No Product? Start With Bypass Surgery

(You’re in for a real treat. In this post, I’m pub­lish­ing an answer I gave to one of my coach­ing clients, in which I describe one of my mon­ey­mak­ing strate­gies. I won’t do this often. So sit back and get ready to take notes.)

Some peo­ple, how­ever, wanted a “taste” of what kind of answers I give. Fair ques­tion. So I’ve decided to reprint an answer from a ques­tion I received the other day from a coach­ing student.

Ques­tion: “Michel, I don’t have a proven prod­uct, and I don’t have my own list. What should I do?”

Answer: Your best bet is to start where a prod­uct and mar­ket exist — and not try to rein­vent the wheel right out of the gates. Since you can turn my answers here into a prod­uct, you have some fuel for a prod­uct in the future. But for now, you can apply this knowl­edge to an affil­i­ate prod­uct to start.

First, start by being an affil­i­ate to an exist­ing, win­ning prod­uct, and cre­ate an entire machine that fun­nels your traf­fic into your own list. That way, you cre­ate leads, then turn leads into sales, and turn sales into upsells.

You tweak things along the way until you have win­ning for­mula. Later on, when you finally cre­ate and launch your own prod­uct, you have a well-​​oiled machine in place.

But here’s the kicker.

Dur­ing the process, you gather mar­ket research because test­ing things allows you to dis­cover what sells, what’s hot, what peo­ple are will­ing to pay for, what key­words do they find you under, what copy con­verts best, etc.

But as an affil­i­ate, you are lit­er­ally mak­ing money in the process of devel­op­ing your own prod­uct. In other words, you’re get­ting paid for research­ing your mar­ket, build­ing your list and cre­at­ing your prod­uct — even when you don’t have a prod­uct of your own!

Get­ting paid for some­thing you nor­mally have to pay is a much more palat­able propo­si­tion, if you ask me. All of this infor­ma­tion will come in real handy when you finally do launch your own product.

First, start with your own opt-​​in page. Don’t just send peo­ple to a sales page you’re an affil­i­ate of. You’re putting your traf­fic at the whim and mercy of your affil­i­ate provider, and it’s just like send­ing your traf­fic into a big, black hole.

If the copy doesn’t con­vert, you’ve lost the sale — and the traf­fic you’ve worked hard for or even paid for… Forever.

Instead, you drive traf­fic to your own squeeze pages, then push them to prod­ucts you’re an affil­i­ate of, either as the “thank you” page once they sub­scribe, or through the autore­spon­der sys­tem once they are on your list.

That way, you make money in the process of gath­er­ing all this pow­er­ful data and learn­ing what works. Plus, your opt-​​in copy gives you a great deal of mar­ket research data that will help you in cre­at­ing your own prod­uct, as well as in writ­ing your own copy.

Then, when you’re done, you have a sales machine that’s ready to go for when you do launch your own prod­uct to your newly estab­lished list.

But here’s an extra tip.

A sim­i­lar approach is using your copy­writ­ing skills to sell exist­ing prod­ucts with large mar­kets that are in demand, but whose own­ers use poor copy to con­vert them. In fact, I do this all the time. You do what I call “The Suc­cess Doctor’s Bypass Sales Surgery.” Here’s how it works…

Tool #1. CB Engine Pro

Click​bank​.com is prob­a­bly the best affil­i­ate pro­gram out there for new­bies. Join Click­bank, and you now have an entire mar­ket­place of dig­i­tal prod­ucts you can sell for a commission.

Next, you need to select a prod­uct. CB Engine is an “all-​​things” Click­bank search engine and track­ing web­site. It offers a free trial, but it’s only $9.95 for three months, so it’s pretty economical.

This site is a gold­mine. It offers tons of great sta­tis­tics, from pop­u­lar­ity, momen­tum, con­ver­sion, affil­i­ate scores, and more. What I like about CB Engine Pro is using its var­i­ous live reports to find prod­ucts, such as “Brand New,” “Re-​​listed,” “Removed,” “CB Insider,” “Best Gains,” and “Movers And Shakers.”

You can then do a search for a prod­uct. But the results offer a ton of golden infor­ma­tion into the product’s pro­duc­tiv­ity, which is a great start. For exam­ple, the search results will give you a list of prod­ucts, in order of pop­u­lar­ity, per­for­mance, sales, affil­i­ates, momen­tum, and more.

The beauty of this is, you can see prod­ucts that sell well. If you want to sell a prod­uct that’s already using great copy and is proven to sell, go right ahead.

But for the sake of this exam­ple, this is not enough, since it tells you how many affil­i­ates who help to pre-​​sell the offer (they might be pro­mot­ing to their own estab­lished lists), and not nec­es­sar­ily how many “organic sales” (that is, non-​​affiliate sales) the copy actu­ally converts.

The affil­i­ates for a cer­tain prod­uct may be doing a much bet­ter job than the sales copy itself. So sim­ply rely­ing on how pop­u­lar a prod­uct is, by itself, can be a bit misleading.

But as a start, this tells you many things: the per­for­mance stats show how many referred sales the prod­uct made. If the “grav­ity score” is high, this indi­cates that the affil­i­ates PLUS the sales site are both needed to make that many sales.

What is a “Grav­ity Score?”

Accord­ing to Clickbank:

“Grav­ity: Num­ber of dis­tinct affil­i­ates who earned a com­mis­sion by refer­ring a pay­ing cus­tomer to the publisher’s prod­ucts. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affil­i­ate paid in the last 8 weeks we add an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last refer­ral, the higher the value added.”

And weighted means that the score is adjusted to reflect affil­i­ate value and not just how many affil­i­ate sales are made. This value is pro­pri­etary, and there’s very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on Clickbank’s web­site on how they come to that score.

But a high grav­ity score com­bined with a low per­cent­age of referred sales means that less affil­i­ates are refer­ring most of the sales, and there­fore there is less com­pe­ti­tion among affil­i­ates, and the orig­i­nal sales copy may be doing a poor job.

This is a great clue!

What is a grav­ity score used for? It is used by Click­bank to attract affil­i­ates to sell prod­ucts. Prob­lem is, the mar­ket may be crowded, so a high grav­ity score can actu­ally work against you.

But, with a high grav­ity score and a low affil­i­ate sales per­cent­age, that means the sales copy relies heav­ily on the affiliate’s pro­mo­tional efforts to con­sum­mate the sales. And it also means the copy is not as pro­duc­tive on its own.

Con­versely, if the per­cent­age of referred sales is high and the grav­ity score is low, then you know that the prod­uct may be poor — because there is not enough organic traf­fic, and the site, which is con­vert­ing poorly, is get­ting most of its sales from affiliates.

(It could also mean that both the affil­i­ate and the sales copy are doing a poor job. So in either of these cases, you need a few extra sta­tis­tics to make a bet­ter decision.)

A site with a high grav­ity and high per­cent­age means the site is almost entirely dri­ven by affil­i­ates. The copy might be poor, as the prod­uct relies heav­ily on affil­i­ates to make sales.

How­ever, the com­pe­ti­tion might be pretty strong. Com­pe­ti­tion is good, since you can do a bit of research to see how oth­ers are sell­ing the prod­uct. The prob­lem is, this might drive your traf­fic gen­er­a­tion costs through the roof.

So a lit­tle less com­pe­ti­tion might be better.

But for now, the score Click­bank pub­lishes tells you a lot: how many affil­i­ates are pro­mot­ing the prod­uct (i.e., how many com­peti­tors there are out there), and how many affil­i­ates are suc­cess­fully sell­ing the prod­uct (as opposed to non-​​affiliate sales).

But what you want to know is how well the site is con­vert­ing on its own (with­out affil­i­ates). In other words, what you want are prod­ucts that are in demand but not sell­ing so well, so you can “take over” the sales copy and con­vert it at a much higher level.

(I’ll come back to this very shortly.)

This means that you should look for a prod­uct with a high grav­ity score (mean­ing, the site is mak­ing a lot of affil­i­ate sales), with a low per­cent­age of affil­i­ate sales (say, under 50%). Why? Because it tells you that the site is con­vert­ing well with affil­i­ates but not so well with organic traffic.

(This is just one piece of the puz­zle. Here’s the next.)

Tool #2. Quant­Cast

Then, go to Alexa​.com, Com​pete​.com, or, even bet­ter, Quant​Cast​.com. Enter the site you want to “quan­tify.” (Not the affil­i­ate link but the site’s main URL.) It will give you the aver­age monthly traffic.

If the site is old enough, Quant­Cast will also tell you the key­words used to drive traf­fic, the site’s com­peti­tors, and the traffic’s demo­graph­ics (which give you a ton of insights into the mar­ket, and some great ideas on how to write copy for it.)

If you com­plete the other step above, the traf­fic stat alone tells you if the prod­uct is in demand. Now you have a pretty fair idea that the mar­ket is there.

For exam­ple, let’s say you enter a product’s URL and the result is 9,088 vis­i­tors. Accord­ing to the chart under­neath this sta­tis­tic, there are pie charts indi­cat­ing the types of traf­fic the site gets. Let’s say it tells you that 92% are “passers-​​by” (i.e., unique vis­i­tors, as the rest are “reg­u­lars,” mean­ing they are return­ing visitors).

So 92% of 9,088 equals to 8,361 monthly unique visitors.

Now, of course, if all things are equal, it can tell you what kind of con­ver­sion rate they’re get­ting. This mea­sure­ment is not 100% accu­rate by any stretch. But, it gives you a pretty good idea of how much new traf­fic the site is pulling in and how much it converts.

After using CB Engine Pro above, you learn that the grav­ity score is 31 and the per­cent­age of affil­i­ate sales is 88%. That means that 12% of sales are organic.

So if 88% gives a grav­ity score of 31, then adding an extra 12% (to make it 100%) gives you a total grav­ity score of 36. (That means, you can make a guess that it made 36 sales in the last 8 weeks, i.e., 2 months).

Assum­ing the site is mak­ing 36 sales every two months, you dou­ble the unique vis­i­tors above from Quant­Cast. That means, 92% of 9,088 total monthly vis­i­tors, mul­ti­plied by two months — which gives you 16,722. With, say, 36 sales, that means the site’s con­ver­sion rate (again, this is a score and not a true con­ver­sion rate) is 0.16% 0.21%.

So this tells you that the site is get­ting traf­fic but it’s con­vert­ing poorly. This is not the com­plete puz­zle, though. You still need a few more pieces…

Tool #3. CB Trends

Trends are pow­er­ful. As you know, you can eas­ily use Google Trends, Com​pete​.com or Quant​Cast​.com to dis­cover trends in the mar­ket­place in terms of traffic.

But this site is specif­i­cally about Click­bank, and its sales and affil­i­ate trends. It’s a chart-​​based site that will ana­lyze all of the per­for­mance fac­tors men­tioned above, but over a period of time. This gives you some clues as to the over­all per­for­mance of a product.

Sim­ply type in the product’s Click­bank ID, and sub­mit. The result­ing charts tell you the momen­tum and pop­u­lar­ity of a prod­uct over the last two months. It’s pretty use­ful, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared to the other stats.

For exam­ple, you can see if sales are going up with a spe­cific prod­uct. At the top, the first one is “pop­u­lar­ity.” Pop­u­lar­ity, in this case, means sales pop­u­lar­ity, and the pop­u­lar­ity of gen­eral ver­sus affiliate-​​based sales.

The lower the pop­u­lar­ity value, the more pop­u­lar the prod­uct is with affil­i­ates. (The best pop­u­lar­ity value is there­fore closer to “1.”) The higher the pop­u­lar­ity value is, the more pop­u­lar the prod­uct is among the gen­eral pub­lic (e.g., direct, non-​​affiliate traffic).

Know­ing from Quant​Cast​.com above that the site is get­ting pretty decent traf­fic, you can now make some edu­cated guesses on the product’s pro­duc­tiv­ity. (Unfor­tu­nately, these are “guesses” nonetheless.)

If you see an increase in pop­u­lar­ity value (which means the prod­uct is los­ing pop­u­lar­ity among affil­i­ates), this might be an indi­ca­tion that a ven­dor in ques­tion is not doing some­thing right.

Some­times, it means the prod­uct owner is doing some­thing uneth­i­cal, such as steal­ing com­mis­sions — although, this is an extreme case. But other times, it could mean that affil­i­ates have stopped pro­mot­ing the prod­uct because the copy sim­ply doesn’t convert.

(Those are the ones you want!)

If the prod­uct was really pop­u­lar at some point, and if sales are on the incline, it could mean that the prod­uct is def­i­nitely in demand. You need more infor­ma­tion than this, obvi­ously, but it’s a great start­ing indi­ca­tor, anyway.

I already told you about grav­ity. The higher the grav­ity value, the higher the com­pe­ti­tion in terms of the num­ber of affil­i­ates pro­mot­ing the prod­uct. This means noth­ing in itself. But when you look at the trend pub­lished by CB Trends, and when you com­pare it to the oth­ers, it tells you a lot more.

For exam­ple, if the product’s pop­u­lar­ity value is increas­ing (mean­ing it’s becom­ing less pop­u­lar among affil­i­ates), and the grav­ity is high or increas­ing, the result is that the copy is get­ting bet­ter at con­vert­ing non-​​affiliate traffic.

The owner is there­fore con­vert­ing more, and is prob­a­bly doing so as the result of test­ing or tweak­ing his copy to bet­ter his con­ver­sion rate over time.

(Even if, as a result of this, you choose not to pro­mote this par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, this infor­ma­tion is nonethe­less pretty pow­er­ful, because now you can “spy” on their sales copy. You can eas­ily use tools like the Way​Back​Ma​chine​.org to review pre­vi­ous ver­sions of the sales copy to deter­mine exactly what changes were made to make it con­vert bet­ter. But I digress.)

How­ever, if the grav­ity score is increas­ing, referred sales are con­stant or decreas­ing, and pop­u­lar­ity is decreas­ing among affil­i­ates, this is per­fect. It means:

1. The prod­uct is in demand;
2. Affil­i­ates have stopped pro­mot­ing it.
3. Remain­ing affil­i­ates are get­ting better;
4. Fewer affil­i­ates are there­fore sell­ing more;
5. Thus, the copy, by itself, is not converting.

(Of course, there may be many other rea­sons, and with all things being equal. But this is a great start.)

So if the prod­uct is con­vert­ing bet­ter with affil­i­ates, but los­ing ground with affil­i­ate pop­u­lar­ity, this might be an indi­ca­tion that the copy is doing poorly on its own.

And if the “per­cent per sale” graph is con­stant or increas­ing, then you know there is not only demand for the prod­uct but also there are mar­kets that are will­ing to pay for it.

Why? Because the “per­cent per sale” also takes into account refunds, which low­ers its score. So if there are no changes, or if the per­cent­age increases, then alto­gether, this tells you:

• The prod­uct is good (refunds are low);
• The mar­ket is there (peo­ple are buying);
• And the copy is sim­ply not doing a good job (it depends too heav­ily on affiliates).

Why is this cru­cial? Because a low con­ver­sion rate doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean the copy is the cul­prit. It could mean dif­fer­ent things: that the mar­ket is not viable (there is no mar­ket for the prod­uct), or the prod­uct is not viable (there is a demand, but the mar­ket is not will­ing to buy it or pay for it).

You want a good prod­uct that has good traf­fic, is in demand, and has a mar­ket that’s will­ing to pay for it, but with poor copy.

You now have an oppor­tu­nity sit­ting right in front of you. All you need to do is increase the site’s con­ver­sion rate. You not only have an oppor­tu­nity to pro­mote the prod­uct but also write the copy yourself.

How?

Tool #4. Affil­i­ate Cloner

The next step is to cre­ate your sales machine. You cre­ate the opt-​​in page, write the sales copy that sells the prod­uct directly, and gen­er­ate traf­fic (either with arti­cles, blogs, pay-​​per-​​click ads, search engine sub­mis­sions, etc).

But you don’t want your sales copy to lead to the product’s own sales copy, which is redun­dant and what will hap­pen if you use your Click­bank affil­i­ate link as the order link.

That’s where Affil­i­ate Cloner comes in.

It’s a pow­er­ful soft­ware that does many things. More than any­thing, it helps to pro­tect your affil­i­ate links from com­mis­sion thieves. But one of its many fea­tures, and the one I pre­fer, is where you can bypass the affil­i­ate product’s copy and go straight to their order form.

Why is this cool? Because you can eas­ily write your own saleslet­ter, and when clients want to order, Affil­i­ate Cloner sends them straight to their Click­bank order forms to buy. (Or straight to any order form of any prod­uct you’re an affil­i­ate of.)

This allows you to tweak your entire sales machine until every­thing runs smoothly and con­verts well. You lit­er­ally have full con­trol of the entire sales process, and use it to gather infor­ma­tion, test and tweak the copy, and even build a list in the process.

In fact, Affil­i­ate Cloner also lets buy­ers order directly from your emails to dra­mat­i­cally increase your sell­ing options. If you use an autore­spon­der, you can use it to bypass sales pages entirely.

And of course, the “thank you” page is an under­uti­lized piece of real estate. But since it’s not your prod­uct, you can’t change that. It’s the only part of the sales process over which you have no control.

But there is a way around it.

You might login to Click­bank to retrieve your cus­tomers’ info, and place them on a new list. (There is soft­ware out there that can do this for you. Even auto­mat­i­cally. Per­son­ally, I use CB Accoun­tant, which will extract cus­tomer con­tact data for you and export the list.)

Or, since they are already on your lead list from your first opt-​​in page, you can get them to signup to a new opt-​​in form (per­haps to claim a gift or extra bonuses after order­ing from your affil­i­ate link), in which case the sys­tem takes them off the “lead” autore­spon­der list and places them on the “client” list, where you can send them a new series of emails to upsell them on other products.

Any­way, you keep doing all of this until, when all is said and done, you sim­ply change the final prod­uct for your own prod­uct once it’s com­pleted, and pocket all the profits.

Hope­fully, this has been helpful.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales
• On Not Playing The Blame Game
• The Future of The Internet is Cloudy
• Carve Your Niche By Dominating One
• Can Copy And Content Commingle?

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