A newbie's success... what I think I'm doing right... and a story on why...
So there's lots of topic of people making no money, or waiting for a long time to make money through affiliates. I wanted to share my story (without plugging a product of course) to give others hope... I'll also let you know that today is my frist official day as a merchant, but things have gone very, very well...
With that being said - let's line this up from a while back. I started to realize that something would work with this idea back in 2005 when I was privileged enough to interview the founder of the website, and get his insights as to were his site will go. Keep in mind that this isn't some experienced CEO I was talking too, this is a guy that was about to leave his company and go to school full time, because he was getting bored. He just casually told me what he thought would happen in the future with this site, and why he thought that.
It clicked with me...
6 months later, his site is bought out for several (I mean a lot) of millions of dollars. What he told me previously about where his site was going to go that clicked with me previously, was now screaming at me for me to take action.
...but that would take work... putting together an info product isn't easy, I didn't know how, and I was pretty busy doing what I love - racing motorcycles- for an energy drink company... life is good, right?
I get diagnosed with a heart disease and the doctor says "no racing until we watch this closely for a while.."
I end up working some marketing jobs, end up in a few restaurants, just kind of wandering through this game called life, trying to make ends meet. November of 2006 comes around, and I decide that this idea I had a while back, would still work. So I set up a free blog on wordpress.com, made some posts regarding knowledge I had about this site and waited to see what would happen... I started getting around 25 visitors a day.
Some would leave comments about wanting more information and others would ask how did I get this knowledge. Well, the website I learned it from was free, there are millions of people on it, and I thought it was fairly easy to use. So I told people, "I learned about this site, from the site... it just taught me itself... trial and error I guess."
This peaked my ideas a little bit, the ones I had when interviewing the founder... I decided maybe it's time to do something on this...
(Okay, enough story, here's the content)
Here's what it took and costs me to start the site I launched today - the one that is doing MUCH better than expected.
Domain name through GoDaddy.com - 9.95
Hosting through GoDaddy - 9.95 / mo
Sony camcorder (most sites wouldn't need this) - $599.95
Dreamweaver CS3 - not sure on costs, split it with a friend
Paying a friend to do my website (easy website, no discount) - $300.00
I do my credit card processing through paypal, so no money out of pocket from that.
I do my affiliate stuff through PayDotCom.com which also cost me nothing to set up.
The product I've launched is an info product about this website, and how to use it properly, which most people don't do. It's audios (which I recorded on my cell phone), videos (hence the camera above), and an e-book that I wrote (took me one very long day).
Here's what I think I did right, and maybe others need to try. The response, although took a while to get through to some people, was fairly easy to do.
I contacted other people on the internet that were merchants themselves, that sold products not competing with mine, but rather complimentary, and asked them to help.
Most people in a business like this always want something else they can sell. In this case, I found a few good people with several thousand, targeted (after all they bought a product over the same topic) people. I asked them if they would help me on my launch day (today), and they agreed.
I learned through talking with others and reading on sites like these that I needed to give affiliates their fare share of the sale. So I put up an enticing commission (75%!) They all sent out there emails today like promised, and within minutes of them sending out their emails - sales came in. It was pretty crazy.
So what do I suggest?
-Don't rush things. I took two months longer to launch this than I wanted.
-Write good sales copy. Mine must be doing something right. I re-wrote it 6 times.
- Find like products, and get them to be your affiliate. Take time to explain to them what you are trying to accomplish, and go from there. Work with them, do what they want. They are your sales people.
- Test things!!! I learned this the hard way this morning when I realized I had messed up the affiliate links for ALL my affiliates. No of knowing how many people go the ERROR page this morning, instead of my sales page (dangit).
Hope my NEWBIE advice helps. Keep in mind, I just launched my site today - but this is what I've learned from the steps I've taken.
I'll update this thread from time to time as things change...
Mike
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Nice Story
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