Discount Deal

I was talking to my girlfriend this weekend and threw an idea past her. "What do you think about me offering a discount on my product for anyone who buys my JV partner's product through me?" She thought it was a great idea, especially considering that my JV partner was beating me in sales=)

I spent yesterday coming up with the idea and implementation. After coming up with the deal, I sent the broadcast to the list. "Buy Mr. X's product and I'll give you 30% off of my product. This deal ends on Friday June 1."

This is the first time I've offered a "sale" on my product other than the failed one-time-offer deal. I made sure that my list realized this. So far I've made 2 sales of the JV product using the broadcast and sold one copy of my product as an add on.

As we get closer to the deadline I expect to see more sales.

I'm Blown Away

Affiliates are the s&*%!! As an affiliate, I already knew this but having your own is a completely different breed of cat. I come home from this party where I met my girlfriend's parents (thankfully it was relatively uneventful) and check my email. New Sale! Sweet! So I go to Clickbank to see if it is my JV partner or me who made the sale, the difference being I earn $45.20 if it is my sale and $21.24 if it is my JV partner. Not that it really matters because I'm just happy to be making sales.

I log on. The number looks weird. My JV partner made a sale earlier but the numbers aren't adding up correctly. I look at the transaction stats. I made a sale! But it wasn't for my product, it was for the JV partner's product. But there's more, I only get email if my product sells. I look closer. My product did sell, but I didn't make the sale. My JV partner didn't make the sale. A brand new affiliate did it! One who didn't sign up on my easyClickmate page.

I can see the CB ID so I do a search. Nothing that gives away the individual's identity or how to contact them comes up. What does come up is the fact that this affiliate was the Affiliate of the Month for another CB product and received a bonus for their efforts.

I like the sound of that=)

Totals for today:
1 Sale from JV partner
1 Sale of JV partner's product
1 Sale from New Mystery Affiliate

Power of Affiliates

My JV partner is awesome. Maybe its because he has a list of 2,000 who never new about my product or maybe its his softsell approach but he has made a sale almost every sing day since he sent out the launch notice. Every single day! I can't even pull that off=) I just set up my PPC campaign for his product last night so hopefully soon I will be able to return the favor.

My outsourcee finished my project in record time. He was able to locate other sites that would be able to sell my product. I will send them an email detailing why they should become my affiliate. This should help to boost sales and Marketplace rankings.

I've also started to see wannabes stealing my salesletter headline and trying to create their own product. Little do they know that this will only provoke me into trying to become the biggest, baddest site in this niche on the internet. Shame.

I'm going to try to go deep into the niche. This niche has various items that people need. Rather than being only and affiliate, I am looking into dropshipping as an option. Not only will I have the hands-off benefit of an affiliate in terms of product storage, I will get a bigger payday for each sale. As a drop shipper, I could even have my own affiliates selling the phyisical products. So far I haven't had much luck finding what I need but I'm still on the look out.

I LOVE JVs!!

I had to add the little "s" up there so that the whole title didn't involve the shift key.

Anyway, JVs are cool! Having affiliates is cool! My first JV partner has pulled 4 sales so far since sending out his email saturday. He said that he would send out another one tomorrow reminding his list to buy my product. I sent out my broadcast at lunch today and had my first sale of his product by the time I got home from the gym. This is awesome!

I should have listened to Jean-Rene and Burke earlier about getting affiliates from the get go. I know, I'm hardheaded. I want to do things my way. I think it would be a very good idea for me to go back and read the comments those two made about other topics and follow what they had to say to the letter=)

But this brings up something that society has trained us not to believe. The pie gets bigger. Both my affiliate and I are making money no matter who sells what. Am I losing money by introducing my list to his product? No. Quite the opposite. Bring on the JVs!

First Affiliate Sale

My first JV partner "launched" my product to his list today. I've had one sale so far, which is pretty cool because it is my very first affiliate sale! No I have the taste for affiliate sales and I want more. Tomorrow I will choose the person to work on developing my list of potential affiliates.

I have also come to the conclusion that it is time to stop avoiding competition and start charging into it head on. I have found a niche that will always be in season, always be needed, and is full of competition. Competition means money. Competition means available JVs and affiliates. Competition means more traffic. Since day one in this business, I have had a problem with getting enough traffic to make things work. Part of the problem is that I have, with the exception of one niche, avoided areas with competition. That is all about to change next month.

Time Keeps On Slippin'

How's it going everyone? I have finally stopped procrastinating and have put out a request to have a "special report" written for me as a bonus to get people to sign up for the newsletter. Hopefully it will increase conversions and confirmations. Doing double opt-in is killing me. I have also picked up a tactic from the elusive Bootstrappin' Burke on how I can also use this report to make money while getting opt-ins. I'm looking forward to testing it out.

Instead of using Rentacoder this time around, I'm going with Craigslist. The quality will be leaps and bounds better than what I can get at Rentacoder. I have already had at least 20 real authors request to work on the project. Some of these people have written for MSNBC and Discovery Health. Yeah, crazy stuff.

I have also outsourced my potential affiliate search. I realized that I was doing menial (however it is spelled) labor when I could be doing something that actually makes money.

I am also about to embark on a test that I have seen mentioned lately. Not going to go into it but I'm hoping to make a few dollars a day from it.

I Didn't Realize It Had Been This Long...

...Since I posted. Here's the scoop. One JV partner (the one with the biggest list) is no where to be found. The other sent out an email to his list prepping them for the "launch" of my video. In the same email, he informed them that he would be making a newsletter and charging $10/month for subscriptions. Remember what I said about having a good newsletter and charging people a monthly fee?

The affiliate section is finished and I've been doing some pretty bad things. I've been searching on Google for affiliates who are promoting the products of my competitors. My task this week is to compile this list and email them with a letter I wrote promoting my affiliate program. There are probably close to 100 sites out there promoting my competitors and that's just in Google. We know how hard it can be just to get indexed into Google. Maybe I should shift over to MSN or Yahoo for this operation.

Anyway, the recruitment of affiliates is in full swing. I'm not going to wait for them to come to me, I'm going to find them. If I could average even 0.5 sales/day with 50 affiliates, that would be $531/day profit.

That would be nice, wouldn't it?=)

Affiliate Section Progress

The affiliate section of the product site is coming along. I have the basic skeleton finished and Clickbank says that I should be in the marketplace by tomorrow. The affiliate section will have tools, basic PPC and SEO info, demographics info from the people who have already bought the product, and possibly some email marketing messages. I bought easyClickMate so that I can manage my affiliates and help them along the way. I plan to offer monthly prizes as incentives to try to get affiliates to work as hard as they can.

Meanwhile, my JV partners are waiting in the wings for my product to hit the marketplace so they can promote it.

I am in the process of devising a plan to actively recruit affiliates.

One of my outsourcees did a TERRIBLE job on the articles. I had to make an actual spreadsheet and send him the changes I wanted made.

Potential JV #2

Indeed, the other individual I emailed contacted me a day or two ago and said that he was also interested in a JV. This guy has been selling his own infoproducts since at least 2004 so this should be good.

I have started work on the affiliate section of my product site. I plan to offer incentives, tools, tool reviews, and techniques to help them sell. I have also taking the information I could ascertain from my customers and generated demographics info for my affiliate to use. Rather than trying to figure out who the target audience is, I will effectively be telling them who has already bought the product. That should help them.

I'm pretty excited about all of this.

I went to a duplex investment class the other night. While I didn't learn much that was new, I did start getting the itch to buy another duplex. I have a few thousand saved up for a downpayment but that looks like it will have to go to foundation work on my first duplex. I'm thinking that maybe I can get a small loan for the foundation and buy a duplex anyway or see if my Dad wants to partner up and get a duplex. He has been wanting to get into real estate for years and just built a rental house for my brother who just started college.

We will see. Now, if I could only make some sales...

1st Potential JV Partner

Of the two emails I sent out yesterday, one individual said that he was definitely interested in a partnership. The other didn't answer my email but discretely signed up for my newsletter. We will see what he thinks about it.

This is good news. Now I need to get easyClickmate so that I can manage my affiliates. It is not required with Clickbank but it allows you some flexibility that just using the basic interface does not provide.

I have started to flesh out my plan of providing training to my affiliates. By actually training them on how to best sell my product, I will be able to generate more money with my products. Rather than waiting for a super affiliate to come along, I will build them myself. Imagine training an army of your own super affiliates...that thought makes me giddy=)