When Big Launches or Big Specials Go Very, Very Wrong
Let me count the ways for you...
* Just the other day, I was recounting the story of the lady who invested a ton of money writing and distributing 100's of articles on the premise of ranking well for mesothelioma, because she had seen that people were paying as much as $20 per click for that keyword. While this isn't a launch per se, in the natural sense, it shows very succinctly how launches could go wrong.
The problem was in this case that the website launch was doomed before it began, because her keyword research was flawed.
People were bidding up to $20 per click -- well, one person was bidding $20 per click!!! One attorney was involved in a mesothelioma class action lawsuit, and he was paying up to $20 per click, but he was only spending $40 a day.
In her case, the marketer spent tens of thousands of dollars to rank for a keyword phrase, so that she could monetize on Adsesne. But the attorney in question was only spending $1200 per month on Google Adwords, and Google was keeping half of that.
With only Google Adsense as her monetization plan, she was doomed because she built her business model on a weak foundation.
It took her almost a year to realize that her plan had gone wrong, and she finally disappeared from the article marketing landscape after having spent tens of thousands of dollars.
* In 2008, an iPhone launch was crippled by a server crash (Server Crash Caused Glitch In iPhone Launch - News Story - KIRO Seattle). For roughly the first 24 hours after the launch, customers were unable to activate their new iPhones.
* Also in 2008, Frank Kern launched his Mass Control program. While the server withstood the onslaught of orders, his membership site was unable to withstand the "mass" of people logging into the site simultaneously.
* On the heels of Kern's product launch, Jeff Walker launched Product Launch Formula 2.0. His server crashed on launch as well -- or did it?
Edit: I do not for a moment doubt that Jeff Walker suffered technical problems with his launch. Many people questioned it as a marketing trick, but along with others including Paul Myers, I know that it is easy for a website to get caught in technical traps. For example, all of my websites were offline for 16 days in May of 2009. That was when I got my first gray hairs. My web hosting company moved my server from one machine to another, which predicated a name server IP change. I knew in advance and made the changes on my Domain Registrar's website -- I thought. When the day of the server change came, ALL of my sites went offline and my email broke. My Domain Registrar was in lock-down, by order of ICAAN. I could not make any changes at all to my account at the Domain Registrar, until ICAAN completed the transfer to another Domain Registrar. There was nothing I could do. I was stuck in Purgatory for 16 days. |
Many suggested that it was a case of a "scarcity tactic" to drive up interest and sales, but that would be a dangerous game when 100's of thousands of dollars in sales are at stake.
Fast forward to Black Friday, 2010...
* Host Gator apparently ran a Black Friday special this morning that went horribly wrong.
Someone skyped me about it this morning, very upset with as she called it, "HostGator's bait and switch tactics"!!
For details on the offer, see here: (http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ull-years.html)
The sale was supposed to run for 4 hours, from 5am to 9am CST. And the Black Friday sale offered hosting for as much as 80% off of many packages.
I heard the complaint at 9:30 am CST.
She said their 4-hour sale lasted 8 minutes!!!
And Host Gators' servers apparently crashed during their Black Friday Sale.
As someone said in Skype, "Yeah, if their servers can't handle the traffic for their own sale, how the Hell are they gonna handle our traffic?"
The only saving grace offered to Host Gator was a note that several people had received several emails about Host Gators' Black Friday Sale, so it is assumed that it maybe had received the same level of promotion as a Syndicate Launch usually gets.
The lady who originally brought it up was still sitting in the Host Gator customer service queue at 10am, with 111 people in front of her!!
With all of the things that can go wrong during a big launch or a big sale, the ones that can be most easily managed are usually the ones that are often the culprit leading to disaster.
If you tried to buy from the Host Gator Black Friday Sale this morning, would you mind sharing your experience with us too?
Did you get in on the deal?
Or did you miss out on the Black Friday deals?
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Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.
Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.