Need some help and advice asap

afiniti

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Nov 17, 2011
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***MODS, I POSTED A THREAD IN THE NEWBIE FORUM WITH THE SAME CONTENT, BUT THIS FORUM HAS MORE TRAFFIC AND I NEED SOME DATA BEFORE A SALES / STRATEGY MEETING TOMORROW***

OK, I need some pros to answer some questions and guide me in the right direction. We have a product launch we'll be putting together (no, it is not ready yet). After working with another client who sold / marketed their products almost exclusively through affiliates, I became a big believer and gleaned a lot of insight and information.

Here is our situation. We have a client (personal trainer) who has roughly 5-6 professional athletes who personally USE and ENDORSE his product and training program. These professional athletes include Football, Baseball, Basketball, Golf, and MMA. One of the athletes in particular is an A-List sports celebrity with roughly 4+ million Twitter followers and 2+ million facebook fans. I believe so much in this client that we have staked our entire web dev team on this project. That said, this is a little different than previous projects. Here is the scenario.

1. Physical product (costs about $60 to produce)
2. Virtual Training / Membership product (bundled as 6-month add-on)
3. Recurring training and membership after 6 months (good potential LTV if we do things right)
4. Sports-celebrities all train with and personally use the product and train with our client.

I'm certain we could easily leverage our A-List sports celeb's social network to sell a ton of units, but I have also come to realize the value of affiliates and would like to move at least 3000 units upon initial launch through affiliate sales.

So, I have several questions.

1. What sort of price point seems comfortable? My initial thoughts were to land somewhere between $249 and $299. This isn't just a P90X type workout system, they are also getting a high-quality manufactured product that is an integral part of the training system. Also, the product costs us about $60 to produce. The memberships/support bundled with it are mostly profit (aside from server and hosting fees). I believe there is good potential to maximize LTV by having an engaging and powerful membership community (something like Jillian Michaels) for ongoing maintenance, support, and content. Is the price too low, to high, or do we need multiple membership bundle options to fit a range of budgets?

2. What kind of commission are we looking at per sale to make this attractive to affiliates? Should we just set a fixed $$$ amount with ongoing commissions for the memberships?

3. What are top affiliates going to need to see from us in order to get on board? I'm assuming the celebrity endorsements are a huge part of things.

4. What other advice can you give me to go from here? I want affiliates to be a huge part of this thing right out of the gate.

I think given the popularity of Biggest Loser, Beach Body, P90X, we have a phenomenal product with mass market appeal. If I didn't believe in it, we wouldn't have taken this client on for ourselves (we're the web dev and SEO team). This also isn't the only product our client is developing, he has plans drawn up already for other products once we've maxed out the popularity and success of this initial product launch. Given the P90X lifecycle, if we're the next big fad, I see this thing peaking for quite some time while we work on getting his other products to market. We have plans for niche programs, informercials, etc. all down the road. However, this product will be a 100% web-based and social media launch, so we need affiliates on board to make sure we are successful!

Looking forward intently to whatever feedback you can provide. I know I have a lot of questions, but we don't want to leave anything to chance, and we're anticipating a hugely successful launch! Does this sound like something affiliates would be interested in promoting despite the fact that it is a new product without a sales history to draw from?

Thanks!
 


Austin, this isn't just the run of the mill "do it yourself" e-book. We have nearly 700K vested into this including production and packaging for the first several thousand physical product units, I'm looking for some additional guidance, not smart-*** responses. Care trying to help, or am I in the wrong forum? I've worked on campaigns with much sh***** products that I wouldn't ever endorse personally, this is a whole different story and I think it speaks volumes that we have several niche markets and pro-athletes on board who train with this guy and actually USE the product themselves. Hey, if you don't think affiliates would be interested at all, that's fine. But, give some helpful responses to my other questions then.
 
Honestly you should really be using this time to seek out an affiliate program or ad network to run this on, getting a personal account manager, and then asking them these questions. They'll more than likely be able to give you all the info you need concerning attracting affiliates and price points, and match you up to some ones they currently have running.
 
you should be partnering with 'amateur gone pro' folks ala Johnstonefitness.com who have rabidly loyal followings and communities and getting them a) stoked on the product quality <since they won't peddle shit to their userbases> and then b) getting them exclusive coupon codes for THEIR members.

This isn't something that will easily move (at that price point) via mainstream channels, it's long tail and loyal/credibility selling that you want to employ. To do that your best bet is credible sources promoting it (on a CPA or other creative models) <or affiliates buying banners on sites like this>