A Successful Failure – My Seed Launch Story

I am a big fan of the movie Apollo 13. The NASA mission at the heart of that film was called a successful failure because they didn’t get to the moon, but the astronauts returned home alive. I want to tell you the story of my own successful failure. It’s not quite as epic, but very relevant to anyone doing business online. Continue reading “A Successful Failure – My Seed Launch Story”

Placing Rocks In The Stream

My first successes marketing and publishing on the Internet did not come from some ‘killer marketing tactic’ or a secret ‘push-button profits software package’. Rather, a simple lifestyle shift began a long steady process of connecting my knowledge and experience with people who were interested. Continue reading “Placing Rocks In The Stream”

Mass Control Feedback from a Satisfied Customer

The hype for the Mass Control 2.0 launch is hitting a fevered pitch, and lots of people are searching the Internet for honest feedback about whether this product is worth the 5 figure price tag.

I am a member of Dennis Becker’s Earn1KaDay marketing forum and was recently asked by one of the other members about my opinion of the course. I think the response I gave would be helpful for anyone who is on the fence trying to decide whether to buy this product.

Continue reading “Mass Control Feedback from a Satisfied Customer”

Product Price Testing Using AB Split Testing Software

“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.

A Perfect Case for AB Split Testing

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.

Setting Up The AB Split Test

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.

Results Of The Price Testing

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.

Case Study: Aweber UNLEASHED and the Product Launch Formula

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.

Case Study: Aweber UNLEASHED Training Video Launch, by Michael Gunn

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%.

Some things I learned/Notes:

  • While the process was very effective, I wouldn’t do it again for a $7 dollar product. It was a lot of work.
  • I wish I had come up with a way to track the sales conversion of those that had opted in and saw the preview videos vs. those that didn’t. That would have been interesting.
  • I need to get a help desk set up. As much of a pain as they are, it’s not worth losing a customer because you never got the email that they were having issues.
  • I neglected to put a support email address on the pages and that caused a couple of problems, but not many.
  • I was very pleased to see that my three affiliates made money. That made me as excited as if I had been the one making it!
  • There are lots of other things I could have done or prepared better for. But money loves speed and I didn’t want to wait any longer to gt the product out.

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.

Mass Control – 4 Day Cash Machine Experiment Part 3

My 4 Day Cash Machine experiment has run its full course and I’ve got the results.

Much to my disappointment, Frank Kern’s 4 Day Cash Machine is not magic (my results might have been better if I had implemented it like this!) The cold, dead, untargeted list I used it on did not suddenly start beating new life and buying products as fast as I could process the payments. But, there were some surprises that give me confidence that it will be useful in the future when I am better prepared to take advantage of it. (My list building efforts are underway!)


Download The Exact Email Sequence That Generated $8260.51 in 5 Days…


Before I give you my detailed assessment of the 4 Day Cash Machine in action, let me break down my results.

Mailing # 1:

  • 377 emails sent in total
  • 34 emails bounced giving an effective delivery of 343 emails delivered
  • 7 people unsubscribed from the list
  • 2.6% open-up rate based on delivered emails* (open rates are highly unreliable measures these days, but I decided to go ahead and include them)

Mailing #2:

  • 361 emails sent in total (I did not remove bounces but did scrub out some duplicates I found)
  • 35 emails bounced giving an effective delivery of 326 emails
  • 2 people unsubscribed from the list
  • .6% open-up rate based on delivered email*

Mailing #3:

  • 359 emails sent in total (I continued to leave in the bounces)
  • 40 emails bounced giving an effective delivery of 319 emails
  • 2 people unsubscribed from the list
  • .003% open-up rate based on delivered emails*

Mailing #4:

  • 356 emails sent in total (I continued to leave in the bounces)
  • 39 emails bounced giving an effective delivery of 317 emails
  • 0 people unsubscribed from the list
  • .0% open-up rate based on delivered emails*

Final Results after 4 mailings:

  • 1305 total emails delivered
  • 11 unsubscribes – 3.2% based on initial deliverable list size of 343
  • 6 page views on the special offer sales page – 0.46% based on total emails delivered
  • 0 orders
  • $0.00 earned

My Evaluation of the Results

While I was disappointed not to make any sales with this promotion, I was not surprised by the result. This was a very cold list that hadn’t heard from me in many months and wasn’t particularly responsive in the first place. The vast majority of the names had come from JV Giveaway events where everyone is signing up for dozens of lists in order to get freebies. A significant portion of the names you get during these events are either temporary accounts setup for the event, or secondary accounts that don’t get checked very often (and usually just mass deleted.)

Surprising Positive Outcomes

I was braced for massive unsubscribe rates with every email. This list was full of people who probably had no idea how they ever got connected with me. Before I even said hello, I hit them with a bunch of sales pitches. I was sure the number of unsubscribes would climb with each mailing (specially the last one with a ‘FINAL NOTICE’ subject line), but that didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, the unsubscribe rates went down over the course of 4 days. I’m confident that a promotion like this will not have much negative effect on my list sizes (I always worry that intense promotions will scare off the subscribers, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue. Other markets may have different results.)

The other thing I noticed was that the page views for the sales page tracked with the first and last mailing. I got a couple after the initial mailing in the promotion (as one would expect) and then the rest came on day 4 after the ‘FINAL NOTICE’ email went out. This demonstrates that the urgency created by the promotion’s deadline does have an effect on response rates.

Overall Analysis

I think that the ‘4 Day Cash Machine‘ approach would generate a spike of sales in a well targeted and maintained list. The persuasion tactics employed are founded in the fundamental principles of human decision making – a reason why, urgency, scarcity. The materials provided would certainly help to assemble one of these promotions quickly and the training provided helps you to resist the urge to ‘fiddle and fine-tune’ the promotion and just get it done.

Since first learning the details of this promotional strategy, I discovered someone doing an amazing version of the process. He automates everything (so each new visitor gets their own unique ‘mini promotion’) and ties in some powerful tactics to amplify the psychological tactics used. Check out this video – it explains the whole process in detail.

The sample webpage content I got from Frank Kern was provided in HTML and was relatively easy to modify. The sample emails, however, were provided in a PDF file. That made them a real pain to cut and paste. I wish they had come in a simple text file – I have them that way on my hard drive for future promotions.

If you have any specific questions about my experiment with ‘4 Day Cash Machine’, leave a comment below and I’ll post a reply.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, please visit us on the web at: www dot go to guy enterprises dot com.

Mass Control – 4 Day Cash Machine Experiment Part 2

Today is the second day of my ‘4 Day Cash Machine’ test promotion. ‘4 Day Cash Machine’ came as a bonus module when I purchased Frank Kern’s Mass Control course (check out this video of a wicked automated implementation of the 4DCM).

The second email in the 4 email sequence went out just after midnight last night (eastern standard time.) Continue reading “Mass Control – 4 Day Cash Machine Experiment Part 2”

Mass Control – 4 Day Cash Machine Experiment Part 1

In an earlier post I mentioned that I planned to put the ‘4 Day Cash Machine’ bonus module (check out this video of a wicked implementation of the 4DCM), that came with Frank Kern’s Mass Control training program, to a hard test. Well, that test started in the early hours of this morning. Anyone who has signed up for the updates list on this website should have already seen the first email in the sequence (the sign-up box for the list is in the right hand side of this page.)


Download This Email Sequence That Generated $8260.51 in 5 Days…


I’ve made this a very hard test. I’m mailing to a small list of people and the majority of them are from a ‘very cold’ set of names that I haven’t contacted in months and who have already received a promotion for the featured product about 8 months ago. These leads came mostly from a couple ‘Fire Sale’ events (not sources of high-quality email leads.) To give you a sense of how cold they were, I had 34 hard bounces out of the main list of 360 – that’s a bounce rate of 9%.

Part of the reason I went with this list is that I wanted to really test the capabilities of this technique to motivate sales. If it works with this group, it should be a huge success with higher quality lists that I have a better relationship with. The other reason is that the primary list I’m building right now is for my first big product launch. I’ve had successes with the pre-launch and I don’t want to hit this list with tangential promotions until after the launch.

It took me a few hours to set everything up. Even though there is a cut and paste template to use for the sales page and the emails, I still had to pick 5 bonus products and write blurbs about them, and customize the emails before loading them into my email broadcast cue. In addition, I had to do some maintenance work on the older list to make sure that everything would go out smoothly (I have switched to Aweber for my email marketing since the list was created, but didn’t move this list due to the low quality of the leads.)

My immediate results are 34 bounces, 5 unsubscribes, 1 page view on the special sales page, and 0 sales. But, it is important to remember that the email only went out a few hours ago and many people have not had a chance to open it yet. I’m expecting that a significant number of the people on the mailing list gave a secondary email address to begin with – so they might not check it as frequently. There are 3 more messages in the email cue ready to go out before the end of the promotion.

My ‘4 Day Cash Machine’ promotion ends at midnight EST, February 14, 2008. Given the quality of the list, I’ll consider the experiment a success if I get even 2-3 sales. More than that and I’ll be stunned!

Look for a full debriefing when the promotion ends and additional updates when I have more results.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit our website at: www dot go to guy enterprises dot com.