When you think about your hobbies, do you ever consider monetizing them or how you could turn them into a source of income? It’s not impossible to create a product, and during your initial launch you can reinvest sales revenue to improve the product. I do not encourage you to create a quick product to make few sales, design it as a stable product and add to it. The big question remains, how do you launch your product correctly? There are several aspects that fluctuate in how vital they are to your launch. Some of the important steps for launching your product are planning, placement, and outsourcing.
Planning is not an easy step and I recommend that you consider, for example, an Internet marketing consultancy. This is especially important if you have no experience with business planning. Although this is just the launch of a product based on your hobby, you are still getting into business. One critical and much-overlooked element that people ignore is the budget during your product launch. If you sign up for, say, 20 different email lists to learn how to do business, you can expect around 140 emails per week, as the average marketer typically sends once a day. If you don’t make an effort to stick to your budget, you can end up spending an incredible amount of your capital on useless items that are simply being sold because of your hype. Another crucial step in planning is developing a timeline with realistic goals that you want to implement or milestones by which you want certain parts of your project to be completed. Regularly reviewing your timeline will unconsciously hold you accountable and give you a boost when you fall behind due to not adhering to your goals.
How do you launch the product you created? Start creating rumors and hype around you. To do this, I recommend clients start answering problems people are having or questions in forums related to their niche or product. When you stick with it long enough, people will start to see you as an expert in the field. On the internet, this is where you can start to develop a positive word-of-mouth campaign based on the experience people have with your responses. Don’t answer a question with one or two word answers, this method is where you want your knowledge to start to shine. One thing I discourage people from is going to a forum for the sole purpose of selling their product. This is generally not allowed on forums and will be seen as a mere annoyance by your potential customers.
Social media is another way to launch your product, as well as build buzz around it. I have seen people get tremendous results with social media marketing. Join groups on sites like Facebook that are relevant to your product and start building a relationship with the people in that group. By doing so, you are creating a warm market for your product launch. In the business world, a warm market is jargon for a group of people who are most likely to buy your product. After a few weeks of networking in those groups, let them know that you will be launching a product in the near future. Before announcing this, you should consider a Facebook fan page for a pitching contest. I would give them some solid information, ask them to visit your SEO blog, and ask them to tell a friend about your page through Facebook’s “Like” system.
When creating your blog, you want it to be self-hosted. This means you don’t want a free blog, but it doesn’t have to be too expensive either. I recommend using a hosting company like Host Gator or Just Host and I also suggest getting a domain name that is keyword based and easy to remember. In the previous paragraph I mentioned a pitch contest, this is where you will give the details of your contest, be creative and have fun with it. This is where you can also make your visitors act like you are hosting a focus group and see what they really want! The prize could be a free copy of your product if they are chosen. Another tactic you should consider implementing is to create an SEO blog and use plugins (numerous free plugins work wonderfully). Some plugins I recommend are Jeff Johnson’s “Traffic Getting Plugin” (you won’t find it in the WordPress plugin, although it does show up if you search), I’m also a big fan of “All In One SEO”. Earlier I talked about getting people to “Like” your page, WP Social is a plugin that allows you to add numerous buttons similar to the Facebook “Like” button. This plugin could make you get social bookmarks (important for search engine optimization) on numerous sites. Don’t go crazy because you don’t want to take content away from your blog.
If you prefer to have a website instead of a blog and don’t know anything about code setup and the like, you can outsource it. I have had clients use different fonts, one of which I find especially interesting. They visited a vocational high school and donated 20% of what they would have paid to a freelancer in the department! You can also place a Craigslist ad asking for help, although I’m not a big fan of Craigslist due to the difficulty of validating past work as opposed to a freelance forum. Speaking of freelancing forums, you can not only check a prospective employee’s experience and customer reviews, but also see the current rate of projects and post other areas of your product launch that you don’t have the time or desire to do. yourself. One thing you can outsource, and if you have little business experience, is the implementation of advertising like PPC or CPA.
Online joint ventures do not look the same as a joint venture in offline business. In e-commerce, many people join a joint venture and are nothing more than affiliates or sellers. This does not take away from the value or importance of this concept. It is also easy to find people who want to sell your product. I do this using CPA networks as it is easy and you have a variety of options in how you want to send payments, third party commissions, analytics and many more options. Another benefit of using a CPA network is that you can allow affiliates to advertise in a variety of ways. An example of this is that Max Bounty sends an email with new campaigns and what forms of advertising are allowed, such as PPC, email, contextual advertising, etc. Unlike digital marketplaces like ClickBank, you can also set any payment you want.
Many online product launches have fairly large launch contests based on getting leads and making sales. Many product launches also offer astronomical amounts of dollars or high-end prizes, like iPads and iPhones. For your pitching contest, you can literally do whatever you want, as long as it’s legal. I recommend a month long pitch contest and have a mini contest every week. I’m also a fan of rewarding the creator or owner of the product with a heartfelt personal email or phone call thanking them for their efforts.
In the end, seeking approval from a consultant can be worth a small investment, even if they just go over your plans and give you feedback. This is your product and you should have as much fun with it as you can. Make this an experience you want to do it again!