I've made millions online - ask me anything!

[LibertyForMe]

I am working on building a website and marketing plan for some B2B software that I developed. It is a very valuable product, and will save business owners a TON of time, and there is nothing like it in the market. It is relatively niche, as it is a quickbooks plugin. Product cost is $249 one time charge.

Part of the plan is to recruit some affiliates and have them market it for us, but I am having trouble determining what a good commission would be. Since we are still working on the website, we don't have any conversion stats or info to tell affiliates what their EPC would be. We were thinking of a $50 commission, but it seems like that would be too low to get any real affiliate interest.

Do you recommend that we sell some product ourselves first to optimize the website and sales funnel and also gathering some stats, and then start an affiliate program? Or do you recommend starting the affiliate program from the get-go and then adjusting the commission based on what we are seeing?

 

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[Michael W.]

LOL don't stress bro. My first "home run" was a little $39.95 info product that I sold over 25,000 units of. No upsells, no downsells, no OTOs, and hardly even any followup emails pitching them on anything else. I pocketed around 500k in 1 year with this one little product. And this was 10 years ago when I knew almost nothing. Of course, 10 years ago all of this stuff was easier to do - but to this day I know people who make significant amounts of money with single product sites/offers.

If your product is great, and you execute, you'll be fine.

Jeezus. You must be some kind of IM savant lol.

I feel like if I ever figure out how to make money online... I probably should forward 20-30% to you. Such incredible info.

 

[limitup]

Jeezus. You must be some kind of IM savant lol.

I feel like if I ever figure out how to make money online... I probably should forward 20-30% to you. Such incredible info.

Nah man. If you reverse engineer a website - or any business for that matter - that you know is making money, then you do the same thing but even BETTER, it's actually kind of hard to NOT make money. Sure there's lots of moving parts that you'll need to figure out to do it if it's your first go at it, but seriously, it's that easy. I definitely don't recommend going off on your own with some crazy idea to make money if you're new to this "game" and your goal is to make as much money as quickly as possible. Just pick a niche that you're at least somewhat interested in, see who's doing what and who the market leaders are, then just copy what they're doing and try to "create a better mousetrap" in the process. It's really almost impossible to fail doing this, unless you give up before getting all the pieces right.

 

[limitup]

Do you recommend that we sell some product ourselves first to optimize the website and sales funnel and also gathering some stats, and then start an affiliate program?

Yes to this 1000%. Depending on who your prospects are, you might find it hard to get much traction from affiliates with this kind of product anyway, and you might find you're better off just promoting it yourself.

A great B2B product combined with a great offer should almost sell itself. Unless you can't figure out how to reach your target prospects, I wouldn't worry about an affiliate program for awhile.

I'm just guessing and it really depends who your target market is for this (all quickbooks users or just those in xyz niche etc), but you're less likely to see massive traction with an affiliate program for something like this vs. something in the "big 3" niches of health, wealth and relationships where it's easy to hookup with existing affiliates/publishers who have MASSIVE lists and can literally drive 100s and even 1000+ sales a day.

 

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[LibertyForMe]

I'm just guessing and it really depends who your target market is for this (all quickbooks users or just those in xyz niche etc), but you're less likely to see massive traction with an affiliate program for something like this vs. something in the "big 3" niches of health, wealth and relationships where it's easy to hookup with existing affiliates/publishers who have MASSIVE lists and can literally drive 100s and even 1000+ sales a day.

Yea, our product is targeted towards Quickbook users who wholesale. If they use purchase orders then they are an exact match. Thanks for the recommendation, I think we have a pretty great offer so I will plow forward for a few months without affiliates and see what happens.

Good info, thanks again.

 

[flacc1234]

Do you recommend starting off by creating your own affiliate product, or is it better to start selling other people's stuff as practice?

Also, how do you pick a niche? Would it be good to pick an online community first, and then pick a product that you could sell to them? Or other way around? Thanks man.

 

[limitup]

Do you recommend starting off by creating your own affiliate product, or is it better to start selling other people's stuff as practice?

Well if you're brand new to all this then ya I'd suggest you promote other peoples' stuff and start learning the ropes that way. When you create your own products theirs a whole bunch of additional stuff you need to learn and deal with, and for most people that would be pretty overwhelming to do it all from the start.

One thing I've done a bunch is promote a product as an affiliate, and then if I have decent success with it, I look into creating my own competing product. Especially if I think I can relatively easily improve on the existing products/sites/competitors.

In addition to what you can learn just by being an affiliate (the conversion rates of your future competitors, etc.) you'll be amazed at what some product owners will tell you as an affiliate of theirs if you ask the right questions in the right way.

Also, how do you pick a niche? Would it be good to pick an online community first, and then pick a product that you could sell to them? Or other way around? Thanks man.

Read this thread from the beginning, this has been discussed.

 

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[eStan]

Wow, tremendous value you're offering here. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Being in the same industry (but far from your level for now) I can relate to what you said about this being like a job, even though you can give yourself obscene salary raises if you do it right.

But then again I wanted to ask you a question. Why do you still need to work so hard yourself? If you have traffic coming in from affiliates, a great funnel built up and know your numbers, why don't you just automate these offers as much as possible? I would believe that a guy with your experience and connections could do this pretty nicely. With a virtual staff to watch over the wheels spinning, I don't see why you couldn't bring home even a nice 7 figure income with not that much work, at least after you set up the offer. I'd like to hear your thought on this.

SPEED +++

 

[theBiz]

Example:

Your driving other methods of paid traffic towards your offer, you now know what your willing to spend CPA wise, understand your market, who your targeting.

1) At this point is it logical to hire someone say off elance to help speed up the process/decrease learning curve in order to get going quicker on affiliate networks?

For instance someone that can look at your offer and say we need to sign up to these 5 networks, and create your offer such as (....) in order to attract the affiliates we need. Are there people you can source out to do this, or does it just take your own manual trial and error?


2) What is your opinion on making a list of targeted websites you would like to advertise on/solicit to members, and approaching the owner of each site to place a banner on their website/have them email blast their list for a rev share to speed the scaling process up even more than hoping you find them on affiliate networks? Seems once you know who your target market is, it makes more sense to find them, then approach them directly.

 

[limitup]

But then again I wanted to ask you a question. Why do you still need to work so hard yourself? If you have traffic coming in from affiliates, a great funnel built up and know your numbers, why don't you just automate these offers as much as possible? I would believe that a guy with your experience and connections could do this pretty nicely. With a virtual staff to watch over the wheels spinning, I don't see why you couldn't bring home even a nice 7 figure income with not that much work, at least after you set up the offer. I'd like to hear your thought on this.

Sorry for the confusion. You're right, I don't have to do anything. In regards to the sites I've made 95% of my money from, I haven't done a thing with them in over a year. I started feeling burnt out a few years ago and I knew this day was coming, so over the past 2 years I've either sold or turned over the management of all my "money" sites to another company.

I basically gave them 50% of everything in return for them running everything, and they just send me a nice wire every month. Hard to do this type of thing usually, but this is a company I've worked with for 8+ years and I know them well, and it's worked out pretty well.

This 6 month "hiatus" I'm taking was supposed to happen awhile ago, but as luck would have it, as soon as I cleared my plate of all these other projects I had what I thought was a great idea for a totally new type of site so I had to pursue that and I've been working on it off and on for awhile. It's not working out the way I had hoped so now I'm definitely ready for a break ...

To answer your main question though, at least the way I did things, no it's not possible to outsource everything - or anything close to it. You just can't outsource the important stuff. You can't outsource the management of 5- and 6-figure media buys. You can't outsource negotiations with potential distribution partners. You can't outsource the creativity and ability to solve problems required to do what I did, and so many other things.

Well I guess you could try, but personally I don't think it's possible in a way that would work. I found it hard to outsource very basic things that required even just a little bit of common sense, logic or intelligence. In my mind, outsourcing is great for more straightforward and well-defined jobs like techie stuff, writing articles, etc.

At best you *might* be able to bring on a partner for a significant % of equity to do this stuff, but other than that about the only other people even remotely qualified for the job would be people who already have relatively high-level 6-figure corporate jobs with expense accounts and other benefits, and there's no way they're going to give that all up to come work for your little one-man operation.

 

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[limitup]

1) At this point is it logical to hire someone say off elance to help speed up the process/decrease learning curve in order to get going quicker on affiliate networks?

For instance someone that can look at your offer and say we need to sign up to these 5 networks, and create your offer such as (....) in order to attract the affiliates we need. Are there people you can source out to do this, or does it just take your own manual trial and error?

There is no way you're going to find someone who can do this effectively on elance. You'll be lucky to find them at all because most people qualified to do this type of thing aren't looking for jobs because they're already doing their own thing. If you did find someone highly qualified who was willing to do it they would be very expensive and most likely require large upfront fees plus a monthly rev share.

2) What is your opinion on making a list of targeted websites you would like to advertise on/solicit to members, and approaching the owner of each site to place a banner on their website/have them email blast their list for a rev share to speed the scaling process up even more than hoping you find them on affiliate networks? Seems once you know who your target market is, it makes more sense to find them, then approach them directly.

Sure absolutely. Advertising on their sites or in their email newsletters or even just solo "blasts" are all a no-brainer. Test everything and anything at least once. Most people won't promote your stuff on a rev share though unless you have a proven track record, you get a referral, etc. They will insist on you paying to advertise with them. Which is fine so don't let it stop you. You just have to track and split-test like a mad man. That is the only "secret" to this game.

 

[barbarian]

Hi!

which are the books that were more influential to your business and lifestyle? which people were also the most influential?

 

[eStan]

Sorry for the confusion. You're right, I don't have to do anything. In regards to the sites I've made 95% of my money from, I haven't done a thing with them in over a year. I started feeling burnt out a few years ago and I knew this day was coming, so over the past 2 years I've either sold or turned over the management of all my "money" sites to another company.

I basically gave them 50% of everything in return for them running everything, and they just send me a nice wire every month. Hard to do this type of thing usually, but this is a company I've worked with for 8+ years and I know them well, and it's worked out pretty well.

This 6 month "hiatus" I'm taking was supposed to happen awhile ago, but as luck would have it, as soon as I cleared my plate of all these other projects I had what I thought was a great idea for a totally new type of site so I had to pursue that and I've been working on it off and on for awhile. It's not working out the way I had hoped so now I'm definitely ready for a break ...

To answer your main question though, at least the way I did things, no it's not possible to outsource everything - or anything close to it. You just can't outsource the important stuff. You can't outsource the management of 5- and 6-figure media buys. You can't outsource negotiations with potential distribution partners. You can't outsource the creativity and ability to solve problems required to do what I did, and so many other things.

Well I guess you could try, but personally I don't think it's possible in a way that would work. I found it hard to outsource very basic things that required even just a little bit of common sense, logic or intelligence. In my mind, outsourcing is great for more straightforward and well-defined jobs like techie stuff, writing articles, etc.

At best you *might* be able to bring on a partner for a significant % of equity to do this stuff, but other than that about the only other people even remotely qualified for the job would be people who already have relatively high-level 6-figure corporate jobs with expense accounts and other benefits, and there's no way they're going to give that all up to come work for your little one-man operation.

Thanks for answering!

I know you can't outsource the things you mentioned. I was just wondering what level of automation you can achieve by having affiliate traffic coming in coupled with a great offer. Of course you would still have to handle the partnerships, JVs, etc. but a few hours per week should do it. That's what I'm aiming for at least. Nice deal you got with that company. A couple of more questions just popped up in my head, hope you don't mind:

1) Which is better? Affiliate traffic vs driving your own? I know the first is pretty much automated but it's not always the best quality. At the end of the day though what you need are leads and that's what you pay for so I guess I just turned this question into a retorical one which brings me to the next question

2) How did you handle fraud when having email submit offers? How can you weed out the fake ones? I know there is a lot of fraud going on with these types of offers. How can you monitor this and make sure you pay for good leads? Mostly at least.. Were you scrubbing yourself to keep up with it?

Thanks again! A lot of gold in this thread folks :icon_super:

 

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[limitup]

I know you can't outsource the things you mentioned. I was just wondering what level of automation you can achieve by having affiliate traffic coming in coupled with a great offer. Of course you would still have to handle the partnerships, JVs, etc. but a few hours per week should do it. That's what I'm aiming for at least.

You want to make 6 figures a month as an affiliate marketer and work a few hours a week? I don't know anyone able to do that for any length of time. You can't rest on your laurels for too long when you're doing any kind of volume or people like me will eat your lunch.

When you're up near the top, everyone else in your market is gunning for you. In the competitive markets, you'll be faced with a continuous stream of new competitors and new competing offers on literally a daily basis. It's practically a full-time job to continually optimize and tweak your sales funnels and keep your affiliates loyal and motivated, manage payouts, etc. just to maintain your position in the market.

Unless you're in some obscure niche with little or no competition, this Internet game isn't "set it and forget" at all.

2) How did you handle fraud when having email submit offers? How can you weed out the fake ones? I know there is a lot of fraud going on with these types of offers. How can you monitor this and make sure you pay for good leads? Mostly at least.. Were you scrubbing yourself to keep up with it?

The only proper way to combat fraud on an email submit type offer is to track user activity and conversions back to the affiliate that referred them, and taking it one step further, all the way back to the affiliates sub-id (all high level affiliates use these). By doing this you can create reports that will show you which affiliates' traffic is generating conversions and which ones are sending you shitty traffic.

My custom reports actually show me my exact ROI, in real time, for every single affiliate and sub-affiliate. Can't get better than that. This allows me to easily spot fraud, manage payouts to balance volume vs. ROI, etc.

Basically when someone tries to send through a bunch of shitty or fraudulent leads red flags go off and my system will let us know. For example, we have one alert set to show us any affiliate with over 100 leads that we are losing money on. In a case like this we'll then quickly look at their leads and 9 out of 10 times it'll be fraudulent. If not it's just really crappy traffic, and either way they usually get shut down.

With a few basic reports like this you can catch and limit damage done by really crappy or fraudulent leads.

 

[eStan]

You want to make 6 figures a month as an affiliate marketer and work a few hours a week? I don't know anyone able to do that for any length of time. You can't rest on your laurels for too long when you're doing any kind of volume or people like me will eat your lunch.

When you're up near the top, everyone else in your market is gunning for you. In the competitive markets, you'll be faced with a continuous stream of new competitors and new competing offers on literally a daily basis. It's practically a full-time job to continually optimize and tweak your sales funnels and keep your affiliates loyal and motivated, manage payouts, etc. just to maintain your position in the market.

Unless you're in some obscure niche with little or no competition, this Internet game isn't "set it and forget" at all.

Not as an affiliate, I know that can't be done. I was thinking more about actually owning the products. You own the offer, the products. But you're right, you need to constantly optimize and keep the EPCs juicy for the affiliates. I guess at this level there is no way you can separate yourself from the business too much.

I'm attracted to the health/beauty vertical, supplements, creams, etc. A good executed product like Sensa since I've seen you mention it can set you up for life. I know there is a huge operation behind it (very far from automated) and some brilliant marketers but still, I heard they were doing 8 figures a month in sales not too long ago. I would work 80 hours a week for a couple of years on that. Force Factor, Stages of Beauty, Peak Life, some other great models (I think these 3 are owned by the same guys). Ever thought of getting into this biz yourself?

Anyway, enough questions from me. Just wanted to say congrats for what you have achieved. Very few people get to this level.

 

[limitup]

I would work 80 hours a week for a couple of years on that. Force Factor, Stages of Beauty, Peak Life, some other great models (I think these 3 are owned by the same guys). Ever thought of getting into this biz yourself?

Yeah I talked about this a little in a previous post. It's one of the few things I regret not trying earlier...

When I think about how much time and effort I've put into the dozens and dozens of different projects I've done over the years, I believe that if I spent that same time building 1, 2 or maybe 3 "real" businesses I'd probably be a lot further ahead financially than I am now. Of course nothing is guaranteed and maybe my attempts at building a real business would have all flopped, so I guess I'll say I regret not TRYING sooner.

I've definitely thought of doing something in the health and fitness industry. As a very active and fit person, and a competitive athlete, it's actually one of my few real passions. It's something I'm going to be thinking about over the next 6 months while I try to figure out what to do next.

I think I have a pretty good idea for a health and fitness related product that currently doesn't exist, that's needed by about 1/4 of the adult population. I've just never had the time to devote to starting an entirely new business in an entirely new industry. Until now that is ...

 

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[GuestUser8117]

Whoa. Gold thread. My neurons are dying lol. Information overdose. There's like a whole book in this entire thread. Thanks to the OP.

 

[bernieshawn]

Ok, I'm going to ask a very "newbie-ish" question if you don't mind What steps should I take if I want to start generating a little bit of relatively steady income on my own in a relatively short period of time? (not really looking to try to make anything over a couple $k/month yet). Some background info to help answer:

1. I am pretty good with PHP/MySQL, Wordpress, HTML/CSS/jQuery ... the basic web stuff
2. I have experience with Adwords/Bing, other PPC sources, but have never had a profitable campaign, and thus never been able to scale paid traffic up past a couple hundred $/month
3. I have built my own web app, nothing big or successful (obviously)
4. I had a very small level of success building an affiliate blog and doing SEO for traffic... nothing huge though, then I got hit by Google and didn't try to bring it back. This was for a high-ticket physical product.... low conversion rates but high average commissions.
5. I don't have a lot of money to spend on anything (yet)

What I've been doing so far to accomplish this small goal is to build another site in the same niche as the site mentioned in #4 was in. I've just been adding all products from the affiliate data feeds manually, customizing descriptions and titles to have unique content, etc. Focusing on search traffic, but not targeting any specific keywords, just going for long tails. Has been working ok so far for doing almost no link building, up to around 120 uniques/day now. Not enough yet to make any kind of money, but (1) I'm not trying to make a ton yet and (2) I can't afford to pay for traffic (my old site in the same niche averaged $.10 per visitor), so I'm not expecting fast results.

That said, I would love to do something where I can hit my goal sooner rather than later, and that's why I'm asking the question. Is there a better path, or should I stick with that? Maybe there are other sources of traffic that I could leverage that would deliver cheap enough quality traffic?

Also, the web app mentioned in #3 I feel could still be successful... one aspect of it is a marketplace that could work if promoted and marketed well, but I'm just out of ideas for it (and kind of burned out with it). I think it would take money to become successful but who knows.

PM me if you want to see the URLs of anything I mentioned here or anything else. Please don't spend too much time answering this

Thanks for all your help with my and everyone else's questions! Very eye-opening.

 

[bringitnow28329]

Yeah this is what I have been trying to do however I have found the people with big lists are these penny stock promoters, but my product exposes the fraud that these people are so they don't want to send it to their subscribers since it which reveal that they are actually ripping off their subscribers. It doesn't seem like there's many legitimate people in this specific niche. In forex niche there are tons of people with big lists but they don't like sending penny stocks offers to their lists even though all the forex offers they are sending are of bogus products that do not work. Its a difficult situation.

Yeah dealing with unethical competitors can be a real bummer when they drive up ad costs. If these kinds of sites are dominating PPC for the keywords you need you might want to look for traffic elsewhere, because it may be impossible to compete with that. There's just not much you can do if the PPC platforms are allowing unethical advertisers to drive up costs in your niche, unfortunately ...

Maybe get what you can out of the PPC and work on developing an affiliate program, do media buys, develop partnerships with other legit sites in your niche, etc. for traffic.

Any one of these things can send you more traffic than Google can anyway.

 

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[limitup]

Is there a better path, or should I stick with that?

I appreciate you took some time to write that all out and I don't mean to blow you off but I'm no good at answering these kinds of "what should I do" and "how should I get started" questions. There are honestly waaaaay too many variables for me to give any kind of meaningful answer to questions like this.

All I can suggest is that you just look around and see what other people are doing and pick something to try. If that doesn't work, try something else. Keep doing that until you find something that works for you.

If you're launching an email submit offer and you ask me what's the best way to combat the fraud you're going to get slammed with, I can tell you that. But I'm afraid there are no one-size-fits-all answers to these kinds of questions you're asking, unfortunately.

With that being said, I don't like SEO because it takes too long. I especially wouldn't recommend it for someone just starting out who wants to make money in the near future, because it's probably not going to happen and you're going to sit around waiting and waiting.

If you're literally broke, I personally think you should do something else to make some money - work more hours, get a second job, whatever. I promise you that if you've never made money online, it's easier to make $500 offline than it is to make $500 online without investing anything (unless you're talking about manual labor i.e. getting paid to write articles for other people, etc.)

Then once you had $500 or so you'd be in a MUCH better position to try a few things online. Consciously or not you'd also "try harder" and you'd give 110% since you had $500 on the line, and this alone could be a huge factor for you.

Probably not what you wanted to hear but that's my 2 cents...

 

[limitup]

Its a difficult situation.

And that's precisely why you're NEVER supposed to start with a product and then try to figure out how to sell it.

I don't know anything about forex or penny stocks, but surely there must be other legitimate penny stock sites out there. And that's just for starters. If I were you I would probably sit down with a glass of wine and a legal pad and brainstorm all the different things that your "perfect prospect" is interested in, what they do online, what sites they visit, etc. and make the biggest list that I could. Then look into advertising, partnerships, etc. with these sites. I think you could also do well with an affiliate program. The affiliates who are promoting the scammy forex and other related sites are also likely to be interested in promoting your site, IF you have a great offer that converts and generates a good EPC in your marketplace.

 

[bringitnow28329]

Well that certainly is true. Unfortunately I sat down and spent a year of my life creating this. I really had no clue what would come of it at the time or if it was even viable. I basically had a great interest and a decade of real world experience in the market, and decided to challenge myself to see if I could come up with something very beneficial. Before I started I had absolutely no idea about internet marketing, just a business background and entrepreneurial mindset. But I soon realized the incredible possibilities that IM presented, if I just found a way to drive substantial traffic, and so far my efforts over the past 12 months have been mediocre at best. I have certainly learned a great deal spending 100 hours a week behind the computer screen, but I'm not where I want to be.

It may seem odd, but there are very few legitimate websites related to penny stocks. The one other legitimate one I know off is who is the authority in this niche, is still run by a borderline snakeoil salesman. I mean the term "penny stocks" gets 300,000 hits month, so you would think that there would be some websites out there but out of tens of thousands nearly everyone is somehow tied to penny stock promotions.

And that's precisely why you're NEVER supposed to start with a product and then try to figure out how to sell it.

I don't know anything about forex or penny stocks, but surely there must be other legitimate penny stock sites out there. And that's just for starters. If I were you I would probably sit down with a glass of wine and a legal pad and brainstorm all the different things that your "perfect prospect" is interested in, what they do online, what sites they visit, etc. and make the biggest list that I could. Then look into advertising, partnerships, etc. with these sites. I think you could also do well with an affiliate program. The affiliates who are promoting the scammy forex and other related sites are also likely to be interested in promoting your site, IF you have a great offer that converts and generates a good EPC in your marketplace.

 

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[mrhahn]

When you created pre-sell landing pages to promote other offers, what kind of elements gave the best conversion rates? Simple? More graphics but polished? What color schemes worked the best?

 

[theBiz]

With your experience of modeling others offers.... do you honestly believe you could go and make a replica of something like insanity workout video?

INSANITY Workout - Extreme Home Workout DVD - INSANITY Workout Reviews - beachbody.com
i mean we could all make this landing page, we could all shoot that video for under $10k... we could all buy tv slots, we can all give the same offer and price point, we can get similar affiliates, if things worked like this, why do so many people fail, especially in this niche? Considering you've launched different successful products, what is the secret sauce so many are missing in order to attain this type of success?

Or is it simply just they know how how to

-acquire a customer cheaper than most
-have some continuity program making them very profitable
-upselling making them highly profitable

Meaning if they handed the keys over to someone right now, they would fail even with their existing business.

 

[limitup]

When you created pre-sell landing pages to promote other offers, what kind of elements gave the best conversion rates? Simple? More graphics but polished? What color schemes worked the best?

The best conversion rates come from adding value and building trust. This usually has nothing to do with your design or color schemes. As far as graphics, colors, ugly vs polished landing pages, etc. you just need to split-test all that like you should be doing anyway with any page.

While there may be some best practices in your market or niche, no one else can tell you what's going to work best when it comes to these kinds of things - you have to test everything yourself.

 

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[100k]

Doesn't matter if you're promoting affiliate products, your own products, or generating leads for that matter. A great offer is simply that, a great offer. Something that's hard for your target prospect to resist. Say you're promoting some nutritional supplement...

A boring crappy offer is "xyz product costs $39 for a months supply, click here to order".

A better offer would be "you can try xyz product for free, just pay $6.95 for shipping and handling. If you want to continue receiving xyz supplement, just do nothing and we'll bill you the low low price of just $39 a month."

A great offer might be "we're so sure you'll freakin' love xyz that we're going to send it to you absolutely free. you don't even have to pay for shipping. just enter your credit card so we know you're a real person, but don't worry - we won't charge you a penny today. try xyz for 30 days and if you love it as much as we think you will just do nothing and next month we'll charge you the low low monthly price of just $39 blah blah blah".

If you're selling any kind of software or web-based service, a great offer generally involves some kind of free trial, rather than just asking people to pay upfront and trust your word that it's great. See what I mean? If you make a great offer like this and your product is actually any good, everything else will usually just fall into place.

Just look at the offers you're making, and try to make them better. To the point where you don't really even have to "sell" them anything. Try to make your offers a no-brainer for the end user.

Don't get me wrong, copywriting can make or break an offer - but only if the offer isn't great. I generally create offers so "great" that I don't need to hire 5-figure copywriters in order to hard sell the customer. With some of my offers the copy literally doesn't matter because the offer is so good.

Combine a great offer WITH awesome copy and now you're cooking with fire. I've had conversion rates over 10% with a $47 product because I know how to make a great offer, whereas most people are lucky to see 1-2% conversions. And this is with cold traffic.

Another way people do this with info products is to just tack on crazy amounts of "free bonuses". You wouldn't think it would work as well as it does, but sometimes you can literally overwhelm the user with bonuses to the point where they feel like they'd be stupid not to take advantage of whatever you're offering.

You know the ones I'm talking about - "this bonus is valued at $97, this bonus #2 is valued at $150, blah blah blah but it's all yours free if you take action today". This stuff works, and works especially well if the bonuses are actually valuable and have real value and you don't just give them PLR crap "valued at $97".

Here's another example of a pretty great offer I've been seeing a lot of lately. People are doing webinars and only charging after the fact. You register for the webinar with a credit card, then you get to consume the entire webinar/content. If you don't think it's worth whatever is being charged, you just send an email and tell them not to charge you. All else being equal, this is a great offer that will almost always convert better than if you just said "click here to pay $97 and register for the webinar" or whatever.

The underlying concept is that if you make a great offer, everything else matters that much less. People go crazy split-testing one color headline vs. another and other little things trying to get an extra few percent boost in their conversion rate. This is all fine and dandy, but by taking a standard normal offer and turning it into a "great" offer, you can literally double or triple your conversion rates overnight.

 

[limitup]

With your experience of modeling others offers.... do you honestly believe you could go and make a replica of something like insanity workout video?

I'm not a big business guy, or even a business guy at all, so I honestly don't know. I also don't know much about insanity or beachbody. With that being said, I can't imagine they are doing anything special or that they have some unique advantage in the marketplace.

As far as I can tell they are just an awesome direct response marketing machine, and they have massive scale (obviously). If you did exactly what they've done, I don't see why you wouldn't expect similar results.

Agora publishing is another great example. All they do is sell "info products" - just on a bigger scale than most of us. I think they are something like a $300 - 500 million dollar company.

I think your main question is why do so many people fail. The answer to that is simple...

Very few people are willing and able to do what it takes to build a company like beachbody, simple as that.

In my experience, MAYBE 1 out of 100 people who says they want to start a business have what it takes - and are willing to DO what it takes - to see any type of significant success.

So yeah, here's the only "secret sauce" I know that leads to success ...

http://c811328.r28.cf2.rackcdn.com/10093_zoom_double_735550.jpg

 

[mrhahn]

The best conversion rates come from adding value and building trust. This usually has nothing to do with your design or color schemes.

How do you implement this if you're just starting out promoting an offer? Is it the way the copy is written to show the value of the offer (you did mention previously copy isn't the main thing you tweak, but maybe at this stage it would be)? Is it just something that takes time? Possibly adding testimonials as they come in?

 

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[limitup]

How do you implement this if you're just starting out promoting an offer? Is it the way the copy is written to show the value of the offer (you did mention previously copy isn't the main thing you tweak, but maybe at this stage it would be)? Is it just something that takes time? Possibly adding testimonials as they come in?

No nothing like that. That stuff doesn't add value.

By value I mean something that is going to further help the user/customer.

For example, say you are promoting FatBurner2000 as an affiliate. One example of a way to add value to the equation is to educate the user about the product, why it works, how it works, how they can get the most from it, how to get the best results, and even better - giving them something of value when they take action.

For example you could say something like "after you buy FatBurner2000 just forward me your receipt and I'll send you my short 12-page ebook showing you 3 simple exercises I do in less than 10 minutes a day that can help you lose that stubborn belly fat up to 348% faster!" That kind of thing.

The only limit is your imagination. I'll be honest and say that most people who do this kind of thing just make shit up, but obviously that's bad kharma and the best way to achieve long-term success is by providing true VALUE. As each day passes, affiliates and marketers that don't provide true value are being kicked to the curb.

 

[theBiz]

I can't imagine they are doing anything special or that they have some unique advantage in the marketplace.

that's a great answer, ok im done taking, you've given some excellent info here, thank you.