Don't you want to laugh at some of the ads you see. "Make easy money as a Clickbank affiliate". Let me tell you, if it was that easy, 95% of all Internet marketers wouldn't be failing at this business. So it's time that somebody printed a Clickbank affiliate survival guide. While this article won't be possibly replace an entire guide, it is the hopes of this author that it will be at least alert you to some of the things that as an affiliate you should be on the lookout for. Otherwise, life as a Clickbank affiliate can be a real nightmare.

Probably your biggest pitfall of being a Clickbank affiliate is your competition. What most people don't realize is that they are not alone in this business. Clickbank probably has the largest affiliate base of any affiliate network on the internet. So if you are going to have a chance of succeeding, the first thing you want to do is not try to compete with others promoting the same product.

This is probably the easiest thing to avoid because of the tools that Clickbank gives you. The Clickbank marketplace may very well be the greatest thing to come to Internet marketing since the introduction of the autoresponder. At the Clickbank marketplace, you can see every product that is being sold and make an informed decision as to what products you want to sell. How do you do this? You do this by examining the stats.

The stats that Clickbank tracks are dollars per sale, percent per sale, percent referred and gravity. Let's take them one at a time and point out what you'd like to see in each.

1. Dollars per sale is how much you will make on each sale. Ideally, you want to look for products that pay the most, especially if you are going to use Google Adwords to promote the products, which can really eat up profits quickly. But this is not the only thing you want to look for.

2. Percent per sale is the percent of each sale that the affiliate gets. Ideally, you want at least 50% on each sale. Some products pay as much as 75% or more. Of course, these products are more popular and harder to sell because of the competition.

3. Percent referred is the percentage of all sales that come from affiliates. This is a very important figure and usually coincides with the next stat. Ideally, you don't want to compete with the products where 85 to 90% of the sales are coming from affiliates.

4. Gravity may be the most important stat to gauge the competition. This figure tells you roughly how many affiliates are promoting this product. You want to sell product with little competition, you want to look for gravity numbers under 20.

Ok, putting this all together, ideally, these are the numbers you want to look for:

Dollars per sale - $25 or more

Percent per sale - 50% or more

Percent referred - Less than 70%

Gravity - Under 20

Believe it or not, these products exist. You just have to find them. When you do, you have found products that you will have a decent chance of selling, especially if you use Google Adwords and mine long tail keywords.

These are just some basics on how to survive as a Clickbank affiliate.