Product launches are one part awesome and one part pain in the dick.
1st, since you will be using affiliates as your initial or sole source of traffic, you of course need to understand the market's general expectations about EPC.
If they have fairly high expectations than you will need to be certain your sales process and your conversions can support that EPC.
Nothing will shut a launch down faster than someone that asks 1000 people to hit for them and the EPC is .17. Nobody will drop a second, third, or more emails on something that is making them nothing and potentially costing them money due to low/no return.
If you got the EPC shit down pat, then proceed to step #2, which is to check the launch schedules of other players in your space.
If you are in a market with a high number of launches, it would behoove you to not try to schedule your launch on top of someone else's, especially if that someone else is a major player in your space.
Everyone will push that player's launch and you'll likely just annoy that person on top of it. If you get a handle on the calendar and all is clear 30 or 60 days out on a date you like, then lock your date in and proceed to step #3.
Step #3 is determining if you'll do a straight launch or pre-launch to launch. I believe Walker advises to go the pre-launch route, but you may find in your space that nobody would ever consider mailing/promoting one launch for more than 7 days, much less a couple of weeks straight.
Additionally, in some spaces the pre-launch helps only you and actually hurts your affiliates, which might piss them off. In a pre-launch you're generally warming up the potential customer/buyer with content and teases... but you're only getting access to that customer/buyer because the affiliate is sending you the lead through the pre-launch.
So, the positive for you is new fresh leads that you get to share your shit with... the negative for the affiliate is that if they send all their leads to you through the pre-launch, then during the launch itself, when other new players come in and promote, they might step in and gain traction in any launch contests you might be running, since they did not burn out their lists promoting your pre-launch.
Now, this assumes you'll be running a contest, which I'll get to in a second...
Back to good for you/bad for affiliates... if you do the pre-launch scenario and end up pissing off even a few top affiliates by burning out their lists at pre-launch and then tapping other affiliates for the actual launch, guess who won't be promoting your next launch? So there is the potential negative of the pre-launch...
I know a good many affiliates that will only hit launches and never mail for the pre-launch.
Anyway, once you have this sorted out... next up... contests:
Nothing says, "thanks for promoting hard for me", like cash and cool shit. In many spaces this is largely expected and to try to launch without a contest would be stupid. This comes back to know your space and the affiliates that reside there.
So, if you're gonna do a contest of any kind, lay it out... how long is the contest... how many prizes... what are they... what are the rules.
After you have that all sorted, get it to sales copy. Sell potential JV partners on your offer... your product... your EPC... your contest. all of it. And, if you can do something for them in return for mailing for your launch, all the better... the law of reciprocity is a biggie when it comes to a launch.
And perhaps most importantly here -- get them to sign up for a list where you can keep in touch with them.
At first every 2-3 days is good. Don't wanna over do it with them if your launch is 60 days out. But keep in touch enough to remind them about the launch and their commitment to mail. Most importantly keep the interested.
As you get closer to the launch, communicate more regularly. In addition to mass mail through your list, drop Facebook messages, skypes, gtalks, AIM's, phone calls, whatever. A good mix of mass mail and personal communications is solid for getting people to live up to their commitments.
Now.
Speaking of commitments...
If you get 1000 people to tell you they will promote for you, 300 will actually do it. People are people. They over commit, they don't pay attention to their calendars, or they are fucking lazy.
Regardless. ALWAYS go after way way way more people than you think you need to get you to the launch numbers you desire.
So...
Once you get the JV's signing up and start getting a buzz about your launch.
Next, comes launch time.
Every day of your launch, update your partners.
Tell them the EPC's.
Tell them you appreciate them.
Get them fighting one another to claim prizes.
Keep them excited and keep them pushing.
A launch is only successful if you can get the maximum amount of people to promote in the short window you have scheduled. And you help make that happen by staying in touch and staying on top of things.
Once the launch has ended, communicate again. Let the partners know you appreciate them again. Remind them you will be there for them when and if they launch. And of course, provide any contest final results and then live up to the prizes.
If you offered cash. Pay it... timely.
If you offered prizes. Ship them. timely.
From there you should have plenty o launch monies and and a big ole list to promote to.
Make sure you don't blow all your launch monies on hookers 'n coke. Make sure you email your lists and reciprocate for your partners. And most of all, make sure you re-invest some of your new monies into other business models that are not built on launches.
tl;dr... find affiliates, offer them money, talk to them through the process, and then pay them on time and mail back for them if they ask.
