$1000 on a site, $1000 on marketing

[jcpeden]

Any links you have to a mailing list takes from the sales message. Any sales message for a different product dilutes the message and will cost sales for the product.

I'm not sure the likes of Seth Godin would agree with you there. The sale should be the ultimate goal, but in Permission Marketing, Seth Godin explains the process of winning the customer over slowly...its like courtship. So, while I agree there should be a definite sales funnel conversions might not necessarily be hurt by encouraging users to sign up to a free email report and building trust...before asking them to hand over their cash.

That said, you've almost certainly made more money than I have online so I'm curious to know what you think about permission marketing as oppose to having customers hit your site and demanding them to buy your product. Have your tried both methods?

[KenW3]

I'm not sure the likes of Seth Godin would agree with you there. The sale should be the ultimate goal, but in Permission Marketing, Seth Godin explains the process of winning the customer over slowly...its like courtship. So, while I agree there should be a definite sales funnel conversions might not necessarily be hurt by encouraging users to sign up to a free email report and building trust...before asking them to hand over their cash.

I must apologise. Based on your OP, I was speaking about ClickBank sites. CB digital product sales pages are not Seth's permission marketing structure. I have read his material, and his six CD set 'Making Money On The Web' from 1999 is sitting on the bookshelf across the room I respect his knowledge and accomplishments.

Seth described permission marketing as the opposite of interruption marketing. A CB sales page site is neither of these. It is the final destination of the marketing process itself. It has one function - close the sale.

I'm looking for a CB site selling a digital product that already has a bit of traffic and affiliates.

Perhaps I am not following the rationale... Do you intend to buy a CB site, but stop selling the product on CB and stop selling through sales pages? Any existing affiliates will be very unhappy if you stop trying to make sales and start collecting leads instead, or try to sell their prospective customers sent (through their marketing efforts) something other than that which they marketed.

[Magnus]

...Ultimately, my usual style is to read something like this, jump in and get nowhere. I want to have my strategy cross-examined and whittle it down into something worthwhile before I leap this time!

Some thoughts, and some mostly rhetorical questions...

I've never done much research into building an ecommerce/dropship store, but I'm fairly certain it's going to take a lot of work (time/effort/money).

To me it seems like a [relatively] decent-sized project that will take a lot just to get up and running, and profitable. Hard enough - without your ultimate goal being even further down the line to sell it.

I appreciate that your aim is to flip sites, but is the route you're taking really the best approach to flipping?

It seems like you might be doing the inverse of what makes sense... i.e. putting in substantial time and effort to build something, only to sell it.

My view, and what I'm working at, is that the focus should be on building something that will ultimately provide very hands-off, passive income.

Maybe your site-flipping aim is to build capital to re-invest quickly though ...in which case I can see the merit in your plan.

[crabfoot]

This is really a PS to my previous post. One of those "5 best" sites I referred to before - musclemaximizer-getbuilt .com - I'm pretty sure this is a template design from somewhere.

[jcpeden]

Thanks for the input guys, by all means it could be a case that I'm going about this all in a totally ass-backward way. I wanted a site with affiliates so that I could leverage them to get more business to my ecommerce store; setting up an amazon affiliate style system. Percentages would be lower but prices would be higher and hopefully so to would be converisons but as you've all pointed out, it might not be as straightforward as I'm making out.

I'm not bound to use this method and if you really think I'm going about it the wrong way, what would you recommend as a strategy for someone in my position? I want to build a bit of capital quite quickly but the long-term goal is to have a small, manageable portfolio of sites that generate a few thousand dollars/month in total. I'm not expecting it to be totally passive from the outset but I don't want to own 100 sites doing $100/month, I'd rather pick up 10 sites doing $1000.

I can comfortably put aside $1000 for the site and a further $1000 for the first month to market and run the site. Where would you recommend I begin? Forums? eCommerce? Micro-niche?

[KenW3]

This is really a PS to my previous post. One of those "5 best" sites I referred to before - musclemaximizer-getbuilt .com - I'm pretty sure this is a template design from somewhere.

Crabfoot sir, This musclemaximizer-getbuilt site is an affiliate for themusclemaximizer.com. It is a marketing page, not a CB sales page. The hoplink to the product is in the 'Click Here' hyperlink.

I'm not bound to use this method and if you really think I'm going about it the wrong way, what would you recommend as a strategy for someone in my position? I want to build a bit of capital quite quickly but the long-term goal is to have a small, manageable portfolio of sites that generate a few thousand dollars/month in total. I'm not expecting it to be totally passive from the outset but I don't want to own 100 sites doing $100/month, I'd rather pick up 10 sites doing $1000.

This is difficult to answer, as it will be based upon what you know best and your future goals. This goal is lacking in any specificity. Discussing a specific idea, such as buying a digital CB products site with affiliates is possible, but 'What do you recommend to build a portfolio of sites' won't enable the same discussion. Everyone here is building capital as quickly as they know how, as that's just business. Odds are, they won't tell you how to compete with them.

CB sites come in two flavours, marketing and sales. As you said you wanted affiliates, that's the sales pages where you work with CB and support your affiliates in their marketing attempts to drive prospects to your sales page. You mentioned a preference for digital products, and that's a very competitive space.

I wanted a site with affiliates so that I could leverage them to get more business to my ecommerce store

The best way to get and keep affiliates is to teach them how to be successful. This would require you to know how to provide the help, so perhaps your approach might be reversed (backwards) a bit, but only if you haven't done this yet.

I would recommend joining a few affiliate programs and promoting them to see what is provided. The best will have banners, sales copy, educational material for their niche, recommended keywords, support staff available to you, and more. I've found them with WP themes, xSitePro templates, articles, etc. They know they cannot succeed if their affiliates are not successful. You will find people who have no clue what they are doing, and others who are consummate professionals in every sense of the word. For the purpose of having and supporting affiliates, this is how to learn from the best.

[crabfoot]

Crabfoot sir, This musclemaximizer-getbuilt site is an affiliate for themusclemaximizer.com. It is a marketing page, not a CB sales page. The hoplink to the product is in the 'Click Here' hyperlink.

Ken, sir, thank you for not saying the phrase in full, as in http://clickhereyouidiot.com Hmm, the linky thing still needs attention, I can't put the link text in.

@jcpeden - you need a BIG plan. Maybe that's why everything you've tried up to now has been less successful than you hoped.

This plan wasn't a bad idea, but I don't think it will work now for two reasons. One is that I think you need a structured portfolio of sites to assist the functioning of this idea, the second is that the lurkers who wander across this site have been reading about it for some time now, so finding those sites you were thinking about has probably got a lot harder.

Maybe that isn't such a bad thing. There are, as Ken said, a lot of techniques to be mastered before you can be confident of going forward with such an idea. Marketing is not an exact science - finding out what makes people buy is a trial and error process, and sometimes any tiny deviation from an established formula can cost you sales (as Magnus pointed out).

There are some people who have an innate grasp of how to get on in the web biz, they can "jump in and learn the rules as they go along". From your own comments it seems you've tried a few things and they haven't gone well, so I don't think you are one of those people - you need to learn what the rules say first.

That being the case, you would probably be best advised not to invest any sums in the $1000 range until you've learned more about the business in general.
When you have a better view of the BIG picture, you can lay out your BIG plan, then do the pieces that fit into it as sub-plans, a little at a time. This idea which started the thread is not really a stand-alone option, to work properly it needs to fit into a larger plan.

If you want to learn about flipping, look for cheap sites and keep an open mind. Most professional gamblers don't risk more than 10% of their "stack" at any one time ...