Give value and you'll be rich! [B.S.]

Alex, I hear you - and yes, good products will not sell themselves.

But try the corollary:

DON'T give value and you'll be POOR!

Maybe that rings truer?

Nice point you make, though.

All success
Dr.Mani

One thing I know for sure... If your product has value, then over time you will build a list of satisfied customers... WHO WOULD BE WILLING TO BUY FROM YOU AGAIN... this time it will be high ticket item.

Yes, you can get rich only when you have a proper system in place, but the thing is that having sales systems won't be effective unless you have a great quality product.

I'd even go on and say that a list of 200 satisfied buyers who bvuy from you every month is enough to make you rich... Maybe even better than having a list of 2000 prospects who miught buy from you... or might NOT....

Hey Alex

You OP contradicts itself from one line to the next.

What are you'se really angry about here? Cuz it sound like you're almost pushing for socialism in IM marketing.

Sure there are some great products out there in the $30 to $60 dollar range...and in most of those cases I say...shame on the promoters for NOT charging more!!!

Shame on them for not believing in their own product enough to charge big bucks for it.

WOULD THOSE SAME PRODUCTS BE LESS GREAT PRICED AT $997?

No.

Why?

CUZ TRUE QUALITY TRUMPS SPACE, TIME, AND PRICE...WHICH AINT NOTHIN' MORE THEN PERCEIVED VALUE.

Cuz who can put a price on greatness? If a product does what it should do....it should be priced as high as possible to the market it's intended for. Why else do this stuff?

Hate to break it to ya....but the IM world is a lot bigger then Filsame, Kern, Silver etc....and you seem to think it's a conspiracy where you need to do some Mafia initiation in order to become a member of some secret society before you're allowed to "get paid.

That's bullshit.

That's victim rhetoric.

That's bein' pissed off over guys like Kern et al...who just so happen to get off their asses and sell stuff better then most do. I don't recall them ever taken a dime from me...because of it.

That's what bitter, angry, frustrated people vent when they need an excuse for why they aint sellin.'

Please don't be a part of that group, bro. You're bigger then that.

The guys you'se mentioned...are just smart enough to pool resources, lists, minds, and marketing....and what's wrong with that? What they do aint got jack shit to do with what you do....or what you CAN do..if you choose to do it. Capiche.

Part of your OP answers your own question.....it's often about marketing trumping the offer. Cuz the greatest product in the world don't sell-- if you don't let the peeps know it's available for sale.

A mediocre product that's well marketed...will out sell a great product that collects dust on the shelf.

Be your own guru.


xxxVegas Vince

Alex - you're right!


Too many people are focused on themselves and their product and think that the quality of the product some-how relates to how it will sell. When it comes to information products that's just not true.

Nothing happens until someone buys it.

As Mani stated - if it sucks, you'll get refunds (and maybe even if it is great)

If you can't sell it - it's irrelevant how good it is.

This is why sales copy is so important - you can sell a bad product with good copy, but you can't sell a good product with bad copy.

Andy

I don't personally think like that.

If your product is good enough, then you wont see any refunds. But from time to time you may get the odd one or two, it's just how it is.

For sure, offering more to people isn't just about closing more sales (then again I guess that depends from person to person).

Personally I couldn't care less. My goal is to give people more then what they originally bought. I was in the same boat as many of my customers, low on income, sick and tired of the owners not spending the time with me to answer my question, or they would for a while then just give up.

These are the main elements that make a product worth its price: The product is only as good as the support one receives, not just for one day, but for life. It's the way I have approached my members, and to this very day, those who bought products from me in the past I still continue to help them out without expecting them to buy anything from me in the future.

It builds a loyal member base - spend the time with them and help them out when you can and they'll buy from you again and again and again.

Turning out $1million launches doesn't come over night - those that say it does is full of it.

I started my first product with Video Guide To Profits. I've not marketed it very much and don't intend to. I've only made around 130 sales so far in a year, ok, not a lot, but I'm not desperate for money - I'd rather spend more time helping them out... And due to the loyalty I've shown them, in the first week I promoted my new course "How To Trade Foreign Currencies" and filled up the first 5 spots at $3,247 each. And I have several others wanting to get in as well.

Do things because you care about others success, and your $1million launches could just be around the corner.

A tiny distinction that means a world of difference:
A great *product* does not sell itself. A truly great *offer* does.

Recommended: The irresistible offer - Mark Joyner (available free now The Irresistible Offer ) A proof right there that it holds true, I am promoting his optin page without any benefit for me ha ha

The greatest product in the world with poor marketing = Low/no Sales
The crappiest product in the world with excellent marketing/distribution/jvs= More Sales

You have to exapand your distribution and that is when the sales come in, the reason why many are making lots of money in IM is because they have wide ditsributions and lots of partners/Jvs/Affiliates.

Some do get their sales via ppc/seo as well but them huge product launches usually have lots of people behind the scene.

There is some great advice in this thread.

Thanks for starting it Alex.

I absolutely see your point. I am sure there are many examples
in history of a lesser quality product out-selling the competition
thanks to better positioning, marketing, partnering etc.

Alex...

In all honest dude... you need a back end with your product.. that n00b market is screaming for upsells and direction...

A guy with your talent could upsell on a higher priced product of your own, YOU have the ability to create a killer upsell for it, don't let your funnel stop at that product...

Believe me dude, your affiliate's will thank you for having a product that has a back end..

I looked at MOMU because of Travis' backend

Products that allow affiliates to earn on the back end are a must right now if your chosen PP is Clickbank..

Personally if a product is with CB right now, there better be a damn good reason for my time, because CB isn't the hottest property in town..IMHO.

Affiliate's WILL come screamin for you if you put an upsell into that funnel dude..

Just my .02

Peace

Jay

I agree with JordanFrancis: there is some great food for thought here.

Including, in part, what Kiev says. I just read another thread bleating on about creating remarkable content. Nothing to truly disagree with so perhaps I shouldn't be so uncharitable with my use of "bleating". I think Kiev is probably just echoing a frustration felt by a lotta folks.

There certainly is this big hoo-hah about "killer content" and "content is king" and so on. But I'm not sure that's quite right.

Why does some silly news story about the latest vacuous bimbo or buff stud get 80million views on any given day?

Where's the quality content there? What's remarkable about that?

(Actually, some folks might--lookout Vince, here comes that STI again--be pedantic about that point and insist that what I call inconsequential gossiping is, in fact, remarkable by virtue of so many people remarking on it. Whatever.)

The people who've spoken about the offer have, I think, made an extremely valuable point here. First... make a market an offer it can't refuse and then back it up with value.

But Kiev's point is still valid: That ain't gonna necessarily have money coming in the door.

And that's where all the good advice here about smart marketing comes into play, I guess.

I'm not suggesting hoodwinking people ("Down, Vince, down!"), or doing the old bait'n'switch once you've got them to your content or anything else. But ya gotta be making them an offer that's gonna "change their live for reals".

This is, in a way Marketing 101, right? But I still think Kiev's OP shouldn't be completely dismissed because there seems to be a truckload (no, make that an aircraft carrier load) of people online who just want load after load after load of free-free-free content and the minute you even hint at making money they throw their arms up and accuse you being a charlatan.

I know, that's just some folks. And some niches.

But surely you've all experienced it.

(Which would probably mean it ain't just some niches.)

The point is that great content isn't actually enough, but it's easy to construct the "build it and they will come" fallacy in your own head when every man and his dog are always bangin on about "killer content" and "content is king" and so on.

A couple of people have pointed out the corollary, i.e. that shite content won't get you jack. THAT's the message that should be promulgated more because what's really meant by the "content in king" argument, in my opinion, is:

Great content, plus an irresistible offer and great copy to spin it, plus super value, plus marketing systems that generate leads and handle all the laborious stuff, plus a back end of the type that would have SirMixalot a-lip-smackin...

...equals dollars.

Dunno. Now I'm just rambling. And a quick review of my post so far tells me I've not been as consistent as I would have liked.

Whaddayathink?

-------------------------------------

@Vince... I think you've probably given a lotta folks a good kick in the cobblers here with what you've said. It's really good stuff, man. Rock on.

Particularly this bit:


That last post, though, bro... what can I say? I'm bustin a gut here, dude!

Out.

TheNightOwl

Sorry. 100% disagree. I can almost guarantee you that if you are able to create a blog and post one quality article EVERY SINGLE DAY for four years straight then your blog will certainly have become an authority.

Same with products. Create a product with super great value that is remarkable i.e. something that is worth making an remark about, then you don't need to hook up with Kern or Filsaime. The word of mouth will kick in (if its really that GOOD).

Value is the key. Amazing content over time is enough.

I think "value" depends on the person giving the evaluation. Something that I buy and love may not be at all right for someone else. I might think a $100,000 sports car is a great value, while an 80 year old grandma wouldn't want the thing if you gave it to her for free. Anyway, some famous person that I can't remember said that "reality isn't important, only perception matters." Sad but true.

Let me add to my post above...

If what we are really talking about here is the bottom line, the profits you make, then all this talk of value is also BS.

I know one particular multi-millionaire who has never provided a single written word of value in his entire life unless it was to me and other friends in a private message.

He sells millions of dollars worth of product and can barely write a decent letter to his own Mother.

You can do "value" till you choke and still be a bum with 20 cents in the bank. (I'm not downing providing value, please try and read between the lines here)

So what does this millionaire do?

He gets eyeballs...millions of them, and leads them to buy products other people sell. That's all. He's bypassed "copy"...he's bypassed "Value"...he's bypassed writing "articles"...he went past all of that.

I'm not saying any particular approach is wrong, but I'm seeing people state things as though they are rules and requirements without which you will fail.

Like I said in a post recently, if I were starting over or starting new I would invest everything into building an authority site on the topic of health. Not because I care about articles or value, but because I care about "eyeballs" - millions of them. Don't project your "morals" on me, I'm just trying to make a point here.

What are you going to set up to get millions of eyeballs?

That is what you need to be thinking about...

Are you going to create a massive authority site that rakes in million of eyeballs from google?

Are you going to create something so incredibly awesome it's raved about in every corner of the globe?

Are you going to set up a paid advertising system that gets unlimited amounts of leads converting at a profit so the system is self funding and virtually never ending?

And on and on. It's the "system" you need to think about first and foremost.

Back in the early days affiliates was my system for eyeballs. And it set me for life. I did some pretty unique things back then that are not so unique now, like coming out with the first affiliate ID brandable ebooks. That was new and a raving success.

There are many paths to take, but if that path doesn't include a viable plan for getting in front of millions of eyeballs you simply aren't going to get anywhere.

So the answer is ignore quality and value - just focus on marketing and you will be wealthy...hmmmm

Good luck!

Jeff

Andy said
"This is why sales copy is so important - you can sell a bad product with good copy, but you can't sell a good product with bad copy."

How true.

Sadly when you first start our you try to talk "normal" whatever that is. And you quickly see yourself starving; so your stomach starts to grumble and you say "Hell, I gotsa sell!"

Then you write the most over the top uberhype this side of the universe that sound like a rookie used car dealer with a bad haircut and VOILA! - Sales...

@Allen... too funny, my man.

There's something I positively love about human psychology and that's the way we like to dress up our motivations and rationalise them and make them sound more grandiose because we just can't accept how totally base the vast majority of them actually are.

(And when I say "base" I don't mean "crude" or "crass" or any other such synonyms. What I mean is primitive and LCD (lowest common denominator)).


THE END.

This is kinda what I was striving for last night when I responded here and said that the OP had made a valid point and perhaps we were glossing over it. I just couldn't quite articulate or pinpoint what was sitting on the tip of my tongue. That's why my previous post sounded (even to me) a little disjointed and lacking focus.

So thank you, Allen, for bringing it into extremely sharp focus.

It's what I was driving at with the bimbo/stud example.

Most of us eat up drivel and are on an endless quest for shortcuts. The National Enquirer type mags and the National Lottery are unlikely to EVER go broke.

Value? Nice, I guess. But not necessarily necessary to make money.

And before anyone goes charging off and responding that the gossip columns are different... I see it in this niche too. A niche where people spend real money. Not just a buck fifty for some crappy magazine, but SERIOUS money.

I won't name any names, but I groan every time some big name huckster (whoops! I mean marketer... (and no... **groan** I don't think all marketers are hucksters)) releases some "Free Report" that's basically an extended freakin' salesletter for the huge homestudy course or seminar or coaching program or whatever that's coming out soon... and they get 587 gushing comments on their blog saying "Oh wow! Thanks for providing so much value yet again! You really overdeliver. I can't wait until [insert product name] is released. I'm gonna devour it!"

Or other such sycophantic crap that makes me wanna puke.

[Note: I have no problem with free reports as a lead-gen device. The point I'm making here is that people are seemingly very happy to eat up stuff of little or no value, but claim (read: delude themselves into believing) that it is. It's interesting, look out for it.]

This is an example of (as someone has already posted in this thread, I think), people wanting to be sold. It's not the same as the lottery ticket, but it's not too far removed. It's silver bullet stuff.

People are people. We all have more or less the same primordial hot-buttons and I don't think providing value has jack to do with being wildly successful.

Actually, now that I'm on fire and on a red-hot rant, it makes me think of my own profession. I won't mention what it is because it's not important. But I could cite so many examples of seeing smiling happy departing clients/customers and I know that the product/service provided them was of questionable value--or at least not up to my own standards.

[Disclaimer/Self-promo: Not from MY groups! LOL! ]

"Ah ha!" some will say (actually some in this thread have already said!) "What's important, though, is what the customer perceives as value."

Uh, yeah. That's the point Allen was making (unless I'm mistaken).

So... back to Kiev's original point: If people are more than happy to pony up for what is essentially crap (National Enquirer anyone? Diet pills? Anyone seen how outta control the "health and beauty' industry is in Japan regarding the claims they not only make... not only get away with legally... but make a MINT off of?)... and they are--proven fact (How much did the latest pics of some celeb cavorting on a beach in Majorca sell for?--then as Allen points out, why should people give a stuff about value if it's just about making money?

Sure, plenty of folks are not just in it for the money. I accept that. Fine. If you really want to provide value to people, then that's a good (I'm won't go so far as to say "noble") thing to do.

Great.

But the OP's point was that we're told and told and told again to provide value, value, value... when I could (but won't) name several big names right off the top of my head who don't seem to provide much in the way of value at all... yet keep preaching it to everyone else and actually getting paid handsomely to do it! How do ya like them apples?

Pretty funny stuff, no?

Providing value is great and I try to do it every opportunity I get. But I do it for other reasons. Probably the same simple reasons that most other folks do: That it gives me a sense of purpose, that it makes me feel good about myself because I'm helping people, etcetera.

But these things have nothing at all to do with what will put bread on my table. I don't buy the idea that providing value will necessarily lead to my making any moolah.

I have on site (connected to my area of professional expertise) where I provide plenty of value and I'm lucky if I even get a "Thanks" posted to my blog. Do it in person where people are paying big bucks and they can't thank me enough. Try and make affiliate offers or sell on that site and rebellion. (Yeah, different thread, kinda... and I'm reassessing my strategy on that site. I maintain it because I enjoy it. The point I'm trying to make here is that I provide heaps of value and people are not interested in paying a cent. As i said, barely even a "Thank you". The surveys that I run from time to time would be depressing if they didn't make me laugh at just how selfish and self-absorbed sooooooo many people are and how that aircraft carrier of people I mentioned before seem to think that the world simply owes them stuff.)

Ask the folks on this forum who do trend-marketing. Find a hot trend, throw up a landing page with some kind of stupid interactive dross related to whatever is today's hot topic ("Click here if you think Britney's head would look better botoxed or exploded and get a $50 discount voucher to Scank's Skincare" )... link it to a PPA (pay-per-action) offer... drive traffic too it by doing the SocialBookmarking Boogie... ka-ching!

Value my bollocks.

Rant done.

I agree....Some of the best products I have purchased are not selling like hot cakes. Then there's Get Google Ads Free, one of the most ridiculous products ever created, and that guy is making bank.

Granted, his affiliates are doing all the leg work and he has great affiliate resources. But nonetheless, that product is just horrible.

Wow. I love this thread! Surprised by some answer but still like it.
A lot to think about, a lot to test, and a lot of action to be taken!

Alex

True... but I do find the problem with a lot of internet markets who market internet marketing products quite really don't give a hoot about the product and only care about the money so you can end up with a piece of crap.

But your point is a very good one. I know lots of artists who make great music but because it's not marketed properly they go no where.

Bottom line: if you want people to come back for more then make sure you don't sell them crap.

:-) B

Alex,

Sorry to hear about your frustration. We all go through the same at some point or another. Listen to this carefully and you will go a long way.

The amount of money you make in internet marketing does not solely rely on the quality of the product. Success comes from the way you market your product. Therefore, I would suggest that you learn all you can about marketing and promoting your product.

I have seen products promoted so wonderfully that sales just flourish and the product being promoted was something my 3 year old niece could do. As soon as I learned the art of marketing, sales started pouring in like crazy.

Your product doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be "good enough." The impression I get from you is that you have already prided yourself with a quality product. Now... go out, learn from the best marketers and promote your product like crazy!!!

Good luck!

I think you just have never created a great product. When you do, all you have to do is get a few people exposed to it and they'll start spreading the word. I've done it a few times, it's actually that simple.

The WordPress plugin in my sig, for example, has sold over 300 copies in the last two months... over $35,000 in profit with less than $1000 in paid advertising (WSOs and sponsored reviews on blogs) to get the word out to start it all. I wrote a post about it in the War Room here.

Now all the sales come from referrals, affiliates, forum posts about it, blog posts (not paid) about it... people that buy it are talking about it because it's a quality product that solves their problem.

I actually disagree entirely.

If your product is THAT good, it will generate its' own viral buzz. Then affiliates will pick up on it and experience good conversions due to the presell and the masses of testominials from the inevitable happy customers.

Then, as more affiliates promote it and more people buy, the bigger the viral buzz gets.

This cycle continues right up until the Guru raises his eybrow, stands tall from his golden thrown, walks out of his meditation hut on the top of Mount Ooobiggoo and declares a JV with you, his minion.

Lol, jokes aside, can you see why great content is so powerful? You can't carry momentum with a shi''y product, but with a good product you can attract a snowballing word of mouth buzz.

Recommended reading:
Amazon.com: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters:...
Create products people need, rather than try to make them need the product you create.

I disagree. People will buy something on 'percieved' value, and the better that percieved value the more they will comeback to buy again.

For instance, say you are selling a pocket knife (as an example) To you, that pocket knife is worth $1. You sell it for $2. Its junk to you, but to the guy that has a knot in his shoelace and he's late for a job interview and cant get his shoes tied, that knife is worth a million bucks. And you just sold it to him for $2!!!! Its percieved value. Always give someone more than what they ask for, thats a standard train of thought in just about any sales transcript.