Hitting it Big with a Digital Product

I'm really trying to get some help on this. The places I've looked all have been centred around building a blog and develop a following (which honestly can take years). What if I have the knowledge and value to share without having an authority blog, what can I do? Do I really have to spend a lot of time just building up a blog, just to launch a product?

Having a good product is important, but having a solid marketing plan is even more important. You need to build up credibility, create converting sales pages and of course have JVs willing to promote for you before you launch.

In reality your product is only as good as your marketing, so focus on the marketing part first.

the short answer is the big launches happen because those people have lots of affiliates who have big lists.

so how do you get lots of strong affiliates? you become an affiliate for one of their products and sell a a good number of their products for them and they will be very likely to reciprocate.

without that....its a slow building process. There is no shortage of products out there for the guys with lists to promote...why will they chose your product.

HINT: good marketing is far more important than a good product. obviously a bad product is no good, but a solid product with exceptional marketing will make you and everyone else more money than a great product no one ever sees

Seriously, have you even tried searching the forum for answers to these questions?

This is what practically every post is about.

You have a lot of work to do. The first step is research. Nobody can hand this to you.

It's not going to happen unless you change your mindset. It seems that you're a very impatient person. Instead of introducing yourself in your very first post, you want something rather then providing some sort of value or contribution to this community.

In your post you ask for a shortcut which shows a sense of instant gratification and within only two hours you bump your post, again it shows how impatient you are.

My suggestion would be to visit this forum daily and use the search function to find threads on topics that are of interest to you, and build some relationships here.

Without a following, your dead in the water.

I ditto what David Keith said.

1. Find sellers with a successful track record of high converting products and start promoting their products and make some sales for them (you'll be earning a commission as well, of course).

2. Make sure they are sellers who typically promote products as affiliates themselves that are similar to what your product is about (if you sell plr, for example, not every seller is willing to promote that type of product, because their subscribers don't buy that kind of product or they expect a different kind of promotion from the seller - a good example is Todd Gross, The Video Guy, who promotes mostly video-related products, but stuff like weight loss plr, no.)

3. Get on the JV mailing list of the sellers you are promoting and get on their normal subscriber list so you can see what kind of products they promote and if they ever promote products from sellers who are not so well known - the first time product sellers or sellers who haven't ran big promotions or made a lot of sales previously. This will give you a good idea whether or not the seller will ever even consider promoting your product in the future when you ask him.

4. You need to sift through these sellers this way and find two or three heavy hitters who you feel pretty confident about that after you have made some sales for them they will reciprocate and promote for you in return.

5. Then focus hard on promoting these few sellers products. Make as many sales as you can for them. If they have multiple products that convert well, great. Promote all their products. If you can make a lot of sales quick for them, good, but you'll likely make sales slowly over time, which is fine. Don't get in a big rush about it. This type of thing is definitely a marathon, not a sprint.

6. At the same time, you should set up your product in advance and try to make as many sales of your own product as you can so you have some stats to show these guys when it's time to hit them up. Fine tune your sales page, make sure you have upsells and downsells that convert. And ALWAYS take care of support issues. You want to assure these guys that you are not an asshole and won't make them look stupid for promoting your products to their list.
(A lot of these sellers in IM don't give a damn anyway - they're out for money, period - but you should run your business nice and proper anyhow for your customer's sake.)

7. When it comes time to hit them up (2, 3, 6 months? When you feel you've made them enough sales to warrant an introduction - doesn't have to be hundreds of sales by the way, it can be 10 or 20 a month for a few months, or whatever - most sellers don't sell much after their launch, so the fact you are making a handful of steady sales for them after the launch stands out and shows commitment.) just Skype them or PM them and say "Hey, this is [affiliate name], I'm your affiliate and have been making steady sales of your products over the past few months. I'm launching a product on [launch date] and I believe it will be a good fit for your customers/subscribers. I'd like to send you more info about it [or just send it right then]...and so on...

8. As mentioned earlier, you should already know they are going to be open to promoting for you, because they have done it for others like you with a similar product (doesn't need to be closely similar). So you should be casual about the contact, and don't do silly things like offer to give them 100% (unless that is what you are offering all affiliates). You've already made them sales. You don't owe them a favor, they owe you. So be cool, but don't act like a desperate fool. Act like an equal, because you are.

The goal is to get these few heavy hitters on board for your launch, because on your JV page, you'll be able to display their names and photos and that will help draw in other heavy hitters and semi-successful sellers and affiliates.

Not only that, but with those few guys, you'll be able to message other sellers directly and throw your heavy hitter names out there in your introduction to these other sellers and pick some of those up without promoting anything for them or giving them more commissions. They'll just sign up.

9. Research how the heavy hitters are setting up their JV pages, and do the same. Pay attention to how they motivate their affiliates before and during the launch, and do the same.

IM Products - good ones, great ones, and shitty ones - all succeed or fail based on how hard affiliates push the product during the launch. You can promote it other ways, and should, but you'll "hit it big" (that's what you said you want) for sure if you recruit the right affiliates the right way in addition to having all of your t's crossed and i's dotted with the funnel, the product (offer), and the after-sale handling and promotions.

That is your dilemma.

There is practically no chance you will interest affiliates to sell your program if you don't have a track record AND an already successfully converting product. Selling their stuff is one way to build a relationship, but without your own list that is off the table.

Chicken and the egg.

This is information you will learn once you try and fail. Failure is an important part of the overall experience. You can't really skip it.

It really doesn't matter how good your program is. It will live or die by the size of the marketing effort, and without affiliates (or any realistic hopes of getting any that are worth having) you are already severely disadvantaged. Add to that your lack of experience and impatience, and you are in way over your head.

Here is your golden nugget... start much, much smaller. Spend a month reading posts that interest you here and elsewhere, then recalibrate your plans to achieve a much more realistic goal. Then learn from it and build on it, working your way up to launching a bigger product when you know you are ready.

6God,

Here's another way (out of many ways that you'll learn from Google searches and in other threads under various sections of this forum):

Can you think of something to offer merchants with top selling products in laterally relevant niche markets, which can give them higher conversions, more repeat buyers and more sales?

Here's an example ...

Some merchants of top selling MMO software products probably need (if they don't already have this) phone, email and live chat support services for the pre / post sales concerns, product support issues and tech support needs of their prospects, existing customers, newly signed affiliates and long time partners ...

So, what you can do is to pinpoint a set of merchants with top selling products that can be effectively supplemented by your own products ...

Then, prune this list down to merchants that currently need phone, email and live chat support services for their prospects, existing customers, newly signed up affiliates and long time partners ...

Next, contact them and propose a 100% performance-based arrangement where they'll get 100% free phone, email and live chat support services from your team, as well as added profits for them from sales of products with supplemental value for their prospects, existing customers, newly signed affiliates and long time partners ...

Tell them how your team can do this, i.e. You will train your team to successfully resolve the pre / post sales concerns, product support issues and tech support needs of their prospects, existing customers, newly signed up affiliates and long time partners; and

After successfully resolving these problems -- Your team will then professionally upsell your own supplemental productss, especially if your products can indeed provide supplemental value to the lead (based on the specific pre / post sales concerns, product support issues and tech support needs of each lead), in which you'll split upsales with them based on a mutually agreed fixed commission percentage (make this easy for them by getting a merchant account from a credible payment processor, or by letting them know that you can use the payment processor that they prefer for this) ...

We're enjoying excellent success from doing this, though we don't do this (and don't have plans to do this) in the IM / MMO market ...

Are you looking mainly for the potential big hit and run payday or more a long career/business in this market?

Do you have a product in mind already?

Mark

Before you spend a couple months developing all your products, have you tested the market first?
Maybe your product will fail and you will have waisted months in development...

I think the undertone of what I've been trying to communicate is I'm wondering if there is a way I can sort of "fake it 'till I make it". I don't mean fake being an expert on the content I'm going to make a course about (I want to add as much value and be as transparent as possible) but rather to other affiliate marketers. Is there a way I can do what the big time affiliates do for one another without being a "big time" affiliate. Have you ever seen this be done? If so, how would you suggest I go about it?

Also, you mentioned looking into finding a JV partner to do this with. Would the process of finding a JV be the same as finding good affiliates (need to develop a good track record, etc.) or could I realistically find one and convince them to work with me just based on the value I could potentially provide to the JV?

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