For years companies like Microsoft and Apple have charged premium prices for software, I think Windows 7 is about $119 – $219 depending on version and Mac OSX 10 Snow leopard will cost $129 as an upgrade. These prices have been justified because of the cost of producing CD’s and distribution. However since I switched to an iMac 2 months ago i’ve noticed a trend. Apple are unbundling their applications and charging much less for them if they deliver via the Mac App Store..i.e online

For example I could continue to use Microsoft office on the mac as they make a mac version it costs $279 Like all bundled apps there are parts of it I probably wont use. When I look at Apples iWork tools (the office equivalent) I get the option to buy Pages (word) for $19.99, Numbers (excel) $19.99 and Keynote (powerpoint) $19.99

On my PC I bought Camtasia for $299 but as a download from the Mac App Store Screenflow a rival product costs just $99… as does Camtasia for mac!

I watched the keynote speech from the Apple developer conference yesterday where they announced that the next Mac OS called Mac OSX Lion would cost just $29.99 and would only be available from the Online Mac Store – and you can use that 1 purchase on all the macs you have registered at the App store!!!

Now compare that to Pricing in the IM sector, the Guru’s Increase prices all the time in the past 4 years the benchmark prices seem to have been $497, $997, $1997 and now $2,997 although that last one may just have been a step too far as they seem to have stepped back to $1997.

Now answer me a question (either hypothetically or please feel free to use the comments) how many of you bought Video boss for $2000? If it had been priced at lets say $67 how many of you would have bought it? Would Andy Jenkins have made 30 times more sales? Maybe not, But I suspect he would have had far fewer refunds and a lot more buyers on his mailing lists to which he could have sold further related products.

Of course the big question is how many of his “Good Buddies” would have promoted for $30 in commission? Probably not many but on the other hand I can think of hundreds if not thousands of other marketers who would have promoted it via blogs and forums.

So where am I going with this…

Once you make a product and set it up for download whether you sell 1 copy or 1 million copies It doesn’t affect the cost on the time spent of the original product. So why not take the lead from Apple and sell it cheaply, forget $197, $67 or $57 try $17 $27 or even $7. When you sell a product at $67 you need to pile on value so that it looks like a no brainer, I do this myself by adding updates , bonuses and usually a forum.

If I was to sell the same product at $27 or even $17 I wouldn’t need to add so much value I could add the value items as further low cost items to the download page. So instead of having a forum for beyond commission and another for Video creation mastery I could offer access to 1 combined IM forum for a low monthly cost for all my products then it is in the buyers hands as to whether they want the added value or not.

Look at the Warrior Forum people sell hundreds, sometimes thousands of copies of their products at $5-$17  If they are good and get good feedback they sell if they are bad they don’t sell it’s a simple as that. Thats a market that works with low prices, my last WSO sold almost 500 copies in a few days Beyond Commission which I feel is one of my best product still hasn’t sold that many.  That begs the question which is more valuable $ in the bank or confirmed buyers on a mailing list?

There are 3 big problems here as I see it.

1. We don’t have something as integrated as The Mac App Store available

2. Affiliates won’t promote for $8 or $12 a sale

3. Buyers equate low cost with poor quality.

While it’s true that there isn’t something like the Mac App Store available for IM products at the moment there are alternatives, I use Digiresults to sell some of my reports cheaply it works well and it’s easy to use. It’s also growing all the time. On top of that It also helps with the affiliate problem.

I’ve found that despite what many people think the lure of instant affiliate payments is powerful and people will happily promote low cost products through Digiresults simply because they get paid instantly and don’t have to wait 3 or 4 weeks to see the results of their promotion.

In the past few days alone i’ve had someone sell 30 or so copies of one my products as I give 75% on that product he’s probably earned about $300 and I’ve maybe only made $100 ..so what!  it’s $100 more than I would have earned selling it at $47 and I have 30 new buyers who are now subscribers.

Now thats what I call Win Win

The last point will take time and education and thats where all you guys reading this come in, if you buy a low cost product and the content is good them it’s up to you to spread the word, tell people it’s good, recommend it , even promote it. Start spreading the word that low cost doesn’t mean it’s crap! It’s in your own interest as you my friends will be the beneficiaries in the long run.

I am going to start to test this with some of my products in the next few weeks I’ll take some of them remove all the bonuses zip up the videos and PDF’s and add them to Digiresults at a much lower price and see how it goes. I realize that it might annoy some people if they bought recently but I’ll sort something out. Stay tuned I’ll let you know if it works or is a total failure.

I would love your comments more than ever on this post, Am I raving mad or do I have a point, could this be the start of something or are people too entrenched in their views please let me know by commenting below.

Everytime I see one of these new style “4 videos, leave a comment below” product launches I can’t help but think of this story.

You see the thing about these launches is as soon as you see the first video you know the product is going to cost $1997. At that price point the vendor basicaly gets $1000 and the Affiliate gets $1000.

I have no problems whatsoever with affiliates making money what i do object to is affiliates promoting a product without ever having seen it.

However that isn’t the worst problem with these types of launches…The big problem is that the products don’t really teach anything new. It’s just rehased products with a fancy new set of clothes. Worst of all is the fact that the people who create them don’t care about the people who buy them.

The whole product is just aimed at generating income and cash for the vendor and affilaites

What most people don’t realize is that there are huge prizes available to the affiliate who sell the most number of copies…

Below is the list of the top 10 prizes from a recent launch

1) $100,000 cash
2) $50,000 cash
3) $25,000 cash
4) $12,500 cash
5) $6,250 cash
6) 17″ MacBook Pro
7) 15″ MacBook Pro
8 ) MacBook Air
9 ) 13″ MacBook Pro
10) iPad 64GB+3G

Do you really think that anyone who promoted the product, and it’s the same people promoting every time, really took anytime to think about whether the product was a good deal for their lists?

I seriously doubt it…

You don’t need to support these guys, if you get an email promoting one of these products unsubscribe from the list, if everyone did that we’d soon get some sanity back into the IM market and some products worth the money being charged for them.

Finally before I get back to work… there are only 7 places available for the october seminar in Las vegas. If you want to know how to create and promote products that actually have value come along.

You can see details at http://beyondcommissionlive.com/us-las-vegas . Come along it could be the best decision you’ve every made….or you could save the money for the next crap product launch!!

Have you ever tried to build a jigsaw without the box lid with the picture, difficult isn’t it. What about trying to build it and finding a few random pieces are missing.

On the surface Internet Marketing looks easy, In fact most marketers make it look very easy.. “buy this great product for only $997 and you’ll make $100,000 a month “… Wake up and smell the coffee it’s not going to happen.

The only person making money from that offer will be the marketer and his selected friends in the “Golden Triangle ” Who promote it. (Thanks to Peter in the WPG forum for that analagy.. Much better than the “Circle jerk” one I used to use!!)

Sure I can tell you to use Clickbank or Adsense but that doesn’t give you the whole picture. You could biuld the perfect site in a great niche, with lots of traffic and get to #1 in google but if the adsense ads only cost 5 cents or the clickbank products has a terrible sales page then you aren’t going to make money no matter how hard you try.

Get Internet marketing right and you can make a really good living mby working a few hours a week get it wrong and you will be the one of the many people in forums who say internet marketing doesn’t work.

Don’t try to make Internet marketing work on your own, there are lots of people out there who are successful even if it’s only making 40 sales from amazon every month or 10 Clickbank sales they have a piece of the jigsaw seek them out and listen to what they have to tell you.

Obviously I think the WordPress Goldmine forum is the best place for this but even if you don’t join us find another group of like minded people who don’t have an ulterior motive and who are happy to share their pieces of the jigsaw.

Remember this is the last time that you will be able to join WordPress Goldmine for a one time payment.. from Monday it will be a monthly payment… why? Because the information in the forum is worth it! You won’t find any forum online where the members happily share so much information.

If you want to do some very quick niche research you can’t beat it. If any of you tech dudes from google read this why not color code it so we can see the approximate searches per month, we’d all be eternally indebted to you!

All you need is Google chrome and you can initially research a niche in about 30 seconds. Once I have some keyword ideas and related keywords I use Micro Niche Finder or the Google Keyword tool to refine the research.

In case you aren’t aware of what the wonder wheel is I created a very short video to show you how I research a niche.

Have a nice weekend…

However up to now I’ve been an idiot!

I should have been using outsourcing for so much more, backlink building, Article submissions etc in fact everything I hate doing and avoid doing because it’s so mind numbingly boring. But because of some horror stories I’ve heard about I have avoided hiring people. This is about to change.

I am about to take on 3 or 4 staff maybe even more depending on how it goes.

I have looked at elance and Getafreelancer and also companies like Agentsofvalue who will hire you staff on a full time or part time basis but I rejected them all for different reasons. I have decided to use Odesk.com.

Odesk allows me to monitor exactly what work the provider has done for me and I only pay for an hours work if they have worked for an hour. It also has various tests which providers can take which gives an indication of their abilities.

Because this is my first foray into hiring multiple workers for multiple tasks I am creating videos and documenting my progress , the videos are available as part of Augusts step by step project in the WordPress Goldmine forum. (previous documentated steps by steps include, Article marketing, Niche reseach and site Building and site reviews. All this and much more is available for a one time payment at Wordpres Goldmine…end of advert!!)

So what have I learned so far.

Well the first thing I learned is to break the job offers down into small tasks. I initially posted a job offer for a Virtual assistant, backlink builder and Article submitter. This got me 24 applicants in 24 hours, but many were over qualified.

I created a new ad for someone just to post backlinks and mentioned that people with previous experience would be preferred. The advert made it perfectly clear to them what would be involved and anyone who had done this particular type of backlinking before would immediately know the process. I’ve had 50 applicants in the past 5 hours. Most have done this before and know exactly what I want.

The difference In hourly rates are also noticeably lower.

It’s very possible that I’ll hire 2 people to do the work, I’ve had bids from people with good rankings for similar tasks charging less than $2 an hour. At prices like that I am happy to give them a days work just to test them out. I am more than happy to give a pay rise or a bonus to keep a good reliable worker once they have proved themselves.

By outsourcing all the stuff I try to avoid doing for very little cost I can concentrate on what I do best.

I’ll keep you informed as to how my outsourcing experiment is going. So check back or better still subscribe to the RSS feed email notification at the top of the site…(a retweet using the Tweet button at the start of the article wouldn’t go amiss either!!)

Outsourcing experiment Costs/Progress/income

August 6th:
Costs so Far $0
Backlinks submitted 0
Ranking Improvement N/a
Page Rank Improvement N/a
Additional Traffic over July.. N/a
Additional Income Over July N/a

If you have ever used Google Chrome you’ll know that it is fast and stable, exactly what we want from a browser. I predict that the OS will be the same. This is also not a bad thing to do with your sites.

Look at your sites and review exactly what do you need to make money..If it’s essential use it if not get rid of it. Your site should be “lean and mean”. I constantly try to refine my sites removing items that are surplus to requirements this is why you’ll rarely see sign up boxes, or rss feeds displaying news etc.

What I consider essential is good unique content, affiliate links , and product reviews. One benefit of removing non essential items is that the sites will load quicker ensuring more visitors get to see them.

Find it Hard To Concentrate on Your Sites?

I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t had times when the last thing they want to do is to work on their sites it happens to me quite often and I need to force myself to focus on the job I need to do. I’ve written many times in the past about creating a working environment that is conducive to working effectively without interruptions. If you would like some more helpful advice please feel free to download the book I wrote a while ago on the Focussed Achievemnet Called “I Can ” there is no sign up required or no up sell… enjoy

http://mjthompson.net/giveaway/I_Can.pdf

One of the best ways to stay focused and productive is to surround yourself with people who are actually making things happen. One such place is to join forums where people are helpful and positive (avoid the ones where people are negative and have nothing positive to say, they can sap your will to live!!)

Finally today a big shout out to two guys who are active members of the WordPress Goldmine Forum (A very very positive forum!!). These guys have taken action and are actually building themselves long-term businesses.

First up we have Jeff who followed the Product creation course we created a few months back and has released his first product on clickbank, this is in a great niche so please consider promoting it. You can check out his great work at http://www.learnguitarquick.com/

Also a big shout out for Marl who has set up an excellent social bookmarking service, which starts at $5 superb value!! you can read more at. http://wraptnotes.com/sitepromotion/

That’s it…. stay Focused!

There is a company in Santa Barbara called Ring Revenue who have recently received $3.5million of financing. Ring Revenue provide an affiliate Platform like no other. The platform they have developed and patented allows affiliate networks like CJ to track phone calls just like they track clicks. In fact the call tracking is much more accurate than the clicks.

The potential here is amazing. First off I means that I as an affiliate can advertise on radio, TV, Newspapers and magazines all i need to give is a toll free number and the network will track my calls and pay me commissions on sales.

As a Product owner I can employ an online sales team which generally convert at much higher levels than sales letters , sales letters generally convert at 1-3% sales teams at 30-50%. I can target specific demographics and collect real time data via the calls.

Just imagine how cool it would be for Clickbank to take on this technology and add a call center , each affiliate has a phone number that goes to a specialised team… I’d be happy to pay extra for this service as not only could I sell digital versions of my own products but hard copy versions as well.

I’ll be watching this very closely and I suggest that you do too. You can read More at www.ringrevenue.com

Meanwhile here is a graphic of how it works.

RingRevenue How it Works

Looking at that kid I realised that we are naturally programmed not to give up and to keep on trying until we master the problem facing us. Why then do so many people give up Internet marketing after a few weeks?? I actually asked someone who once asked for a refund why they were giving up after only 4 days. They said “Internet marketing is too difficult, I want an easy way to make money”.

What can be easier than looking at whats working for other people, pressing a few buttons to create a site and then spending a few hours in front of the computer driving traffic to the site you’ve built. Once you master it, it is possible to spend 4 or 5 hours working on a site and have that site earn you hundreds of dollars every month.

Internet marketing might be a lot of things but it’s not hard.

I lost count at the number of times I built sites that failed when I fist started. I would built a site then sit back and watch as it made about 5cents a day.. So i’d look at what I did wrong, once I’d found the problem I’d make sure that I didn’t make the same mistake again. Soon I was like that little kid,  instead of being able to walk two steps I could create sites that would make 50 cents a day.  After that it was just a matter of time until I worked out how to make sites that made me $10 a day.

If I’d listened to the part of me saying  ”give up it’s too hard”, I would still be struggling to make an income I could live on and I would probably be working for someone else doing a job I hated. Instead I have a great lifestyle I work on my terms and I am doing something I love.

Start to look at Internet marketing in a realistic way and be prepared to fail, and you will succeed it may take time but you will be a success.  Failure is a powerful tool, embrace it and learn from it.

Of course if you want to learn from my previous failures and reduce the time it takes to be successful then be sure to check out WordPress Goldmine. Next month I am going to be reviewing peoples sites and suggesting improvements.

This is a warning you are about to get inundated with emails for yet another Clickbank product. Yes in a week or two CB Quantum will go live. The pre-written emails are ready to go along with the bits of video ready to get you warmed up. You’ll get pre written emails and bonus offers  all in an effort to get you to buy the product and earn the affiliate a very healthy commission.

I’m not even going to mention my views about the 3 guys producing this product. It would probably get me landed with a writ for defamation of character, lets just say I loathe the methods they use, and believe that the whole area of Internet marketing would be better off without people like them.

My issue with this is that this is yet another product about how to make money using clickbank. The thing that gets me is that these guys have been producing Clickbank guides for several years now …If I am not mistaken Clickbank hasn’t changed , the methods are still the same. Why are the methods that they once sold for $47 or $97 now worth $1000? If you get emails promoting this before you unsubscribe ask them why the other clickbank books they promoted are no longer valid!

Don’t be taken in by their slick sales letters, they make most of their money by selling crap like this to their lists of subscribers and then creating another book about how they made a million dollars and now own a Ferrari and yacht…then sell that to their lists.

Making money with clickbank is easy and you don’t need to spend $1000 to find out how to do it.

Here is how i do it…

Disclaimer… I don’t own a Ferrari or a Yacht so if that’s how you judge success then don’t follow the guide below. I do however get a nice payment from Clickbank every week.

1. Find a Product, Cbengine.com or CBsnooper.com are great for doing this.

2. Set up a landing page or a blog with a review of the product. I prefer the review method.

3. Find a series of keywords that people interested in that niche would use when searching for information.

4. Use the keywords to drive visitors to your site either by Article marketing Or PPC (I prefer Article marketing It’s cheaper and 1 article can get thousands of views!)

Thats it for this latest rant I’ll be unsubscribing from anyone who sends me emails about CB Quantum. It really is time we told marketers who really don’t care about their subscribers that enough is enough.

“Signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as useful twwets) to the level of background noise(sales pitches and other useless tweets). The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is.”

So basically the less background noise the better the signal to noise ratio… On twitter the noise is the pointless constant spamming or poor quality tweets someone makes. I once followed someone who tweets solely consisted of what music they were listening to.. At the other end of the spectrum I got 50 tweets from one1 person in a day promoting GDI..the seller of those pointless .ws domains. Did either of the tweeple think they were being useful and helpful?

I’ve recently used the method I laid out in the Free Twitter Tips and Tricks book I released last week to build up over 3000 followers in the past month. I now have a responsibility to provide useful interesting information to those followers and not constant sales messages. Personally I like to follow people who inspire me and with whom I can enter into conversations so why shouldn’t I try to follow that example. Unfortuatly many of these people get lost in the constant background noise so the question is how to Deal with it.

I think the obvious answer is to go through my twitter account and remove people who don’t provide a good signal to noise ratio. Personally I don’t mind getting tweets that are sales pitches, I’ve often found very useful ideas and products this way bit I don’t want to be bombarded with them.

If everyone adopted a policy of only following people who posted interesting and useful tweets 80% of the time Twitter would be a far more useful place..

Thats my Views and I’ve probably missed something obvious. As an internet marketer am I being a hypocrite? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or sending a tweet.