Hi and welcome back to my blog. In my last post I promised to fill you in on my inner thoughts about the IM Product Launch cycle so here goes:
What I’ve observed in the marketplace is this phenomenon of very short lived product launches in which the vendor creates a very seriously professional marketing funnel — I mean these guys are good enough to sell you just about anything — and the price is pretty low, so thousands of people buy it, regardless of whether or not the vendor has any serious track record of supporting software and customers. Once you do get your hands on the product it’s often debatable whether or not all the marketing hype was accurate (or whether the product actually works and does what they said it would). And statistics show that 80% of the people who buy, might not even look at the product inside the first year of buying it. So it’s a guaranteed profit for these kinds of vendors. So even if they get a ton of refunds from astute buyers, the ones that never even look at the product guarantee that these vendors will keep a large portion of the proceeds in any case.
But it seems, what people want to pay for is the mental image that vendors can create in the minds of their potential buyers via an influential sales page – that’s what the customer is buying into, mostly. And then in some percentage of these launches, I guess it really doesn’t matter what comes after — as long as they make that ton of cash up front — and then later, they can pay someone a low hourly rate to provide less-than-convincing support, while the vendors go off and spend the rest of the money somewhere. Then in a few months, the product might even be extinct. It happens often enough in this space… but the vendors did get their vacation money so that’s all that counts.
So here comes Huey, I break into the circle, circa 2012, looking like a fish out of water. Marketing was the farthest thing from my mind when I got into this game. I figured I was done with software and I wanted to sell music services full time (although later I decided it was a huge time suck for minimum pay).
My father’s big advice to me was, “Be excellent all the time and that’s all you need.” And I do try to put that into everything I do. But excellence certainly isn’t the only thing one needs – marketing is just as important, if not more so. In fact if I review my life and times, it seems everyone I ever knew was able to make money because they knew marketing – even in the music business, they could be the crappiest musician but still keep themselves working full time because they understood marketing.
I actually depended on those people to keep me working because I really sucked at marketing and I had no clue what I was supposed to do. The fact that I WAS excellent, was the only thing that kept me working and “kind of” paying the bills. It certainly wasn’t my marketing ability. Of course this was back in the olden days, before the internet 😉
In the last six years (2012-2018) I’ve learned a lot about writing sales copy and marketing stuff – I still study new things every day to stay up on my game and keep my software fresh. I’ve written my own sales copy many times now, resulting in decent income. Not huge, but hey – not bad. I don’t exaggerate when I sell, I’m always honest in my sales copy, but I do use the standard formula of evincing the pain points and then providing the solution. But what’s different about my own promotions, is that I’m not looking to make a killing up front and then disappear.
As all of my loyal members will tell you – some of whom have been with me now for six years! I actually live and breath this stuff and I use all my own tools that I write to my own specs (as well as taking suggestions from users). But it’s an ongoing process, NOT a one-time money grab at the time of a product launch with a “deflated” product three months later. I actively support my systems and I spend each and every day tweaking, improving, teaching and running my own marketing campaigns.
Except for very rare cases and circumstances beyond my control, I have always seen to it that all the products that I have released through Web Dimensions, Inc., dating back to Viral Image Curator Pro are kept maintained and running, with current signing certificates for your safety and authenticity. This also costs us money but it’s another way of proving to you that I/we are genuine and a brand that you can trust.
I got a crazy great deal going on right for my membership – check it out here
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll explain how all these internet changes are affecting me and my business.