This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganBefore you start recruiting JVs and sending traffic to a hard launch, you will need your actual launch structure in place. Your launch structure includes your sales pages, your sales funnel, your pricing model, as well as the marketplace or payment platform you will use. Your launch structure also includes the backend infrastructure you will need for delivering your products to buyers and your initial interactions with them after they purchase. This includes setting up a support desk, a member’s area (or product delivery apparatus), and an autoresponder welcome sequence. (Note: many would argue that these last three items are better categorized as CRM rather than part of your launch structure, and that is a valid point, but we’re dealing specifically with the immediate post-purchase interactions that often make the difference between happy customers and angry refunders, so we’ve included them as part of your launch structure). Let’s take a closer look at each of these. Sales Funnel Before you start building the pages, you’ll need to establish your funnel flow. Hopefully, you’ve done a good job of splintering your product into multiple stand-alone components or combining your product with other relevant products. The reason you need to do this is so that you will have multiple products to upsell and downsell through a funnel in order to maximize your revenue. If you haven’t done this yet or aren’t sure how, see the guide on Product Creation. The flow of your sales funnel basically handles what happens after a person buys your front-end product. Ordinarily, they will be offered a relevant, higher-priced product as an upsell. This product should ideally augment or reinforce what the front-end product does. You’ll then need to plan for a “yes or no” scenario. You will (probably) want a second upsell in case the buyer purchases the first upsell, and you’ll need a downsell if they decline it. This can theoretically go on as long as you want, but generally you’ll annoy people if your sales funnel is more than 4, maybe 5 products deep. Depending on what marketplace you will be using (discussed later), you will be able to create product listings and set up your sales funnel before designing your actual sales pages. Pricing Finding the perfect pricing strategy for the products in your funnel can make a world of difference. First, you will want to establish what your “normal” price will be after your launch period. In most cases, this will already be lower than your product’s actual assessed value. But then, for your special launch period, you will typically want to offer an even lower price to encourage early adopters. But be careful. This is not a race to the bottom. Often, a price that is too low will kill the perceived value of your product and can drive prospects away. You will want to think long and hard about how to find the perfect “sweet spot” that maintains the perceived value of your product while also making it a no-brainer to snatch it up before the launch ends. Plan on a few different pricing ideas and combinations throughout your funnel so that, if you feel the offer isn’t performing well, you can change it up. Be sure to be taking notes if/when you make changes so you can compare performance at various price points. Marketplaces The last component of your structure that needs to be established before moving on to the sales pages themselves is which marketplace or payment platform you will be using. If you are relatively new to product launching and you’re relying heavily on JVs, you’ll want to stick with one of the big affiliate marketplaces rather than your own payment platform. This is because you will have a greater chance of attracting affiliates and many of these marketers are only comfortable with these marketplaces anyway. The reason this decision should come before your actual pages is that some of these marketplaces have specific guidelines and requirements for vendors and their pages. For a long time, ClickBank was the preeminent, go-to affiliate marketplace for digital goods. In recent years, however, JVZoo has emerged as an even more popular marketplace for hard launches. ClickBank has the benefit of being a little easier to use from an affiliate point of view because most products do not require you to wait for the vendor to manually approve you as an affiliate. However, ClickBank is also much stricter in its guidelines for vendors and their pages, and they also seem to be more evergreen oriented than launch oriented. JVZoo, on the other hand, is much more launch oriented and seems to be the preferred affiliate marketplace for both vendors and affiliates when it comes to launching new products. Another marketplace worth mentioning is WarriorPlus. This one is not necessarily “new” but it’s been recently updated and expanded and is making a big comeback. It seems ...
