Late Night Internet Marketing with Mark Mason -- Affiliate Marketing Tips, Online Business Advice, Email Marketing and SEO
Ever wondered about those late-nigtht TV infomercials and the products that they sell? Well, I have to admit, sometimes I buy some of those products. As it happens, I’ve be trying to drop some weight lately, so I decided to pull the trigger on the current version of the famous
P90X exercise program by Beachbody. Now called P90X3, it’s definitely a cool program, and I am really impressed by the quality. Even more impressive is the marketing, and the P90X affiliate program is interesting as well. In this episode, I break down Beachbody’s marketing strategy and the six lessons we can learn from it. I also take a look at the current version of the Corn Sheller site — crazy earnings in June.
Corn Sheller Update: Big Jump In Earnings
We’ve talked a lot about the corn sheller site over the last two years. Last week, we discussed the fact that the site had made about $700 in the last two years. Well, that the numbers for June are in, and they show a record month. In June 2014, the corn sheller site made $205 thanks to two very big days.
As mentioned, the earnings are made possible by
the very cool phpBay program, which I have been using for years.
You can see in the June earnings graphic above that the profits mostly came on two days — a $100 day and a $70 day. The other line in the graph shows that click into eBay from the site were flat during that time, indicating that there was no surge in traffic. The page view numbers for June are shown below.
The bottom line is that this is just a nice random event. I am not expecting a big month again next month, but I would like to try and increase traffic to the site. To that end, I plan to promote a video in the way that we discussed last week as well as build some links to the site.
Stay tuned.
Breaking Down Beachbody Marketing and The P90X3 Affiliate Program.
The big topic for this episode is my efforts to lose weight and my experience with Beachbody and their marketing strategies for P90X3. I discuss the following seven marketing lessons (really they are simple observations):
* Create or promote excellent products. Beachbody has solid products. In fact, I think they are excellent. If you want to be successful, follow their example and make the best (or promote only the best) products. P90X3 is awesome, and I really like Shakeology too (although it is expensive — see lesson 6 below.
* Cross-promote. Beachbody has tons of products and they cross-promote all of them.
* Always sell the benefits. Make sure your customers understand what benefits they are going to get — not just the features. Being able to do 300 pushups is a feature; looking like a stud and feeling great about yourself is a benefit.
* Address buying objections in your copy. P90X3, for example, addressed the “I don’t have the time to exercise” objection as a core part of their product design, and they highlight that feature in their sales material.
* Use affiliates. The Beachbody P90X3 affiliate program is really a multi-level marketing scheme. You have to pay to join. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, and it is clearly working for Beachbody.
* Don’t skimp on pricing. Beachbody’s Shakeology product is about twice the cost of competing products, but people still love it (and buy it). The lesson is that you can charge whatever the market will bear. Don’t sell yourself short when pricing your products.
* Use social media to help people when promoting your products. Beachbody affiliates (coaches) are doing a great job with this, and are trained to do it in the Beachbody coaching training materials (which are really impressive).
If you are interested in being a Beachbody coach (affiliate) or ...