Where could you possibly get new buyers in the Internet Marketing niche on your mailing list and only pay 50 cents or less per lead?
Or in my case, pay nothing at all. In fact I made a few hundred dollars on the front, much to my surprise.
Think about this for a moment now… If you could pay 50 cents for a new buyer on your mailing list, and then sell them something for a dollar, you’re ahead of the game.
Let’s put it another way.
And how about if they gave you another dollar a couple of weeks later? And then again another couple of weeks after that.
That’s what I’m talking about.
I have to clarify here though. It’s not the same person giving you a dollar and then another and another, but when you do the maths that’s what it works out as.
Put another way, you pay 50 cents per buyer on your list, and you get 10 of them. A few days later one of them gives you $10. A couple of weeks after that, a different one gives you $10. And so on.
The effect is, it’s like all of them giving you a dollar every so often. You with me?
That then drives the simple doubling of your 50 cents to another level, because you aren’t just doubling it, you’re trebling or quadrupling it, or even more. So if you see you’re making $2 per lead over a month or so, you know that you can now afford to spend $1.50 to get that lead and you’re still making 50 cents on the deal.
That’s how you should look at your online business.
That’s a bit of a royal pain, but I can see that with MASSIVE numbers of buyers coming on board and where the money numbers are high, how important it is to do this.
Let’s get back down to earth.
From my perspective, I like to keep things as simple as I possibly can and I often don’t have the patience to put checks in place and work it all out to the nth degree. As long as I can see the exercise has paid for itself a few days later, then I’m a happy bunny. Because buyers often hang around for quite a while, sometimes years.
That 50 cents cost up front could have a massive return on an individual basis. I know that many people reading this right now have been on my list for years and have bought everything I’ve released in that time (thank you!) and will still be around (I hope) for years to come.
Where then, do we get the new buyers for 50 cents or less per lead?
From the Warrior Forum.
It’s like a busy street corner that’s populated with a special kind of person that’s in the Internet Marketing niche – it’s not the only one, but it’s the busiest. If you go looking, you’ll find busy forums out there for many niches where you can do the same or a similar thing.
From my perspective and probably yours if you’re a marketer, the Warrior Forum is THE place to find new buyers. They even have a special place on that forum where you can bang your drum called the Warrior Special Offers forum.
You can go there with a product you’ve created, put up a sales page in the form of a new thread and watch the buyers join your lists.
It costs $40 to run a WSO (there are other criteria too), and another $19 to use the Warrior Plus system – which is absolutely crucial to your list building efforts.
Up front you have a $59 outlay, and as long as you can bring in at least that much in sales, you’ve broken even. It hasn’t cost you a penny to run and you’ve picked up at least a few new buyers on your mailing list
The WSO+ attracts affiliates like this.
The seasoned affiliate may check out your WSO as a likely candidate, and as soon as they see the WSO+ button on it, they go to the affiliate page to check out the offer. If your product is part of a rising price sale and pays 100% instant commissions, then it’s a very attractive proposition to them.
What the affiliate will then do is place a request with you that will allow them to be your affiliate for this sale. If you wish you can then auto-approve them for all future sales if you know who they are or they perform particularly well.
They will then send you traffic to your WSO using their affiliate link, and some of that traffic will buy. The affiliate will get paid immediately into their PayPal account, the buyer gets their product, and if you’ve created your new list using Aweber or ImnicaMail, then WSO+ will auto-add them to your list. (They still have to confirm by clicking a link, but most do.)
That’s a win-win-win. Perfect!
If you’re lucky, enough casual traffic will find your WSO attractive enough to buy and you’ll make enough money to cover your WSO. In that case, the new buyers on your list haven’t cost you a penny. You shouldn’t bank on it though.
Here’s the proviso to make this work.
You need your own products that you created yourself or had created just for you.
I said this a few years ago, and it was important enough for me to stick it to the top of my blog.
Product Creation, Traffic, List Building, Automation = Internet Business.
And then again a variant on that on another site I’ll be opening shortly:-
Product Creation >> Traffic >> List Building >> Business Building
It might sound obvious, or difficult, or crazy, or easy, or not for you, or whatever, but it works.
If you choose a style or niche (e.g. mine’s web apps, WordPress plugins and scripts) then go and find out what people in your niche want… they will buy. And if they like what you did, they will buy other things from you too as long as you address what they want.
You need the power of affiliates to really make it all work, and you turn them onto promoting for you by paying them 100%.
Okay?
Let’s just quickly run through it again.
- Create a product.
- Put up a WSO for it.
- Use the WSO+ system to pay 100% commissions to your affiliates.
- Gather your new buyers onto a new mailing list.
- Repeat.
You then make your money by selling other products or memberships to your new buyers afterwards.
After you’ve gone through this cycle a few times and created a few products, then it gets easier as you can sell your original products directly to your new buyers as those products will be new to them.
That doesn’t sound too hard does it? It’s also fun and you learn lots of new stuff along the way.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. What have I missed out? Do you need some more detail? And so on.
Fire away.
-Frank Haywood
Hi Frank – excellent post. And it’s totally true, the WF is LOADED with potential buyers. It’s also a place where, IF a scam is detected, you can get ripped a new one in double-quick time. I’ve thought more than once about doing a WF offer, however I haven’t been able to come up with a product or service I thought was good enough.
Anyway, great post, and thanks for posting it.
Regards,
Maury
Hi Maury,
Thanks for that.
Yes there is that aspect to it, and it looks like the current pricing structure is enough to put many potential scammers off, and as you say they tend not to last long there when they do. There are some very “demanding” buyers on there who often want to see proof of your claims and it’s a very public place. So if you claim something there, you BETTER be able to prove it or it’s game over. Even so, I’m still surprised by all the supposed screenshots of CB and PayPal accounts that some WSOs run. I haven’t believed any of those for a long time, but there’s always newbies going to fall for it and it’s a damn shame. Even the real screenshots are questionable as you never know if the numbers you’re seeing are for the actual product they’re touting or for something completely different. At any rate, whenever I see “proof” like that the alarm bells go off.
As for coming up with a product or service idea, spend a bit of time on the WSO forum and you’ll come up with loads. 😉
Then all you need to do is go research it and put it all together. It’s fun.
Here’s an example. I saw a plugin the other day that was going like hot cakes and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. I looked at the screenshots. I watched the video. I looked at the demo site. As far as I could make out it wasn’t anywhere near complete as a solution. Yet many offline marketers were getting very excited about it.
So I PMd one of the people who were a little critical of the plugin, and then we had a back and forward chat about it. Eventually he decided it wasn’t worth it and asked for his money back. His reason was that it was being advertised by affiliates as one thing, but it wasn’t what it seemed to be.
So now I’ve seen there’s a big demand for that kind of thing, it’s on my hit list. But when I do it, I’ll do it properly.
You could do the same kind of thing with a bit of research. Don’t ever be put off if someone beats you to an idea – you can always put your spin on it, and overall it raises people’s awareness and causes discussion and comparison. 😉
-Frank
Thanks, Frank
I’ve been wondering about the ‘basic structure’ or business model of the WSO. And I was interested to note your shift into that medium.
Appreciate your efforts,
Phil
E. Troy, WI (US)
Hi Phil,
The whole WSO thing is something I should have started doing a long time ago. I have a few bits and pieces to do to make it all a little bit slicker, and I’ll then adopt that as a whole lead generation model and then set up some more. I have some great ideas I want to share with everybody here, but only after I’ve tested them to make sure they work. 😉
-Frank
Great ideas – in fact I purchased a product a while back that suggested you buy a PLR of some kind, then re-label it and offer it as your own (which, technically, it would be). With that said, many of the WF members have been in IM (and the WF) a l-o-n-g time. In fact, on another post, one actually said something like ‘isn’t this the same as xyz product that so-and-so sold a while back?’ Then it gets very interesting (and sometimes very quiet), as we get to watch the OP start to do the WF version of the Washington DC politicians two-step. LOL 😉
Regards,
Maury
Hi Maury,
Hehe. Yeah, I’m fairly sure (without checking) that PLR is a no-no on the WSO forum. It has to be a product you’ve created or had created just for you, i.e. unique. Otherwise the WSO forum would become overloaded with products.
Then again, maybe not…
As you’ve pointed out, it doesn’t take long for someone to point out that it’s a PLR product and that’s the end of that WSO, and that’s then a bit of a waste of $59 as no-one will buy, and no-one will promote.
I saw somebody place a PLR product on the WSO forum a while back, and when someone pointed it out, it got shifted by a mod off the WSO forum and on to the classifieds forum which isn’t as busy. So yeah that rule probably is still in place.
But it’s not that hard to create a product – I’m going to prove that in about a months time. All you need is the idea, and it doesn’t even have to be a new one. Look through all the old WSOs for a ton of ideas. Pick something that’s about 6 months old and all forgotten, and off you go. The fact is in 6 months time, 60% of the current crowd of IMers will be gone, disillusioned and out of pocket, and replaced by a new group of newbies. Just by continuing to be around you’re ahead of most of the IMers online. 😉
-Frank
Great thoughts and ideas, as usual Frank.
I’ve been a member/buyer in the WSO for many years, but not a seller, which I’m about to change [on your suggestions], by the way!!
Hi Vern,
Good for you. A lot of the time it just takes the guts to do it. I know I always get as nervous as anything whenever I put a sale up either on one of my own sites or on the WF.
And when you do it, you’ll immediately separate yourself from 99%+ of other people who don’t do it. Taking action is an amazing thing! 🙂
-Frank
Hi frank,
That sounds a lot like the churn and burn methods some well know and not so well known marketers use. It’s good for short term profits but you tend to piss off your lists very quickly by keep promoting other peoples stuff.
My preference is for selling my own products , build a list ..build a relationship with that list , give advice help and content, then promote my own products to them when ever i have a new one.
The benefits are 3 fold.
You don’t dilute your lists by them going onto other peoples lists.
When you launch a product you get a great chance of WSO of the day because of all the activity and high epc on your wso+ account (batting 2 for 2 at the moment)
You build a highly responsive list who look forward to your emails.
Mark
Hi Mark,
It was just intended as a “bare bones” plan for people to pickup and understand quickly. I see what you’re saying though and I think we actually work in very much the same way.
Are you sure you actually read this blog post or did you just see what you expected to see and commented on that? I’ve just re-read it and I don’t see any advice there that says “keep promoting other peoples stuff.”
What I actually say as you seem to have missed my point is you create your OWN stuff and use it to build a mailing list. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that EXACTLY what you do?
I have people on my lists that have been on there for years and I don’t hear a peep from them, but they buy everything I release for which I am very grateful. Part of that gratitude is I make sure my products are low cost when I pre-release them to my subscribers, and I do release some great stuff. PHP scripts, WP plugins and themes is my current niche.
Those people that do comment on my blog or in a WSO or by email asking for help – I give it to them. I tailor my replies to what I believe is their level of expertise. And if you ask any of my subscribers who have been there a long time they’ll tell you I VERY RARELY promote anyone else’s products.
I did it the other week for two products on the same day that I thought were outstanding and well worth the money. But that is quite an exceptional circumstance – I can’t remember the last time I promoted for someone else apart from that, it’s easily been 12 months. (Although I will say that one of those products I promoted, I really like the guy behind it and I’ll very likely promote his other stuff too – I’m currently working through a new SEO video set for local business I just got from him and it’s very good.)
In all, I think you may have me mixed up with someone else, and I also think you may have “filters” on and be looking for that kind of person.
Here’s the thing. If you look for something you’ll find it everywhere. Like the grumpy old man who sees people frowning at him everywhere, or the shrill excitable woman who gets into lots of arguments.
I find that if you look for the best in people, you’ll see it. If you go around smiling and being pleasant, then everywhere you go you’ll find people smiling back.
Maybe next time you go to tell someone off for doing something you don’t agree with, you first check carefully to see if they’re actually doing it. 😉
-Frank
“I know that many people reading this right now have been on my list for years and have bought everything I’ve released in that time.”
Almost (I’m after one past item).
Still, my ears are burning.
I think I should just add that this has been one of your best posts, not only for its content, but for the clarity of its articulation.
All the best to you,
Anthony
P.S. One thing I notice from your transition to WSOs is that we no longer have personal
download pages. How will you be handling updates and the possible need for multiple
downloads (for example, if a product becomes corrupted, accidentally deleted or simply
lost)?
Hi Anthony,
Thank you. 🙂
As for the WSOs, I’ve been using WSO+ which stores everything forever as far as I can tell. It will also let me update the downloadable zip, so I think we’re covered for any pruchases there. (Pretty awesome actually.)
There’s also an IPN forwarder, so I reckon what I’ll do is build integration into one of my products to pick that data up eventually, probably in Affiliate Click Pal (nearly here) version 2 or sooner.
-Frank