Dec
13
In the last chapter, I explained the importance of marketing products within a particular niche market. There are two different ways to do this, you can develop your own product or you can promote someone else’s product. In this chapter, I’m going to teach you the basics of developing your own product. There are advantages and disadvantages to promoting your product vs. promoting some one else’s product. The biggest disadvantage is that you have to build an entire product from scratch. Another is that you will have to deal with customers and provide the best customer service possible. However, if you play all of your cards right, you can generate hundreds of dollars per day and get free targeted traffic from your affiliates.
As you probably know, I am the creator of the highly successful Amazing Design Secrets Course. It’s a web design course devoted to all areas of developing a website, including writing and coding HTML and CSS, designing layouts and graphics in Adobe Photoshop, and marketing your website on the web. I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons after launching this course. I literally threw away thousands of dollars of advising promoting my product and it took a lot of practice before I could even break even. Now, my return rate is below 2%. I’m able to help people accomplish their web design goals in the process, my customers love my product, and I’m constantly getting great feedback about the course.
When creating your own product, it is important (obviously) to build something of high quality and substance. Please don’t build a crappy product because nobody likes a crappy product. The internet is filled with crappy products, and guess what their sales look like? Whatever the idea you have is, be sure that the product is well written and is something that you are proud of. The results will be mind blowing when you offer a quality product to your customers and even more mind blowing when you sell something that you can be truly proud of.
Let’s talk about the landing page of your InfoProduct. I’d like to direct you to a product that I believe has one of the best landing pages on the internet: Butterfly Marketing. This is a wonderful product, and I recommend that you make the investment into your future. While I understand it’s very expensive, it has helped me achieve hundreds of thousands of dollars of results very quickly throughout all of my marketing campaigns. They have a landing page that is so impressive because it converts a very high number of visitors to customers very quickly—even though their product is somewhat pricey. The website is designed to convert the maximum amount of users possible.
Writing an e-book is one of the best ways to get your idea heard. We live in a world where people want information, and in many cases, people are willing to pay for information, like you did with my Amazing Design Secrets course. I created this course because I am just sick of all of the resources that exist today to learn html, graphic design, and web design. One day, I thought to myself “I can do better”, so I decided to do just that. I sat down for several months and I wrote a 140 page book, and when I was done I said “this isn’t enough” so I then created 33 videos to go along with it. Luckily, there are millions of people in this world that want to learn web design and are willing to pay a small price to get step-by-step instructions and lessons from a professional.
You probably see this everywhere, there are websites devoted to turning people from amateur guitarists into rock stars, the overweight into sports stars, and unemployed into small business owners. This is the information age and the possibilities are endless! WE ALL have a skill that someone wants. So why not teach it to someone else? If you are interested in writing an e-book or if you’ve already written one, I’d love to hear about it and I encourage you to write it out and see what happens.
Here are some simple steps to getting an e-book together:
- Come up with an idea
- Write what you know
- Make your product a quality product
- Give your customer exactly what they want
- Build a well designed website to endorse your product
- Sell for fair prices
- Offer a return policy if the customer isn’t satisfied
These simple steps have helped me become successful. I hope that I’m able to help you as well.
Squeeze Pages
A squeeze page is a cheesy sales page that usually runs for miles on your screen that includes a headline, a sales letter, testimonials, videos, audio, a description of your product, the bonuses offered an order section, and a P.S. section. Although this method of web design is very cheesy, it is also very effective. Let me go into detail about what is needed in a good landing page to generate powerful sales. 90% of customers leave your website within the first eight seconds of viewing your site. Generally, they look at your headline, hit the end button on the keyboard to scroll down to the bottom of the page, look at the price, and hit the back button to go somewhere else.
Headline
Your headline is the most important part of your entire web page. It is the first thing you notice when visiting a website. Here are some headlines that I’ve used on some of my websites that were NOT effective: “How to Design Websites Quickly and Easily”, “How to Design Websites with Ease”. Now, here is a headline that is very effective: “Finally, Now ANYONE Can Quickly and Easily Learn How to Design High Quality Websites AND Take the Frustration and Headache out of HTML With This EXPLOSIVE Package!” Do you notice the difference? The last headline SELLS the product to the customer and makes them want the product before they even start reading your web page. It’s their first impression when they visit your website. It is important to put your customer into a psychological state of WANTING your product.
There are some headline no-no’s that you should know. Never begin a headline with “Welcome to …” Introducing your website in such a way is not good marketing and the visitor will likely leave your website as soon as they see it. Also, you should never include your domain name within your headline either. The rule of thumb here is telling the visitor exactly what they expect to hear.
Sub Headline
Many product developers don’t realize the power behind creating a sub headline. Now that I’ve got my customer’s attention, check out what I say next: “A 100% Proven, Step-By-Step Method to Quickly & Easily MASTER Web Design Concepts, Like HTML, CSS, and Graphic Design, in 30 days, Guaranteed!” What I’ve done is I’ve told the customer exactly what is in the course placing a subliminal seed telling them what they’re going to get out of purchasing my course.
Sales Letter
Your customers want a personal touch when buying your product. This is the letter from you directly to your customers. It should include your personal picture (which makes a huge impact on the trust factor), the date and time the letter was written, and a nice quality sales pitch to the reader and potential buyer. Believe it or not, this is the best form of marketing when selling your products on any marketing platform. For years, direct marketing campaigns have used this exact same method to win over future customers.
When writing a sales letter, there are few pieces of information that must be included to make a sale. These things include establishing a layer of trust between you and your potential customer, establish your creditability by listing a case study or success story, outline the benefits of using your product, define a problem and how it can be resolved by using your product, make it memorable, and test it over and over again.
One feature a sales letter should contain that is very important—and many webmasters neglect doing this and are loosing lots of money!—you need to, in detail, explain exactly what you’re selling by explaining the feature and then countering the feature with a key benefit. This means that the item you’re promoting needs to be thoroughly explained. So, for example, if you say that you’re product contains a “Guitar Tuner”, say this instead:
Our product contains a free Guitar Tuner, now you can always stay in tune with your music skills while learning how to play music by ear. Finally, you can quickly and easily impress your friends with your guitar with this awesome bonus!
Your sales copy should also contain a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). These means that you need to explain to the customer why your product outweighs that of your competition and why they can trust your product above someone else’s product. One method to achieve this might be by explaining your product has less than 1% return rate, or that 99% of your customers are extremely happy with your product and have told you so in your survey (provide the survey results in your sales page), or that 50% of your customers buy from you again and again. The point is to make sure that your customer leaves no question on whether there are alternatives or not. This USP will put you ahead of your competition again and again.
It should also contain a bulleted list of all of the benefits they will receive by purchasing your product, but the bullets need to be as detailed as possible. Instead of typing in “Introduction to Graphic Design”, write “Master advanced graphic design techniques to get you designing like the pros in record time!” One think I would like to add is that when using bulleted lists, it is highly recommended that you use small bullet sized images in place of the <li> HTML tag. This will be more attractive to the user and will also behave better with the search engines.
You need to include a call-to-action! Give your customers a deadline to purchase your product by and if they miss the deadline, explain the consequences. This might be considered bully marketing to some, but it works! If you have a newsletter that you would like a customer to sign up for, tell them to sign up before you quit accepting new members. If you want them to purchase your product, give them special promotion and provide a deadline before the sale goes away. If you have a physical product, you may want to consider having a counter on your page that counts down the amount of books you have left in your inventory as sales are made. This will encourage customers to act fast. A good call-to-action will give your prospective customer more reason to purchase your product right away.
Here is a list of words that I use in the sales copy of all of my websites. The words are true, honest, and they psychologically target the customer in a way that easily sells the product to them.
| 10-minute | Absolutely | Adore | Advice | Alternative |
| Amazing | Automatically | Avalanche | Balloon | Bargain |
| Benefit | Best-selling | Blueprint | Bonus | Bottom line |
| Brand-new | Brilliant | Caliber | Certainly | Choice |
| Cinch | Comfortable | Complete | Completely | Complimentary |
| Desire | Device | Discount | Discover | Easy |
| Ecstatic | Effortless | Enable | Enjoy | Ensure |
| Excited | Expert | Explode | Extra | Fact |
| Fast | First | First-time | Fix | Flat-out |
| Formula | Free | Fresh | Fun | Gain |
| Gift | Give | Good | Grant | Guarantee |
| Guaranteed | Guide | Hand over | Happy | Healthy |
| Hefty | Honest | Hot | Hot-selling | How-to |
| Ideal | Imagine | Immediately | Impressive | Income |
| Incredible | In-demand | Ingenious | Inside | Insider |
| Instantly | Introduce | Just | Killer | Know-how |
| Knowledge | Lead | Learn | Like | Literally |
| Little | Love | Low-Cost | Magic | Merit |
| Money | Natural | Need | New | Nice |
| No-cost | No-risk | Now | Number-one | One-of-a-kind |
| One-time | Only | Overwhelming | Penetrate | Perfect |
| Perks | Pledge | Precious | Prefer | Preference |
| Private | Professional | Profits | Promise | Proud |
| Proven | Quick | Ramp up | Reality | Reliable |
| Resolve | Results | Reveal | Revealing | Revenue |
| Right | Risk-free | Roadmap | Safe | Sale |
| Satisfaction | Save | Save | Secret | Secure |
| Security | Serious | Shocked | Shocking | Show |
| Simple | Simply | Skyrocket | Snowball | Solution |
| Solve | Special | Step-by-step | Substantial | Suddenly |
| Supreme | Teach | Telling | Tested | Testimonial |
| Tiny | Tool | Totally | Trust | Truth |
| Uncover | Understand | Unique | Unreal | Value |
| Value-added | Vow | Want | Worth | You |
Testimonials
It is also very important to get testimonials from your customers. A good testimonial can go a long ways. I recommend asking your customers for their testimonials and offer them some kind of “special bonus” for leaving their feedback. A standard text testimonial isn’t enough anymore either. You need your customer’s testimonial on audio or video, you need to get samples of proof showing that your product worked for them, and you need their picture as well. These testimonials will eliminate any doubt a potential customer may have about your credentials. They’re solid proof that what you’re selling works.
Incentives and Bonuses
Include some kind of incentive to make your customers act sooner. This can be a bonus, a discount, a special offer, or something free, but make it of high quality and relevance to the customer interested in purchasing. It is also helpful to include more than one bonus if you can! In the past, I have been able to partner with other product developers provide free copies of their books as bonuses. Some authors were able to create books just for me in an effort to also promote their own products. A solid series of bonuses will help make more sales.
A Money Back Guarantee
Please offer your customers their money back if they’re unhappy! You just can’t please everyone, it’s impossible. By offering a solid, iron-glad money back guarantee, you will increase your conversions drastically—and don’t be stingy either! I’ve seen companies offer lifetime double your money back guarantee’s on their products. While I understand that it may be a risk for your business, if you truly believe in your product (and your return rate is low), it may be a great way to generate more sales and more happy customers. After all, dissatisfied customers, even 10 years after buying your product, can hurt your online business. I recommend making a powerful statement by offering a fair and over the top money back guarantee.
Merchant Accounts
ClickBank is probably the internet’s most popular merchant for InfoProducts. The beauty of this service is that ClickBank takes the responsibly of handing your affiliate program, so that others can promote your products online. However, they do charge fees for each transaction that can be significantly higher than other merchants, like PayPal. There are several alternatives, including purchasing shopping cart software and accepting credit cards through a merchant account.
Affiliate Programs
Getting someone else to promote your product will make your job extremely easier. If you can develop a successful affiliate program, driving traffic to your website will no longer be a chore and you can worry more about selling your product once the visitor reaches your website. The easiest way to do this is to offer extremely high commissions to your affiliates—they deserve it after all! It is very hard work to drive quality traffic to your website and anyone who can do that where the end result is a sale deserves every penny you can give them. I recommend offering a 75% commission to your affiliates. Most affiliates won’t even consider promoting your product unless the commission is 75% and making at least $30 off of your product. This explains why so many products you see online cost $39.95—75% of $39.95 is about $30.00. It might seem over generous, but it’s essential to your success.
Product Delivery
There are two ways to deliver your product to your customer, and I recommend using both, a digital delivery and a physical delivery. This is a process that you should automate if you can. Automating a digital deliver can be difficult depending on the security involved. If security is not a problem for you, simply placing the digital item on the “thank you” page is sufficient, but it is certainly not secure. There are plenty of applications that work with your merchant service that will ensure a more secure delivery of your digital product.
I highly recommend offering your customers the option of purchasing a physical product. In fact, if you can afford it, only offer a physical product. My reasoning is this, you can charge more for a physical product, customers like having a physical product, and you’ll have fewer returns. Also, you can afford to pay affiliates 50% commission rather than 75% because the risk is far lower, more affiliates will trade that for a lower percentage. Going physical can result in better profits for you and your affiliate.
Article written by Andrew J. McClary, © 2008, All Rights Reserved.
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