The Accidental Internet Marketer???

Hey all...

I've been poking my head around this section for years but have mostly been a participant of the Offline Section. I think I average about 3-5 posts per year here!

I have quietly gotten a lot of value from this section but have never been able to get the chance to give anything meaningful back. I hope that someone, somewhere finds value in this...

I'm going to share what I have learned in my journey in becoming what I call the "accidental internet marketer."

The Sneaker WSO

Background
I'm a sneaker head. I love sneakers. Sneaker RESELLING is a $1B annual industry. I've been a participant for years. Earlier this year I had the seemingly dumb idea to make a WSO about it at the time.

I literally was throwing some stuff at the wall just to see if it would stick. I whipped up the entire WSO in about 4 hours with an atrociously ghetto sales page. The WSO was anchored by membership to a private chat room I administered. I threw the darned thing up on WF happy to have urinated away $20...

Then something strange happened... The first copy sold within 30 minutes of the thread being approved!! WTF... It was a Friday night, so I went to sleep... I woke up... more sales. Uh oh... the dog caught the milk truck!!

I literally pulled the plug after the 92nd sale (at an average price of $82 a pop) because I was stretching myself too thin at the time... The chat room was burning me out and I was losing valuable time in my other endeavors.

However, in analyzing my "success" I broke it down to a few components I figured I'd share with you all who might get value from any of this...


1. Proof
I was able to prove most of what I was saying in my sales copy through the use of photos. This in turn made my sales copy come across as authentic. I featured myself in one of the photos with a haul of sneakers that were extremely hard to get. I've been hired to write "copy" (6 commercials, animated videos, have written a book) but in your face sales copy was new to me at the start. I used heavy reliance on photographic proof and it turned out to do the trick.


2. Authenticity
I am a sneaker head... Again, I was talking about sneakers and making money on sneakers in a way that only someone who has walked the walk can do. So I think that helped a lot. To be honest, I admire the copywriter who can deliver the bacon while not having a ton of hands on, real world experience with the subject he or she is selling. That's real skill.


3. Emotions
I think everyone learned from that movie Wall Street that humans are motivated by two things; fear and greed (more on that later). I played on greed HEAVILY but I did it through the use of images vs. words. No, I didn't plaster around gaudy photos of fancy cars and wads of cash. Rather, I used the types of photos everyone can relate to get people to feel a sense of overwhelming greed when going through my sales letter.



I wanted to test to see if either I somehow hit some sort of lucky streak or if what I was doing was "portable" outside of WF.

So, I literally took my WSO to a mailing list I developed while working in the small business loan industry. The list comprised of brokers, funders, and other consultants. I figured offering this product to this market would be like trying to sell your sweet grandma a gangsta rap CD.

I used the same three elements on those folks and to my utter shock managed to get a few sales out of them... Granted, it was no where nearly as successful as WF, but that wasn't the point. The goal was to get a few sales, I did so.

So, at this point I figured "Ok, I think I got this..." But, again, I was pretty stretched thin with the whole chat room deal and didn't want to do a guide unless I could do it right and fetch a decent dollar for the guide, so I just shut it down to take a long pause... I got to dabbling in to something else and created another idea from that experience...



I have a WSO currently running that is on it's third iteration. Given the price point and the fact that I haven't even mailed it out to my small "list" I'm more than happy with the initial results.

The sales copy appears awkward to some (like I said, I'm no master) but I have stuck to relying on Proof, Authenticity, and Emotions.

Anyway, remember what I said about fear and greed? A wise man once told me that you're more inclined to get $1 out of someone if you told them that if they gave you $1 they would be able to preserve the $10 they currently had in the bank vs. going up to someone and asking them to give you $1 so that you could return $100 to them in a few weeks / months.

I took this persons "wisdom" to heart. I wrote the most aggressively scary copy I could come up with. It all centered around what all the experts are saying - another market crash / economic calamity is months away.

Anyway, I figured the VALUE of what I was offering coupled with fear would "push me over the top." I was COMPLETELY wrong. After two sales over 72 hours, compared with my first sale coming in 30 minutes on my first, I knew I had failed.

So, I iterated again. I threw away 100% of the old copy with no reference to doom and gloom whatsoever and got back to focusing on greed greed greed. Sales began coming in at a steady pace. At that moment I took a step back to assess the situation... I determined that winning with fear will only work in the financial markets because "selling fear" was the most offensive thing I could have done to my readers. In fact, one commenter stated; "your sales page is horrible." - The mods were kind enough to remove the comment! lol.

I failed even though I stuck to my "formula." I used Proof (screen shots of many articles predicting the upcoming economic chaos), I used Authenticity (visuals of my method in action) and I used Emotion (hammering away at scaring the crap out folks). But I still flopped. It was the best learning lesson EVER. Not giving up was an even better lesson. NEVER GIVE UP.

I was able to self diagnose and adjust. As it stands now, I'm on my third iteration of positioning the product and I think I have finally settled on the best approach. I'm happy with the pace of sales given the minimal time and monetary investment... and given the fac that the product is priced at $40.

What's Next

The "accidental internet marketer" will be able to test his skills yet again! I'll be re-launching my SNEAKER WSO featuring what I call the "sneaker reselling Bible."

The aim is for the buyers to be much less dependent on direct access to me than they were when I first launched it. I've been able to catalogue the hours of chat and organize questions accordingly. Essentially, I've turned that initial success into a market research tool.

The experiment in selling this WSO to a bunch of small business loan sharks who aren't sneakers heads, or Warriors taught me that I could sell this thing to anyone. So, to "scale up" I've decided to focus on ONE strategy and ONE strategy only.

I've decided to use the authority of high authority / high PR sites to put out great content to in turn push traffic to my self hosted page for the product. Here are the next steps:

1. Create an Amazon eBook to piggy back off common sneaker and sneaker related search terms. Use the eBook to push traffic to my page.
2. Create a FREE Udemy Course. Use the Udemy course to do the same thing.
3. Invite students to participate in the creation of YouTube Videos. Use the YouTube video description section to send traffic back to my offer.

The plan is to start with the eBook and work that channel until it's fully refined. This may include revising the eBook, hammering away at back linking, etc. Once that channel performs, then on to Udemy. Once Udemy performs, then on to YouTube...


Wrapping Up

This plan would not be possible were it not for the things I learned from snooping around here in the IM section so thanks to all you advocates of using high PR / authority sites as a a "cheap" way to siphon off high quality / targeted traffic! Thanks to all of you who have made prescient suggestions on sales copy. There are a ton of things I've snooped around here to learn from you folks and perhaps I may be able to offer value here in much the same way I did in the Offline Section over the course of a couple years.

Thanks for listening!