If you’ve been following our industry lately, you probably have noticed the buzz around this thing called the Software System. I didn’t buy it nor am I against it. And in fact, I’m not here to review it or give my take on it. The reason why I opened that up is to study how internet marketers act or roll with these big-time launches by their industry friends and business partners.
It’s All About Affiliate Marketing
A long time ago, I wrote a post called Affiliate Marketing in blogs where I discussed that unlike in PPC-CPA space, affiliate marketing in blogs is all about building relationships and recommending products that are really really congruent not just with the market, but with their specific needs.
So for example, you can’t just promote a product about making money online in a making money online market. You have to dig deeper into that and find their inner needs. Is it making money through memberships? or about blogging? product launches? This just doesn’t apply to blogs, it applies to people with lists as well.
As you can see, you will get nowhere when you don’t identify the inner needs and desire of your market. With this, you really really have to be specific with your offer.
The Software System Launch
First and foremost, I would like to give this disclaimer that I’m not a product launch guru. I really am not that’s why I constantly watch and study different things. What I’m going to outline here is just all my 2 cents.
Obviously the software system isn’t your typical “make money on the internet” kind of hype. It focuses on creating softwares and selling them to a bunch of people and making tons of money. During that launch guys like John Chow, Jeremy Schoemoney, Jeff Walker, Frank Kern and a bunch of smaller marketers and bloggers jumped on the bandwagon and promoted it. For this post, I would be using the big 4 mentioned above.
During the period, these guys were emailing people like crazy and for almost everyday (twice a day for Kern for instance). Now let’s (briefly) take a look at some of their emails during the launch day:
John Chow’s Offer:
Jeff Walker’s offer:
Shoe’s offer:
Kern’s offer:
Noticed the same patterns in their emails on that launch day? Hmm, interesting…
Incentivization – the art of bribing
As funny as it may sound, all of them (and some more others) have this kind of a bribe to further more try to convince their readers to purchase UNDER their link. And all of them are claiming that by spending $2700 on that product, they would get over that price value in return. How unreal could that possibly be? Can I buy a Kia and get an Audi in return?
I know it sounds crazy but incentivization is a big part in launches and also a big reason why marketers (both the owner and the affiliate) make so much money. The incent value that they’re giving away is just the “perceived value”, not the real price tag but since a lot of smart marketers have built good communities around them, most people trust them and believe that they’re really getting a good value for the amount they’re spending (w/c maybe is true or maybe not).
So I think that’s the important thing to learn here. People’s averseness (means resisting) to buy something online these days makes it much harder for us, marketers to go out and sell our own stuff w/o giving away a lot in return. It also speaks on how crucial relationship building is in this type of business since people obviously won’t buy from you and anything you recommend, unless they trust you and see you as a prominent person in your market.
This trend started a long time ago and I believe it would only continue for a very long period of time. As an internet marketer and/or blogger, are you in this game too?