Do WSOs Need a NEW Strategy?

After quite a while, I ran a WSO. Posted it on 8th September.
The offer is time-sensitive, and ends in 3 days. I chose that
approach because of how busy the forum is lately.

Boy, was I over-optimistic in my guesstimate!

On 11th September, the day the deal ends, my WSO listing is
on Page 5.

Curious, I counted the number of listings per page.

It's SIXTY.

That means a (determined) WSO browser would have to wade past
almost THREE HUNDRED other offers before even seeing my title
or headline.

And this is a marketing forum, where the headlines of most WSO
offers would go right into a beginner copywriter's swipe file!

Which brings me (in a roundabout way) to my point.

Back in the day, a WSO listing was enough by itself to make
sales - because you got a fair shot at having your offer in
front of a targeted audience for long enough to be exposed
to a fair segment of it.

Today, with the speed at which a listing scrolls off the front
pages, it is time for a revised marketing strategy to
make WSOs work.

1. You cannot rely any longer on ONLY exposure on the WSO
forum for sales - unless you're very lucky with your timing
and appeal to the market

2. You must harness many of the alternative channels of
exposure on the forum - especially your signature at the
bottom of posts you make (and that is why I've disabled
my signature for all posts on this thread, to avoid the
impression that I'm doing this to drive attention to my
own WSO!!!)

3. You must participate actively in discussions. I found
that each post I made on the forum daily brought a fresh
round of sales. It could be coincidence, but I *think*
that people who read those posts clicked on the signature
and found my offer.

4. You must plan on an OFF-FORUM promotion to go with
the WSO listing. I emailed my lists once when the WSO
went live, and once before the deadline.

5. JVs matter even for WSOs. While I didn't do it with
this offer, it's likely that running an ad for your WSO
in front of many other people's audiences will boost
sales.

6. The affiliate program that WSO Plus offers becomes
more attractive than ever before - as it bakes in some
opportunities for extra exposure to your offer.

7. The Warrior banner ad at the top of the forum is
one more avenue of getting more exposure, especially if
your WSO has gained some traction, has feedback on the
thread, and earned you enough to comfortably afford
the banner ad.

Based on this experience, I'll probably go back and revise
some of the material I have presented in the past about
using WSOs to get an information business going.

And more to the point, I will very likely revise my earlier
recommendation to BEGIN with a WSO - because it has now
become a far more competitive venue to make sales on than
others which have become relatively 'low hanging fruit'.

In fact, for my recent WSO, I'm not sure if the sales from
the forum alone would have covered the cost of running my
ad before the listing scrolled off page 1. That it ended
up making a big multiple of that is a reflection of using
other marketing methods to drive traffic to the WSO.

What are your thoughts about a need for a different WSO
strategy than the "post it and forget it" approach
that was effective in the past?

All success
Dr.Mani