The $9000 A Month From A Board Game Case Study Revisited
I’ve promoted many, many products over the past five years of blogging and if you were to ask me what sold best, I’d very quickly say – Product Launch Formula.
I don’t know the exact amount, but I’m confident I’ve generated over $100,000 in sales (probably closer to $150K) of just this one product through each incarnation its creator, Jeff Walker, has released.
This is a real testament to the quality, relevance and power of the strategies and tactics Jeff has taught us over the years. I personally have benefited directly and indirectly more from this one system than anything else I’ve ever studied in Internet marketing. I’ve applied the launch formula to every release of every product of my own, and learned a tremendous amount from other marketers using the techniques. It’s truly life changing stuff, when you apply it.
Simply put – if you’re selling something online you are CRAZY if you don’t know and apply what Product Launch Formula teaches. It’s fundamental training in online selling psychology, which I suspect is a very good reason why it’s sold so well for me as an affiliate product.
The End Of Case Studies
One thing I can unequivocally state is that my blog readers LOVE case studies.
Some of the most popular blog posts I publish are the podcast interviews I do with people who started with nothing, went to work to build an online business, and ended up making big money. These stories are inspiring, educational, and of course great marketing materials too when you use them as part of a lead-in to releasing a product.
This is a tactic taught inside Product Launch Formula, which makes sense, since Jeff uses lots of case studies to promote his own product.
Unfortunately due to the new rulings by the Federal Trade Commission in the USA regarding case study testimonials, Jeff’s decided to be extra cautious and remove the case studies from the web.
Before he does this there’s one particular case study you HAVE to listen to if you haven’t already before Jeff takes it down.
It’s called the Food Stamps to Six Figures case study, or sometimes the Horizontal Helix case study, but I prefer to call it –
The $9000 A Month From A Board Game Case Study
Just enter your email on that page and you will have access to stream or download the case study immediately.
I also did a write up after listening to the case study myself, which you can read here – $9000 A Month From A Board Game?
Product Launch Formula 2.3+ Opens One Last Time Next Sunday
On Sunday and Monday, the final days before December 1st when the new FTC rulings come in that are forcing Jeff to take down his case studies, Jeff is opening up the doors to his Product Launch Formula 2.3+ version of his course (that just means it’s the newest version, lol).
I’m not going to push this too hard as many have already purchased this course. If you have the money for it, it’s a must-have training program, if you don’t, at least listen to the case studies Jeff is giving away before he pulls them down next month – they are free.
I’ll have some bonuses for those of you who order the course through my affiliate link, which I’ll tell you about via email before it opens on Sunday.
In the meantime, go listen to the $9,000 Herb Board Game Case Study before it’s taken offline –
When Is The Right Time To Launch Your Product?
During the last coaching call I did with my members the question of when is the right time to launch your product online came up repeatedly from different people.
The question isn’t about timing in terms of day or night, or what day of the week, or time of the year you should launch, rather what conditions need to be in place to expect a successful opening campaign. Here’s what we’re talking about…
- How many subscribers do you need on your email list?
- How many RSS subscribers on your blog should you have?
- How many unique visitors to your websites do you need?
- How many affiliates do you need?
- How many sales should you expect given certain numbers?
All these questions and many more make up part of the answer to the overall question of when you can consider yourself ready to launch.
It is difficult for me to answer this question with anything concrete because every market is different. However I understand the need for ballpark figures and some sort of reassurance from someone who has launched before, especially if they are your coach and mentor.
What Are The Benchmarks?
Inside Membership Site Mastermind I alluded to the number of around 5,000 subscribers as a good target to aim for before launching, which ideally should be email subscribers if possible.
You can include RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and fans too, but generally these contact points are less responsive and less targeted than email. Email subscribers, especially when they come through from a targeted incentive like a free report or email course, are more qualified, hence more likely to buy.
Another metric you can look at that is relevant is the open and click through rates of the emails you send. While it’s nice to have 10,000 email subscribers, in most cases you are lucky if 25% of them even open the emails you send. If you’re getting 10% or more of them clicking your links, you’re doing very well.
Given that opening an email is easier than clicking a link, which is easier than making a sale, you can see why it’s important you understand the reality behind the numbers you currently get.
If you don’t track the open and click through rates on your emails, you should start. Outside of this data you can look at unique visitors to your blog or website as another estimate of how much traffic you can expose to your offer, but understand knowing how many people read your blog content is difficult to correlate to how many people will buy from you.
What Metrics Should You Analyze?
What Works In Internet Marketing Works Even Better In Other Markets
I just won a 40in Sony LCD TV in an affiliate competition, and that wasn’t even first place. In another competition this month I won a Rolex watch. During this year I won a Apple iTouch and some other prizes.
In July when I reopened Blog Mastermind, I ran an affiliate competition for my partners, giving away top 10 prizes, including a Mac Air as a first place prize.
These competitions are common place for Internet marketing launches. The people who sell products related to how to make money online know how effective a prize competition is for motivating affiliates to promote. Strangely enough, it’s not the prizes the affiliates really want since they could easily buy the items – it’s the glory and beating their peers that matters most.
Regardless of the motivation, affiliate prize competitions work and help you make more sales, so why is it that marketers in other niches don’t make use of this technique?
Prize competitions could be considered a standard in Internet marketing launches so it’s not going to surprise anyone, but if you were to run a competition in a non-IM market, you are going to be doing something new, something different – and I’m pretty confident it’s going to work REALLY well at motivating your affiliates too.
New is Powerful
What creates buzz in any market is something new. “New” is powerful, and while the bar is rising very high in the Internet marketing niche for what can be considered innovative, it’s still relatively easy to be seen as an innovator in online marketing if you just take what the Internet marketing crowd are doing as a standard and apply it to your non-IM market.
This is why concepts such as the product launch formula work so well. Outside of the film and television industries and a few innovative companies like Apple, most companies market their products with stock standard – and let’s face it – boring styles of marketing like dry television, radio and newspaper campaigns.
While affiliate competitions and product launch formula style buzz campaigns won’t work for every type of product, chances are what you are selling online could benefit from a few innovative techniques that no one is doing in your industry.
Let me ask you this – if you are currently selling in a non-make money online market right now, has anyone ever done an affiliate competition to motivate launch partners when a new product is released? Even the concept of affiliate marketing is not applied to a majority or products sold online.
This to me spells opportunity. All it takes is for you to put in a little extra effort and you could be seen as an innovator in your market – and best of all, a winner when it comes to your profits too.
Yaro Starak
Copy-and-Paste Marketer
Video: How To Record Video Testimonials Using Skype
This is video number four in my live product launch case study. I recorded this yesterday, a day that was quite tiring but a ton of fun because I got to speak to six people who had all taken part in Blog Mastermind and listen to them recount their experiences in my program.
It was wonderful to meet everyone in a more personal format and thanks to all who I talked to (you know who you are).
Each of the conversations were recorded and as long as they come out okay from a technical standpoint, I will be using them on the Blog Mastermind coaching page as testimonials when the program re-launches.
In this video I explain why testimonials are important and then provide a visual tutorial on how I record video interview testimonials using Skype, Call Recorder for mac or Pamela for windows.
As you will hear in the video, it’s critical when conducting a product launch that you have people who can offer genuine feedback after using your product, especially from “normal” people that others can relate to.
It’s great to have expert recommendations that can raise your credibility in the market, however it’s also important to have feedback from someone who just came “off the street”, who tries your product, enjoys the experience and is willing to talk about it.
In today’s world we are more likely to trust someone “just like us” rather than someone claiming expert status, so the average person testimonial has become critical, which is why I’m so grateful to the people who volunteered to do the video testimonials.
In case you missed the previous videos in this case study, here they are…
There Is A Sucker Born Every Minute
You have to love the Internet marketing world. There’s a certain amount of jaded bitterness that surfaces when you sell something that presents a make money online opportunity. Every time I promote a product related to marketing or online income generation, there are those people out there who have adopted the belief that all marketers are liars and their products are more sales than substance.
Some might argue that it’s the hype – the language used to sell Internet marketing, in particular the long sales page format, that elicits the snarky comments or the sighs of “not again” from a handful of viewers. The disdain is palpable from some people and as much as I understand where they are coming from, it would be nice to only deal with satisfied customers.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time and everyone has a different experience and mindset, which isn’t always positive. No matter what you sell, there are people who will take issue with what you do and how you do it to the point where they feel the need to publicly state their disapproval.
I’m a bit tired of negativity, so today I’m going to relay to you three “golden nuggets” from three products I purchased from Internet marketers who sell Internet marketing products – the prime targets of the naysayers.
I spent at least $1,000 on each of these information products and they have all had a positive impact on my business and returned more than their cost in increased income and resource savings. Note these ideas – the nuggets – are just a sample of what I learned from the products and as anyone successful knows, it’s the two or three really powerful ideas that make a big difference.
Here are three examples -
