Every month I publish an income report…why? Good question 

1. Accountability

With all the shiny objects out there it’s easy to spend WAY more than you’re earning. Luckily I realized this early on and I’ve kept detailed records of my expenses ever since. That being said, I know that there are certain expenses that are NECESSARY when running a business. As much as I don’t want to pay for them, I need to pay for my email autoresponder, website hosting, and video hosting every month. It’s just a part of doing business. There are other things that I buy as well, but I try my best to keep my expenses SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than my revenue. If I can do that then I’m ahead of the game.

2. Integrity

On my show I ask my guests a lot of personal questions. One that frequently comes up is “How much do you make?”. I feel like I need to reveal my own income if I’m going to be asking others the same question. It only seems right.

3. Perspective

There are a lot of online marketers out there who fake-it-till-they-make-it. In other words, they fudge their numbers and exaggerate their earnings in order to establish false authority in their niche. My goal is that by watching my income grow slowly over time you’ll realize that there is no get-rich-quick button.

Here’s my results for May, 2015.

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32,015 page views (-10,425 from April)

24,197 Youtube channel views (-2,194 from April)

156,383 minutes watched (-26,827 from April)

Aweber subscribers: 5,961  (-414 subscribers from April)

GetResponse subscribers: 7,574 (+324 subscribers from April)

Total email list subscribers: 13,535

Expenses

Affiliate Prizes: $2,465 – Prizes given to affiliates who promoted Social Robot

Social Robot (CLOSED) Adjustment: $2,000 – We had a glitch with the JV contract, so I got paid too much.

Facebook ads: $375.82 – JV ads for my Social Robot launch

oDesk Virtual Assistants: $348.10 – I have some workers helping me with daily tasks that don’t need me. I’m trying to outsource more and more daily.

GoToWebinar: $199 – I use this for live webinars and training

Aweber: $149 – This is my list building software that allows me to email everyone when there’s a new interview or review

GetResponse: $145 – This is the autoresponder I use for my buyer’s list

Macbook Charger: $82.46 – I had to replace a broken charger cord

Wistia: $54.70 – This is how I host my sales videos and course content.

List Wise: $53.39 – I used a list cleaner to remove bad emails from my email list

Traffic Planet Hosting: $50 – The hosting account that I recently switched to. It’s super fast and I’m very happy with it.

Image Typerz – $49.50 – Proxies for affiliates to test out Social Robot during our launch

Improvely: $29 – This is a tool that I’m using to track the lifetime value of leads

Resell Rights Weekly: $19.95 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews

Schedule Once: $19 – A tool I use for scheduling coaching calls

GoDaddy: $16.34 – I renewed a domain and bought one for a friend

WuFoo: $14.95 – A tool that allows me to take applications for my coaching program

Skype: $10 for premium – I do all my interviews with Skype and Ecamm call recorder on a Mac.

Sendgrid: $7.50 – I tried using Sendgrid for my mailing list, but they banned my account and told me they don’t support affiliate marketing

Jeet Connect- $7 – I tried out a self-hosted autoresponder, but my Sendgrid and Mandrill accounts got banned for sending Internet Marketing emails

Amazon S3: $5.13 – I use this to host images and videos

Droplr Pro: $4.95 – I tried this out for a month, but I cancelled and still prefer Jing for taking screenshots and recording quick videos

Total expenses: $4,105.79 (+$3,186.19 spent compared to April)

Revenue

Social Robot (CLOSED): $2,183.02 from review and preview video

Go Bonanza: $1,256.36 from review and interview with David Eisner

Digital Product Machine 2.0 (CLOSED): $1,007.59 from review and preview video

Tube Live Profits: $894.82 from review and interview with Saul Maraney

Fresh Store Builder (CLOSED): $684.82 from review and interview with Carey Baird

Simple CPA Machines (CLOSED): $653.95 from review and interview with Yair Dolev

Cloud Prospect Machine (CLOSED): $653.81 from review and interview with Steve Benn

IntelliPlayer: $632.56 from review and interview with Bill Guthrie

Video App Domination (CLOSED): $495.50 from review and interview with Jian Bacallan

Product Launch Profits (CLOSED): $494.18 from review and interview with Fergal Downes

Video Lead Box (CLOSED): $410.49 from review and interview with Neil Napier

Mobile Stream Revolution: $382.04 from review and interview with James Renouf

ViconLead: $331 from review and interview with Lee Pennington

Rocket Bar (CLOSED): $321 from review and interview with Sam Robinson

Mobile Optimize Pro (CLOSED): $319.17 from review and interview with Brett Rutecky

Social Contest (CLOSED): $295.42 from review and interview with Neil Napier

Video Sales Blueprint (CLOSED): $280.50 from review and interview with Sam Robinson

WP Clickster (CLOSED): $225.33 from review and interview with Spencer Perkins

Vid Protect: $211.34 from review and interview with Ian Ralphs

Social Neos: $189.96 from review and interview with Abhi Dwivedi

Weird Niche Content: $184.44 from review and interview with Mark Bishop

Solo Ad Arbitrage 2.0 (CLOSED): $164.27 from review and interview with Andrea Fulton

Zapable (CLOSED): $163.80 from review and interview with Chris Fox

CPA List Loophole: $150 from review and interview with Greg Konenenko

Thrive Leads: $120.25 from review and interview with Shane Melaugh

Online Wealth Academy (CLOSED): $108 from review, interview, and webinar with Mikael Dia

Kindle Money Mastery: $82.19 from review and interview with Stefan Pylarinos

Video Maker FX: $81.50 from review and interview with Peter Roszak

Social Video Magic: $75.50 from interview with Jeff Long

Operation Solo: $53.91 from interview with Anthony Tilley

Resto Box: $52 from review and interview with Prady

How To Build Your First List: $49.14 from review and interview with Reed Floren

Simple CPA Siphon (CLOSED): $48.94 from review and interview with Stephen Gilbert

IMNow Webinar (CLOSED): $48.50 from review and interview with Keith Lynch

Viral Content Profits: $48.50 from review and interview with Ricky Mataka

Explaindio: $45 from review and interview with Nick LaPolla

InstaHook Video Backgrounds: $40.80 from review and interview with Brad Scott

The Fiverr Handover (CLOSED): $40.32 from review and interview with Fergal Downes

Kindle Marketing Magic: $35.88 from review and interview with Mike Balmaceda

Video Pages (CLOSED): $33.50 from review and interview with Joshua Zamora

Arbitrage Underdog RELOADED: $31.62 from review and interview with Tom E

HydraVid: $29.94 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss

Tee Cash Boot Camp: $25.90 from review and interview with Andy Berard

Video Rizer (CLOSED): $25.65 from review and interview with Aaron Wolfe

Targeting Inspector 2.0 (CLOSED): $24.98 from review and interview with Aravindh Sridhar

Local Reputation Hero: $23.50 from review and interview with Matthew Ianotti

The Rainmaker (CLOSED): $23.50 from review and interview with Bill Hugall

AmaSuite 4.0: $23.50 from review and interview with Chris Guthrie

List Building for 2015 (CLOSED): $19.64 from review and interview with Fergal Downes

Tee Blueprint (CLOSED): $19.02 from review and interview with Manny Hanif

Ultimate Traffic Monster (CLOSED): $18.52 from review and interview with Naidy Phoon

Keywords Studio Pro: $18.44 from review and interview with Rahil Ahmed

Instant Email Swipe File: $18.30 from review and interview with Matt Bacak

Zamurai Video Bootcamp: $17.50 from review and interview with Joshua Zamora

Vidlify (CLOSED): $17 from review and interview with Radu Hahaianu

Funnel Vision (CLOSED): $14.97 from review and interview with Dr. Ben Adkins

Webinar Fusion Pro: $14.80 from review and interview with Dwayne Golden

Absolute Jacker (CLOSED): $13.50 from review and interview with Ariel Sanders

Screencast Pro: $13.50 from review and interview with Joey Xoto

Bing Brings You The Bling: $11.95 from review and interview with Rob Stafford

Spy Perfection (CLOSED): $10.63 from review and interview with Sam Bakker

Solo Ad Escape: $7.48 from review and interview with Kevin Fahey

CPA Vid Krakken (CLOSED): $6.18 from review and interview with Saul Maraney

Hydro Funnels: $6.05 from review and interview with Mike Buontempo

Fiverr Euphoria: $5 from interview with Fergal Downes

Inner Circle Solo Ads 3.0 (CLOSED): $4.50 from interview with Rob Stafford

Crowd Search Me (CLOSED): $1.75 from review and interview with Daniel Anton

Total revenue from interviews and reviews: $13,996.62 (-$8,494.99 from April)

Social Robot JV commission: $20,092.97

Affiliate Income Secrets: $1,901.52 – My product teaching how I make money from affiliate marketing

Resell Rights Weekly: $141.80 – This is a website that has a ton of products that you can use as your own

Lead Pages: $77 – I’ve been using Lead Pages for a while now…and it’s one of my top tools

Click Magick: $59.50 – A tool for tracking clicks

Kindle earnings: $4 – Earnings from a few books I have on Kindle

Total from OTHER streams of income: $21,993.19 (+$16,169.39 from April)

Total Revenue: $35,989.81 (+$6,984.23 from April)

Total Profit: $31,884.02 (+$3,798.04 from April)

Ok, so that was May…now let’s take a look at June.

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Here’s my results for June, 2015

41,177 page views (+9,162 from May)

33,673 Youtube channel views (+9,475 from May)

208,252 minutes watched (+51,869 from May)

Aweber subscribers: 13,565 (+30 subscribers from May)

Total email list subscribers: 13,565

Expenses

Launch Prizes for SociVids: $3,270 – My share of the launch prizes to affiliates for promoting SociVids

oDesk Virtual Assistants: $358.09 – I have some workers helping me with daily tasks that don’t need me. I’m trying to outsource more and more daily.

Facebook ads: $228.52 – JV ads for my SociVids launch

GoToWebinar: $199 – I use this for live webinars and training

Aweber: $149 – This is my list building software that allows me to email everyone when there’s a new interview or review

GetResponse: $145 – This is the autoresponder I use for my buyer’s list

“Rented” a Macbook Pro: $114.94 – I had to buy a Macbook Pro while mine was getting fixed. After I returned it, the exchange rate dropped and I ended up “paying” a little over $100 for it…but it was worth it since I made a few thousand dollars while my computer was in the shop.

Traffic Planet Hosting: $50 – The hosting account that I recently switched to. It’s super fast and I’m very happy with it.

Improvely: $29 – This is a tool that I’m using to track the lifetime value of leads

Wistia: $25 – This is how I host my sales videos and course content.

Skype: $19.99 for premium – I do all my interviews with Skype and Ecamm call recorder on a Mac.

Resell Rights Weekly: $19.95 – Reoccurring membership fee for the bonuses I add from my interviews and reviews

Schedule Once: $19 – A tool I use for scheduling coaching calls

WuFoo: $14.95 – A tool that allows me to take applications for my coaching program

Amazon S3: $3.12 – I use this to host images and videos

Total expenses: $4,625.61 (+$519.82 spent compared to May)

Revenue

Fresh Member: $5,152 from review and interview with Mark Thompson

SociVids (CLOSED) : $3,517.37 from review and interview with Brett Rutecky

Profit Penguin (CLOSED) : $1,456.80 from review and interview with Bill Hugall

Profit Store Pro: $1,213.50 from review and interview with Jon Mac

CPA Income Crusher: $1,192.87 from review and interview with Tobias

Crazy 5rr Cash (CLOSED): $1,167.56 from review and interview with Huw Hughes

Instant Video Machine: $1,112.45 from review and interview with Matt Bush

Super CPA Profits: $829.46 from review and interview with Dan Dasilva

Solo Ad Hit List (CLOSED): $815.75 from review and interview with Andrea Fulton

Webinar Hero: $798.36 from review and preview video

Social Vid InstaPortfolio (CLOSED): $556.50 from review and interview with Jian Bacallan

5rr Cash Machine: $506.62 from review and interview with Idrees

Video Pop Funnels: $460 from review and interview with Roger Dagenais

Evil Reddit Magician (CLOSED): $434.96 from review and interview with Ben Adkins

Own The Web: $424.40 from review and interview with Jeff Hunt

Instahook Virtual Studios: $405.55 from review and interview with Brad Scott

Bulletproof Cash Code (CLOSED): $403.12 from review and interview with Spencer Perkins

Video Box Pro: $321.76 from review and interview with Rahil Ahmed

Zapable (CLOSED): $266.50 from review and interview with Chris Fox

AmaSuite 4.0: $261 from review and interview with Chris Guthrie

Product Launch Profits (CLOSED): $227.45 from review and interview with Fergal Downes

Click Pop Engage (CLOSED): $225.48 from review and interview with Sam Robinson

The Super Funnel (CLOSED): $178.36 from review and interview with Alex Jeffreys

Video Retargeter: $166.50 from review and preview video

How To Build Your First List: $135.56 from review and interview with Reed Floren

Arbitrage Underdog RELOADED: $132.24 from review and interview with Tom E

Thrive Leads: $127.25 from review and interview with Shane Melaugh

Weird Niche Content: $125.45 from review and interview with Mark Bishop

Viddify (CLOSED): $116.02 from review and interview with Joey Xoto

Video Maker FX: $108.20 from review and interview with Peter Roszak

Online Wealth Academy (CLOSED): $108 from review, interview, and webinar with Mikael Dia

Cloud Prospect Machine (CLOSED): $97.50 from review and interview with Steve Benn

Azon Authority: $97.34 from review and interview with Sean Donahoe

Easiest 5rr Cash Ever : $90.85 from review and interview with Bamdad Sky

IntelliPlayer: $73.48 from review and interview with Bill Guthrie

Go Bonanza: $73.24 from review and interview with David Eisner

Social Contest (CLOSED): $70.46 from review and interview with Neil Napier

Social Robot (CLOSED): $69.98 from review and preview video

InstaHook Video Backgrounds: $58.40 from review and interview with Brad Scott

Mobile Lead Monster: $58.20 from review and interview with Kevin Zichermann

Funnel Kit: $52.41 from interview with Emka

Steal My Business: $39.16 from review and interview with Ankur Shukla

Explaindio: $34 from review and interview with Nick LaPolla

Rapid Mailer: $33.50 from review and interview with Sean Donahoe

Fresh Store Builder (CLOSED): $28.50 from review and interview with Carey Baird

Buzz Ignition (CLOSED): $25.65 from review and interview with Neil Napier

How To Get Traffic From Facebook Ads: $24.57 from review and interview with Reed Floren

Local Reputation Hero: $23.50 from review and interview with Matthew Ianotti

Kindle Money Mastery: $21.24 from review and interview with Stefan Pylarinos

HydraVid: $19.96 from review and interview with Walt Bayliss

List Verify Jeet: $18.50 from review and interview with Radu

Vidneos: $18.50 from review and interview with Ben Murray

Operation Solo: $17.97 from interview with Anthony Tilley

Ultimate Traffic Monster (CLOSED): $17.52 from review and interview with Naidy Phoon

Vidlify (CLOSED): $17 from review and interview with Radu Hahaianu

Tube Live Profits: $15.74 from review and interview with Saul Maraney

Retro Reppin: $15.24 from Interview with Mike Shreeve

Webinar Fusion Pro: $14.80 from review and interview with Dwayne Golden

Absolute Jacker (CLOSED): $13.50 from review and interview with Ariel Sanders

Kindle Marketing Magic: $13.36 from review and interview with Mike Balmaceda

Solo Ad Business Blueprint (CLOSED): $11.83 from interview with Kate Rosenberg

Spy Perfection (CLOSED): $10.63 from review and interview with Sam Bakker

Video Ranking Machine: $10.20 from review and interview with Ray Lane

Laptop Laziness: $8.67 from review and interview with Bill Hugall

Solo Ad Escape: $7.48 from review and interview with Kevin Fahey

Social Lead Chief (CLOSED): $5 from review and interview with Stefan van der Vlag

Little Guy Big Profits (CLOSED): $4.99 from review and interview with Eric Larson

Inner Circle Solo Ads 3.0 (CLOSED): $4.50 from interview with Rob Stafford

Crowd Search Me (CLOSED): $1.75 from review and interview with Daniel Anton

Total revenue from interviews and reviews: $24,166.16 (+$10,169.54 from May)

SociVids JV commission: $32,022.91

Affiliate Income Secrets: $2,177.05 – My product teaching how I make money from affiliate marketing

Social Robot JV commission: $1,044.63

Resell Rights Weekly: $141.10 – This is a website that has a ton of products that you can use as your own

Lead Pages: $122.15 – I’ve been using Lead Pages for a while now…and it’s one of my top tools

Kindle earnings: $4.14 – Earnings from a few books I have on Kindle

Total from OTHER streams of income: $35,511.98 (+$13,518.79 from May)

Total Revenue: $59,678.14 (+$23,688.33 from May)

Total Profit: $55,052.53 (+$23,168.51 from May)

It’s been a few months since my last income report, but I have a good excuse.

In a May and June I had TWO six-figure product launches. To be completely honest, I didn’t really want to get involved in a big product launch, as it’s much easier just promoting products as an affiliate, but when Joshua Zamora reached out to me in April and asked if I would be interested in partnering on his Social Robot launch, I couldn’t resist.

In this income report I’m going to give you a detailed account of each product launch. In each one there are things that we did very well…and of course mistakes that we made along side them. I’ll be going over each so that you can copy the good things…and avoid the bad.

The Story of the Social Robot Launch

So it all started in the middle of April. Joshua Zamora from ZamuraiBlogger.com sent me a message on Facebook asking if I’d be interested in being a JV manager for his upcoming software launch. At first I was hesitant as I didn’t want to get involved in something that might be over my head. I made sure that he clarified exactly what I would be doing throughout the launch. He said “you’ll simply be reaching out to potential affiliate partners and letting them know about the launch”. That sounded easy enough.

Learning the Software

After looking at the product, I finally agreed to join the launch. I immediately set up an appointment with the software developer to do a detailed walkthrough with me so I would be able to answer questions from potential affiliates. At this point we were about a little less than a month away from the launch. The software was completely finished and had been tested by beta testers. It still had a few little things that I wanted to be changed, and thankfully the developer, Mitja Balažic, was open to any suggestions and applied the changes quickly. As for the sales pages and funnel, Joshua had already planned it out, so I didn’t need to worry about that, but my first job was to simply let affiliates know that we had a launch coming up.

Recruiting affiliates

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when doing a launch is failing to give affiliates enough advanced notice before launching. Most launches are planned MONTHS in advance, and if you try to let even your closest affiliate friends know about a launch the day before it goes live, it’s very unlikely that they will actually be able to promote.

So a little less than a month before the launch date I went to work reaching out to everyone that I know in the IM space, which added up to around 300 potential affiliates. Luckily Joshua had a nice excell spreadsheet that he had used for a previous launch (you can access the template here). I made some logical changes and added in the names of potential affiliates that I would be reaching out to one by one. I then started pinging them on Facebook with a simple “hey NAME”. So, an example would be “hey John”. When they answered, I would simply let them know that I had a launch coming up in about a month and give them the link to the JV page.

Now, I want to point something out before I go any further. I have a relationship with every single person on that list. This wasn’t my first communication with them. I had promoted at least one of their products in the past. This is VERY important as you don’t want your first communication with someone to be you asking them to do something for YOU.

A little less than 2 weeks before the launch I started handing out the sales page preview. Joshua and I had started testing out the software and getting results with it. I was able to rank the VERY FIRST video I tested with the software when the developer was explaining how it worked. That video is still ranking #1 in Google for “little guy big profits review“. Joshua was also able to rank a video for the search term “Buckeye Impact Group review“, which also still remains the dominant #1 spot. This PROOF definitely made it easier to recruit affiliates.

One important thing to note here is that it’s just as important to have proof for affiliates, as it is for a sales page for customers. Affiliates (at least the good ones) want to promote something that will actually help their subscribers, and if you can show them proof that your course or software actually works, then it makes it much easier for them to promote for you.

About a week before the launch I started handing out review copies. I created a “Quick Start Guide” with the bare essentials allowing affiliates to test out the important parts of the software without having to learn everything about it. Most affiliates don’t have time to test out every software that they promote, but I wanted to make it as easy as possible for anyone who wanted to give it a test drive. I’ve included a link to that page HERE. I was able to make it really quickly using Thrive Content Builder, a page building WordPress plugin by Shane Melaugh that I HIGHLY recommend. I even recommended it when I was on John Lee Dumas’ show Entrepreneur on Fire back in February.

The night before the launch everything was all ready. I simply sent a short message to everyone who had showed any interest in promoting asking them if they needed anything else for their promotion. Most of them didn’t need a reminder, but it’s always good just to give them a little nudge (I need it sometimes too) to make sure they get their mailings ready.

What about potential affiliates who didn’t answer me on Facebook or Skype?

Of course there were some affiliates who didn’t respond to my messages. I understand that, and it’s a part of this business, but I personally try to at least acknowledge everyone who messages me about a promo and at least tell them yes or no. There’s nothing wrong with someone saying “sorry, the offer doesn’t fit my list” or “I’m already promoting something else”. That’s fine. But I think it’s a bit rude to ignore someone, especially if you’ve promoted something of theirs in the past. During the last two product launches there were some people who just didn’t ever answer, and I’ve removed them from my potential affiliates list and moved on to those who respond and promote.

Launch Day

We launched Social Robot on Thursday, May 21st at 11am EDT. I have to give credit to Joshua Zamora for the launch strategy and sales page, as he’s a master of EXCELLENT copy and the use of scarcity throughout the launch period. He set it up so we’d have early bird pricing from 11-2pm EDT. Then the price would go up $2-3 every 6-12 hours throughout the 4-day launch. By having a scarcity timer that ended “soon” for every visitor, it made it so that people wouldn’t put off buying it for too long. And, if they did wait, they’d see that the price went up not just by a few cents, but by a few DOLLARS.

The launch started out strong with most affiliates mailing when the cart went live. This got us to the top of Jvzoo and was the attention we needed to get more affiliates on board.

6 hours into the launch the momentum kept on going. We had 1,284 sales, a 23% conversion rate, and $64,447 in total sales. It was doing well. Very well.

By the next day we had $110,000 in sales…and Jvzoo Product of the Day. That was great, but we needed to keep the momentum moving. Most of the time, the FIRST and LAST day of a product launch are when most sales occur. This causes a LULL during the in-between days. Well, our launch was already only a 4-day launch (ending on Sunday at midnight), so it was easier to keep the excitement alive. To keep affiliates mailing, we decided to do a mini-contest to reward those who kept pushing. It went as follows:

On Saturday we hit $150,000 in sales. This was probably the slowest day of the launch. But it’s times like that which make having an affiliate contest OH so important. We had $10,000 up for prizes for the top affiliates promoting Social Robot. At this point in the launch I was able to reach out to affiliates and let them know where they were on the leaderboard. Most affiliates appreciated me taking the effort to contact them, and I definitely was able to get some that normally might not have mailed to mail again.

And then came the LAST day of the launch. This can be the MOST profitable day, especially if you have a REAL reason for your affiliates to mail, and a REAL reason for your customers to buy. In our case, we raised the price from $47 to $67 at midnight EDT on Sunday. We also did a closing contest so that affiliates who might not have been able to win the top prizes on the main contest leaderboard would have a chance to win some other prizes if they pushed hard on the last day. I’ve found that these mid-launch contests can be super-effective in getting affiliates to mail…and I’ve been influenced to mail for launches as well by those who have used this strategy.

The final results for the launch were as follows:

$192,000 in sales
3,500 total sales
15% conversion rate and an 8.15% EPC

Summary and Things I Learned from this launch

I’m super-happy that I agreed to do this product launch. Normally I’m content with just doing my affiliate marketing thing, but with all the connections that I have now in the IM space, it only makes sense for me to be a “connector” bringing together good products with potential affiliates. That being said, it’s definitely not an easy job, and my wife will vouch for the fact that I was up many nights until 5 or 6am (Istanbul time) chatting with potential affiliates on Skype and Facebook. Here are some things I learned:

1. Keep organized – I had an Evernote document where I kept all my info for the launch, from links to JV pages, to affiliate bonuses, to passwords…everything was in ONE central place.

2. Back up your sales page – As an affiliate I’ve mailed for a lot of launches that end up having their sales pages go down because they’re hosted on a shared $5/month Host Gator or Bluehost account. Before the Social Robot launch, we backed up the sales page on my Traffic Planet server…and it’s a good thing we did, as we got hit with a TON of traffic and the sales page was loading slowly. Being able to simply switch over to my sales page saved us, and most importantly our affiliates, a lot of money.

3. Be ready to for support tickets – With any software product launch you’re going to get a LOT of support tickets. Most people don’t bother to go through the tutorials, so if your software is complicated at all, you’ll get an influx of tickets. A really cool support desk that Joshua Zamora recommends is Help Scout.

4. Choose your launch partners wisely – Early in the launch we had an issue with our Jvzoo contract which divided commissions to Joshua, Mitja, and I based on our agreed upon contract. We decided to simply worry about fixing this AFTER the craziness of the launch was over. We could do this because we TRUSTED each other.

5. Make sure you actually KNOW affiliates you approve – I know this may seem like common sense to most of you, but we had some instances where affiliates removed all their money from Paypal, which made it impossible to process a refund. We had to reach out to them and ask them to put funds BACK into their account so we could process the refund. If you’re an affiliate, you should always keep a few hundred dollars in your account. Plus, it probably looks bad to Paypal if you get a negative balance.

6. Have “exclusive” bonuses for affiliates – You should have bonuses for ALL your affiliates to use right on your JV page, but I found that a bunch of affiliates wanted SPECIAL bonuses…so make sure you have something prepared for them.

Ok, so that was the Social Robot launch. As you can see from my numbers above, I ended up making about $15,000 in profit after deducting prize money and correcting for the Jvzoo contract error we had at the beginning of the launch. Plus, of course I received a copy of the customer emails, which means that I added about 2,000 subscribers to my list.

Now on to the SociVids launch I did in June.

The Story of the SociVids Launch

At the end of May, Brett Rutecky from BrettRutecky.com approached me about being his JV manager for a software that lets you post interactive videos on the Facebook timeline called SociVids. I’ve known Brett for a while now, and consider him a friend, but because of the sometimes harsh nature of his review website, he has made some enemies along the way. I knew it might be a challenge to get some affiliates onboard whom he had “scorned” in the past, but I was hoping that affiliates would promote anyways since SociVids is a high-quality software.

I agreed to join the launch. Brett also brought Austin Anthony from IMBuddies.com on to do the sales pages, sales funnel pages, and JV page creation. All three of us took part in the launch strategy.

Proof
One thing that I had learned from the Social Robot launch was that PROOF is everything when it comes to selling a piece of software like this. We needed to have results. Well, luckily Brett had already been using SociVids to build an email list and promote affiliate offers. He didn’t have HUGE proof, but it was enough to prove that the concept works. Also, Austin gave the software out to a CPA marketer who was able to use it to make $40k in revenue. That proof definitely made it easier when getting the sales page created and with recruiting affiliates.

Picking a Launch Day

We had a bit of a difficult time picking the launch date for this one. The launch calendars were EXTREMELY full, and we didn’t want to launch at the same time as one of our friends. I personally think it’s a bit silly to schedule your launch at the same time as someone else’s that you would potentially promote, as you could just as easily make money promoting for them. In the end, we decided to launch on Sunday at 2pm EDT. We ended up changing the time later on, but we stuck with the date. It’s generally thought that launching on weekends will get you LESS sales than launching during the week. However, I’ve seen this disproven time and time again with VERY successful launches starting on a weekend. Even with the weekend spot, we had to plan out our launch timing carefully. A very popular product called Explaindio was launching on Tuesday, and we knew that we would have a tough time competing with one of the top-selling products on JVzoo. In the end, we decided to do a 3-day launch. That way, we’d have scarcity built right into the launch throughout the 3 days.

From then on I just did my “JV thing” that I explained earlier. I strategically reached out to each potential affiliate one by one and delivered the JV page, sales page preview, and review access gradually leading up to the launch date. Apparently this worked because we ended up having a TON of support from our JV partners (thank you!).

During the launch planning, Neil Napier from KVSocial.com approached us about doing a prelaunch webinar. I had initially planned to do the webinar myself, but with all the launch planning and JV recruiting, I was happy to bring Neil into the launch. He has an EXCELLENT track record of producing high-converting webinars, and he definitely delivered the goods with our launch.

Launch Day 

Everything went smoothly RIGHT up to the prelaunch webinar. However, during the webinar we started seeing an issue with our server. The sales page went offline and we were a bit panicked. The LAST thing you want in a launch is to have your sales page go down as you can lose THOUSANDS of dollars, and also the trust of your affiliate partners. Of course it happens sometimes…but it’s something that I try my best to avoid. Anyway, the page went down, and thankfully we had backed it up on my server. This shows again just how IMPORTANT it is to back up your sales page…because it WILL eventually go down at some point. By the way, Austin was so impressed with my server that he ended up using it as a backup for his eCom Experts Academy launch which ended up doing over $600,000 in sales in July (congrats, Austin!).

$100k in LESS than 10 hours

So launch day went VERY well. We hit $100k in sales quickly and the momentum continued on. More and more affiliates jumped on. By Monday afternoon we were at $156k in sales, and it just kept on going.

Contests

Like in the Social Robot launch, we decided to do a mid-launch contest to keep the momentum going. This was great for getting new affiliates to promote who might not have had a chance at winning the main launch contest. For this contest we structured it as follows:

This definitely helped as we did another $70k in sales by noon the next day.

On the last day of the launch we decided to give away $2k in EXTRA prizes for people who promoted the closing of the product. We had it set up so that the price would raise drastically at midnight so that it would give an incentive for the affiliates to mail, and for the customers to buy before the price went up.

Last Minute Changes

Like everything in life, things don’t always go according to plan. We ended up changing a few launch strategies pre-launch AND mid-launch to make sure we had the BEST launch as possible. We had originally decided to give away a special discount code ONLY to people who attended the prelaunch webinar. The idea behind that was to give a real incentive for people to attend, as we knew that webinars have a MUCH higher conversion rate than just sending people to a sales page. This was meant to give customers a special discount as a reward for attending, and also to make affiliates more money. Well, after speaking with some affiliate partners, we decided that it would be better for everyone to just do a $5 off discount code and not make people attend the webinar. In retrospect I think this was the fairest option for all affiliates. In general I don’t like discount codes, as it’s better to just have the price be lower on the sales page then make people use a code. I definitely learned a lesson on this one.

We also had a change in the closing strategy. We had originally planned to have the price go from a one-time to reoccurring payment at midnight on the last day. After speaking with one of our top affiliates, Martin Crumlish, he advised me that this strategy would be the same as removing the buy buttons from the sales page….meaning that we’d lose a lot of potential sales. So, instead of changing it to monthly we simply decided to raise the price by about $20.

With changes like these, it’s important that ALL affiliates learn about them. So, each time we made a change, I had to send a message out to our JV email list AND message each individual affiliate on Facebook or Skype. This was of course a pain in the butt, but I wanted to make sure that each one of them knew…and most people thanked me for letting them know.

A Little TOO Successful

When you do a product launch that has over 4,000 new customers in 3-days, there are BOUND to be some issues. We had to deal with thousands of people posting links to Facebook in a very short time, and unfortunately some of these customers were posting “naughty” spammy stuff. It’s unfortunate that some “bad apples” will ruin it for the rest of us, but these spammers started getting our links flagged in Facebook, causing our “nice” customers to go through an image-verification process when posting their links. Thankfully, Brett is an EXCELLENT software developer, and he was able to quickly solve the problem by rotating out the links and removing spammers. Eventually the problem went away, but this issue caused us to close the sales cart at the end of the launch so we could make sure our existing customers wouldn’t get affected by new “spammers” being introduced to the system. It was more important for us to take care of our existing customers than to make more money.

JVzoo Product of the Day TWICE in a Row

It’s pretty rare for Jvzoo to pick a product as Product of the Day TWO times in a row…but I was super surprised (and grateful) when they did. Being chosen twice definitely added a ton of sales and got us more affiliates hopping on board when they saw us at the top banner of Jvzoo.

Backend Webinar

For any successful launch you’re going to want to have some sort of webinar on the backend to both deliver value AND make some extra money from the launch. Depending upon the launch strategy, there are marketers who will actually purposefully LOSE money during the launch to build a list of leads and then make it up on the backend selling services like software and coaching.

Normally, I would have done my own backend webinar and sold my coaching program, but I was happy to take off a bit of the stress of the launch and have Ricky Mataka and Michael Young do the webinar for us. All we had to do was include a banner inside our member’s area for people to sign up, and then mail out the list a few times telling them about the webinar.

We did the webinar a couple days after the launch, and simply had to be on the call to introduce Michael Young. Michael did a presentation and sold his program on the call, which ended up making us about $16k total in additional commissions. I was happy with that, but I always think it’s better to do your OWN backend webinar if you can as you get to keep 100% of the commissions generated instead of sharing it with an outside partner. That being said, $16k is pretty amazing for very little work, and if anyone needs a backend webinar for their launch I highly recommend reaching out to Michael or Ricky.

Summary and Things I Learned from this launch

This launch definitely took a lot out of me physically and mentally. Instead of just having to communicate with affiliate partners a few times, I had to do DOUBLE the work when it came to informing them about launch strategy changes. Here are some things that I learned:

1. Do a prelaunch webinar – There’s nothing like a prelaunch webinar to get the ball rolling. It also gives affiliates a REAL reason to presell and mail before the cart goes live. In my experience, offering the chance to win a free copy of the product or some special bonus for buying on the webinar seems to work well to get people to sign up.

2. Don’t be afraid to change things – I was a bit nervous to change things in the middle of the launch, but I’m extremely happy that we did. Most affiliate partners are also product launchers, so they should understand that sometimes changes need to be made.

3. Ask for help and advice – We’re all in this together. If you’ve got a question about something related to your launch, the best people to ask are your affiliates. It’s in THEIR best interest as well for your product to convert, and most of them are more than happy to give advice.

4. Don’t be cheap – I’m a big believer in investing in a launch. Don’t expect to pay $100 for sales copy and have a six-figure launch…it RARELY happens.

5. Sunday is a GREAT day to launch – This launch goes to show you that ANY day can do well for a launch. Sundays are usually WIDE open.

In the end, it was my MOST successful launch ever, thanks to my JV partners, affiliates, and customers. You can check out ALL the final results of the launch at my post on Facebook HERE.

So there we go. In May and June I was involved in TWO launches that did a total of over $461,000 in sales. Of course I didn’t get to keep all of it, but by being a JV manager I was able to make over $50,000 in extra income by helping product creators make sales, affiliates make money, and putting QUALITY products in the hands of customers.

See you in the next income report 🙂