[IainMuirs]

(10-06-2012 01:35 PM)zoom Wrote:  

The launch did not quite go as well as I expected. Ironically, I probably could have made more money longterm if I gave it away for free- I will talk about that in a bit. But I have learned so much in the process. I think that my ebook was a little too niche specific. I'm marketing towards runners. I read online that only about 13% of runners have shin splints. So essentially, I can only market towards 13% of my followers. Right now I'm writing a different ebook that I can market towards all runners.

I setup a payment system with ejunkie. This was a great decision. The ejunkie system is easy to use and has a lot of features.

I wrote a sales page, you can view it here: http://www.explosivelegs.com/the-shin-splint-bible

What I didn't realize before, is that having an e-mail list is so important. It's way better to sell something to email list than it is to sell something to a twitter list. Right now I am in the process of transferring my twitter followers into email subscribers. It's going well so far. I'm using aweber as an autoresponder.

Now if I had given this ebook away for free, then I would have a much larger email list and this would give me a lot of leverage. Unfortunately I don't think I can offer the book for free now. The people who paid for it would get mad and I would lose credibility. Some people also would not buy future products in the hope that they would also become free.

So overall, it's been a great learning experience and I have bigger plans for the future.

Yeah giving it away for free in exchange for getting them on your email list could have been a good bet as you can sell them further products / ebooks etc.

The money is in the list! You need an email list. Twitter traffic doesn't convert well into sales, when people use Twitter they are not in 'buy mode'. They use it when they're sitting on the toilet, browsing with their smart phone or on the bus for example. They aren't going to pull out their credit card and make a purchase most of the time. Trust me I have tried, conversions were terrible.

Aweber is the best for your email list, good choice. You need to give them an incentive to join, a good freebie. Just telling them to sign up for updates or a newsletter isn't enough, give them something of value. A free ebook / report / guide / software. Whatever you can offer.

I looked at your sales page. Whilst I'm not a fan of the over the top, spammy as hell, sales pages yours looks a little bland. It looks like it could just be a standard web page / blog post. It doesn't really grab your attention or force you towards the buy button.

(10-06-2012 04:44 PM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

Don't give up so fast. It's only been a few days. Give it some time. Anyone who sells a book hopes it with explode in the first weeks. People who sell shitloads of books from the start are usually backed by the major publishing houses who do the promotion for them. I guess this goes for known writers also.

How many book have you sold so far?

You don't need to be backed by a major publisher to sell loads from the get go. Anyone with a loyal following and an email list can do a decent amount of sales. As long as you know your followers well and give them something of real value to them you can smash it in week one.

[Spike]

@Ianmuirs

Whats your opinion on my salespage with the flash animation? I recently added the top text and the references.

Hit the tweet button if your looking anyway

[IainMuirs]

Neil you sales page definitely stands out, it's not your typical sales page (which is a good thing). Might be a good idea to make that animated part clickable so it takes them straight to Amazon, I can imagine a lot of people will try and click it. $10 for an ebook is considered quite expensive btw, ebooks on Amazon sell better at the $2-$5 range.

[worldwidetraveler]

A couple of thoughts.

Many affiliates will avoid lead capture pages. You should allow your affiliates to send traffic directly to your sales page. If the affiliates did their work, they will already pre-sold them.

Never trust people who say they will buy something until they actually bought it. Lot's of people will say they would purchase something only to disappear when the product is available.

Best to develop more general products that will appeal to a larger crowd. You can then start hitting more specific topics and further segregate your list.

Now, you said something about giving it away for free. I wouldn't give the ebook away for free, I would create a series of autoresponder messages that gets fired off a two to three times a week. You can add in affiliate links to other product if you can tie those products into the information. Those products should be relevant to the info you are giving.

Also, you don't necessarily have to give it away. You can become an affiliate for other products and use your ebook as a bonus if they purchase through your affiliate link.

[zoom]

(10-07-2012 11:12 AM)IainMuirs Wrote:  

The money is in the list! You need an email list.

The money is certainly in the list. Right now I am converting my twitter followers into email subscribers. It's going well so far. I get a bunch of new subscribers every time I tweet about my list.

I agree with you about Twitter, it's not the best venue for conversion. Though I usually get at least one sale every time I tweet about my book. I can't tweet about it all the time though for obvious reasons.

Thanks for the help.

(10-07-2012 09:10 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Never trust people who say they will buy something until they actually bought it. Lot's of people will say they would purchase something only to disappear when the product is available.

That is definitely true. I am following some of your suggestions now, thanks.

[Spike]

(10-07-2012 08:08 PM)IainMuirs Wrote:  

Neil you sales page definitely stands out, it's not your typical sales page (which is a good thing). Might be a good idea to make that animated part clickable so it takes them straight to Amazon, I can imagine a lot of people will try and click it. $10 for an ebook is considered quite expensive btw, ebooks on Amazon sell better at the $2-$5 range.

Thanks,

The animation is not clickable. It's not really a flash animation but more a sort of a photo overlap but I didn't know to name it. The version I have is adjustable in all sizes and is on repeat. I could also change to a new photo overlap all the time if i wanted to. This theme is quite easy to work with once you know a bit of basic photoshop.

I won't make the book any cheaper since its a 502 page book. It's not some 200 page quick read.

[Spike]

(10-07-2012 09:10 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Never trust people who say they will buy something until they actually bought it. Lot's of people will say they would purchase something only to disappear when the product is available.

This also goes for people saying they're gonna write a Amazon review. If all those people actually did that then I would have tons of reviews already.

If I say I write a review then I would write a review. A (alpha) man should keep his word or not make empty promises.

One thing I learned the hard way in life is that there are not many people who you can trust on their word. Most people are bullshitters. Since I manned up on my trip and also took the red pill I'm very unforgiving for people saying A and doing B. This includes my friends also.

I also had tons of Facebook friends (I only add people I personally know) saying they would buy my book and review it. Those who bought the book hardly wrote reviews. I mean how much trouble is it to log on and write a couple of lines to help someone out? I really don't get this.

Two weeks I helped a facebook friend out who wanted to gift my book to a girl he's in love with. He asked me for a personal note to include in book to make the gift extra special (he is also mentioned in my book since we traveled a few days) so I drove to my parents house on my scooter through the rain to get one of my old proof books and gently cut out a blank space. I wrote a personal message for the girl on it and drove through cold and rainy weather to the post office to spend almost 5 dollar on stamps and a big envelope to send it to him.

I never heard from the guy again. I don't know if he go my envelope, if he gave the book to the girl or what happened after.

People have no loyalty anymore, especially most young people. I was raised with old school values. It's all me me me nowadays. That pisses me of and makes me bitter towards people in general. I always try to help people out in a lot of situations but get very little in return.

Anyway, end of rant

[worldwidetraveler]

(10-08-2012 04:40 AM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

People have no loyalty anymore, especially most young people. I was raised with old school values. It's all me me me nowadays. That pisses me of and makes me bitter towards people in general. I always try to help people out in a lot of situations but get very little in return.

Anyway, end of rant

Neil, I learned a long time ago that if I am going to do something, as a favor, that it is better to do it because I want to do it and not expect anything in return. If they actually keep their word then it is a pleasant surprise. Sure does make things easier.

[Spike]

Sometimes a simply thank you is enough but people still won't do it. I think you're right about doing it because you want to do it and not because you want something in return.

I wish i could delete that rant. The guy just send me a message two hours ago. All want well and he got laid. But he was damn late on the message though.

[Spike]

(10-08-2012 04:06 AM)zoom Wrote:  

(10-07-2012 11:12 AM)IainMuirs Wrote:  

The money is in the list! You need an email list.

The money is certainly in the list. Right now I am converting my twitter followers into email subscribers. It's going well so far. I get a bunch of new subscribers every time I tweet about my list. I am in the process of now creating a free ebook about 'diet and nutrition for runners'. This should get me even more subscribers.

I agree with you about Twitter, it's not the best venue for conversion. Though I usually get at least one sale every time I tweet about my book. I can't tweet about it all the time though for obvious reasons.

Thanks for the help.

How are you converting twitter followers to email subscribers? I already tweeted your salespage to my 3.5k followers a couple of times. Hope that helps.

[zoom]

(10-08-2012 04:35 PM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

How are you converting twitter followers to email subscribers? I already tweeted your salespage to my 3.5k followers a couple of times. Hope that helps.

Thanks for tweeting my salespage. I really appreciate that. I will be sure to tweet your sales page as well. Also you should consider writing a blog post about fitness on the road or dieting on the road. My followers would be interested in a blog post like that.

I have a program called tweetadder that connects with Twitter's API and always me to automate things such as follow/unfollow people and send direct messages. Right now I am sending 250 Direct Messages every day to my followers promoting my email list. I am sending them to my oldest followers first. I get new subscribers every day because of this method.

I have 60 subscribers since starting the list about four days ago. I really enjoy the process.

[IainMuirs]

I launched a new digital product around 8hrs ago. Had a few sales so far but I had expected more. I'm hoping by tomorrow there's a lot more. I don't need many to break even on the project but a profit is always nice.

[Spike]

(10-08-2012 05:24 PM)zoom Wrote:  

(10-08-2012 04:35 PM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

How are you converting twitter followers to email subscribers? I already tweeted your salespage to my 3.5k followers a couple of times. Hope that helps.

Thanks for tweeting my salespage. I really appreciate that. I will be sure to tweet your sales page as well. Also you should consider writing a blog post about fitness on the road or dieting on the road. My followers would be interested in a blog post like that.

As for getting email subscribers, I am doing two things:

1. I am tweeting out messages promoting my email newsletter. Simple enough. Here is an example that worked well: https://twitter.com/XplosiveLegs/status/...4661484545

2. This is more advanced. I have a program called tweetadder that connects with Twitter's API and always me to automate things such as follow/unfollow people and send direct messages. Right now I am sending 250 Direct Messages every day to my followers promoting my email list. I am sending them to my oldest followers first. I get new subscribers every day because of this method.

I have 60 subscribers since starting the list about four days ago. I really enjoy the process.

Good stuff

I'm looking for a wordpress newsletter plugin that automatically gives an pdf when signing up but I don't know how to name this/ google this.

Anyone know the name of this feature or know one?. Not sure if normal newsletter plugins have this service

EDIT, Never mind found it! http://www.dragonblogger.com/mailchimp-t...ward-sign/

[IainMuirs]

As far as I'm aware Neil, MailChip is an email list manager and not a plugin as such. I've never used it though so maybe there's more to it than that.

I've almost broke even on my product launch, 3 more sales to go and I will have.

[Spike]

(10-09-2012 11:30 AM)IainMuirs Wrote:  

As far as I'm aware Neil, MailChip is an email list manager and not a plugin as such. I've never used it though so maybe there's more to it than that.

I've almost broke even on my product launch, 3 more sales to go and I will have.

What kind of product are you selling?

It took me a few hours but I managed to figure how Mailchimp works. I must say that I'm quite happy with it.
I used a HTML widget box on wordpress (copy paste html, bloody simple) and I now send out an welcome Email including a link to a free PDF Ebook for new subscribers. I tested everything and it works (albeit a bit slow but my cache might be clogged up)

Best thing is that it's all free for the first 2000 subscribers so it doesn't cost me a dime. Tomorrow i'll try to figure out how to get a pop up screen for my website where I offer the Free 3 page ebook to new subscribers.
I still have to learn about all the ins and out of mailchimp but I won't spam my mailing list anyway. The most important thing is done and in only half a day.

[zoom]

Another good way of getting email subscribers is to send out a link to the people who bought your book. You should have their email address in your merchant account.

[IainMuirs]

(10-09-2012 03:33 PM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

What kind of product are you selling?

It took me a few hours but I managed to figure how Mailchimp works. I must say that I'm quite happy with it.
I used a HTML widget box on wordpress (copy paste html, bloody simple) and I now send out an welcome Email including a link to a free PDF Ebook for new subscribers. I tested everything and it works (albeit a bit slow but my cache might be clogged up)

Best thing is that it's all free for the first 2000 subscribers so it doesn't cost me a dime. Tomorrow i'll try to figure out how to get a pop up screen for my website where I offer the Free 3 page ebook to new subscribers.
I still have to learn about all the ins and out of mailchimp but I won't spam my mailing list anyway. The most important thing is done and in only half a day.

A digital guide on making money from affiliate sites in 2012. I actually haven't sold any more copies since I made that post earlier today saying I had almost broke even, typical.

Let me know if Mailchimp is any good. Aweber is the best mailing software I've used.

[zoom]

Can you post your sales page IainMuirs?

[IainMuirs]

No I can't.