JV requests, bonuses and being pissed
Okay fair warning here. Usually this blog is relatively upbeat. I try to give you actionable information and recommendations on things that work for me. Today is different as I am pissed. Totally pissed.
It does not happen that often but today two things set me off. Not so much because of what it means to me but what it means to you the reader.
Item #1
Got an email from a good friend asking me to check out a new launch and maybe get involved with it. Supposed to be game changing the way Butterfly Marketing was when it launched. (Butterfly Marketing did change the landscape of internet marketing.)
So I go to the page he linked to interested in finding out what this was about. Curiosity works.Then I got pissed.
All that was there was a listing of all the prizes for JV partners to win, how much money I could make for each sale and what kind of integration they were willing to do with JV partners.
Now there is nothing wrong with any of that but it was what was missing that pissed me off. Outside of the name of the product there was absolutely nothing about the product.
Okay it is a game changer and you tell me about all I can make but what the hell does it do for the purchaser? Don’t you think that is important for me before I decide to even get involved. More and more the JV proposals are doing this and quite truthfully the product has much more to do with whether I will promote it than what I make. Time to end this crap and lets focus on what it does for the customer I send there.
See I like to make money. I am competitive and somehow even a $20 prize has value only because I won it but the product has to help someone or I have just become a list pimp. Aint happening sorry.
Now this product may be a game changer. It may be something I should be telling you about but because I don’t know and all they cared to tell me about is how much I can make and not how it can help you I won’t be involved.
Item #2
The Biggest Firesale - Full disclosure here before I rant on this. I promoted this and the product is a great value. I offered a bonus for it. My bonus was a half hour of consulting. Bonuses are not the problem.
The name is not a link on purpose. This is not a back end way to get you to buy it.
Part of the problem is just inherent in any Firesale. Too many products at once given to one person has a tendency to create paralysis. That was one of the reasons I offered consulting as it would help anyone that purchased it consume it.
Others have made similar type offers. Some even better than mine and I applaud them.
The problem is that I have seen over the top bonus offers too. Adding 100 ebooks or other products to a large package already is almost guaranteed to make the whole package worthless for the buyer.
Sorry I understand how to reuse things and do a lot of it but I would tend to get paralysis from so many things and know I would end up with a bunch of digital dust collectors with no way to start consuming them.
Hey I understand why they do it and this is not the only time I have seen this. There are many bonuses that actually compliment and help people use products. I just want to see more people start using those types of bonuses so you get value and not just a lot of clutter.
Okay enough ranting for one day. Hopefully you have gotten something of value from this rant that can help you make better JV proposals and promote to help your list and readers not just generate cash.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
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Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don't personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Couldn’t agree more, Mike!
If a product isn’t good enough to stand on it’s own, or with one or two small bonuses, then offering a bigger stack of bonuses is just an attempt to part people from their money – with no worries about whether it helps them or not.
Thanks for being one of the ‘good guys!’
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November 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I decided to pass on the firesale, and paralysis is perhaps the right word for it. It would take me too long just to download all that stuff, much less find time to effectively put it to work. I may kick myself in the future for missing out, but I can only drink so much from the firehose at any one time.
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November 18th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Hey Mike,
Excellent post. I was thinking the exact same thing this morning about the bonuses being offered.
Personally, I would MUCH rather get some personal coaching as a bonus than a bunch of digital products that I know I will never get around to using… The coaching can completely transform someone’s online business, whereas many of the other bonuses will just result in digital clutter.
Cheers!
Jit
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November 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Hi Mike,
Yes it seems to offer bonuses is a new trend. It’s crazy. Just to avoid list hopping?
I’m waiting for someone to start comparing the different bonus packages… Hmmm new niche…?
Fred
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November 18th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Mike,
Good for you. Personally I tend to delete a promo email from anyone if I see that they are offering more than one bonus for purchasing a product.
If you have to start offering bonuses for something, there may be something wrong with the original product, NO?
Ok…you can get down off of the soapbox now.
Ron
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November 18th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Mike
You know every niche has noise makers that give the niche a bad reputation.
The car business is one of those niches and is certainly known for making a lot of unnecessary noise. The sad part of that is there are a lot of professional sales people in the car industry. They suffer because of the noise makers.
Even the medical industry, the one I am in, has those market detractors. They feel they cannot compete if they are not overdoing their marketing.
For us newbies to internet marketing, seeing a firesale is like taking a shower with a fire hose.
Glad to know experts like you, Doug, and Jit share the same point of view.
Kind Regards
Glenn Seymour
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I can tell you righte now, this will not be the last firesale you will ever see.
Funny how I didn’t see Mike Filsaime’s name there or maybe I just got blinded with all those stuff they were giving away.
Great analogy, seeing a firesale is like taking a shower with a fire hose, lol. That is so funny.
Imagine a newbie with no marketing, business or internet background and seeing that for the first time, Yikes!
Glad others feels the same way.
Paul Penafiel
November 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Basically, I agree with what seems to be the consensus here: that there is so much information in a firesale that it is like having a firehose when a garden hose will do.
However, I did sign up for this one. No, I don’t intend to download all of the products; I really don’t want to be at my computer that long!
Even so, there are several items that I expect will be very helpful to me at this time, so I can “cherry-pick” and I’m still getting a great deal.
Actually, this is the same tactic I use when hitting the gazillion giveaways that are around nowadays. I just have all the emails sent to a “bulk” list account, then unsubscribe from most of them. I cherry-pick both the products and the emails, using and keeping only what’s apropos for me at the time, and changing the list address on the emails I want to keep getting.
So perhaps it’s time to “unpiss thyself”
Yes, I think a lot of people are getting taken advantage of, but if you’re on the net for very long, you learn pretty quickly that most of the stuff out there is exactly that: stuff, with little or no substance.
So pick wisely and get and use only what’s important to you at the stage you’re at in your internet marketing business.
When gleaning material from the net, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff, or you’ll suffocate in your silo of “stuff”.
All a firehose will do at that point is drown you as well.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
@Don McNulty -
See the problem is not the firesale itself because like you I can see valuable pieces and would never grab them all but adding even more as a bonus that upset me. The playing on greed I guess might be a better way to place it.
If you are going to do a bonus make it something that will help people get more from the initial purchase not overwhelm them
November 18th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Paul Penafiel -
Nothing wrong with the firesale and this one had great value. Not everything but there were some great products offered. I liked it enough to promote it and wuld not if there was not value there for the buyer.
My problem was with overwhelming someone with even more stuff instead of helping them to consume what they purchased. Not just for the firesale but for a lot of bonuses I see for launches.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
hey Mike,
Great post. Boy, you hit the nail right on the head. I don’t know how many times I have bought something with bonuses and then had to spend half the day downloading the bonuses. There has got to be a better way. I think as more people get wise to this they may choose your way of thinking.
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December 12th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Nice perspective Mike. My favorite part though was the term “List Pimp”. Never heard that one before, but it’s good lol.
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