How I convinced my competitor to sell my product - without meaning to

Hi,

to more experienced IM'ers this may be old hat but for those of you who are less experienced and have just created on ebook and placed it on a site like ClickBank and are looking to find ways of making sales, I hope what happened to me will give you food for thought.

I wrote an ebook in the 'Save Marriage' niche. Before doing so, I bought a couple of the best selling books in the niche from ClickBank and learned what it was they were offering and then went and produced my own version, which I believe, is as good, if not better than the products I bought.

Well, like most people that place a product on ClickBank I got some affiliate signups but they weren't making any sales.

However, I wanted to add more content to my site and thought it would be a good idea to approach experts in this field and ask them for an audio presentation or take part in an interview on any particular subject in this niche. In return I would create a page on my website with their audio, their link to their site and whatever promo material they wanted.

I searched Google with my keywords and compiled a list of over 500 websites in the niche. They were a mix of marriage counsellors, marriage coaches, life coaches etc.

I sent an email to each of them. As expected 90+ never responded. However some did and I went ahead and got unique audios and interviews. Here's a couple of examples:

Save Marriage | Stop Divorce | Marriage Help
Save Marriage | Stop Divorce | Marriage Help

I send out emails to my subscribers about the audio and they then click back to my site and listen to them.

Anyhow, when I sent out my email request to the 500+ list, I also sent an email to my competitors. They also had ebooks listed on ClickBank and had been involved in marriage guidance for years.

In my email I simply asked them to share their expertise with an audio presentation or interview - just like everyone else I was emailing. And, in return I would promote them etc.

One competitor, who sells a lot of marriage books on ClickBank actually replied. They told me they didn't have any audio but they were glad that I had reached out to them and that they were thinking of promoting my ebook to their 22K list of subscribers.

They asked for a copy of my ebook, which I sent.

About 10 days later I was going to bed and thought that I'd check my email and to my amazement I saw sales of my book.

I logged into to my CB account and saw that it was my competitor who making all the sales. They had indeed sent out an emailing to their list. Amazing!

Over the next few hours and days the sales kept on coming. I'm still getting sales.

The first point I have learned is that competitors are also partners. After all, once a competitor sells their ebook, they want to keep promoting products to their buyers so they will often promote their 'competitors' products as well.

The second point I learned was to offer benefit to them and ask for little in return. I didn't come right out and ask them to promote my book; I asked them for their expertise and, in return, I would set up a webpage on my site with their links and promo material and also add these to the autoresponder email I send to my subscribers.

We both get something out of it; they get promotion and I get credibility.

Well, that's it. I made sales when I wasn't expecting to; I was simply looking for good content from experts in my niche.

I was just trying to make relationships not money but, in the end, did both.

Robert