Warning: If you are looking for quick and easy riches, this is not for you. Story. (Ignore it if you dont have time for fluff) Cut to the chase. I am not trying to claim I make 10.000 without doing any work. There will be work. It is the essence that separate the those "who want it" and those "who do it". I make my first dollar doing web design. However, I don't have any technical skills and everything is done via arbitrage. As competition eats into my profits, I decided that I had it, there and then. After leaving behind a string of failures in SEO, CPA and the likes in my wake, I decide to build my own Empire with software. Here are some of the reasons why. 1) I hate doing video tutorials (info-marketing niche) 2) I have army of affiliates pushing sales for me. (No need to worry about SEO, PPC and etc) 3) No shipment, dropshipping or any pressure to meet deadlines. (stress free) Product Creation with Nothing Down Wander into a programming forum and find any programmer who have an existing product that they want to sell. This shaves away 40-60% of the time starting it out all over again. It is imperative not to wander into IM forums as most programmers have some foundations of IM and are extremely fussy about their partners if you don't have a past accolades of stellar sales. Moreover, programmers who have a PASSION for coding tends to follow through rather than give up because of some unexplained issues. (someone in hospital or fall sick for a extended period of time) The usual agreement that I follow is 50/50 rev share. This keep them motivated and go all out for you. That is also why small startups tends to outperform big established venture given the vast difference in time and resources. Communication is Key I can't emphasis it enough. Most people fail in this step cause of poor communication or they have too many commitments to follow up. Stick with a project management software. Most of them are free. (I personally use Trello) This allow me to keep track of the progress, anytime and anywhere without digging into a mountain of sub folders to find the files I needed. Set a series of deadlines for minor stuffs leading to the final completion instead of setting a deadline just for completion. This saves frustration and insanity on both sides of the wall. Traffic on Steroids Congrats if you makes it here. Only 1% do makes it here. The rest falls in "I have the world most brilliant trillion dollar idea and I need you to sign this and that" which never seems to get going. Well, let's leaves it at that. Most affiliates only cares about two things. EPC and Conversion. The fastest way to get out of this major obstacle is to copy some of the most popular sites and retrofitted as your own. If you are still having troubles getting affiliates, contact the influencers in the blogosphere and offer to give lifetime/free licence in return for free promotions, reviews and testimonials. One way to find them is doing a Google Search like this. Always go for keywords like "Top 10" or "Best [product]" as people tends to be in a buying mode and hence are more likely to buy in this stage. Do not follow the conventional advice of Googling for product names as they are harder to convert over given how much they have invest their time and money seoing/setting up for a particular brand. Watch your Money flows in Up to this stage, you should see a trickle of sales in your inbox. Divert sales enquiries to yourself and support to your programmer. If you are lucky, you will catch attention of the whales who will buy in bulk or request for reseller options. Accept their request in return for testimonials which will aid in further sales of your product. It is IMPORTANT not to spend those money on chicks, booze or fast cars immediately. Do yourself a favour and invest in marketing channels or develop the software further. This is a mistake I made which costs almost 100 grands down the drain. Product Creation(BLACKHAT) Find a popular software and make it better. You can find popular software by the number of views in a forum thread. Replies generally doesn't implies the popularity of the software as bug issues always tend to form the bulk of the replies in a sales thread. Xtreme Domination(BLACKHAT) Dominate the market by coding similar products and priced against yourself. By owning a series of products in a similar market, you are basically trying to fence out the competitor via price and volume without losing out at all. Currently, I am owning several softwares and this strategy has work out well for me. On most days, I will be busy doing A/B testing to keep my affiliates happy. Hope it helps. [UPDATE]Xtreme Traffic(BLACKHAT) Leverage on your main competitor asset by doing SEO/PPC on their product keywords and do a well analysed and "unbiased" report why yours is better. In this way, you have manage to siphoned most of his hardwork in a fraction of what he used to do. PPC is generally much cheaper and SEO is also much easier (ya, you get the idea...) if you focus on your competitor keyword. [UPDATE]Xtreme Conversion(BLACKHAT) Include at least 30 days RISK FREE Money Back Guarantee. (The longer the term, the higher your conversion soar) Yes, we do encountered refunders every now and then. But those people usually make up 1-2% of the customers. The way to tackle this is to issue server backend licencing key and deactivate it once they refund the money. Include a forum membership too to reduce refunds as people tend to come back over and over again, looking for valuable insight or simply socializing. In this way, you have build up a virtual team of volunteers who helps to debug, offer support to new customers, and giving valued-added experience on top of your product FOR FREE. So what are you here for?
Majority of it will work. But getting traffic is Huge. It is like choosing a good product for promoting. How one can be so sure that the software works/ performs in the market in the first place.
So basically : You found Programmer who work for free and you split the revenue from sales 50/50? Or you pay him and after that still split the revenue 50/50? This part is unclear
Hence under "Product Creation(BLACKHAT)", I erased the hard work for you by looking into popular products and making it better. Think of it, Senuke was one of the first SEO software that "does it all". However, that doesn't stop Xrumer, Scrapebox or SEWhatever from selling. Software Empire is still in its infancy due to supposedly large obstacles like 1. Knowing how to code 2. Knowing what to code 3. Knowing where to code It is in a totally different league from Affiliate Marketing that Gurus has managed to spawn a market out of it. But once you got it right, the reward are beyond just monetary, it is the sense of satisfaction knowing you have create a dozen jobs in the economy and sleeping soundly at night without worrying about the next Google animal update.
I found a programmer and offer him a contract that requires no upfront from my side. Most programmers aren't in for the money. They just want their work to be recognised. That's where we come in and assist them in their Earth-shattering goal. To improve your rate of success in partnership, throw in a couple of free hosting for them to work with. I begin this with no ebook or guide to lean on. But I can say I do have exceptional persuasion skill. (read it as; make sure the other party are covered first and feel secure working with you before you cover yours).
You have to have a website ready for the software right? Will clickbank work in this case? what I mean, is you put your product on clickbank and the affiliates will sell it for a comission, but wait, clickbank needs a % of the action.
Yes Boriss. It is easy to set up a converting website nowadays. For example, if I want to set up a site against my competitor, I will go to Fiverr and find gig that say "turn site into psd" (I apologized as the system doesn't allow me to post link yet) Then I will modify the element using photoshop (or you can get it cheap here as there are many ps experts around) Finally, I will convert it back to html/css using Fiverr. Yes, Clickbank will work and I guess the % is justifiable giving CB has a sustainable volume of affiliates in their database. You are basically just leveraging on their system and affiliates. However, once you have grown big enough, you can always cut back on CB and self hosted a affiliate system yourself. Try to go for tiered payment. It will set you apart from the rest.
Great method. You could also learn programming, and just churn out knockoff programs (like you mentioned above). Then, just find an IMer willing to do the legwork while you just collect money, and do support.
I could. But it could take 3-5 years to match the skillset of these people I am working with. Most of them carry a Master in Programming. On top of that, they have experience too which is quite irreplaceable.
