[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”1.Idea”] [/thrive_text_block]
I came up with an idea for my product. A concept if you will. In my niche, there is a company called clickfunnels which is very popular among marketers. They have a lot of brand awareness and they have a strong affiliate program which drives that awareness.
The problem with clickfunnels? It’s fairly expensive as far as monthly expense is concerned. At $99 a month, All the newbies know about them because of their great brand awareness but none of the newbies can really afford clickfunnels from a business standpoint because they have no idea what they are doing yet. If they can afford it it’s because they are spending out of pocket which is not conducive for a great business.
SO I decided I would target this “can’t afford clickfunnels” demographic who knew the power of a funnel (thanks clickfunnels) but couldn’t afford that all in one solution. I wanted to show them how to build an entire functioning sales funnel that would make them money. And I wanted to show them how to set it all up for free.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”2. Vehicle of Delivery”] [/thrive_text_block]
I decided I would make the product video because I can produce the videos quickly. Much quicker than writing and people perceive the video presentation as having a higher value than a special report.
ALso I decided I would utilize the power of Mindmup because this was going to be a presentation style product and I would walk people through each step using a mindmap that takes them from step to step. That way I could expand the bubbles to go to extra points and I could add links to demonstrate certain things.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”3. Proof of concept”] [/thrive_text_block]
I wanted to show people how to do everything for free so I needed to go out there and find told that could integrate with each other and that had free versions of themselves (not trial versions).
Once I had all the tools I needed I went ahead and build a “free funnel.” I decided to record this proof of concept process so that I could use the in depth training as an upsell for my product. For the visual learners who needed that more in depth training from watching me do it.
Once I had proof of concept done and the upsell recorded from it, I went back and created the FE product based on the in depth proof of concept product I created.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”4. Marketing Material”] [/thrive_text_block]
Now it was time for me to focus on the look of my “free funnels” product and start with the second BIG part of this whole process. Marketing.
I wanted the logo to basically copy the clickfunnels logo and I wanted the name to strongly relate to clickfunnels because I knew who I was targeting and I wanted the idea of clickfunnels fresh in their minds.
I came up with “free funnels.” It sounded a lot like clickfunnels, it had alliteration which made it catchy, and I modeled the clickfunnels logo strongly, using the same color scheme and a very similar font.
The differences? Well with the logo I was sending a message. On the clickfunnels logo, they have a modern T.V. looking box with some gears in it. On the free funnels logo I used an old school TV icon and put a chain breaking in it.
The TV was meant to symbolize a cheaper more “ghetto” way to do something, and the breaking chain was supposed to symbolize breaking the chains of expense.
Once I had that logo I used PixelStudioFX to create a decent cover. I used Canva to create some banners for facebook profile, pages, and my groups and my youtube channel.
I needed to set a date for the release so I could put it on the marketing material as well. SO I set it for the 23rd of June.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”5. Building out the Funnel”] [/thrive_text_block]
Now I had a FE product and I had an initial upsell. That wasn’t enough. With my last launch I tried something completely different with my sales funnel and while it did ok, it did not live up to my expectations. With this one I wanted to model a very successful sales funnel. So I looked at my affiliate campaigns and I focused on a product that I was extremely successful in promoting and also was very profitable for me. I modeled the 8 MInute Profits 2.0 sales funnel by Mark and Paul.
This was a great sales funnel and it made me a lot of money as an affiliate so I wanted to model it closely for my free funnels launch.
My funnel wasn’t EXACTLY the same because in the original 8 MInute Profits 2.0 funnel there were 3 upsell products and the downsell for each was a discount on price for that product. I didn’t really want to do that. So I adjusted it a little bit. But the idea of a DFY product in the middle and a “Coaching” style product at the back of the funnel are ideas that I modeled closely.
Also I modeled the upsell and downsell VSL videos. ALways in the past I just stood in front of the camera and talked about my upsells and downsells. ON this launch though, I did proper VSL’s for the upsells and downsells.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”6. Social Proof”] [/thrive_text_block]
I had put a facebook comment box on my sales page so that I could get real feedback from actual people who had been through the course. I then proceeded to give out review copies to my Coaching group for Affiliate COmmand 2017. This was a ready made group of people that I felt were trustworthy and I wanted to give them a copy of my new one and let them give some honest feedback on the sales page. I also reached out to 10 or 20 of my closer friends on facebook in the IM space and asked if they could look my product over and give some honest feedback. When free funnels launched I had 20 plus comments with honest feedback from real ppl on my sales page.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”7. JV Recruitment”] [/thrive_text_block]
I knew I was going to be using heavy JV traffic for this launch but the problem was by the time I got done with all the stuff above. It was only 2 days before I was supposed to launch.
I had a decision to make. Either do the best JV recruitment I could over the next 2 days, or plan on getting the JV page and the swipe files and everything else I needed for JV recruitment done over the next 2 days and then postpone the launch for 1 weeks to dedicate to JUST JV recruitment.
This is something that was not a hard decision for me because I knew that I was going to lose thousands if I did not do the JV recruitment right. I had put too much work into this launch already to dick around at the end and do it wrong.
So I changed the dates on all my marketing material. Then did my JV page and swipe files for the affiliates.
I modeled my entire JV page after the 8 MInute Profits 2.0 jv page as well. Even down to the polo shirt I wore and the things I talked about on the video.
I also modeled my swipe files after the 8 Minute Profit 2.0 swipe files.
It’s fair to say that I wanted to know if this would make a big difference in results. YOu see, I was doing things a little different than this before. I wanted to know if I modeled a more successful process…would it produce more successful results?
Spoiler alert: it did.
Okay so how did I do JV recruitment? I had an entire week now to dedicate to it.
So the first thing I did was open up a Google Sheets document and make a list of possible affiliates. I assigned tiers to these affiliates.
Tier 1 was my inner circle of affiliates who were almost always cool with promoting my products and also I put in affiliates who had sold a shit ton of my products in the past even if I didn’t keep in really good touch with them.
Tier 2 was affiliates who had sold my products in the past even if it wasn’t a ton of my products. I knew they could sell and I knew they were familiar with my stuff.
Tier 3 was affiliates that were also product vendors and I had supported them on their launches in the past.
Tier 4 was affiliates that were affiliates that I had no direct relationship with but I had shared lots of leaderboards with them and had spoken with them on facebook before. We knew each other we just hadn’t directly affected each other in any way.
So tier 1 and tier 2 got review copies. I reached out to them on facebook by DM.
Tier 3 and 4 got a reach out feeler message asking if they would be interested in a review copy.
I joined or was already a part of around 70 JV and Launch groups on facebook.
I then proceeded to send out a message to all those groups proclaiming that “JV RECRUITMENT GUY” sucks! And then I went on in that message to say all the ways JV recruitment guy sucked. A the end of the message I apologize because this week I was going to be JV recruitment guy. No links or launch details in this message. It was meant to interrupt the pattern in the jv launch groups.
2 days later I sent out a new message to all those groups with my launch details. This was about 2 days before launch.
This initiated an eruption of JV requests.
About 3 hours into my launch I saw that my conversion rates were up to 13% and my EPC’s were around $2 and I sent out the same JV details again to all those groups with one small change. On this one I put the current conversion rate and EPC’s at the top and a call to action “JOIN US.”
Again another swarm of JV requests after that second JV details message in the groups.
Evertime an affiliate ask me to do an interview for them I did it and I worked around their schedule every time. Not mine.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”8. Launch Week”] [/thrive_text_block]
So the next 4 days I was in a launch cycle with free funnels. I started it at $5.95 and I put it on a dimesale. I capped it at $9.97 with a very clear message that the product was going to be going to $27 at the end of that 4 days.
I released a new bonus on my download page for the next 3 days of the launch. The reason I did this was to maintain buzz around the product, and to give the affiliates who were promoting it something new to talk about every day.
I think I did a poor job of spreading the word to the affiliates about these bonuses and next time I plan to do better.
Also during launch week I vlogged everyday on youtube and facebook, just talking to people about my launch and how it was going. I felt like this humanized me as a real person, and also created “legend” around my product. Sort of made it more than just an info product.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”9. Monitoring live social proof “] [/thrive_text_block]
During launch week I got a shit ton of traffic to my sales page. Over 10k visitors. This resulted in over 1k sales and over 40 comments on my sales page. So during the launch week I would check in on my sales page every day and respond to comments left their from buying customers and from people interested in the course.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”10. Adapting”] [/thrive_text_block]
My product was scheduled to go out of launch cycle and up to it’s normal price of 27 bucks at 9am on July 4th ( an important holiday here in America). I was reached out to by several customers and also several affiliates about keeping the product at it’s reduced price for the holiday.
I want to point out here that I am a hard headed son of a bitch and I don’t really like changing my shit no matter what anybody says.
However…
One Mr. Brendan Mace reached out to me because he wanted to promote my product. He asked if I could leave it a reduced price for the duration of the holiday.
I want to point something out here. Brendan Mace was teamed up with Jonas Lingren and they had a product on Warrior Plus that was competing with my product at the time and on July the 4th they had actually won the Deal Of The Day (it’s an award that you can win on warriorplus that virtually will guarantee you a shit ton of traffic).
So maybe you understand what the fuck I am talking about or maybe you don’t have a clue…but understand this…there was no reason under the sun why Brendan Mace should have been wanting to support my product on the 4th of July other than one…
He told me he wanted to see if he can push some sales for me and help me win the Deal of the Day award because “I deserved it.” His words not mine. I always hated it when people say someone deserves something because I never felt like anybody deserves anything. That’s not how this world works.
You guys know that. I know that.
But that’s what he said. And I didn’t think I deserved shit…but I knew one thing right then and there…this dude has a lot of heart and I like him.
So I told him it was settled. I’m going to leave the price locked until midnight and that’s what happened.
And that’s the story of how Brendan Mace joined the launch promoting something he should have really had no business promoting.
I feel like I should also point out here that Jonas Lingren (his partner) also did a review video for my product (a competing product of his own). They both promoted for me and competed with me at the same time.
I can’t say enough positive things about those two guys.
So there I was at midnight going into the 5th of July, ready to take that thing to 27 bucks and I’ll be damned…you will never guess what happend.
I go the Deal of the Day award for the 5th of July.
FUCK! So now what? I am going to run at FULL PRICE when I go the Deal of the Day??? That is stupid.
But I already told people this thing was going back up after the 4th.
So what did I do?
I changed my message on the sales page above my buy button to say,
“IN Honor of this Award Winning Product Winning a Deal of The Day Award, I am holding the sale price in place until midnight”
And I set the sale price at $14.97
I felt that this would still be fair to the people who bought the product during the initial launch cycle but it would give a special deal to the people coming in for Deal of the Day traffic.
So got a bunch more sales after that and then at midnight I took the product to 27 bucks.
So that ended with back to back Deal of the Day Awards for me, over $13,000 in revenue and over a 1,000 units pushed.
I didn’t get to keep all that money but put it this way…I kept the lights on and the refrigerator stocked in my house…
…or in the words of Conor McGregor, “ I’ve got my bills paid, my money made, and the entire game slayed.”
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”So that’s about it. “] [/thrive_text_block]
Now maybe you just read this and you are thinking to yourself, “Damn you just gave us all that information for free???? YOu could have sold that as a case study! And yeah you’re right I could have. I could have really got more detailed and made it a case study and sold it to you.
…and if you ARE thinking that I will tell you something…
I never made a dime on the internet until I stopped worrying about my bank account and started legitimately trying to help other people. Sometimes that means helping people for free. There is a give and a take to pretty much everything in life the way I see it.
Now maybe you read that up there and you though, “I don’t understand half of what the fuck you are talking about and it sounds like too much work to me!”
If you’re thinking that I will tell you something too…
What I do IS work. I work hard and I work smart, and I always look for ways I can work harder and work smarter.
On top of that…if you want to make it here you have to be a fucking savage. There are no sick days. There is no I don’t feel like doing it today. It’s a lot of late nights, early mornings, and juggling between your friends and your family…
…and if anybody who ever made it to the level I have achieved (or beyond) has told you that you can do this without neglecting your friends and family sometimes, they are lying to you.
We are only given 24 hours in a day and for you to master your craft you are going to have to dedicate time to that. A lot of time. Time that you could or should be spending with your kids, with your wife, with your friends.
It’s your time. You have to decide how to spend it.
I know only one way up this ladder. It’s a hard road but any of you can do what I have done.
So I’ll leave it with you now. Because rest assured it always comes down to you…
Do you want to be the boss?
Kam (aka ZeroFatz aka Running the Fucking Table)
