"A
BIG
Dog is just a LITTLE
dog that
wouldn't stop barking!"
"What
It's Like Out in
the Trenches"
Actual
Marketing Stats from the
Big Dogs Home Office
As a number of you already
know, the updated, 2004 version of "Secrets of the Big Dogs"
will be released in the next 60 days.
Now, ordinarily, so we
don't compete with our own affiliates, the Big Dogs Home Office does
not do ANY direct promotion for the ebook. However, to analyze the continued
effectiveness of all of the CHIP programs, as well as field test some new
programs for possible inclusion into the CHIP, for the last two months
we've been doing extensive marketing ourselves.
I think you'll find our
results VERY interesting!...
First of all I feel it's
important to point out that we did three things WRONG - three things that
we always urge you folks NOT to do:
(1) Since we wanted
an EXACT statistical analysis of all of the programs over a two month
period, we did not change our ad for the entire 60 days!
(2) As you'll see
below, our ad was very SHORT and did not include ANY contact
information such as name, email address, or phone number - items that
we ALWAYS urge you to place in YOUR ads.
(3) We did NO
follow-up whatsoever! As you folks know we always preach
that, as soon as you make an ebook sale, you should contact the
purchaser, introduce yourself, and keep in contact with him to assist
him in upgrading to Alpha Dog. Unfortunately, time constraints
simply did not allow us to do this.
...and yet we still had
pretty good (although not astounding) results.
The subject line and ad we
used were as follows...
SUBJECT LINE:
## Finally the TRUTH -
Big Dogs is a SCAM ##
AD COPY:
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########################################
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BIG
DOGS IS A SCAM!
You’ve
been flooded by those stupid Big Dogs ads for
almost three years! Now
it’s time for the TRUTH.
Big
Dogs IS a scam. See for
yourself at…
http://big-dogs-is-a-scam.com
########################################
########################################
########################################
(Note: If this is
the first time you've seen this ad, you might be wondering just WHAT
the heck we were trying to do! Actually this ad was specifically
designed to SHOCK a person into opening it and reading it!)
And, as you can see, it's a
very, VERY short ad, and flies in the face of just about everything we
preach about doing with YOUR ads to make them effective. Again,
however, we wanted a very simple, "standard" ad for testing purposes.
You'll also notice that
the target URL is neither a ClickBank hoplink nor an AdMinder tracking
URL. Instead, this URL takes the prospect to a "gateway
page." If you haven't yet seen this gateway page, you might
want to check it out before you read this article any further.
It will help you understand the concept we were using...
http://big-dogs-is-a-scam.com
Note that the
prospect is not immediately taken to our standard sales page for the
"Secrets of the Big Dogs" ebook.
Rather, they are first taken to the gateway page that details exactly
why Big Dogs Is a S.C.A.M. The prospect must then read the
entire page before they get to the link at the bottom which, only THEN
takes them to the actual standard sales page. So, essentially,
they have to "work" to get there.
After three years Big Dogs
is a VERY well known and respected name on the Internet. Most
people have at least HEARD of us. So this ad and gateway page
were designed specifically to attract that group of suspicious (or is
it "careful?") people who have seen a gazillion Big Dogs ads
and always say to themselves, "Ahhh, it's just another
scam!"
How'd our ad campaign do?
Well, in October, our
first full month of testing, we had 5,440 unique
visitors who clicked to the gateway page - the "SCAM page."
Astoundingly, of those 5,440
unique visitors, 929 took the time to read the entire gateway
page and click through to the standard sales
page. This is a click-thru rate of an amazing 17.08% - a
figure we didn't really expect to be so HIGH!
And of the 929 unique visitors
to the sales page, a whopping 56 purchased the ebook.
This is a closing ratio of 6.03%, which is about 6 to 12 times
HIGHER than the industry average. Considering that each prospect
had to wade through TWO completely different websites (the "SCAM page" and
then the standard sales page) this figure is nothing short of amazing.
Even if we take the number of sales as a percentage of the initial
visitors to the SCAM page, we still come out with a closing ratio of 1.03%. This should pretty much lay to rest
once-and-for-all folks who may blame
their lack of sales on the sales page as being "old and
tired!"
(Incidentally, we DO
change the format of the sales page twice each year, SPECIFICALLY to
"keep it fresh.")
Now, then, what about the
real money-making part of the program - when ebook purchasers upgrade
to Alpha Dog? How did we do there?
Off the 56 ebook
purchasers we had in October, 9 upgraded to Alpha Dog status.
That gives us a conversion ratio of 16.07%, ANOTHER figure that
surprised us. Why? It surprised us because, if you will
recall from above, we did NO follow-up AT ALL - once a person
purchased the ebook, we made no attempt to contact them in any way to
encourage them to upgrade!
So... just what did our
October statistics tell us?
Well, DESPITE the fact
that we didn't change our ad for two months, DESPITE our ad being
extremely short and "lacking personality," DESPITE the fact
that we didn't do any follow-up...
...the Big Dogs
system worked, and it worked well!
Now, before we do any
further analysis, let's take a look at our November statistics.
In November we had a total
of 5,597 unique visitors to the gateway page - the "SCAM
page." So we had slightly more visitors than in
October. However, only 457 clicked through to the
standard sales page, for a click-thru rate of only 8.17%.
If you'll recall, our click-thru rate in October was 17.08%.
Thus, in November we had HALF as many click-thrus from the gateway
page to the "SCAM page," So just what happened?
Our poorer results were a
combination of three factors:
First of all, our ad was
getting "stale." Remember that we stayed with the same
ad for the full two months - something we tell you NEVER to do.
Secondly, around the
middle of November starts the holiday slow season, which lasts until
the first week of January.
But the biggest factor
was HOW we generated those unique clicks. Listen up
and you will learn something.
Over the years we have
tested over a dozen of those so-called "guaranteed hits"
programs. We have NEVER had one work! Oh, you get the
HITS, alright. But those hits never seem to result in
sales. Knowing this, we STILL decided to test one more.
Sure enough, using a guaranteed hits program, we got 1,563 unique visitors... to the "SCAM
page." But of those 1,563 visitors NOT ONE CLICKED THROUGH
TO THE STANDARD SALES PAGE!!! And, obviously, none of them
resulted in ebook sales.
We don't have the room or
time, here, to go into the technicalities of WHY they don't work, but
suffice it to say that, although they sound good, "guaranteed
hits" programs are a total waste of time.
But there IS one
exception to this! And it happens to be a part of one of the
CHIP programs!...
Remember good 'ol
EmailPromoter? If you'll recall, EmailPromoter is actually a
two-part program. The first part is a Set-And-Forget-Emailing
system which automatically emails out your ad to their FFA page
posters. This part works quite well by itself, and we got a
whopping 28% click-thru rate from the "SCAM page" to the
standard sales page.
The second part is what
EmailPromoter calls their "bonus" traffic program, which
"guarantees" 250 clicks a month to your target URL. In
October we got 975 (NOT just 250!!!) unique visitors from this
portion of the EmailPromoter program, and those 975 visitors
resulted in 28 click-thrus to the standard sales page.
Now that's a mere 2.87% click-through rate, which is LOW in comparison
with the FFA part of the program, but STILL... not too shabby results
for a "guaranteed" hits program which is seen by totally
untargeted traffic!
In November we got 745
unique visitors from the guaranteed hits portion of the program, and
12 of those visitors clicked through to the standard sales page, for a
click-thru rate of 1.61%. Still not too bad.
Now let's get back to the
rest of our stats for November...
In November we had 41
ebook sales, resulting from the 457 click-thrus from the
"SCAM page" to the standard sales page, for a closing ratio
of 8.97%. Compared to October (56 sales from 929
click-thrus, for a 6.03% closing ratio), our November sales
were DOWN, but our closing ratio was UP - up by almost three
full percentage points. That's nearly a 50% increase in
closing ratio. Now that SOUNDS good, but it is actually a
deceptive statistic, and it brings us to a very important point... PERSISTENCE!
You need to understand
that a whole lot of prospects simply don't buy immediately.
Some
take days, weeks, or even months to make their final "buy"
decision (yes, even for a product costing a mere $19.95). This
is precisely why we preach that, in ANY business, you need to have
"staying power." Our November closing ratio is
deceptively high, compared to October, only because some of the people
who initially saw the standard sales page in October didn't make the
"buy" decision until November. And we WILL be getting
sales from those October page views for months to come!
We don't have the time to
go into a lengthy analysis of each and every CHIP program in this
article. Suffice it to say that, in the majority of cases, each
CHIP program performed as it should. Those few that didn't,
in our opinion, measure up may very well face the "cut" over
the next 60 days.
One CHIP program, however,
that does bear honorable mention here is AdSaturation, because it
works so deceptively well.
AdSaturation is actually
three lead sources in one. The first lead source is the
"new members that have joined AdSaturation since you last logged
in." This does NOT amount to a whole lot of new people - a
mere 10 to 15 each day, and this is why we have a lot of Alpha Dogs
who complain about this low quantity of daily leads. Remember,
though, that we said AdSaturation worked "deceptively"
well. Appearances to the contrary, this small quantity of leads
are worth their weight in gold! They gave us a very nice 15%
click-thru rate from the SCAM page to the standard sales page.
The second AdSaturation
lead source is the FFA posters. Again we get a lot of complaints from
Alpha Dogs who say that, although AdSaturation supplies as many as
1,500 FFA leads each day, two-thirds or more are duplicates. This IS true. On one particular day, for example, I downloaded
nearly 1,800 FFA leads, but by the time my Group Mailer had discarded
the duplicates, I was left with barely 200! Let me point out two
things, however. 200 leads a day is approximately what the other
FFA-type programs in the CHIP deliver anyway, and the AdSaturation
FFA leads are VERY responsive, giving us a click-thru rate from the
SCAM page to the standard sales page of approximately 24%! That
is an amazingly high "open-read-act" ratio.
The third and final
AdSaturation lead source is what they refer to as their
"Read-Mail" feature. For an additional fee, you can
send out a solo ad to as many or as few of the TOTAL AdSaturation
membership as you desire. For our test, we had them mail our ad
out to 43,317 for a cost of $25.62. This resulted in 167 unique
visitors to the SCAM page, 45 of whom clicked thru to the standard
sales page, giving a click-thru rate of 26.95%!
So you can see that,
although at first glance it APPEARS that AdSaturation does not perform
well, in-depth analysis indicates that it is very valuable, indeed!
SUMMARY
Our two month-long
experiment ended up delivering a treasure trove of valuable
information. The bottom line is this...
1) Even after three
years, the Big Dogs program in general, and the CHIP programs in
particular CONTINUE to work and work well by delivering quality leads.
2) Over these two
months we had a total of 11,037 unique visitors to the
"SCAM page." 1,386 of those unique visitors
clicked thru to the standard sales page for a 12.56% click-thru
rate. And of those 1,386 visitors to the standard sales page, 97
resulted in sales of the ebook. This is a 6.99% close
ratio, which is far and above the industry average.
What
THIS figure tells us is that the sales page works very, VERY well - all
YOU need to do is to get prospects there with unique
and powerful ad copy.
and finally...
3) During
October and November those 97 ebook sales resulted in 14
who upgraded to Alpha Dog. This is a 14.43% conversion
rate, and again we stress that this was with NO follow-up and NO
contact with the ebook purchasers. In other words, the ebook -
all on it's own - IS doing it's job of selling the prospect on
upgrading to Alpha Dog. However, we do want to stress that YOUR
conversion rate should be substantially higher than this - in the 18%
to 20% range.
Now at the beginning of
this article we made the statement that, "...we still had
pretty good (although not astounding) results." But
some of you. especially those just starting out, may be saying, "Geez,
97 sales in two months - that seems pretty astounding to ME!"
It's not BAD, my friends,
but it pales into insignificance when compared to...
* Fred Damron, who
holds the record for most ebooks sold in one DAY at 65!
* Or to
Tom Bell's WEEKLY record of 124 ebooks sold!
* Or to Brian
Garvin's MONTHLY record of 344 ebooks sold!
The sales are out
there, sports fans! Ya just gotta use creativity, imagination,
determination, and persistence to get 'em!
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