Perhaps the most effective strategy to generate those sales is a time-limited offer. Again, Darren Rowse has shown just how effective that can be. In late 2009, his Digital Photography School site launched an e-book about portrait photography. Although Darren is a hugely experienced blogger whose sites give him a very handsome income and the author of a book about professional blogging, this was the first time that his Digital Photography School had launched a product. In a blog post on his site, ProBlogger.net, Darren explained that his launch strategy consisted of the following:
• An e-mail to his newsletter list
• A post on his Digital Photography School web site
• Promotions to members of his forums
• Further mentions on Twitter to supplement the tweets he’d already posted
• A message to his community on Facebook
• Promoting through affiliates using E-junkie’s affiliate service
• Asking friends and members of his network to give his book a mention and a link
Within 12 hours, he’d sold 950 copies. The e-book cost $19.95, but for the first nine days, customers could buy it at a 25 percent discount. By the time the nine-day launch period had ended and the e-book was available at full price, he’d sold 4,800 copies, grossing a total of almost $72,000. Not all of that was profit, of course. PayPal’s fees meant that actual revenues were slightly smaller, and there were production costs to pay for the e-book’s design, proofreading, and commissioned content. Affiliates also took their cut. But there’s still no doubt those nine days were extremely profitable, helped by an offer that came with a clear deadline. And it’s the deadline that’s important, not the price. Sales continued to come in at the same rate even after the price went up, pushed by the momentum created by the launch. The deadline pushed leads to buy immediately instead of putting the decision off till later—or never.
Those nine days might have been more profitable, though. The graph showing sales of the e-book over the nine-day launch period looked like a V More than 1,000 copies were sold on the official launch day, creating an immediate spike. Sales then declined before spiking again at the end of the launch period, when Darren sent out a second e-mail reminding readers that they had only 36 hours remaining to buy the book at a 25 percent discount. That e-mail generated almost 1,200 sales.
Other marketers have pointed out that that’s a fairly typical pattern, but it can be improved. Jeff Walker, for example, did a midlaunch promotion, turning the V shape into a W shape by adding some additional bonuses halfway through the launch period. Leads who had seen the first e-mail and decided to think about it were converted then, and fewer were lost before the end of the campaign.
Darren also felt that he could have put more work into encouraging his affiliates. Only two or three, he said, generated significant sales. That’s an easy mistake to make, especially for people with experience of earning as an affiliate. It’s easy to forget that not everyone understands the importance of recommending the product, talking about it, and making the affiliate link both unobtrusive and easy to find. It pays to make affiliate work part of the preparation by ensuring a good choice of banners for publishers to use, keeping them informed about the launch campaign, explaining what they can do to increase sales—and recruiting as many as possible.
It’s a lot of work, but when the rewards are almost $8,000 a day, it’s worth putting in the effort.
That’s the story of information products. They’re another way to transmit the information that you have about your passion or your profession to people who want to learn that knowledge—and get paid for it. The products themselves can come in a range of sizes and formats; they can be sold online using a team of affiliates and delivered using an automated shopping cart system that’s a breeze to add to your site.
They take effort. While you can be up and earning with a web site in days, a good information product may well take weeks to put together, as well as the time and expense to create an optimal sales page promoted by a cadre of affiliates.
But once that’s finished, you’ll be able to relax. The money will come in by itself, in a constant stream and entirely automated. You’ll be able to kick back and enjoy the chime of the KaChings.
5
Earning from Affiliate Programs
In Chapter 4, I talked about selling your knowledge to others in the form of an information product, and I pointed out that a vital part of the marketing process is creating a network of affiliates to do the pushing for you.
Those affiliates aren’t promoting your product just because they like you. They should like you—and they certainly won’t help you if they don’t like you—but that’s not the reason they’re selling your goods. They’re promoting your product because you’re paying them. You’re giving them a share of the sales price, turning them into sales reps working entirely on commission. Clearly, should those affiliates find that they’re not making money out of the deal, they’re going to be doing something else. The fact that affiliates continue to promote your goods shows that they’re winning.
If those affiliates can make money from selling products on a commission basis, so can you.
This isn’t a case of either/or. You don’t have to choose between making money as an affiliate and making money by creating products for affiliates. I create and market information products, selling them through affiliate networks. I’m also an affiliate, selling products created by other producers. In fact, my sites generate five-figure monthly incomes from affiliate sales alone. As always, when you’re looking to make your Internet business KaChing, you want it to KaChing in all sorts of different ways.
Earning as an affiliate is different from the revenue strategies we’ve seen
