Think You Are Going To Be Rich Selling WSO's? Think Again

He's right. Relying Solely on WSO's as a source of your income is a high mistake that many people (newbies especially) are guilty of. The best way to use WSO's is to use them as a way to gather leads and build your list. And of course only sell or promote high quality products.

Yea you will never make zillions of dollars overnight....So many people buy into these "get rich quick" deals when it is not possible overnight....

I have only seen only few WSOs which are continuously in the WSO from years, others disappear after sometime, which probably means it didnt work well for the seller.

I dont think it is wiser to depend on WSO earnings solely..

Do you know that there are some people around here running 7-figure businesses based on WSOs and ultra-low ticket products?

The term "Rich" is variable.

To some newbies reading this, they maybe thinking WOW, I've got to make a WSO.

But yes I agree.

Here's what I can tell you.

I've helped about 50 people recently all create 6 figure+ businesses in the WSO section alone.

Several of those recently hit the 7 figure mark from WSO's + list building alone..

so yes. WSO section is alive and well and there's tons of money to be made for everyone.

no. you don't have to do 100% commission.

I never have. never will. if your product converts and gives a high epc, that's good enough to get alot of big affiliates on board. So there's still plenty of money to be kept for yourself on the front end and oto.

Even if you did give away 100% commission.. who cares?

find someone else who has an awesome high quality WSO related to your niche that is doing 100% commission, promote his the very next day.. and CRUSH IT! BOOM!

you just made 100% commission for yourself.

where's the problem?

Or like you hinted on.. find some one with a webinar.. let him set up everything. you sit back and get paid.

I co-hosted a webinar.. I did nothing. literally. lol. I showed up and did a 3 minute introduciton. he took care of the rest.

I made $85k from it... and this was from a tiny list of 700, and sold his product..

So that list of 500 customers/buyers that you get from selling your WSO that you just talked about.. just got BAD ASS!

Affiliates. Schmilliates.
If you got a hot offer that converts... it's not hard to get affiliates to promote it at all.
I help newbies who do their first product line up tons of affilaites.. all the time.

but even if you don't have affiliates promoting for you.. doesn't matter. you can still crush it. There is so much more traffic out there..

facebook ppc, solo ads, banner traffic, ppv, signature traffic, youtube, etc..

so yes. I agree with you. if people think they're going to get rich by quickly slapping together a half-ass report and just listing it in the WSO section..

and then believing that money will magically fall out of the sky.. they're crazy.

But don't be such a negative nancy, Shawn, when it comes to WSO's..

There is TONS of money to be made. The sky is not falling.

Just be smart. think outside the box. do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.. and you'll do fine

I saw some stats compiled by one of the WSO JV Groups on Facebook and apparently over 96% of WSO's fail. Not sure what they classify as 'failure' but it's true that most hardly sell any volume. Just look at the numbers on W+ and you'll see most people can't sell much more than 10-20 copies and hardly anyone is doing 1,000+ sales these days unless they already have a huge list, lots of JV connections and a good reputation.

The best thing to do is to use them as a lead generation tool then funnel your subscribers into higher paying offers like coaching, membership sites, webinars or high ticket products. Selling $7 WSO's isn't getting anyone rich these days.

Shawn - I love this post. I have set up a handful of WSO's over the years. All did ok, though none were even close to stupid money successful. The last one I did was a bomb here on the forum. I relied too heavily on the Warrior Forum to do all the work for me.

My number one mistake - I didn't find any/enough JV partners. I was afraid to reach out and ask for partnerships. And the ones I did, I didn't push to promote it.

My second mistake - I had a single product package - no Upsells or downsells. I know it's important to have an upsell and a downsell, but I was in too big of a rush to try and make some money.

My third mistake - This is directly related to the first two. Because I didn't recruit a group of JV partners and because I only had the one product in the sales funnel, I believe I priced the item a little higher than I should have to start. And, with only one product in the sales funnel, I only offered 50% commissions to affiliates.

I am realizing, if I had recruited JV partners and offered 100% commission, but priced the product at 1/3 the original sales price, added an upsell priced at original target price with a 50% commission and a downsell at mid-price point, I more than likely would have doubled or tripled my net.

You post has helped open my eyes. Lesson learned.

Thanks for posting.

-- John

Thank you Shawn for this post. I created a product and was going to do a WSO, but discovered what you already wrote in your post, so I decided not to do it, although I am thinking of giving my product as a free WSO for collecting leads. The problem is that in this case also I don´t know if its really worth it. I mean that even if you get 300 or 500 leads, the quality of those freebies seeking leads is much lower than that of 20 buyers. So, in my case, I don´t really know if it´s worth doing a WSO (In a cost effective balance a solo ad could be more profitable). I would much appreciate if anybody could assist me in this dilema.

I love threads like this because it scares others away from selling WSO's.

They are far from dead. But do you have to work hard to have a successful WSO? Yes.

Do 99% of the people who release WSO's expect to just stick their product up and make hundreds of sales? Yes.

Is that the reality? No.

Have a look at the Warrior Plus stats alone. They have now sold over $55 million worth of WSO's through their system only the last couple of years. Add in JVZoo, Product Pay, and others and that figure would be even bigger. Someone is getting all that money. If you say it's all too hard and play the victim then you won't be one of the people getting a share of that money.

So sad that I missed out on those years!

On my last WSO we messed up the $27+ 50% OTO and at the very last minute had to pull it cause of it's issues just before launching! So mad! So only had a 100% FE and low price $12 75% BE. Though if I had not had to pull the high price OTO it would of been worth it since it sold about 1,400 copies (that mostly all went to affiliates).

It's sad that it's not what it used to be. Though on the other hand, it's still way better to build a list that way as opposed to paying for solo ads! Solo ad buyers give away a product for 100% free to get 'freebie seekers' on their list, AND they pay for them at about $40 per 50 leads or so (same for FREE WSO's listed per bump).

They might have an OTO in place after the opt in, though since they were mailing to freebie seekers the conversions aren't great and they usually only make back their $40 investment, then have to find the next one to buy.

The stats you mentioned above sound much better! Instead of getting about 50 new 'freebie seeker' leads every couple days for free, you get 500+ buyer leads in only a few days and get paid at least $2k to get those higher quality leads!

I'd take option 2!

Only thing is it is a lot more work and more time consuming and you don't have endless products you can create that would make a good selling WSO. Though the return is still better than solo ads for list building.


Most people selling WSO's about how they made $x,xxxxx dollars from their WSO's are misleading! As they pretty much all only mention the Gross amount the WSO's received, not their personal net amount they walked away with.


That's true for all list building Unfortunetely. Still makes people decent money if they can build large enough lists. It's a numbers game etc.


I agree. You could get lucky with one, though for the majority of them, don't expect too much, especially without doing the entire launch process, and the net is going to be small without a great high ticket funnel in place. It takes a lot more pre launch work and often experience and reputation built up first to get one of those 4,000+ selling huge five to six figure launches!

My first WSO was listed with no OTO or JVs so I got to see how much traffic would come in from the forum alone. Not much! It may say (6k viewing) though they're mostly all viewing a specific page they got to from a link, not browsing.

Only relying on forum traffic you're lucky to make back your $40. I got some affiliates and sold over 100 copies though that was a huge failure and disappointment, after putting weeks into writing and perfecting it, giving away secrets that were making me money, paying $150 to a designer for the sales page, etc. The conversion rate was almost 10% without a single refund, so that wasn't a failure. It was the traffic that was the failure.

It also changes what you're willing to put into and give away for your WSO's. With such low returns it's no longer worth it to give away some of your best kept secrets and tips that are earning you money elsewhere, and invite competition on those in exchange for almost nothing. So the quailty of WSO's goes down!

Now days since there's so little buying traffic directly from WF, I see more and more sellers launching with JVZoo and using their own self hosted sales pages instead. More control and better for getting traffic from a wider range of sources. Though they still use the JV connections and pricing model from WF. 100% low ticket FE and 50% middle ticket BE.

I would only rethink what it actually takes to make good money from a high selling WSO. They're still worth it IF you put into them what is required now days to make it a hit.

If I made that $2,000 I would be a happy camper. But when he said those figures are a bit high, he was right. The advertising costs and the cots of creating was more then the revenue for me. Not sure I will go there again.

Hey OP, you are going to piss Alan off with this thread. But it probably needed to be said.

This doesn't just go for the WSO section but for life in general.

If something was mind-numbingly easy, wielded positive success every time it was done and required little effort, everyone would be doing it.

The problem is: A lot of people today want everything for nothing and don't want to put any kind of spin or action into anything. Just take a look at some of the scraping sites where people give away people's WSOs and how many people lurk there requesting things.

You might be thinking: We should shut those places down!

But why? Those people aren't ever going to put in sufficient effort to ever create their own business, they're going to sift through forums looking for freebies that'll make money for them without effort.

The people on top of the WSO+ lists aren't wizards, they're just putting in more effort than your typical WSO salesman who puts up a WSO and calls it a night. It's not the reality behind WSO sales, it's the reality behind selling a product period.

For people who think releasing a product is as easy as launching a website, here are some of the real facts:

1) No one's going to just buy your product to make you money. That's a common problem with a lot of people is that they just expect people to throw money at them. No one is logging on to make you money, they want to solve a problem or they want information.
2) You're going to have to work on your social skills. People will ask you questions, they'll probably even ask questions that have been answered before and all it takes is one lost temper or poorly answered question to cost you a few sales from the visitors or lurkers there.
3) Refunds will always be a part of selling. Some people will genuinely disagree with your product and some will just be serial refund-ers who go through product pages, get it then request a refund immediately after.
4) Traffic is another issue that people seem to forget about. Just because you have some amazing product, doesn't mean everyone's going to come running to it, you have to get it out in front of them. Yes, a JV with a list helps or perhaps even some PPC but there are multiple ways to promote a product or WSO after it launches to keep getting traffic.

The problem isn't that WSO selling or infoproduct marketing sucks, it's that people are misguided on what it is and expect people to just hand them money because they've designed a product.

As far as affiliates go, as someone stated earlier, I'm pretty sure an affiliate would be happy promoting something high converting for 25% of the sale rather than a random crap product for 100% of the sale.

The reality of making money online period is, it's not easy (contrary to what people who don't understand the internet says) and if it was as easy as some info products would have you believe, everyone would be doing it, making the value of money hit rock bottom.

Regards,
Corey

As someone who launched his first WSO 2 months ago and will be launching a 2nd one next week, I've made more money in the past 2 months in comparison to my 2 highest months as a regular affiliate marketer with a list. Not too bad for a first WSO and I've never made one prior to that.

I did learn quite a lot of important lessons from my first WSO and I know my 2nd will probably sell much better.

It also depends on how you launch your WSO...

Writing a WSO and posting it in the WSO section without marketing it at all obviously won't bring in a lot of sells.

You would keep 50% of the FE as well would you not? Not all your FE goes to affiliates. You will have your own sales I'm sure.

Am I right to think this?

Don't be fooled into WSO. But instead have WSO as one of the ways to make your business grow! You gotta do 5-7 things to make it work!

Your product may start it's life as a WSO but that should rarely be the end of it's life span. Use the WSO section to cheaply test products and get feedback, conversion and sales figures then move it elsewhere and start selling at a higher price.

Don't look at releasing WSO's as a business, it's just part of a business. A source of traffic and testing if you like.

I have found that the key ingredients to WSO product launch success are:

(1) Getting coaching on how to launch products upfront, especially if you are a newbie
(2) Launching quality products and offering lifetime service after the sale
(3) Forming relationships with other affiliates both for your product launch and for offering quality products to your list (offering 100% commissions on product launches seems to be falling by the wayside and for good reason)

One small product launch (300-600 sales) can afford some with enough income to support themselves just fine with email marketing alone. Recommending highly targeted, relevant offers to one's list is important. One also needs to ensure that they are writing corporate quality emails to their subscribers rather than the one or two-liners that are commonly seen that offer no real value.

There is success to be had doing WSOs has been my experience. And, some people's definition of being "rich" is different than others. Having meaningful relationships, being financially independent, and being in good health is considered being "rich" by some.

For the newbie reading this thread:

The key is not to look at the numbers that people are calling awful. The OP was right on the mark stating that you should have a strong back end in place if you would like to make a good consistent monthly income.

Where IMO he falls short is that he paints a very one sided picture. One that involves massive amounts of work for very little return. I just did a WSO and did over 135 sales with no real JV. It also converted really well for an MMO product. Strong 7% My OTO did a 19% conversion and a 0% refund rate.
Decent numbers for a couple hours of my time and $200

As for whoever stated that 1000 sales is rare..... Really?
It happens all the time. Yes JV's are booked, but there are a ton of sleepers out there that will come up and make a big day for you out of the blue. How can someone attract those sleepers? Well...And this is just a thought. Make some friends around here. Stop looking for the money and start learning that the big boys and girls around here have friends. Not I will scratch your back if you scratch mine friends, but real I can't wait to see you at the next event friends. Networking usually leads to friendships. Marketing becomes a few conversations not some spam attack.

The key to doing a WSO.... Do one and find out. Fall down and feel the pain of failing when you tell yourself this one will be the key to setting you free. Then make a choice as to how committed you are to your success. You can dust yourself off and kick ass on the next one. OR
You can quit and walk away knowing that at least you tried. If that's your deal. Those who do succeed in the WSO section. Don't do the latter.

Not really that tough. It all takes work and trial and error. The one thing I do know for sure.

Put your heart into it and think about your customers and how to best help them, and you will improve everytime. Go after the money and watch the bad reviews come pouring in.
I personally would rather do 100 sales and have 100 happy customers than do 1000+ and have 500 buyers who don't care about what I have to say next.

There will always be people giving you reasons not to do something. This post one of them. Ignore it and go for it.

i am agree with Will :- advantage or disadvantage depending on how you choose to use it,

yes a new be can be Rich in just one or 2 or 3 wso ,
like Rome wasn't built in a day every things takes time and hear work,
The Big issue is now a days more and more people are jumping in to WSo with a dream they will be Rich with in few month in internet marketing, without knowing the Facts .
if you want to be true Rich want a good income from Im then have to work lot more than just 2 or 4 hours...

nice read, and I agree %100.

never the less, you didn't spell out "what can't be done" but more like "how not to do it."

Hi Shawn,

I think you hit the nail with your post here. Surely there will be Wso's that generate lots of money, enough to take a break for a few months or even a year, but over 90% of the Wso's don't reach the income one expects when launching it i think.

But then again, you can still make a nice income when you have a good quality product, and you only need a few good affiliates to promote your offer.

You simply need everything in place to make good money in the Wso section, because you won't make decent money in the front end if you have an average product.

Jens

A lot of WSO's end up moving over to Clickbank or other market places. Or like someone else mentioned you could take it to AppSumo, Udemy, Lynda or various other market places depending on what it is or sell it exclusively on your own website. Once you've created a buzz through the WSO, got some sales figures, seen how well it converts / sells you can then use that data to your advantage.

Selling something for $7 forever isn't a great strategy IMO.

True, the more places it's sell for the better but in the spirit of the WSO section they are 'supposed' to be special offers and special offers don't usually last forever.

I think that most products have a limited life span in the WSO section. People seem obsessed with NEW launches. I've recommended products to my lists before that have been around for a while and are proven good sellers, work well, no complaints about the product and many members of my list have emailed me (some quite angrily) asking me why I'm promoting an old product. I promoted something a short while ago that had been released just a week earlier in the previous month and had an angry email from a guy saying I must be desperate to be promoting products from last month. :confused:

Thank you for saying all of that, not so new. I purchased a five star WSO that cost me less that ten dollars some months ago, the budget is tight at that week. It turns out that the seller is friendly and I am willing to opt in his list. Just some days ago I purchase his high ticket webinar session.
Had the WSO cost me more than 10 dollars, I would never seen one of the best webinar I've ever seen.

I made a profit on the WSO I'm tied into but agreed, it's definitely flat-lining.

I think the reason why WSO is still so important for IM - it is about traffic, targeted traffic. It is #1 site having so many MMO niche audience here. As someone highlighted, it is about value, it is the value that make the products can sell for years. With such a tremendous traffic source, we cannot neglect the opportunities in WSO. It is a matter of the value you bring to the table and the strategy you used in selling.

Every marketing venue I've participated in has changed over the years. The WSO forum is no different. I started in it over 2 years ago. It seemed competitive then, but what did I know? !

There was a lot more organic traffic searching for products than there appears today. But, as Will mentioned, if you keep at it, and have something of true value, you can carve out your own success niche. Most warriors simply do not give it enough time and enough tries at bat.

...and there isn't just one marketing model that works - there are many, and ones that haven't even been tried yet. You definitely do NOT have to give up 100% commission to do good sales.
My last one, a few weeks ago, did almost 13K in sales with a healthy profit.
...and I have an entire offline business that takes most of my time and attention.
_____
Bruce

offering 100% on the front end is absolutely fine, i love doing it because it's good for affiliates and if you have a good product then you can pick more affiliates and get sent a boat load of buyers for free

my latest wso has done 1000 sales and i gave 100% commission on the fe

i still made made a nice chunk of money from the upsells and also i funnelled tonnes more people into my membership site too

oh and not too mention i now have an extra 1000 buyers

did i manage this on my first wso?

no

did it take work?

yes

can anyone do this if they bother to learn?

yes

you can make some fantastic money but at the same time it does take work, the ones who just think by chucking together a quick wso to make lots of money are the ones who will never make a bean

paul

I've made about $8,200 selling WSO's on Warrior since joining in February. I'd hardly consider that rich, or even a good income, but hobby spending money my wife never sees is always a bonus.

This thread is spot on. I have created a few WSO's in the past but after its all said and done, you really don't make that much unless you know a way to get that buyer to buy something of greater value.

Its not just about WSO, if your business is built and rely on just one platform platform, then your definitely not secure enough and not running on full potential... the same case with WSOs

might be true that one WSO can not make you rich but series of WSO's can.

The Idea here is not just to launch a WSO and hope for sales, but to build and grow customers list as well as affiliates.

there is nothing wrong with wrong with 100% commission when you know you can give less on your next launch when you will have additional 500 customers on your list already

I don't think there's a place online or offline you can't become rich from.

If you love your product , believe in it , have mastered the knowledge base of IM etc . You can be successful at almost anything .

Best thing to do anyway , is to have multiple streams of income instead of relying on just one.

Very interesting thread, one thing I was curious about reading the OP post, there must be a point in the sales process where affiliates (that are needed) hurt the customer.

By that I mean if you are using the upfront and back end model as mentioned, does that not reduce the quality of the product and the future of a product.

Most successful products have to be updated, maintained, supported.

If the only way to develop a sales process is to (give away) most of the revenue from the sales process to an affiliate, then where does the customer come in?

It would seem to me that sellers owe customers a product that will be a viable long term product that is both useful and valuable.

When I see a WSO where most of the revenue is in affiliate sales then I wonder to myself, do I want to buy that because I have to think that the seller is not thinking the product offering through.

Just an idle thought, but perhaps the value of the product and the amount of effort it takes to maintain and support a product should come first.

Very sound advice from this thread. Another learning experience on WF

Interesting post, I just launched my first WSO last month, got WSOTD and got over 500 sales. But I am not leaving my customers deserted, doing some good after sales service for them. The great thing about having a digital product is that you can continue to relaunch it in many platforms!So going to relaunch it in Jvzoo as well!

Wow, great post - liked it a lot. With so many claims about make $X in Y minutes etc., it's good to see an honest and business-focused take on WSOs. Haven't launched any of my own, but it's interesting to see how things are changing.

Interesting Thread. I'm a wso seller too and here's what i can share:

- The WSO Section Changed. It's not the same that it was some time ago where you published something and sales started rolling in like crazy (considering your product was good).

- Today a Good product may be ignored and jump to page 2 without being noticed (things go too fast).

- Extremely Low priced products had sense in the past because of the volume, today if you don't have good JV's, forget it.

Don't trust people who say that it's easy and that you can make fortunes by publishing a WSO as is. It's not real. You need affiliates, otherwise it's a matter of Luck.

Some warriors may talk about the millions made through W+ etc. I'd monitor those numbers month after month to compare them with the past to see the progression as i'm not sure.

My opinion: There's WSO Blindness.

The wso section is growing like crazy and think that subcategories would be great to help customers make a better decision if things are grouped.

Today, all the offers are mixed together:

- How to make money selling your hair.
- Pinterest Software.
- [Free WSO] Discover How I Make Money Publishing Free WSO's.
- Weight Loss PLR Articles.
- Hot Membership Plugin.
- Backlinking Software That Will Catapult Your Site To The Top of Google.
- PLR Images about my dog.



Frankly, it's a mess and a waste of time/efforts/opportunities for both vendors / customers.

Maybe something better organized in subsections (truly moderated where each wso would belong to a category - today for example you see SEO services in the WSO section when you have other sections for that like "Warrios For Hire" etc), would be more convenient and a win win situation for everybody.

Example:

- Software WSOs
- Themes & Plugins WSOs
- Money Making Systems WSO (You'd say no but this section should exist as these WSO's exist).

And so on. It's just an idea, someone could organize it seriously.

You would know where to find what you're looking for. Something like what Google has accustomed to.

It would be great to see the power of WSO's again in terms of exposure, even if you don't opt to launch with affiliates (i'm not saying if it's convenient or not).

Things change (i'm still trying to open my messenger to chat with my friends),
so why not a change for WSO's?

That's what i think. What i believe...nothing will change

Just my 2 or 10 cents.

People give up way too easy... They launch a WSO... it bombs and they immediately turn to create something else.

Wait a minute... Why not rework the WSO, change the offer and make it work instead of giving up on the product. If it's valuable information you want to share with the world then look for a way to make it work.

Too many people slap up a WSO and expect the money to come rolling in instantly. They don't have an upsell, they don't have a marketing strategy at all, unless you consider winging it a strategy.

Like others have said, think outside the box... We all started in the WSO section with our first one and made it work.

Here's a simple plan to get you thinking a little:

1. Launch 3 Free WSO's all related to each other, about a week a part each with a unique and interesting offer. Build your list...

2. Followup with your list routinely... reiterating the most important parts of your free information in the days and weeks to come.

3. Launch a paid WSO with a pre-announcement to your own list of the launch so they can take advantage of the low price first. That's about treating them right.

4. Keep going ... with or without affiliates.

5. Just because you launch a free (or paid) WSO doesn't mean it's dead when it drops off page 3. It's your job as a marketer to keep promoting it in different ways. Think outside the box here folks...

lol do we seem to forget not too long ago when Chris Munch made over 100,000 selling his $9 course?

If you get a few buyers from a wso then stop making any more products then yeah it's not going to work out. You need to continue to make relevant products that get more buyers, and more important REPEAT BUYERS. If you continue to do this (and the sky is the limit) and build a big enough buyers list then you will get a ton of sales just by promoting your new wso to your list.

If your WSO breaks even and you get 500 added to your list, I would still do this as often as I could. As soon as I had 10,000 on my list, I would be in hog heaven. They say your list shojlf be worth $1 per member per month. so I don't think the WSO is a means to get rich. I think of it more in terms of building my list. If I can have it as a self liquidating, or better yet, profit makin operation, so much the better.

I think of WSOs as a lead acquisition tool only.

You won't get rich selling WSOs, that's true.

But you can very well get rich if you have an elite backend funnel.



Just my $.02

People who think wso's will make them rich, will be poor for a long time.

I don't think anyone expects to get rich with $7 WSO's.
It's just another source of income and in this business you have to diversify a little.

It also depends on how you launch your WSO.

I see quite a few not agreeing with you but I do. I have pretty much moved away from wso's though and launch outside to get a better price.

I will say in six months last year I built a list of over 5,000 throwing wso's up.

I made really no money on wso's. I would pay the affilaites as much as possible and run contests and the graphics copy ect would eat it. I did get buyers emails though and returned my money ten fold.

If I did wso's again. I would
1. Do low cost trials, say 2 bucks then the rest 14 days later.
2. It would be a quailty wso. With good bonuses and only one great oto.

I would concentrate on the numbers since I want that email address.

This has worked but it offers for more serial refunders coming in. I love to block those guys don't you. Anyways I do agree to a point but if you have a great product and the right oto's there is still alot of money to be made here. I just like to make more so outside is best for me for the most part. Plus alot of my stuff borders grey hat so keeps me out of trouble.