My first product is created, and it's not selling....

Could be the product, could be the sales copy, hard to say since we don't see either. We can only guess

I'm a full time music producer and I do promote some music stuff just pm me and I'll help you. If it's good and has an affiliate program I'll blast it to my music email list.

Well, I dono how it could be the product since nobody has actually purchased it. It's a video course for beginning guitar players..

Without giving any details, it's anyone's guess..

Could be the traffic quantity (if your traffic is low in the 100-200 visitors you can't make a fair decision especially if your product has a high price tag), the traffic source (maybe people don't quite expect to be sold a product when they enter your site), the targeting (do they really search for a product to help them play the guitar?), maybe it's your sales copy, maybe it's that they don't know and trust you yet.. maybe it's the weird graphics or complicated process to buy.. maybe you posted a video that looks weird and doesn't inspire confidence..

And that's a lot of maybe.. only you should know why it's not selling as you're the only one who has all the data.

Gabriel

There are many, many such courses available. Some are excellent with high quality websites and armies of affiliates (I am one). You should have done more research and you would have found the niche is saturated with high quality offerings.

Better luck next time.

Why would I buy your product as opposed to Doug Marks' Metal Method or Curt Mitchell's Fretboard Physics in the first place?

I disagree that the market is saturated, but if you can't answer that question, you are going to be a dork and not make any money.

Have you tried to market to 'moms' vs the aspiring guitar player? To me this sounds easier. I think it would be easier to get traffic/sales through social media

Can you give us an idea of the product, the sales page, what traffic you are driving, what affiliates you have signed up? Without this information its anyone's guess.

This indicates you don't know about the dozens of products on Clickbank, not to mention the really big companies that have dedicated affiliate programs. I've been in this niche for years, a new product would have to have a wicked USP. I don't see a beginner getting any play at all.

Also known as: facing reality.

It doesn't matter. I know the quality of competition he is facing, and the nature of his target market.

But hey, what do I know. You go ahead and stick all your time and money into your product and then come back in six months and tell us how well you've done.

Congrats on your success you have pushed yourself and done something despite being afraid. That is something to be celebrated. Now you have experience in that and you can build on it.

Not sure if you have seen these guys, I have been watching them for years now.

I was an affiliate for them back in the day and got a lot of their drum DVDs sent to me and they are top quality.

But have a look at the type of stuff they give away for free:
Guitar Lessons (100% FREE) - Learn How To Play Guitar Online

Tons of professionally recorded videos.

They have done the same in the drums, guitar, and piano markets. They've been doing so for about 10 years now so they are obviously doing something right and are one to follow. If you've ever seen their videos you will also know they have all the latest studios and gear so they must be making a fairly decent return on all that investment.

Your other option is to brand yourself which is something Cobus has done very well in the drum niche. He started by just playing covers online and now has over 300k fans on Facebook, 411k subscribers on Youtube, and over 135 million video views on Youtube:

https://www.facebook.com/deedlebag
http://www.youtube.com/user/deedlebag

When he recommends stuff or puts out his own courses people can't wait to jump on them.

So take note of those around you that are already successful and look deeper into their models and see what it is they are doing that you are not doing.

1) Have a profitable funnel with lots of high ticket upsells
2) Drive traffic

I would like to be kept posted though as I have no experience in that niche but like to learn about everything so keep the thread strong and let us know what you do and if it works.

Well, we have to see a description on what's included in the product, there are too many good guitar courses out there. Maybe you should PM some willing Warriors to see if they will critique your site, and give you some advice on what might be the problem.

Also not all traffic is created equal...

you should check on your content, it can help drive traffic to your site. you can also offer something for free to your visitors like ebook or free report regarding your niche

Yup, me for one, I know little about marketing and less about affiliate marketing, just development. It sounds to me like you enjoy what you are doing and I suggest sticking at it, but:

1) My first product took over a month to sell its first license. During that time I was adding to the site, the product and experimenting with adwords. You mention 2 weeks, that's just not at all long enough to start worrying.

2) You need to understand the competition, what they are offering and at what price. You might be able to offer something new and at a lower price.

3) There will be a market for you, sure, your product might not be the best there is, but you can still offer good value for money and find that part of the market for yourself.

You like what you are doing (so it sounds) - think and grow it!

Can you share the link to your landing page here?

I create products outside the IM niche.

The problem could be many things.

1) No one knows who you are so they don't want to buy your course over someone they do know.
2) No one is desperate for the problem you are solving.
3) Your sales page isn't up to scratch.
4) Your traffic is poor quality and not targeted.
Etc Etc Etc

We can only give you vague answers without seeing your product and sales page.

It could be something as simple as your sales page SEO, Layout or even its wording.

Get someone to go over it to spot any errors.

You may want to analyze these points

1. What is the demand for your product?
2. What are your traffic sources?

A simple keyword research using Google Keyword tool will show you if there is a market for your product.

If there is a demand then you may want to look at the sources of traffic. How are you driving traffic to your site? Are they from search engines (doing search queries) or just visitors who stumbled across your site? Did you pay for lead generations and if so then what are these sources (ask demographic details from providers if you have purchased traffic).


For products not related to internet marketing, you would do well to get targeted traffic. If you are hard pressed for time or resources to generate organic traffic then some paid sources would be facebook (create account and pay for ads), reddit (yes they have an ad posting option) and of course paid ads from relevant blogs.

Ask yourself this; would I buy my own product with what I can visually see on my website? If the answer is no, then there's your first problem. You are your biggest critic if you can't even convince yourself to buy your product then you sure as heck will struggle to find others. You're up against a lot of competition, people post this kind of thing all day long for free on YouTube.

Well, I will say the next thing. I also have an experience when my first product did not bring me even 1 sale.

This was really terrible, because I spent a lot of time and power creating it. And I hoped that my life would change when I start selling it.

But the truth was depressing. I have made zero sales.

Why? The answer is simple: nobody knew me. I had no mailing list and relationships with big players in my niche. I also had no money to promote my product myself. Nobody knew about me. And the problem was in zero traffic to my sales page.

So, each niche is full of competitors. If you have no your brand, if you have no mailing list or useful connections with your partners, forget about big sales.

Start from it. Try to find partners and build relationships. Pay attention at gurus. They always recommend each others when somebody of them starts selling something.

You, mention traffic. Where is this traffic coming from? Are you tracking these things? Who wrote your saleletter? You? Does it satisfy a desire? Does it make the visitor, want to read more of your salesletter?What is your price point? Do, you have any affiliates? Do, you have a targeted list? Have you, looked for JVs?

There, are lots of questions! If you can answer them, you will better..know,why you have success or failure

Jumping, into a market due to saturation..does not mean, instant failure...If you have a better product, responsive list and Jvs...you can make money!

2 weeks of driving exactly how much traffic?

You might not be giving it a chance to succeed yet.

Rely on good ole email marketing. Test your niche out with paid advertising, and if you get alot of leads, keep generating leads and email them with good content - then drive them to your sales page in each email. Just dont email everyday.

I may suggest to you that in order to make your leads more interesting why don't you find some products that are free and giving it to your leads as a freebies so that they will get more interest in reading your post and the product that you're promoting.

Cory D,

One thing I notice on this thread is that you don't seem to be talking much about your product. The unspoken principle that you believe in that I'm somehow intuiting here is that it doesn't matter to you how badly your product sucks, but that as long as your marketing is good, you're supposed to be be successful in selling it.

For something like a video course for guitar playing, I reckon you'd have at least ONE reason why anybody ought to buy your stuff. "Makes learning the guitar easy" or something like that. Something. And I myself believe that if anybody believed enough in at least one thing about what it is they're peddling, then it'd make it easier to figure out why one is not making any sales, and move forward from there with something tangible.

But I don't get that from you. And I worry at what you said here:

This gives me some impression that you weren't seeking to "create a good product" somehow. I'd hazard a guess that you wanted to "just create a product -- any product".

Let me ask you: Is it the case that:

You're wondering why your product isn't selling, and you're just honestly not sure if you were able to produce a decent enough product at all in the first place.

Or is it the case that:

You're wondering why your product isn't selling, and you DON'T CARE if you have a good or bad product in the first place, but you still want to know how to effectively market what might be a low quality product?

As far as I understand marketing to be in my naive mind, isn't it supposed to be the case that you strive to create a good product first, then worry about how to price, promote and distribute it afterwards?

If it's otherwise, then there must be some sort of new definition of what marketing's supposed to be about that I never heard of.

And if it's the latter case (that your primary concern is simply getting sales instead of putting something good out for some folk out there to buy), then maybe some black hat magic would work for you. Pushing to a desperate market would also definitely help, I think. But at first glance, I don't see how any newbie guitar learner would be desperate enough to learn the guitar.

Then again, maybe something like this would work:

Buy My Video Guitar Course and Get Laid! GUARANTEED! Or Your Money Back!!!

Getting laid idea attributed to the Juggalo on the thread

Well if it's a video course, have you tried advertising it on Youtube or social sites? You could put a few small samples, like a movie trailer! Good luck

I'd just focus on increasing the amount of traffic direct to your site first, I am fairly sure that this is the problem and with a bit of time/effort your product will begin to sell!

are others selling the same type of product if so that's great figure out where and how they are selling it

Pretty sure I found you.

http://qualityguitarlessons.com/ <<I doubt having the Optimizepress getting started instructions as a homepage is doing much for credibility.

http://qualityguitarlessons.com/letter-1/ <<I'll let people who do Sales Copy for a living break that down for you.

Funnily enough, the Cory D I found on YouTube liked the College Humor video of the same vein as his last activity lol.

Hi,
Where are you going to get your traffic? Warrior Forum is one, but, where else?
You should be going to music forums, specifically guitar forums. If it's newbies you're after, then go and search the niche. I'm sure there are plenty of people just starting out to play guitar that would like some help. Help them for free.
Good luck
Geri Richmond

Hi Cory D... looks like BobTheBostonian has figured out a major reason you're not getting any sales.

There is some great advice in this thread... The Guitar Market is huge but you've got to bring something to the table that makes you stand out or you've got to be on the other side and able to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site. Ideally.. you've got both covered.

So my question to you would be... "What Makes Your Product Unique? Better Than Others On The Market Right Now?" If you've got a good answer for that... you've got your sales pitch.

Another problem I found with you site is that it's open to anyone who knows what to look for with a wordpress site. I "Highly" recommend you set up a membership site and get you content locked up. The warrior forum had a membership plugin for sale recently called Instamember. That should do the trick... but no doubt others will suggest alternatives too. Hope this helps.

the Cory D scandal

Eh, poor execution =/= scandal.

Hi Cory

I remember being exactly where you are right now!

As a writer, I had imagined that I would steadily build a portfolio of my books; they would all be selling and eventually, I would make a nice income from my writing. So, I wrote my first book, created my own graphics, put together my sales page and published it on my site. Whammo - zero sales!

Then I came to the Warrior Forum and asked for advice, posting a link to my site (hint: it might help if you did that too). I think I secretly expected some people would be impressed, perhaps one or two might even buy it. But whammo - they tore my sales page apart. They told me my graphics were ... erm ... poo ... my headline sucked ... and various other things too.

So began my lengthy detour into internet marketing. I realised that I had to sort these things out before I wrote my second book otherwise, there would simply be no point creating more products.

Gradually, I got better and better at copywriting and I got better at creating graphics too. But, I also realised that graphics were not my strong point. So, I outsourced that work and - guess what? - I realised that creating graphics was also not the strong point of some people who offer their services to do it for you - lol. But, after a while, I found my current graphics designer - a fellow Warrior - and he now does all of my graphics for me. He has a great 'eye' and his work complements my own.

As a consequence, my sales page got better and better and - whammo - still no sales!

In parallel with this, I was writing articles and engaging in various other activities for traffic generation purposes. I was building a list too - and, with hindsight, I can now see that these processes were similarly immature. Nevertheless, I did manage to get some interested visitors into my autoresponder and they were receiving my newsletter.

One day, I thought to myself that - pay attention here - my product might as well be NOT selling at $9.97 as NOT selling at $27 so I reduced the price and whammo - I finally got some sales! Not a lot, but I did start selling. Since then, I have farted about with every aspect of the processes mentioned above and I am still selling the same product - now on a donation basis.

The experience taught me a lot and, when I did finally write book #2 and book #3 and so on, I applied all of the lessons I had learned. Gradually, it all added up and, about 2 years ago, I quit the day job. I am not making a fortune, but I managed to get to the level where I can afford to concentrate on this project full time.

So, I know where you are and I recognise that you are asking the right kind of questions. There are many people here who are genuinely willing to help you to improve; there are some others who (with all due respect) have not got a clue. It's part of the challenge (and the fun) to figure out which ones you ought to listen to. But good quality help is available.

Stay committed; look to the long term; think in terms or processes (lead generation, newsletter engagement, sales conversion etc); work on improving all of them ...

PLAN - DO - CHECK - TWEAK

^ do that for every process and keep doing it.

Keep measuring and tweaking; allow your results to tell you what is working - NOT other people!

AND ...

You WILL make it!

Good luck,

Will

You could give your product away for free and build a mailing list. That's how we grew one of our non-internet marketing niches. Then, we recommended quality affiliate products to our subscribers.

WOW.. I didn't realize I'd get this much of a response. So I'll elaborate a bit for everyone.

I've been a guitar player for over 10 years. I know many musicians and guitar instructors and a handful of them like to make online video lessons along with myself.

I didn't want to share my entire life and business with you guys... But I can understand that you could not make a fair assessment based on the information I gave you so I apologize.

The product I have was produced by my friend Ben who has been a guitar instructor for over 11 years and has done work on other online membership sites.

And to let you know, I'm in the process of testing different offers and sales pages so the sales page you see may not reflect exactly what my offer is, but it's close. That was just my first go at it..

This is a 4 part video series for a beginning guitar player.

I have 3 bonus' that are included in the purchase.

I am giving away the first lesson completely free in exchange for a name, email, and to fill out a 5 questions survey that will help me to tailor guitar lessons around their responses.

The main domain has nothing on it because it's being reserved for a membership program.

I'm using sub-domains for blogs, different products, etc..

And in case you still had doubt in my belief in this product, then NO, I did not just try and whip up some half assed product that is hidden behind clever sales copy just so I can make a few bucks.

That is not my mentality. I have invested a lot of time and money to make this something of high value and I know that it will help a beginner. I've used these instructions and have seen others use them with great success. It's just a matter of conveying that they will work for others at this point.

I appreciate the input guys, and just bare with me. This is my first run at this. I know that doesn't matter to the market place, but I know you guys have been in the same spot before.


Cory

Did you pay a copywriter how knows how to sell stuff to do your copy? Or did you try and "wing it" with a cheap "article writer" posing as a copywriter? Or worse, did you do it yourself?

Get a copywriter with a proven track record and send quality traffic. As far as saturation that just means there's a lot of money to be made and you just need to up the game better than the competition and not be a coward.

Well I did do the copy myself.. A good copywriter can be extremely expensive from what I hear. Upwards of tens of thousands of dollars... I don't have that kind of money otherwise I would have done that...

Hi Cory,

How many people are seeing your sales page? And where did they find it?

Also, someone might suggest giving some copies away and getting testimonials up.

Not that I know anything about that.

well it can be many things, the copy may not be right to the targeted audience, to hypy, bad grammar, not pretty, small wording, hardling no graphics, not fun to read, really theres alot that can be wrong, the copy plays a big part, if u have a video that will help!

cheers

A Quick search of google showed me these keywords that you could use PPC to get. These are all low comp. words in PPC.

Saved ideas (43)

My keyword ideas

beginner guitar chords

playing guitar

how to play songs on guitar

guitar licks

beginning guitar

how to tune your guitar

youtube guitar lessons

how to read guitar tabs

learn to play guitar tabs

rhythm guitar

how to play an electric guitar

can i learn to play guitar

how to play the electric guitar

learn acoustic guitar

guitar notes

learn how to play guitar chords

blues guitar

how to play a electric guitar

tune guitar

guitar exercises

playing acoustic guitar

rock guitar

how to play guitar songs

guitar theory

play guitar

how play guitar

how to play electric guitar

how to play guitar beginner

how to play acoustic guitar

guitar scales

how to play acoustic guitar for beginners

how to play an acoustic guitar

how to play a guitar for beginners

how to play the acoustic guitar

how do you play the guitar

play the guitar

how to play the guitar for beginners

how to play a guitar

how to play guitar for beginners

how to play the guitar

learn to play acoustic guitar

learn to play guitar chords

how to play guitar

Also, why not create a short video for youtube to drive traffic to your site/product?
Just a few ideas. Hope it helps.

I had a look at your sales page since this niche is right up my alley, and as you have probably gathered by now from all the comments, it's the "presentation" that is not selling the product.

Whether the product itself is any good I don't know, and maybe that's part of the problem as well since there are no product samples of your videos on your sales page, only still shots of what appears to be Youtube videos, and there are also no testimonials.

The grammar needs work, (little things such as "you're" when it should say "your" will usually slip by spellcheckers), and maybe also condense some of the text into a shorter but more powerful pitch.

From there you might also want to consider wrapping up the entire page into a more attractive and colorful header / footer type minisite, and last but not least, the product needs to have virtual product images I.E. video modules, DVD images, eBook covers, whatever brings the product to life in order to give the whole deal more perceived value.

Speaking of which..... the price. $47.97 Why the .97 ?

You can probably get your asking price for the whole deal, but you will really have to work on getting the perceived value up in order to match that price point.

Good luck.

Details please, can't suggest much based on your little input.

Problem might be with the product or the sales pitch!
Do you offer them bonus? give them something for free, something good related to the product.