All Order Form Impressions: The number of order form impressions your offer receives, including upsells.
• Order Form Submit: The number of times that prospects have attempted to submit an order. An order form submit can have a failed result due to declined credit-cards, incorrect information, etc.
• Initial Order Form Impressions: The number of order form impressions your initial offer receives (not including upsells or recurring bills). An order form impression occurs when a prospect’s directed from a payment link on a landing page to the order form.
• Initial Sales Count: The number of purchases your initial offer has.
• Initial Sales Amount: The total amount of money you receive from your initial sales.
• Rebill Sale Count: The number of customer rebilling events.
• Rebill Sale Amount: The total amount of money you receive from customer rebilling events. For example, monthly subscriptions.
• Upsell Count: The number of purchases of upselling products.
• Upsell Amount: The amount of money you receive from upselling products.
• Gross Sales Count: The total number of customer purchases, including initials, rebills, and upsells.
• Gross Sales Amount: The sum amount of money you receive from initials, rebills, and upsells.
• Refund Count: The number of purchases refunded by customers.
• Refund Amount: The amount of money refunded by customers.
• Cgbk Count: The number of purchases charged back by customers.
• Cgbk Amount: The amount of money charged back by customers.
• Net Sales Count: The number of purchases after subtracting Refund Count and Cgbk Count from Gross Sales Count.
• Net Sales Amount: The amount of profit you make.

Below are calculated metrics that are very helpful in deciding what to do next with an affiliate product:

• Hops Per Order Form Impression: Hop Count divided by All Order Form Impressions. This number should be below 20. If higher, it could mean that the price of your offer is too high or the landing page’s not convincing enough. You have 3 options: changing to high-income traffic (like the US and UK), using email marketing to persuade your prospects to purchase, or switching to another ClickBank product.
• Hops Per Order: Hop Count divided by Initial Sales Count. 200 should be the maximum. Similarly, you can improve this number by changing your traffic source, using email marketing, or trying another product.
• Order Form Sale Conversion: Initial Sales Count divided by All Order Form Impressions. The average number for this is between 5% to 20%. If you have a lower-than-5% Order Form Sale Conversion rate, running remarketing campaigns can improve the number.
• Initial Earnings Per Hop: Initial Sales Amount divided by Hop Count. This number is useful when assessing the performance of your paid ads. For example, if your CPC is $1, your Initial Earnings Per Hop should be above $1 to make up for your ad spend.
• Earnings Per Click: Gross Sales Amount divided by Hop Count. This number is useful when evaluating the performance of your entire sales campaign (including upsells and rebills). For example, if it takes you $1 to acquire a new customer, your CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) should be above $1 to make a profit.
• Refund Rate: Refund Count divided by Gross Sales Count. The average number for this statistic is 10%.
• Cgbk Rate: Chargeback Count divided by Gross Sales Count.
• % of Total Sales: Gross Sales Count of a product divided by the entire Gross Sales Count of all products.

Conclusion

When starting affiliate marketing with ClickBank to make money, it’s important to understand all necessary metrics so you can use them to your advantage.

If you still have any ClickBank statistics or terminology you’re not entirely sure of, just comment below and we’ll try to help you out.

Happy marketing!