Fact: Truth About Abs, Clickbank's #1 product outside the make money online niche does well over 100k revenue every day.
Single affiliates do well into five figures every day.
Out of your suggestions, with yourself not being overly experienced in product creation and promotion, I'd go the Clickbank route.
With 100k you have a lot of money to play with.
1) Hire two very good CLICKBANK copywriters.
...There's a distinct style that direct response marketers just don't grasp when it comes to the online sales letter / video.
Have each do a long form sales letter and then a powerpoint video template (basically what should be on each slide).
2) Have a designer do two-xx designs to split test your copy. Also have your long form sales letters spoken to be put as power point videos.
Note: Truth About Abs, written by Vin Montello, was originally a long form sales letter before being turned into a powerpoint video. The speaker literally read off the sales letter and clicked through the slides.
...Powerpoint are as much a fade as anything. In a year they'll be dead. Long form sales letter copy is NEVER dead... it's the bread and butter of all direct response and online sales whether you like reading or not.
Your biggest asset ever will be the long form sales copy pieces you get.
3) Test combinations until there's a proven winner. No matter how unlikely it'll seem that one video and design will work extremely well there is always one combination, as with any copy/design, that surpasses all.
4) You should have your copywriters do at least one upsell... possibly get each copywriter to do a different upsell. So one would do a $97 video course the other a $197 home study course piece of copy.
...Your buyer is already predisposed to buy from you again. Your backend, no matter the price as long as we're talking under $300 with proper copy, should convert at atleast 30%. 50% is where you should aim for.
5) Refine your process of upsells and downsells to no more than five.
...Beyond that your buyer will get anxious and may refund the whole thing.
Note: As to the uninformed posters above saying Clickbank doesn't work well with upsells you don't use them beyond the first few dipshit. You use merchant accounts for all bigger upsells.
A good process may be a $37 front end with a $97 backend... if they don't take the backend downsell it to $47 and if they take that or not hit them with a $197-397 coaching/ home study course. If they take upsell one then hit them with the $197-397 coaching/ home study course.
Beyond that is your call... it's usually best to wait and sucker... uh, persuade, your buyer after a week or two with a bigger $997 or $1,997 coaching program.
6) Recruit affiliates... through whois spamming big affiliates doing media buys to doing guest posts on Shoemoney (which is a great move for this guy starting out)
like here.
This is pretty much grunt work and phone calls just like any affiliate manager.
Hint: big Clickbank products have "affilaite managers" going out trying to get people on board (mainly CPA guys, actually).
7) Test and optimize with the data from your affiliates. Your growth will directly be linked to how happy your affiliates are... just like I know "super affiliates" if you give me great service and bonuses I'll tell my friends.
The biggest point, and I can't stress it enough, is putting emphasize on copywriting. Don't think that Clickbank affiliates are stupid... they will promote what converts best for them. Look at fatloss4idiots on Quancast.
...That's what happens when your site converts like shit. And just a few years ago the did 22 million in revenue. Now they're lucky if they do 10... all because they didn't keep testing and optimizing their offers.
You have the luxury of cash... use it wisely. Build generic offers, with real value, that have awesome copy and test until that bitch converts better than any other weight loss offer.
Don't expect success to come immediately... make sure you have strong in house operations because it will take awhile for reluctant affiliates to switch over without some major pushing.
If you want copywriters hit me up on AIM: FTChater.
...Expect 10-30k per page + royalties from the three guys I'll give you.
One has written nearly every #1 Clickbank "make money online" product (all of which do over a million in revenue) who just finished a job for me outside the mmo niche... another wrote and directly coaches Truth About Abs... and the other writes direct mail pieces that do millions (and firmly understands the Clickbank game).
Personally I'd use 75k for copywriters and course development (including all the upsell goodies, etc). That's what like under $200 a day... you can do that with even the crappiest e-book in house. Don't skimp out, man. When you want to enter into big players like Truth about Abs, diet solution, and even Fat Loss 4 Idiots you need to spend money.
...They might not be in the spotlight or as glamorous as some re-bill offers. But you don't take away market share from low to mid eight figure companies without some fight.
...You won't need much for actually testing purposes. You'll make back most of it so it's not such a big deal. Recruiting affiliates also doesn't take much money, just effort.
