Using a low-end offer to build a buyer's list for subsequent digital products. (11)
Using a low-end offer to build a buyer's list for subsequent digital products.
I am planning on writing a series of books on business related topics. Has anyone gone through the process of building a buyer's list? I was thinking of creating an offer in which I give away all the profit in the initial volume as a way of using the leverage of affiliates to build the list. Thoughts appreciated!
Why on business?
Hi
new on STM.
what is a "low-end offer" ?
Best regards.
I've done similar things before, and it works.
To be honest, I'd probably reduce the size of your initial offering and use it as a free giveaway (the classic five-part email course or 22-page PDF) to build the list, then market to that list with subsequent books. Most mailing list software will let you then segment your list further into "people who have actually bought something" and "people who haven't bought yet", so you can then market to those two lists differently.
I'm assuming you have a fairly targeted niche for this? B2B plays are very different to B2C plays when it comes to paid traffic, but both can work.
@vicnent - In this case, what fernando is referring to is simply a lower-priced offering to get people interested in what he's selling. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Fernando!)
@fernando
This is certainly a very viable strategy, with two things to keep in mind. One, the market must lend itself to buying with no warm up or relationship (and many, many markets do) and the transaction value must be enough so it’s worth the affiliates while to promote it. There are certainly some clever ways to increase it, and I’ll show you how I do it.
There are some markets that don’t lend themselves to initial front end sales with no relationship, and while there are exceptions that prove the rule in this market, the men’s dating advice market is one of them. There’s not enough pain in it, so opt in is the key to that market—they opt in for curiosity, stay for entertainment, and buy when life event (such as getting dumped or rejected or made fun of for not having a girlfriend) happens.
But in markets that are pain markets (like the women’s dating advice market or the diet market), hobby markets (golf, MMA, funny cars, witchcraft and all other kinds of unusual markets) such offers can work very well, especially markets affiliates are already familiar with and promote other offers in. These markets don’t need existing relationship to buy since they buy to relieve pain (physical or emotional) or buy because it’s a hobby to them and that’s what they spend their money on. Of course building a list of pain or hobby market buyers and building a relationship with them is extremely lucrative, so creating a front end product affiliates can promote profitably works very well in these markets.
So, once you have a market and you have an offer, the trick is to get the initial transaction value up as high as possible so you can pay the affiliate as much as possible, so they’ll promote more. I’ll illustrate some strategies on how to increase transaction value dramatically, even if you’re starting with a low end offer.
I have an audio CD for guys who want to get a girlfriend. The pitch is here if you want to see it, and the offer is FREE audio CD plus $9 shipping and duplication cost.
http://www.womenapproachyou.com/girlfriend-cd.htm
The goal is to get the customer to have his credit card out by the time they get to the order page, so we’re no longer “selling” we’re “upgrading” which is much easier to do.
So, the first upgrade on the pre checkout order form is an unadvertised option for a $99 plus shipping product, and you can see it here:
http://www.womenapproachyou.com/cd/c...d-cd-doers.htm This order form also has a continuity option for a $29.97 a month newsletter.
Like clockwork, 11% of the people who buy the CD take the $99 upgrade.
Then, when they checkout, they go into a 1 click upsell chain, and it is remarkable how the numbers break out—about 16% take the initial $197 upsell, and 7% take the $99 downsell. A small percentage take the $997 offer (about .9%), and you can even put them into continuity of you like. This is the same 1 click upsell chain I use for my Secrets of Natural Attraction product, and I just feed CD buyers into it.
http://www.johnalanis.com/1clicks.htm
So, let’s look at what’s happened to our Free plus $9 shipping offer.
At the pre checkout order form, they’ve increased to $19.89 in value due to 11% taking the $99 pre checkout upsell.
When they hit the 1 click upsell, they’re now worth $58.07, if no one takes the $997 upsell (and you have to get a large number of buyers before there’s enough of a distribution to measure that one, so I don’t factor it in, even though it is nice when you take them).
So, when you look at those numbers, you can now pay affiliates a bounty, say $35 to $40 (you must factor in refunds, credit card fees, etc.) on a $9 sale. Clearly you must know your numbers, and clearly this won’t hold up with all traffic sources, but magic happens when you can get them to get their credit card out and upgrade them. And now you have a list of buyers that have come in at an average transaction value of $58, although the guys who took the upgrade are obviously much more valuable over time than the people who just spend the $9.
Ah, you say, but you’re greedy, you want more money AND you don’t want to do any work to get it? Well then, listen up, because I am about to tell you something that can actually allow you to do just that, if you can scale.
When the sale is made, make SURE you get physical address and phone number, if at all possible. If you have your own merchant account, you will do this regardless, if you’re using Clickbank you’ll have to set it up as part of the order process.
You now have a list of direct response sold buyers you can rent on the direct mail rental market, and there are plenty of mailers who are happy to test offers to online buyers. How do you rent your names? You call up MacroMark, tell them you have a list of recent BUYERS to rent, and ask them if they’d like to rent them. You email them the file, then you go to your mailbox once a month, open the check, admire the check, then take the check to the bank. Easiest money you’ll ever make.
NOW, you do NOT want to get greedy and start mixing in phony addresses because the mailer will get bad results, and won’t continue with the list. But if they get good results, they’ll mail it every time you put up new buyers, and you’ll get paid. If you’re putting up 3,000 buyer names per quarter (every three months) you can do very well…at the height of my list rental, I was getting $3000 a month in list rental fees. This money is, of course, in addition to what you sell them via email follow up.
There are actually a lot of companies who make their profit purely on list rental—if you open the National Enquirer and find the fractional page ads that say things like “Sciatica?” or “Back Pain?” you’ll see these tiny ads are selling a low cost book. They’re not making any money on ads, but they’re making it on list rental and they do pretty well.
So, if you put all the parts together I just described, you can do very well with the strategy of creating a low end offer for affiliates to promote with a high enough payout, renting the names, then marketing to a list of buyers. Get all the pieces right, and you will profit handsomely.
Originally Posted by fernando
johna5150 = pure awesomeness
@johna5150 this is such a huge help - thanks so much!
@caurmen you are right.
@nefig It's an area of interest - the specific topic is online b2b enterprise sales.
As I'm going through the details on this, it's pretty clear that a book about B2B selling is just not going to work - it's not a pain. But there are clearly a ton of other niches to look at. Thanks again, and I'll post here as I move through the process!
@fernando
I figured I’d move this thread over to the Affiliate Marketing section since this is something I think everyone here can really benefit from—building a buyer’s email list can support you in style for a long, long time. Also, I have a few interesting notes to add to this thread, regarding markets that don’t necessarily fit into the immediate pain or hobby category, as well as a few cool monetization strategies.
The market I’m in, the men’s dating advice market is not an immediate pain market, since most guys can be pretty happy while they’re single, with episodes of pain. In a market like this, what you have to do is identify those areas of pain, then craft products for each one, so when a segment of that market goes into pain, you’re in front of them.
Some examples from this market are:
Guy gets dumped, wants his ex back
Guy sees friend with hot new girlfriend, he wants one
Guy is disrespected by woman he likes, wants respect
Guy is in bad relationship with unhappy woman, wants happy one
Older guy wants to date younger women
Guy sees friends getting laid, wants to get laid too
Guy has friend he wants to turn into lover, but is afraid of rejection
…and so on. So, what you do is create a low end product that addresses each of these concerns (and every market can be splintered into specific concerns) that you can let affiliates promote to smaller niche markets. You won’t get huge volume on any single one of them, but in aggregate you can do well, and then feed them all into a general email list for that market, centered around entertainment and personality. You can also send them offers by direct mail, since they are buyers and now have a relationship with you.
I like to use these products a bit differently, however, promoting them to my opt in list, after building a list with a free offer, to the right market segments. What this allows me to do is to present different offers to the same guy over time as his interests change—if you go down the list of pain points, almost every guy experiences them at some point in his life, so the same customer will buy multiple products as his interests change.
Here’s my list of “splinter products,” some more successful than others, but they are all useful:
How To Get A Hot Girlfriend CD:
http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/girlfriend.htm
How To Make and Keep a Woman Happy CD-- http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/happy.htm
How To Get Women To Like, Admire, and Respect You CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/like-you.htm
Ends Cheating, Lying, and Betrayal By Women Audio CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/no-cheating.htm
How To Talk To Women And Get Them To Like You CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.c...k-to-women.htm
How To Understand Women By Knowing How Women REALLY Think About Men: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/women-think.htm
These 3 Free CD’s Get You Laid Over and Over (Even If You Don’t Deserve It): http://www.johnalanis.com/join-elite.htm
How To Get Physical Fast and Close the Deal With A Willing Woman CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/transitions.htm
How To Overcome Testing By Women and Turn the Tables Fast So She Finds You Irresistible: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/testing.htm
Secrets of Charismatic Male Energy CD—attract women without saying a word http://www.effortlesscommunication.c...neticforce.htm
How To Get Your Ex Who Recently Dumped You To Come Back, Begging YOU To Forgive Her and Take HER Back CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/getherback.htm
How to Turn a Hot Friend Into An Even Hotter Lover and Make Her Think It’s Her Idea CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.c...d-to-lover.htm
How To Earn and Keep A Woman’s Respect For Life CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.com/respect.htm
How To Read Female Body Language So You’ll Know For Certain If She Likes You and Wants You To Make a Move CD: http://www.effortlesscommunication.c...y-language.htm
It looks like a lot of work at first to set these up, but if you look closer, you’ll see the only thing that’s really changed in each one is the headline, cd, opening paragraphs, etc. This really is a template thing. Notice the pre-checkout upsell on each of the order forms; also all of these offers flow into the same 1 click upsell chain.
If any of you know Frank Kern (and I’ve known Frank since 2001, before he was “The Frank Kern,” and was slumming around Georgia with his dog fence business) you know he has a unique talent for coming up with cool labels for marketing strategies (my favorite is his “Death Grip Email Sequence.”) A year or so ago he invented the term “Trip Wire Product” to describe a low end product ($7 or so), offered to your list, that gets people to start buying—once someone has gotten out their credit card and purchased, they are much more likely to buy a lot of stuff from you in short order, because they are now are recent, direct response sold buyer instead of merely a prospect. And of course when they buy a low end product, you merrily feed them inot a robust 1 click upsell chain. It’s not a new strategy by any means, but the label is a good one because it orients your mind towards thinking of ways to set “trip wires” that turn prospects into buyers.
Now, there IS a danger here if you offer too many of these, because then you train the list to buy only low end products, which you don’t want, even if they feed into a 1 click upsell chain. So, to combat this, I promote a wide variety of product price points, occasionally offering the lower end ones to the list, to hit that segment of the list that is suddenly having that problem.
The most extreme example, of course, is a “Get Your Ex To Come Back” product. Right now, for example, there is a certain segment of guys in my list (no way to identify them) who are not interested in a Get Your Ex Back product. Come tomorrow at this time, they will be acutely interested because they will be dumped by their girlfriends, and in massive pain. In three months they will no longer be interested, because the pain will have passed. But if I can catch them right now and turn them into buyers, they will buy for a long time because they have now changed their identities from prospects to buyers.
Of course all of this stuff works even better in a pain/hobby market, I just happen to like the men’s dating advice market because I can get paid for talking about things I like to talk about anyways. There is certainly profit to be made, but the above strategies are necessary, and a longer term play.
Originally Posted by fernando
Wow. This is such a goldmine! I've been thinking about the content top-down...as in what do I want to write, and then how do I sell it. What I'm really getting from this is how I should figure out the selling part first, and backfill the content.
I love the direct marketing list rental approach. Definitely gonna apply that to my funnel.
Home > General > Affiliate Marketing Forum