Launching First Ever Product - Starting to go a bit mental

16 replies
Hi Warriors,

I'm desperately looking for some advice from any warriors who have experience of launching a product in ClickBank.

I'm about to launch my first ever product. It's going to be priced at $147 and is a piece of software. However as I've never released anything before and have no list of affiliates to pull on. So I thought it would be safest to launch the product in Clickbank so as to pull on their massive database of affiliate marketers.
I'm also doing all the necessary launch processes of having a squeeze page with a free report to build our own list. I'm holding a twitter contest giving away 5 copies of the software to build up buzz before the launch as well and I'm attempting to organize a 4 day webinar with my main JV's that shows off the software with the JV's giving their advice as we use the software live. This will be recorded and sold as an up-sell which the JV partners will also get a share of the profits from.

I've tried, but failed to even get a reply from my biggest JV target. Even though I followed their own course on how to successfully woo a potential big name JV partner. (it was a wicked personalize video as well and not heard a peep back so far! Arrrgh, so very frustrating. Don't Panic, Don't Panic!)

Anyhow, I'm starting to worry a little bit about the answer to the following questions..

Here are the points I'm most in need of answers to:

1. Because I've never used ClickBank before I don't qualify for ClickBanks "1 click up-sell" feature. So how should I be adding an up-sell/down-sell system into my purchasing process?

2. In ClickBank our products affiliate fee was going to be $60 (I know its not over 50% however we believe our product will sell very well and seen as it's a one off payment and we will need to support the software through some inevitable changes in the future we think the price is fair.)

Anyway, I know that to persuade a top JV partner, I'm going to have to give them at least 60% as well as some additional back end sales and list building opportunities. So my question is, how can I setup this secondary higher affiliate fee for JV partners?
(I do have a copy of Amember but I'm not sure what the protocol is for processing using clickbank and then also using Amember for JV partners???)


I would really appreciate some help with this from any season pros out there!

Cheers
Adam
#bit #launching #mental #product #starting
  • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
    What niche is your product in? Is it a recurring-billing product? If it's your first CB product, has it been approved by CB?
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    • Profile picture of the author Freeman77
      Keeping the Clickbank percentage at under 50% will probably not pay off. A high priced product is considered a difficult sell, so affiliates want a good amount of compensation. If they can promote a $100 product and get $70 back, why would they choose a $14 product for 60 bucks?

      I'm not trying to burst your bubble, and it sounds like you're doing a great job building up to your launch. BTW, my experience with Clickbank is that it's great to have a bunch of people promoting my stuff, but nothing compares to my own efforts to sell it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Desmond Ong
    Get your product approved by CB first and then change your launch plan.

    Obviously things are falling apart and you need to re-structure. You should consider hiring a JV broker if your product has anything to do with internet marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
    As Desmond said, consider hiring a JV broker.

    That's because the "big guys" in your niche are inundated with JV offers. They're going to focus on the offers from people they know. So if they don't even recognize your name, your offer is going to be a low priority for them.

    (Sidenote: For those who think this is some guru conspiracy, forgetaboutit. If your best friend asked you for a ride to the airport, would you take him? How about if some stranger on the street asked you? You'd be more likely to do a favor for a friend.)

    Anyway...

    If the marketers in your niche don't recognize your name, hire a JV broker (who IS recognized in the market). And start building relationships with potential partners for future endeavors.

    Second point:

    In ClickBank our products affiliate fee was going to be $60 (I know its not over 50% however we believe our product will sell very well and seen as it's a one off payment and we will need to support the software through some inevitable changes in the future we think the price is fair.)
    Do consider bringing it up to at least 50%. I realize you have support costs and whatnot. But you're building the most important asset of all -- the customer list. Indeed, some people break even or even lose money on the front end, just because they know how valuable the list (the backend sales) are.

    So, you need to plan your backend sales funnel before you launch.

    Cheers,
    Becky
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    • Profile picture of the author Lance K
      Have you beta tested the software?

      If not, you could offer a beta tester discount. And that way, people won't expect it to be perfect.

      Post in the Joint Venture forum here at WF (assuming your software targets the IM market) and let people with certain size lists offer the beta discount to their lists. Pay at least 50% commission.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        I think you need to apply to CB ahead of time as your price exceeds their standard and will need special permission. Software I've seen offered on CB is much lower price and usually at 75% commission.

        Might not be a problem but could eat up some time.

        kay
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  • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Mizel
    You might not like what I'm about to say, but believe me, I've done several million dollars in sales on Clickbank and this is absolutely the best plan for someone in your position..

    1) Lower your price to $97 - Maybe even $47 or $77. The triple digit price barrier is too high for a lead product.

    2) Increase commissions to 75% - You'll get plenty of orphan sales since CB tracking sucks, and you'll be making potential affiliates happy enough to keep promoting for you.

    3) Offer 100% to the guru you want to woo - I have a few CB merchants who pay me a bonus per sale by PayPal monthly. The effective commission works out to over 100%.

    Listen, the secret is not figuring out how to get people to promote an offer with a low commission, it's figuring out how YOU can make money while still paying a high commission.

    Those top CB offers that pay 75% didn't up their commission after they got big, they got big by upping their commission.

    Jonathan

    PS: The best way for you to do an upsell is to create a page between the sales letter and the order form and set up different Clickbank products in the same account and upsell from that page. It's not post purchase so the response will probably be a little lower, but it's a great trick for anyone using 1ShoppingCart, CB, or other system that doesn't have 1-click upsell ability.
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    • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
      Jonathan Mizel, I clicked on the link to your video. That is genius! It's such a simple thing, and something that should be common sense--but no one hardly ever does that. Now I've got to go back and read the other stuff on your blog! --Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author AdamLCasey
    Wow thanks to all of you. This has been a great response and a real help to me.
    It's helped me realise that I'm going to have to rethink my pricing and structure.

    @MikeMcmillan:
    It's in the InfoProduct niche.
    It doesn't currently have any re-occurring billing. However I'm thinking about trying to come up with some way of building this in.
    It's not currently listed with ClickBank (currently in it's final week of bug testing).

    @R Hagel and Desmond Ong

    I'm a little worried about the cost of hiring a JV not just their slice of the pie but if I choose wrong and they realize just how wet behind the ears I am with regards to launching a product. Then I might well be taken for without me knowing it!
    Any idea of prices and recommendations?


    @ Lance K
    I was seriously considering going down the beta testing route, however I have one real concern in that, what we're selling can easily be taken and passed around without us being able to stop them.

    Although we have wrote our own custom code it's on an opensource platform that will means we will need to have an open source licence. If your thinking how can you justify the price, well the price is for support and free upgrades for life. (we already have 3-4 wicked ideas for version 2)
    Please could you point me in the direction of other posts, where people have requested Beta testing so I can see how they structured the beta testing offer?
    (price wise how much do you think it should cost, I know Market Samurai released their software with several features missing originally for $67 but now its up to $147)

    @kay and MikeMan10.

    I've emailed them with the concern about the price and it being my first offering. They stated that their ruling was to detract from people trying to offer 4 page ebooks for triple figures. And that if I can prove that it's worth what we say its worth and the support is professional then MAYBE it will get through. However I'm definitely considering reducing to $97 after reading all your replies.


    Finally @Jonathan and Mikey
    I'll take whatever you guys have to offer as I've heard of you both and know you're opinion and advice are well respected in here (sorry other peeps not been doing IM that long)

    What I need to understand is how this will be profitable. As 25% of $97 when you get down to it is peanuts and because our product is aimed at Internet Marketing Newbies the chances are that our support forums will be very active ones!
    As you never can pick and choose what level of IT competence your buyers are at.

    So what I'm thinking now is that I really NEED to have a re-occuring back-end product to make this whole launch profitable. As it seems to me that this quality product (that I'm really quite proud of) could well just turn out to be quite a hefty loss leader!

    am I missing anything here?

    Jonathan if it's o.k. can I ask when you say you've made several million dollars in sales. Is that at 75% for every single product? If so where do you make your profits do you just make the bulk of your money outside of Clickbank? Sorry to pry into your numbers just trying to work out where my profits should be coming from.

    Thanks again guys I really, really appreciate all your help
    (and anyone else who feels like chipping in!)

    One last question. Would you every launch in Clickbank get a ton of great reviews and then take it out of ClickBank and get your own processor and start to drop of with the affiliate marketing fees of 75% and start offering more like 50%?

    Cheers

    Adam
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  • Profile picture of the author winebuddy
    What I need to understand is how this will be profitable. As 25% of $97 when you get down to it is peanuts and because our product is aimed at Internet Marketing Newbies the chances are that our support forums will be very active ones!
    As you never can pick and choose what level of IT competence your buyers are at.
    Not peanuts if you sell a million copies :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
    Adam, I know you are anxious to get it flying. That's understandable. But in all honesty, from where it sounds like your at now, I see a couple of months of pre-launch stuff to get done. You say it's an info product, but there are 10,000+ info products for sale on Clickbank. If it's a product in the IM niche (something that would be sold in the Marketing & Ads category) I would register at all of the JV forums where product launches are announced.

    At most of these places you can't just walk in and post a product launch announcement. They all have their own guidelines. But the gurus all announce their launches, especially for CB stuff at these forums. I would sign up to promote a few product launches yourself--and follow up on it by promoting the products heavily. The best way to get on the good side of a potential JV partner is to actually sell some of his stuff!

    Then, as you get emails from the vendor near the product launch and just after--watch their leader boards for their contests. See the names of the top ten sales leaders. These are the big super-affiliates with the big lists. These are your top JV prospects, but they will be hard to bring on board first time out.

    Find sales pages for these super-affiliates' products and opt in to their list so you get their emails. Many auto-responders will require that a physical mailing address is shown at the bottom of the emails. Get their physical mailing addresses. Forget about emailing them! Put together a promo kit for your product and launch and Express mail it to them. Suck up to these guys like a bear to a honeycomb.

    One or two of these big affiliates will send you more traffic (if they mail for you) than a thousand of the nickel/dime affiliates you pick up on Clickbank simply by having your product listed in the Marketplace.

    Go to eZineArticles and find authors with at least 500 articles to their name in your niche and try to bring them aboard as affiliates. They will have developed lists as a result of their article traffic and will have subscribers targeted to your product. Do not overlook this technique.

    I know you want to make a killing right out of the gate. But remember, a successful product launch is the fastest way, bar none, to grow your list quickly (assuming you have a good number of big guys promoting for you). If you have a good opt-in form on your sales page, the list you grow during the first few weeks following your launch is quite likely worth more than the profits you make from the sales of your product--and you can market to them every single day with related affiliate products!

    My Best, Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author vagabondette
    ok, let me start off by saying I'm new at this so my suggestion might be pretty worthless but I figured I'd make it anyway.

    In a couple of your posts you said that your pricing was so high because of the support you expected to provide. What about lowering your price for the program (or making it free) and offering a monthly support subscription instead? You could have a member support site where people could come for help but they'd have to pay for entry.

    That option might put more in your pocket over the long run than a one-off payment with lifetime upgrades.

    Like I said, this may be way off-base but it's an option to consider since you seem mostly to be worried about covering costs of supporting your community. Whatever you decide, good luck. I'm subscribing because I'll be launching a product soon and I think that I will learn some good things from this thread.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Mizel
    Here's the big secret of 75% commission that almost nobody will tell you...

    Over a month or two, a good 15% to 20% of your sales will actually come in with no affiliate tagged (even if you don't promote it yourself). That's because...

    1) Cookies get erased.
    2) Cookies get blocked.
    3) Cookies expire.
    4) CB tracking sucks.

    Over 90 - 120 days, it's more like 35%, and it just keeps rising the more you follow-up with old prospects. Like it or not, that's just the way it is. Therefore, your *effective* commission is actually 50%, which is what you were shooting for anyway.

    Affiliate have LOTS of choices now-a-days with regard to products they can promote. We look at all sorts of metrics...

    Commission rate.
    Earnings per click.
    Earnings per thousand pieces mailed.
    Earnings per thousand banner impressions.
    Earnings per campaign.

    CB affiliates are actually quite obsessed with commission rate, and even though it's not the most important thing in my book, many will never even test your offer unless it's at 75%.

    As for how you will make money, it's called back end marketing and continuity. Don't confuse a lead product (customer generator) with a back end (money generator).

    Jonathan
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    • Profile picture of the author vagabondette
      Originally Posted by Jonathan Mizel View Post

      As for how you will make money, it's called back end marketing and continuity. Don't confuse a lead product (customer generator) with a back end (money generator).
      This is key. Get them as a customer then make money from them. Even if you lose in the short term, a long-term relationship with a customer who is used to buying from you can be priceless.
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  • Profile picture of the author AdamLCasey
    Well I thank you all for your input. After much deliberation I'm actually going to go down the free route for the product and have a low price monthly subscription with training, interviews, freebies and free product updates instead.
    I'll let you all know how I get on and I'll be sure to post the link to our free download in here for you all to check out.

    So that's the marketing out of the way.

    Now what I need is a checklist of technical things that could go wrong to double check before the launch. Anyone have a routine checklist they'd like to share?
    i.e. (servers unable to take a massive surge of visitors for the free download would not be good! What precautions should I be taking?)
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