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The latest buzz in the Internet marketing world is the concept of Integration Marketing. Mark Joyner recently started a web community around the concept and wrote a book as well (you can get a complimentary copy of the digital version of the book when you register for a free account at the website.)
Continue reading “Integration Marketing: What Is It and Why You Should You Use It?”
Mark Joyner is rolling out a new website called IntegrationMarketing.com and giving away a copies of his new book on the subject to everyone who creates a free account at the website.
I’ve signed up, downloaded the book, and checked everything out for you, and in a moment I will tell you what I discovered. But first, I want to make sure you know who Mark Joyner is.
Continue reading “Integration Marketing – The Next Big Buzz Word”
Do you want to know what a marketing cult looks like? Search out your closest Apple Store and go take a look.
The latest version of the iPhone was plagued by severe problems that would cause customers of other products to abandon ship and look to another company with a better product. But, even the most dissatisfied customers are keeping their phones because they are the ‘best designed’ phones available and ‘Apple makes the best products.’
Continue reading “How To Build An Internet Marketing Cult of Your Very Own”
Establishing Value For Your Products is a critical objective in the product launch process. When your product sales page goes live, you don’t want your potential customers still wondering about whether the product is worth the price. At launch time you want them clamoring to get a copy before you sell out or raise the price. If your customers need to mortgage their home or sell a kidney to buy your product, they need to know in advance so they can free-up the cash and not miss out on your limited offer!
Continue reading “Product Launch Secrets: Establishing Value For Your Products”
The Underachiever Method is an Internet marketing system developed and taught by Frank Kern and Ed Dale.You can now get the Underachiever Method training absolutely Free – keep reading to find out more.
Continue reading “Get the Underachiever Method Training Absolutely Free”
Searching for an e-commerce solution for your Internet business? E-Junkie’s shopping cart system may be the online selling solution you’ve been looking for.
One of the first big decisions that any new Internet business faces is figuring out how to sell and deliver products. Simple solutions like PayPal’s ‘Buy Now’ button and shopping cart tools are attractive because they are free to setup and easy to use. But, they come with some very severe limitations. They don’t have secure digital product delivery options (you have to set that up separately with 3rd party software on your own server), there are no tools for processing sales/VAT taxes or shipping charges, and there are no tools for running an affiliate program.
Continue reading “Review: E-Junkie E-Commerce Shopping Cart”
Previously I wrote a review of the DigiMemo L2 digital memo pad that I got this past Christmas to help with my product creation and marketing work.
I feel that this original review covered the core questions that someone considering a purchase would ask, but describing the DigiMemo L2 in words doesn’t do the product justice. You need to see it in action to truly know whether it is the right technology for you.
Continue reading “DigiMemo L2 Video Demo”
“How much should I charge for this product?”
That is rarely an easy question to answer. Choose too low and your profit margins drop. Choose too high and you won’t make enough sales to generate good profits. And, guessing based on what other people are doing is no guarantee that your product will sell (they might not be doing very well.) Also, if your price is low, it can be hard to attract affiliates to sell your product. There just isn’t enough money in it for them.
I am working on a 9-1-1 product (like Tony Shepherd recommends in his Double Genius System – a really great little ebook that I highly recommend) and wanted to find out how much people are willing to pay to solve the problem I address. I’ve seen others in the market selling products for $7 and others as high as $12. I think that they are all priced too low and that I can do better sales at a higher price. So, I set out to test my price.
The first step of the process was to put together the sales letter for my product. Many people who teach product creation recommend that you write the sales letter first and then create the product to deliver on the promises of the sales letter. That’s what I did. In this case, I only have the product outlined, so the sales letter writing process really helped me to define the features of the product and I even came up with a couple of ideas that will set me apart from the competition. I also created 2 bonus reports that factored into my testing plan.
One major focus of the sales letter is building up the perceived value of the product. I wove in many examples of the amount of money that people spend trying to deal with the problem and asked the reader to think about how much they have already spent without success. My goal is that the sales letter should establish a perceived value for the results of the product at about 10 times the purchase price.
Once the sales page was ready, I created 2 versions. One had a price of $17 and the other $37. These would be alternated by a simple AB Split Testing software package that I have so that visitors would see one or the other.
Since the product doesn’t exist yet, the order button leads to a page that informs the customer that we are still finishing the product and it’s not ready yet. It acknowledges that the customer has an urgent need and offers to give the 2 bonus reports mentioned in the sales letter to help the customer out until the main product is finished. To claim the reports they have to sign up for our email announcement list.
I’m sure that a few people will be angry when they click to buy and get the ‘work in progress’ page, but I plan to offer anyone who joins the list a huge discount when the product is done. This, in addition to the quality of the free reports, will hopefully rebuild some good will.
For people who request the free reports, there is a third page that reminds them to check their email for the confirmation request in order to verify that their email address is valid and opt them into the announcement list.
As I write this, the test is still underway. I’ve had about 47 total visits to the sales pages. The $17 price is leading the results with 4 ‘sales’ (an 18% sales rate.) The $37 price hasn’t gotten one purchase click. The confidence rating for the results is sitting at 75%. 2 people have requested the free reports and only 1 has confirmed the request and gotten the reports.
The current test will run until I get a clear winner, but it looks like the $17 price is a sure bet. After this current test is complete, I’ll test $17 against $27 and see how it goes. Overall, I’m not just looking for the most clicks but the total profits. I’d rather make the same money from fewer customers.
Once I determine the selling price, I’ll start testing the sales letter itself. The current 18% ratio is pretty good for starters, but I’ll keep working on it until I run out of ideas for improvement. I’ll start with the header graphic, move down to the headline, and then work through the body of the copy and the offer.
Of course, I’ve got to get the product finished as well!
If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com.
Selling software is an extremely profitable business. The recent “Grand Theft Auto 4” release sold over $500 Million in the first week and many more mundane software titles like word processors, spreadsheets, and screen capture tools sell hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of product year after year.
For information producers who are more familiar with creating courses and seminars, there is another alternative that will help you cash in on the software business using the content you are creating right now.
Back in college I studied fiction writing and came across a piece of writing software called “WritePro.” The software was (and still is) pitched as a virtual writing tutor designed to help users craft better characters and richer story lines for their writing. This software is not particularly sophisticated and has not been updated much, but continues to sell for $99 per copy over 10 years later.
The foundation of the software is a writing course created by author and writing coach Sol Stein. It consists of a series of exercises and questions designed to help you develop a fictional story with well-rounded characters. The software simply presents the questions and exercises to you in a specific sequence and records your responses.
As you work through the material, you revisit and add to the material you previously wrote and, finally, convert it into a wordprocessor file to further develop into a manuscript for a novel.
The technology to run this software is very simple – it’s the sequence of questions and exercises (the content) that creates the value. Speaking of value, let’s take a look at the value of Stein’s teaching in various formats.
Sol Stein has 3 significant books on writing that can be purchased today: “Stein on Writing”, “How to Grow a Novel”, and “Solutions for Writers.” All three books can be purchased at Amazon right now for $47.74 plus shipping – if you buy them used, $32.23.
There is an MP3 audio on CD version of “Stein on Writing” that sells for $24.95 new and $15.72 used (that’s about $5-$14 dollars more than the print version.)
The “WritePro” software is constructed from essentially the same teaching content, but it is presented in an interactive interface that prevents people from jumping ahead until they have done the writing work for each module. That software sells for $99 today and has been on the market for over 10 years.
Think for a minute about all of the ebooks, audio recordings, videos, and websites you have created. Can that content be presented as a sequence of learning modules with assignments at the end of each one? Can the end result of the activities be combined to create a resource that will help your customer succeed at whatever subject you are teaching them about? If so, you could have the makings of an excellent software product on your hands.
If you have an ebook about how to write short ebooks, it probably breaks down the writing process into steps that build on each other. Imagine a software package that instructs users to pick a topic and write it down. Then, it asks them to write down four sub-topics. Then it presents each sub-topic and asks the user to write several paragraphs for each one. The software would walk the user step-by-step through the writing process, capturing the results of each exercise along the way. When the writing is done, the software could present the user with several templates to chose from and out the other side comes a well written professionally formatted ebook ready to sell. That’s just the bare bones of an idea. There are many other useful functions that could be added to increase the value to the user.
The first step in adapting your content is to create a teaching plan and define the final output and how it will benefit your customer. Next, plan the content for each module and make notes on how you would like to present it to the customer. How will the user be able to navigate through the exercises? Will there be supplemental teaching material available? Will the user need to review previous results during later assignments? Make your notes and show them to a trusted adviser to get an outside opinion of how well the material flows.
There are a number of different technologies which can be used to program your final software. You can use a program like Flash or Multimedia Maker to create your program and deliver it to your customer. Or, you can hire a programmer to start from the ground up and create everything in C++ or Java. Whatever your solution, before you search for a programmer on eLance or start working on it yourself, create a detailed outline from your notes of how you want the software to work and make samples of how you want it to look. This will help shorten the development process and minimize mistakes and miscommunication.
The greatest value will come if the software you create helps people create and store resources they can use again or pushes them to complete a process they wouldn’t otherwise finish if they just had a blank pad of paper and your content in ebook form. Some of the simplest software I’ve seen does little more than ask people to fill in a few blanks about a product and then inserts the results into a pre-formatted HTML template to create a sales page. The user uploads the resulting file to their server and they are ready to start driving traffic to it – a simple tool that helps people who have trouble putting together a decent sales page.
The bottom line is this, create something useful and you can profit with it for months and years to come. There is big money in software.
If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.
I have a very exciting Product Launch Formula case study to share with you. It shows the kind of success you can achieve just by taking advantage of the free content given away by leading marketers when they launch their own training courses. Even using a fraction of the ‘Product Launch Formula’ or the ‘Mass Control’ process can yield big gains.
This case study is written by Earn 1k a Day‘ membership site where we continued to build our marketing businesses.
Michael is a very astute student of Internet marketing and I’ve had the privilege of watching as his efforts really began to pay off. Now, with his permission, I’m publishing his recent product launch case study here.
I came VERY close to buying ‘Product Launch Formula 2.0’ (PLF2) last month, but at the last minute I decided not to. I just couldn’t afford it. Instead I decided to do a test. You see I had read a lot of posts both here (the ‘Warrior Forum’) and on E1kaD (the ‘Earn 1k a Day’ membership website) about the hype around PLF2 and the videos that Jeff Walker provided and that the process he was using was nothing but hype as well.
I saw it differently. To me the free videos that Jeff Walker provided were pure gold. I carefully watched them multiple times and also studied the process he used. In addition, I ran across several audio interviews from Liz Tomey and Jeff Dedrick that they were using to promote PLF2 as well. These audios were amazing and contained outstanding information.
I decided to challenge myself and use the methods/techniques I learned from Jeff’s videos and Tomey’s audios to do a product launch. I have made products in the past and have had some good success in the past. So I was curious to see how much of a difference it would make.
I recorded 14 short video tutorials on how to use the popular Aweber Autoresponder service and created a product called Aweber UNLEASHED. I determined this was a need because of the number of posts I saw on the Warrior Forum and other boards regarding this tool.
I then contacted three forum friends whom I knew had Internet Marketing (IM) mailing lists and invited them as Joint Venture (JV) affiliates. The total combined subscribers on these lists was about 16,000.
The plan was that I would release one video early in the week for people to preview and then another two days later. I set up a squeeze page in order to get access to the video. Those who confirmed were redirected to a blog that had the video posted. During the next two days of promoting the free video the squeeze page converted at 60.4% and 316 opted in and confirmed their email.
I uploaded the next video. I then sent an email to all the lists about the availability of the second video. Using Frank Kern’s suggestion, the second video I shared was ,IMHO, the best of the 14 and 64 more optins followed that day. The videos received a total of 543 page views during the three day pre-launch.
It was then announced that the Sales page for the full 14 videos would be available on Thursday at noon for a price of only $7. On Thursday emails were sent to all lists about the availability of the videos. Of course PayPal selected that day to have some major technical issues and the first 20+ orders got messed up.
For those that had issues I sent them an alternative download link as well as an additional eBook that I currently sell for $17 as a bonus for their troubles. After the initial issues with PayPal, all went well. The sales page was converting at a robust 23%. As of this writing there have been 188 sales for $1,576 in a little more than 48 hours.
I am receiving numerous requests for people wanting to be affiliates, which I have granted. This affiliate traffic has not gone through the “Pre-launch” routine and so the sales page is converting at a much lower rate but still overall it sits at 19.4%.
Overall it was a great launch and a great experience. All this from using information found in the free videos and audios that were released before PLF2.
Hype? Maybe. But the proof is in the bank account and with the satisfied customers.
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Michael Gunn is an Internet Marketer and product creator. His products include the free report, Are You Taking Action?, Discussion Forum Fortunes, IM Audio Club, and Niche Warfare in addition to the Aweber UNLEASHED video training series mentioned in this case study.
To learn more about Michael and his work and collect a copy of his latest free report, visit his blog at: www.NicheWarfare.com
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If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights.