You have heard of Crowdfunding right?
I presume you have seen various stories about crowdfunding in the news over the past few years. The crazy funding numbers. The preposterous products. The mad inventors… and so on.
But did you realize that it is possible to take advantage of crowdfunding in a very specific way to boost the revenue and exposure of your ClickBank digital product business, no matter whether you are a vendor or affiliate?
You see, there is a perception that crowdfunding is all about “inventions”. People trying to create Solar Powered Drone-Flown GoPRO’s… or paper-thin iPad alternatives for under a hundred bucks.
Of course, Crowdfunding CAN be a very effective platform for these more complex products and crazy ideas – they regularly raise millions of dollars in funding and huge profits for their creators. For instance:
The $12 Million Dollar Beehive
The $500,000 Cube
Even one guy (literally) sitting in his bedroom attempted to crowdfund an entire country out of debt (namely Greece)….and whilst he didn’t actually do so (it being a pretty tall order!!)… DID raise nearly 2 million euros in a matter of days.
The power of crowdfunding really is off the charts.
There is good news however, you do NOT need to be a genius with a complex outer-planetary patent-pending idea to take advantage of the Crowdfunding platforms.
Instead, it is far better to keep it simple. Simple – and scientific.
l’ll let you in on a little secret. What many people do is actually source their products directly from China (or any other country for that matter) rather than “invent it” themselves. Sometimes, they simply rebrand a private label product. Sometimes they sprinkle it with a “little bit of magic” (ie. make some design and product adjustments) to give it a USP. Either way, they are done fast. Next step… launch.
It sounds easy. And in essence it is. But truth be told, many people fall at the very next hurdle which is why you see many crowdfunding campaigns fail.
The big mistake that people make is that they just ‘turn on their campaign’ and expect “the herd” to come flocking. They rarely do. There is simply too much noise out there.
In fact, the correct way of doing it is to only launch your campaign when you are 100% sure that it will be funded. The way to do this is to identify and capture a targeted audience and build buzz over two or three weeks BEFORE you launch the campaign. Then once it is funded, you purchase the inventory, deliver the product and keep the profits.
If it isn’t funded for any reason. Well, just start another campaign and try again. You have purchased zero inventory upfront and have spent very little money.
So how is this all relevant to your ClickBank business?
Well, let’s say you were selling a digital ebook on weight loss and fitness as an example. You could be the vendor OR an affiliate. You would take the following 7 steps:
- Identify a physical product that is ALREADY selling well in the same market. This could be any type of weight training device or product. It just needs to be something physical.
- Think of a small adjustments that could be made to the product in order to make it unique (the “magic dust” …or USP in other words)
- Find a manufacturer on Alibaba.com or a similar site who is manufacturing the product and determine if they could make these adjustments if necessary.
- Work out costs. How much would the product cost you? What you would sell each product for in order to make a healthy profit? What would your minimum inventory order be and so on.
- Build an audience (ie. An email list) using Facebook ads and other traffic generation techniques and get this audience excited about the product.
- Launch your campaign. Announce it to your audience with a special opening day discount and (hopefully) reach your funding goal.
- Use the campaign funds to purchase and ship the products.
Now the key points here as a ClickBank client are the following:
- You have just built a highly targeted audience. A perfect audience to whom you can sell your Clickbank product to, as well as future products. The money’s in the email list remember?!
- Of course, if you already have a product and/or an email list, the 7 steps are made considerably easier as you ALREADY have an audience to market your crowdfunding campaign to. You may not need to build an audience at all.
- If you are thinking of creating a ClickBank product, you can see how doing a crowdfunding campaign at the same time as creating your product (or creating your affiliate website for that matter) is a perfect way to generate capital for marketing activities and clearly a great way to build an audience that you can sell the product to, once it is live.
In conclusion…
Whilst it is true that Crowdfunding has been around for a number of years, only a small number of people have REALLY known how to “work it” properly. This is currently one of those ‘blue oceans’ that comes around every few years. Adsense… Mobile apps… Amazon FBA… and now Crowdfunding. What you need to make absolutely sure of is that you strike now before the herd comes-a flocking.
Greg Jacobs & Tim Godfrey have been marketing online for close to a decade and have launched several successful products on the ClickBank platform and run a series of other highly successful online and offline businesses. They have just released a new video which details how Greg generated over $500,000 from his most recent Crowdfunding campaigns learn more at www.IncredibleDreamMachines.com