Losing my virginity - outside the Adult niche [PLOT TWIST included!] (14)
Losing my virginity - outside the Adult niche [PLOT TWIST included!]
Hi guys
after the fantastic welcome I got from you - thanks again! - it's time to get real.
As the title suggests - this is me losing my virginity in this area of marketing. In the past, my focus was on email marketing and I was in the lucky situation that I was able to work with existing lists (my own / my clients lists) and basically just "bought" leads, so I never actually touched the whole process before that. I'm even more excited to learn, with an open heart and a clean state of mind.
The setup
The product
What I'll be focusing on is a niche product that aims at traders of all kind: Stock brokers, Forex traders, etc. The product is somewhat unique as it does not give "theoretical" advise of any kind, but rather focuses on controlling their emotions, a reason why many traders fail (overspending "trying to make up for it", panicking, making emotional instead of knowledgeable decisions, etc.).
The product is a 200 USD multipart book. It's a solid product, there's a solid sales page, there's a solid email sales funnel.
Now the promised PLOT TWIST: I own the rights to this product (together with the developer) - He provided product, salespage, etc. and is ready to adapt as we see fit.
Basically means: 100% of sales go into our pockets.
Once sales get started, the idea is to "upgrade" this into a video course with a higher pricepoint (1k+ ), but before this is done I also want to gain experience from existing buyers.
The goal
I believe the best way to sell this is by getting people into the email funnel, so basically the goal is to drive traffic to the landing pages, where people can sign up.
As this has not been tested, maybe sending direct-to-salespage or LP => Salespage might just as well work; being the dusty ol' email marketer that I am, I'd love to collect email adresses, though 
.
Technical setup
As I did the whole product setup myself, I took all the measures to make sure I'm tracking as much as possible, on- and off-page.
- We use Infusionsoft for the email marketing part, which gives us a lot of great segementation possibilities
- On-page, there's Kissmetrics tracking literally everything visitors do, plus Infusionsoft data is pulled in (which email was opened and lead to what reactions), so I'm hoping once we get volume on the page we'll be able to do some nice segmentation magic with people who signed up but did not buy.
- Heatmap tracking through Crazyegg, salespage only
- For Traffic tracking, I'll use CPVlab, as I've played around with it already and understand (at least basically) how it works
- For Landing page / squeeze page testing, I'll use Visual Website Optimizer.
The challenge
This product has never been marketed, so I don't know the conversions of the sales page, I don't know the conversions of the email funnel, heck, I don't even know if the product will sell at all. However, As I've seen quite a lot of stuff in my life, I'm confident to say: This is solid, and people made worse stuff work. So I am determined to make THIS work.
Also, due to the fact that this is a "high ticket" item (not in general, but compared to let's say a zip submit ), I'm fully aware that I'll have to burn a chunk of money before I see any results / get some helpful stats.
The shameful, humble beginnings
OH, THE MISERY. Please don't permaban me for what I did 
Given the fact that I never worked myself with PPC stuff, I thought "ha, google / bing all the way". Can't be THAT difficult, eh?
So I had 2 random people compile a list of keywords for me (came up with around 1000 kws in that niche), had some ads written by a decent copywriter, and threw them into Adwords / Bing.
Only to realize the following, after the first traffic came in and even the first signups were made:
- After reading the advertising guidelines, I realized squeeze pages just collecting email adresses in exchange for a little bait are NOT loved by Adwords or Bing.
- Despite the incredible luck that I did not get banned or closed down for guideline violations, with the first traffic I lost my money faster than a sailor with a harbor whore, as - and that brings me to the next two points:
- my keywords are WAYYY to broad - I blew money on unrelated and probably overpriced keywords
- The clickprices are HORRENDOUS, as the quality score of the landing page was (of course) miserable.
- For the long-tail keywords I came up with, there's too little traffic to get this going or even to scale.
The next steps
So as far as I can see it, I need to do three things:
1) Find traffic sources that WILL allow me to send good amounts of targeted traffic to Squeeze Pages
2) Find ways to utilize the "big 3" (Adword/Bing/Facebook) to send traffic - a simple squeeze is out, so I need to figure out ways they will approve?
3) regarding 2, find and get keywords that make actual sense and do not cost an arm and a leg.
Timeline
Before end of June, I have little time as I'm finishing up a consulting project in my job, so I'm travelling a lot and I'm burned out in the evening. So I can do prep work, but not focus with a clear in on traffic.
July / Augst - there's only admin work, and then I took 6 weeks off my job as our 2nd baby is due, so I'm at home and ready to work on that (plus learning "mobile" with regular affilaite products).
Questions that I already have
- Can anyone hint at traffic sources that I can utilize for lead generation?
- any tips on making this work with Adw/Bing/FB, landing-page wise etc.?
THANKS SO MUCH already in advance - I'm excited to hear what you think and will update you on the progress along the journey.
reserved to summarize some key items
First of all, I certainly applaud your ambition.
You are trying to do something big, and I personally love people who think big.
That said, you need to walk before you can run.
I would really suggest that you first figure out how to take a PROVEN external offer, and get that profitable first, before you venture into running your own product. If that takes you a week ... terrific. If that takes you a month ... fine. If that takes you six months .... still no worries.
Once you learn how to drive profitable traffic for similar products, then you can try to apply what you have learned to running your own product.
I would also strongly suggest you either read Eric Ries' Lean Startup book, or at least watch his talk at Google. My sense is doing this will save you a lot of unnecessary mistakes.
As far as I know you will have difficulty running any sort of clickbank style sales page on google / bing. You might want to create a review style blog and write helpful articles and advertise those, with a link to the actual product all being on the same domain. You can collect emails but they cant be the primary focus of the LP as far as i know.
@bentho
Basically there are two main camps you will find with Paid Advertising, those, involved in CPA, and those in CPS. As per the CPS route, it is obviously much more difficult when you are trying to get a customer to buy a product from on a first time basis. Meaning, driving them to a sales page, and trying to convert them on the spot is going to be highly difficult with them knowing you or your brand. Especially with a high end $ 200 product. I am actually quite familiar with the Forex market, and actually started my career back in 1994 at a Forex Trading Firm in NYC. Still trade to this day by the way for my own account, As you are likely aware also, the 3 main pillars of forex trading are Strategy, Money Management and Psycology, Most people can indeed master the Strategy part, but the reason 90% fail at trading is their lack of proper money management or emotional control. But in terms of commercial value, most forex traders are looking for the best trading setup, or best system, and as such you will find tons of these types of products in the marketplace. However, the psycological aspect is not that sexy to most individuals, and as such you will see very little products in this area. I myself have read probably over 250 trading books, and I can count on my one hand how many were directly related to emotional aspects of trading. Michael Douglas book comes to mind. The best on the subject in my opininon, Trading in the Zone. Anyhow I digress. My point is that you will have to build a relationship with your audience, and the best way to accomplish this is via email marketing. You need to forget about Adwords, and Bing for squeeze pages, Thier TOS with likely disallow it. Try instead to build an email list using Facebook, Retargeting Traffic, Solo Ads, and PPV Traffic. Join Aweber or GetResponse, make sure you get Double Opt ins, create a lead magnet like a Free Ebook to do so, and then build an autoresponder series of emails.
So basically here is your funnel:
paid traffic >>> squeeze page >>> lead magnet >>> email list building >>> autoresponder series with quality content to build trust >>> Sales
Originally Posted by cmdeal
You have to think anyway, so why not think big?
Donald Trump
Thanks for all the replies so far:
@cmdeal: I watched the video and will grab the book for sure. Thanks for the tip! Is what you're trying to say: "Fail faster?" (e.g. "pivot" away from what doesn't work instead of hoping that a bad idea will work once you make it nice and shiny?)
@vivido: That's something I definitely will try. Is there any reason for the "same domain"? (e.g. will Google interpret this as the landing page being just an affiliate site?)
@vp5005: Thanks for your insights on the Forex market. I am aware it's a niche, but the hope is to bank on the fact that there's little comparable out there, and the target group in general is big enough, so hopefully also is the niche. as for the customer generation - probably you just skimmed my post, as the email marketing strategy is exactly what I have in mind and what is already set up I'll have a look at the solo ads though, as this is something we already talked about. Any hints on solo ads vendors in that niche?
@iamattila: love that one! 
My question still remains - any tips on specific traffic sources that are good for sending traffic to squeeze pages?
Bentho,
Solo Ads are great for list building. However, they are more dominant in the IM and MMO space then in other markets like Forex, however you will certainly find some good providers if you dig around. I would suggest SafeSwaps, and also Tim Yu Forex Solo Ads, just google him up. Anyway that would be a good start, If you really want to get heavy into list building I would also suggest ArcaMax, but they are an absolute BEAST, so you will have to start smaller before going to them.
Hi guys,
I thought i'd give you a quick update on this follow-along (i've been "side-tracked" with the mobile follow along).
I've started digging for Forex / Broking related ads and identified some solo sellers that looked good.
I bought a couple of solo ads and started sending traffic one-by one.
So far, I'm happy with the results - the funnel entry (sign-up page) converts at around 35%, which is not bad as I didn't even start optimizing.
I started testing 4 copy variations with VWM and got results from 7 to 28 percent for the losers.
So far, I got no sales, but as it's a 197 USD product, I am by no means worried.
As I am intentionally on the break, I only got around 150 signups so far... those guys will now go through a 6-day email sequence, let's see how it goes.
Next steps:
- optimize landing page more and send more traffic
- Test a different Version of the sales page (same copy, but text-only - this one is very graphics-heavy)
- test different Price Points.
I'm still looking for tips for a squeeze-page friendly traffic source besides solo ads?
"I'm still looking for tips for a squeeze-page friendly traffic source besides solo ads?"
sitescout.com
Thanks sean, I'll give it a try - I had an account with them for ages but never used it.
I'll have a look around if I can find some General tips for SS around here
Just a quick update on this - first sale was made, hooray!
So with the current traffic it's a break-even Situation and ON TOP OF THAT we're building a nice little targeted list.
Not statistically relevant, but I honestly did NOT expect any sale so early in.
I think the landing page conversion rate can still be improved, plus I'm not happy about follow-up email opening rates so that'll go back to the copywriter to come up with some stronger Headlines. CTR on emails is good though for the ones that get opened.
Once I changed the LP - was a bit of a busy week in my Job - I'll start sending some actual paid traffic.
I'll Keep y'all updated!
Thanks maynze. If I woulnd't suck so badly at creating banners, graphic-wise, I'd have done way more alreay.... :/ I can come up with the copy, but the design.... oh boy....
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