Big Guru IM Launches Dead?

I guess there aren't any big guru launches. ha.

Guru launching a money making strategy almost ruins it because it becomes flooded with marketers. Take SEO link monster for example.

If they'd have kept it quiet and launched it just on a few forums here and there, it would be strong and they'd be making consistent money.

Instead, they went the guru route and blasted every list they had about this AWESOME NEW SERVICE.

I have yet to hear anything good about it. From what I hear, most of their sites are getting deindexed.

Personally, the only guru whose list I am still on is Travis Sago, but he keeps it pretty real and offers more than just a super secret money making button. He actually coaches people and makes pretty good money, as do many of his students. I'll probably be a subscriber for life.

As for the rest of them, they can go straight to hell for all I care. I'm sick of the money making buttons clogging my inbox. I have a business to run.

All the above I guess. Back in those days, it was also far more easy to make money on ClickBank for affiliates. Clickbank + Adwords was a sure shot formula of success. You didn't even need a domain to get started! Now Adwords has banned such affiliate advertising, people have become skeptical of the Gurus, and of course the economy. That's why we don't hear about launches these days, I think.

Boredom. Been there, done that. Launches are a pain in the a$$ to coordinate and require a ton of work.

Besides, Frank Kern last year summed it up nicely.

Real businesses focus on one thing:

Gaining leads - converting leads to buyers, daily.

Doing a product launch is great for gaining leads, getting massive capital, and what not.

But it requires a lot of effort. And the big number records have all been broken. So now a lot of these big names are off doing their own thing.

However, the launch strategy still works and they are going on everyday, just not as big of exposure.

Clickbank products are being released every month that makes millions of dollars.

Big WSO's are being launched every month that bring in mid range 6 figures and some WSO runners in the various circles are predicting the first Million Dollar launch will happen this year some time. (And some are actively working towards it)

And on a much smaller scale, launch tactics are making a lot of people money. Doing a 2 day presell and offering a bonus upped an affiliate promotion I did for a partner to selling 3 times what I normally do.

It still works. It's not dead. At all.

Rob

Brandon Buchard not too long ago just had a big launch. Matt Lloyd just had a big webinar launch of licensing his products. There will always be big launches. Remember the big dogs have lists of hundreds of thousands to millions of leads and they collaborate. When they launch a product its HUGE.

If we're only talking about the MMO market, then launches (big or small) are a constant. Some people may not see them because they're not part of many lists or certain key lists. Just this last quarter I've seen about 40 launches, some small, some fairly big.

"Big" launches are still around and they aren't going to go away anytime soon. The smart marketers don't depend on these launches in the sense that it's a "do or die" scenario, it's just one of the many strategies they use to get momentum going.

RoD

I see big launches going the way of the slam dunk contest..yea it was great and all 10 years ago, but the same flashy stuff keeps popping up every year and no one is bringing anything innovative to the table. Game changing and innovative is something the IM market has yet to see in a long time. It's true. We can all point to product x and product y as being great, fantastic, it'll make you $xxx, but come on. This marketplace has educated itself immensely over the last couple of years and that's why you see a drop off in big launches..in my opinion.

You will ALWAYS be able to sell a shovel to the gold digger, but what happens when the gold digger wisen's up and realizes it's more profitable to sell shovels?

Another thing that seems to have dropped off a bit are seminars. Seemed like there was a different big guru seminar every other week for awhile there. I'm sure there are some still out there, but you just don't hear about them as much as you used to, or at least I don't.

It's hard not to think that sky-high refunds didn't hurt the IM launch business. A friend of mine used to promote the $2,000+ launches for the big commissions. She did sell quite a few, but also got a lot of refunds. So, her net was not much. 40% refund rates can do that.

Clickbank has found a new niche: REFUNDS. They are charging vendors $5-$10 per refund now and vendors are howling. Since they have now realized that refunds are part of their new business model they managed to carve out a nice payment processor niche for themselves

Launches are still happening, they're easy to spot when you get 20 emails with almost the exact same subject. I've seen it more with WSOs recently probably due to the generally lower prices for WSOs making them more affordable in this economy.

I've definitely seen a lowering of pricing structures in recent months. Products that would have sold for 27 or 37 dollars are now only 7 or 17 dollars. unfortunately, lower prices means it's less lucrative for affiliates, which may explain the seeming drop off.

Jim Waller

I dunno, but I used to follow a completely different niche, and I saw the same pattern. A bunch of huge launches (DVD courses and live events mostly) from 2005-2008, and then nothing. Wonder why.

I don't think launches will every die they will adapt like everything else.

About a year and a half ago, Kelly Felix...aka. The Rich Jerk, Bring The Fresh, promoted a high end Iphone app creating course to his subscribers. The course was by Tray Smith who is Frank Kearn's cousin.

If I recall correctly, Kelly sold 5 units to his list. The top guru sold less than 15.

Kelly said that people are no longer biting on these big ticket guru courses.

Check out this site: » The Salty Droid >> bleep

There are still plenty of gurus and large product launches, but the market is very saturated which forces prices down. The really big launches sometimes get lost in the fog of all of the emails you get from everyone else.

I think one of the reasons why the "BIG" Guru approach isn't really working any more!
Consider how many internet marketers there were back in 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012!
Do you see a patterne? Thats because there is - and that is the same for the numbers of IM's that are actively becoming better in this industry! That means less to fool! Besides one can't really claim to be a guru to something that its more mainstream! Because thats what internet marketing is growing to become - Mainstream! Because some "clever" Gurus have driven butt-loads of people to the industry! Of course only the smartest, most resourceful or determined IM's actually survived in this business! But still that is exactly what the "GURU" route does bring more competitors to the table! Is that really what you want? Sure it does provide an opportunity to sell even more stuff but you're still making it even more mainstream. I ask again, is that what you want? Because lets face it the more people we are at doing this, the less we all get! So I ask again - Is this what you want? I think I've made my point absolutely crystal clear - if not! Bringing more to the table just makes it harder and harder to earn money - No matter the niche!

Well that was just my 02's.

there are frequent launches mentioned on JVNotifyPro.com, usually every few days. There are some repeating names but none of the big guys from years past.
One thing I noticed is a move to Clicksure instead of clickbank by some gurus. In two cases there were last minute switches from clickbank to Clicksure, but I don't know the exact reason. One was after the product was already live for a couple of days (The Success With Anthony program by Anthony Morrison was the one that switched post launch) so it must have been a good reason to do that and risk confusing affiliates. In his prelaunch video he did mention the refund rate on clickbank being too high and what he was doing to try to keep people from refunding post purchase. I do not know if this was the reason though.

To be perfectly frank about it, I couldn't afford their products when I was just getting started a year ago, and now that I could afford them I honestly don't feel the need for any of these high-ticket items.

Still, I'm very thankful to them because I've learned so much just by attending their free webinars and taking notes. And learned even more by deconstructing and studying what they're actually doing in their presentation, sales copy, e-mails. It has paid off very handsomely for me in the past 15 months - and will for years to come!

"Guru" launches are still going strong... Filsaime is doing one at the moment for some offline marketing thing. Jenkins did a mini-relaunch of video boss last month. Deiss launched Digital Marketer not long ago..

-Matt

Wouldn't go so far as to saying that big launches are dead coz sometimes when I get bombarded via multiple lists regarding the same launch, I know for a fact that a veteran seller is behind it and usually that is the case. Scalability only increases as more and more folks enter the IM market. I would probably say that big launches do happen - but maybe they are scarce in number as opposed to few years ago.

I think the big launches still have a place. Andy Jenkins re-launched Video Boss recently and Mike Koenigs just did an Instant Customer launch.

I think they now mostly promote their launches among each other. Each Big Guru Markets other Gurus products to their list and get a 50-60% commission.

Also they now market their products to pre-screened "Buyer Lists".

It keeps it more low profile. Rather than sending out millions of emails to sell 2,000 units at $2,000 each and give away half the money in commissions they try to sell more internally among each other.

They've exhausted their lists, I heard somewhere that combined they all have around 1 million subscribers. List building is expensive and to replenish a list of that magnitude will cost a lot of money...

You have to remember that only a very small percentage of people can actually afford a $2K product - and because of this those who can afford it have brought.

Nobody wants to wait 6 or 12 months for a MMO product to come out. Lol, what a waste of time you could of spent that time learning here and taking action.

That's my theory.

Or, guys like Kern and Walker have moved into individual client consulting.

The Salty Droid has exposed so many of these scammers. Not a lot of sheep left for them to trick.

People can google before they buy...AND THEN THE TRUTH COMES OUT.

Old-school Guru high-ticket ($1,997) product launches have indeed slowed down over the last 2 years.

The economy shifted, our market matured, WSO mentality took over, and there are not that many ways you can package the same stuff over and over.

people are more budget minded and savvy about not getting into continuity programs and upsells and overpriced guru systems; they've grown immune to the whopping price tags. and well said ken_c; list fatigue, burnout, trust issues, if you pillage your list they won't trust you, which is a good thing... the bs people in my niche are like locusts, all cross promoting their latest $2,000+ shiny object for MLM-style aff commisshes model; people wise up.

ha I noticed this thread was posted last year, and currently those big names that were mentioned in the thread haven't launched anything for quite some time. I am on all their lists too and haven't even seen any email promos from them.

I did get an email from Kern saying that he is pretty much doing all consultations now, pretty much out of the IM game altogether. Reese took a bunch of time off to travel around the world and hasn't released any products as of late either.

It's funny though, that you still see launch after launch still going on and it's rehashed stuff that isn't anything new.

So many newbies join the ranks of " I wanna buy everything, and get the next shiny new object" everyday, that there still are plenty of folks that will buy the latest product launch. To those of us that have been in the game for a while, these daily launches are getting tiresome.

The most recent launch by Ronnie M "mobile money code" is another one of those that is hyped up. He hired actors and rented the Ferrari and the mansion and so much of it is so contrived, (the video) that it gets ridiculous. Your BS meter goes off instantly.

But he has a million and 1 JV's promoting it, so he will make money for sure. But if you watch the sales video it is the same stuff all over again. The "It's not your fault" pitch, the "I was just like you, until I stumbled upon the secret code" , the "I found this forum that was invite only for millionaires, but I found a Hacker that was able to get me in and was able to get me this secret code that I fine-tuned and now I make $20,000 a day" Blah Blah Blah...It's totally freakin ridiculous.