mistakes – Karol Gajda

Although I don’t like dwelling on past mistakes or failures (especially because failure doesn’t exist), there is always something that can be learned from them. I get a lot of requests for information about mistakes or failed projects from my past. They are a plenty!

The reason for that is simple: when I have an idea I believe in, I go for it.

If I believe in something I do whatever I can to take swift action. It’s important when we have an idea we’re excited about to get the ball rolling quickly, because getting started is the most difficult part of any project. Once the ball’s rolling, momentum builds, and we’re more likely to see a project through to the end.

I have enough stories on mistakes, failures, and lessons learned to create a whole series. Depending on how this goes over, and how much I enjoy dwelling on the past for a bit, I will continue it regularly.

Part of the problem with past failures is I don’t have backups/notes with me so I’m relying on memory, Google, and archive.org for help.

The Failure: LaunchALabel.com

Unfortunately, I can’t get a screen shot of the site. Here’s the archive.org link. I spent about $2,000 on design and backend aspects of this project and it looked great.

I launched LaunchALabel.com in August of 2007.

The concept was: Get 50,000 music fans to each donate $25 to a new record label that they would control. They would choose the bands, the marketing, and decide where the money would go.

50,000 x $25 = $1,250,000.

The goal was to use $1 million to sign bands and $250k to run the actual label (Just Paypal fees on the donations would’ve amounted to ~$50k). The idea was to sign 5 bands, and allocate $200k to each of them for the purposes of recording/touring/marketing.

Here’s the copy from the home page of the site:

It’s Your Label. You Choose The Bands. We Make It Happen Together.

From: Karol Gajda

If you’ve ever thought you could run a record label better than the corporations who currently control our music industry then this may be the most important Web site you’ve ever visited.

Join 50,000 like-minded music fans who want to make history. As a community you will launch a brand new record label. The World’s first Social Record Label.

You choose the first 5 bands the label signs to packages worth $200,000 PER band! These bands will be taken care of as they should be.

You will receive a copy of each of the first 5 label releases. Based on iTunes costs that’s a $49.95 value.

You choose the label’s name.

You make the decisions on tours and everything else that goes into launching and running a successful record label.

This Is Your Label.

Nobody can sway your decisions. Not me. Not any music industry “big wigs.” Nobody.

Once 50,000 music fans join for free each will be sent an official invitation to LaunchALabel.com and be asked to make a $25 donation to raise the necessary cash to rock the music industry.

From there you will start voting on label names and the first band to sign to your label.

To learn more check out our How It Works and FAQ sections.

Or click here now to join our music revolution.

Karol Gajda (that’s Carl not Carol)

Was it incredibly ambitious?

Yes.

Could it have worked?

Yes.

Did it work?

No. :)

Results

I sent out press releases, I e-mailed bloggers, I e-mailed friends, I did everything I could think of … it all resulted in ~300 free signups after a couple of months.

I did get a write-up at CMJ.com, which was pretty cool. But it was a tiny write-up and it resulted in no traffic. :)

Why It Didn’t Work

I knew going in it would be an uphill battle due to one word: skepticism.

I got a lot of e-mails from people thinking I was just going to take the money and run. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what to do to overcome this at the time.

What Should I Have Done Differently?

In other words, what should I have done to overcome skepticism and establish trust?

The obvious choice would have been to partner with someone who had a public profile.

I could have offered a nice chunk of money raised, maybe $10k-$50k, to either a celebrity or someone already well known in the music industry to join in on the project.

This would have given me instant credibility and more opportunities for press.

Closing Thoughts

I honestly believe this project could have worked. And I actually believe something similar could work well today. I’ve often thought about revamping the idea a little (100 people each donating $1,000 to sign just 1 or 2 bands).

That said, other sites have sprung up that totally blew my idea out of the water.

Enter: KickStarter.com.

KickStarter has proven that crowd-funding for artists and entrepreneurs works like gangbusters.

I’ve helped fund 3 projects so far. 2 of them musical acts.

You can following my KickStarter here if you’d like.

How Would You Have Made LaunchALabel.com A Success?

Do you have any ideas on how this project could have worked out successfully? Let’s brainstorm in the comments.

Additional Questions For You

– Do more of these kinds of articles interest you? Would you like me to create a Mistakes and Failures series? In this article I focused on one major mistake I made, but there were others as well. Do you want me to go into more detail on the mistakes?

– Do you have any stories of failed projects where you learned a thing or two? Give us a brief synopsis of the project and tell us what you learned …

Selling a digital information product has almost no cost outlay and negligible delivery costs. It’s a great business model.

But if you’re an infoproduct seller you’re probably straight up ripping your affiliates off. Probably not consciously, but you’re doing it anyway.

Over the past 10 years I’ve made the majority of my income (~80% of it) as an affiliate. This article is coming from experience. I realize that most people who sell infoproducts have never been affiliates and don’t understand it from that end so this article will hopefully open up some eyes.

What I’m advising here is a long term business building strategy. Stop thinking short term. If you just want to sell one product and fade away you can do what you want. If, on the other hand, you want to cultivate an army of successful affiliates who build your business then there is no question you need to follow this advice.

It’s Difficult To Gain A New Customer

We agree on that, yes? Getting a visitor to pull out their credit card and buy something from you is difficult. At least 90% (and more likely 99%) of your visitors will never do that.

So it’s this magic 1% that support what you do monetarily. You want to do everything you can to increase the number of 1-Percenters. You do that by getting more traffic to your site. And one way you get more traffic is by getting more affiliates who sell your stuff.

Your Affiliates Work Harder Than You

Your affiliates utilize their resources, their time, their money, and their effort to send you new customers. And you don’t pay them unless they’re successful.

It’s a perfect scheme for you. Free advertising, free customers, no downside.

To an affiliate, there’s a huge downside. They might spend hours or days working on a promotion for your product with no guarantee that they’ll even make a penny. And they very well may lose money if they’re utilizing paid traffic sources, a very common strategy amongst affiliates.

7 Mistakes You Might Be Making With Your Affiliate Program

1) You offer one-time 50% (or thereabouts) affiliate commissions.

2) You sell more than one product and sell each one through a different affiliate program. (Thereby stealing traffic from affiliates who send traffic to one product and don’t get paid when customers buy a different product.)

3) You sell more than one product and only offer 50% (or thereabouts) affiliate commissions with a short affiliate cookie. Lots of people will just buy one product and then if you blow them away will later buy another product. If your affiliates only get paid on the first product you’re scamming them. See also: #5.

4) You offer less than 60% commissions. Ideally you should offer 70-80% commissions. Everything you make is free money after all. Affiliates are sending you customers you would have never had. Pay them like you care.

5) You don’t offer lifetime commissions. If your one-time affiliate commission is 70-80% (or more) then this can slide. But if your up front affiliate commission is 50% (or thereabouts) then you’re running a racket. A lot of ready-made easy to use affiliate systems make it difficult to offer lifetime commissions. If that’s the case with your chosen system, increase the commission per sale to something respectable.

I was chatting with Henri from WakeUpCloud.com a couple of weeks back about this. The main affiliate program he promotes with his affiliate marketing efforts offers lifetime commissions. He puts in a hell of a lot of time into promoting it and it’s because he loves the product AND knows he’s being treated well.

6) You accept offline or other forms of payment, but don’t pay your affiliates for those sales. There is no other way to put it: this is stealing. Robbery. Theft. Throw yourself in jail.

7) You offer one-time 50% (or thereabouts) affiliate commissions. (It’s so important it’s on the list twice.)

The First Step To Recovery: Admit It

Admit your affiliate program is garbage. Once you do that you can fix it.

Sidebar: I will (and do) happily promote a friend’s product for no commission or whatever commission they offer. It’s not about the money to me. It’s about helping a friend. Making that clear for all my friends who sell products. It’s all love here. ;)

How To Fix Your Affiliate Program

1) Immediately increase the affiliate commission to at least 60% across the board to any affiliate who has made a sale. If an affiliate has sent you a few sales, give them an extra bump in commissions. If they’ve sent you a lot of sales, give them an extra extra bump.

2) If you don’t offer lifetime commissions, find out if your affiliate systems makes it easy to do that. If it’s not doable, see #1.

3) If you have a really low cost up front product consider offering 100% commissions. This is not unheard of and it’s actually very smart.

4) If you sell more than one product using different affiliate systems stop stealing from your affiliates and consolidate into one system.

Affiliate Programs Who Are Doing It Right

There are 2 listed here. I wish there were more. I hope this article will make that happen.

– DoubleYourDating.com’s affiliate program (through CJ.com) offers 200% affiliate commissions on their Double Your Dating eBook. The eBook costs $19.95 and the affiliate commission is $40! 100 sales gets you a $45 commission. And 200 sales gets you $50! And you wonder why Eben Pagan (aka David Deangelo, author of the eBook) reportedly runs a $20 million+ per year business? He treats his affiliates well. (That said, he doesn’t offer affiliate commissions on back end products. The high up-front commission is because he doesn’t offer commissions on the back end.)

– UnconventionalGuides.com – I also like what Chris Guillebeau is doing with his affiliate program. He offers just 51% commissions up front, but offers a 10% boost if you perform to the tune of $2,000/month. While affiliates should be paid even more if they’re kicking ass, in comparison to most affiliate programs it’s fantastic. In addition, every product he sells is commissionable. So if you send traffic to one product but the visitor buys something else you still get paid. Sweet!

The Ultimate Affiliate Program

This is what I would like to see in an affiliate program:

– 60% commissions starting with your first sale.

– 65% commissions once you reach the 10 sale/month threshold.

– 70% commissions and biweekly payments for 50 sales/month.

– 75% commissions and biweekly payments for 100 sales/month.

– 80% commissions and weekly payments for 200 sales/month.

– No falling back on tiers. If you hit 100 sales in your first month and 25 sales your second, your commissions will still be at 75% for that second month and beyond. Why? Because that’s just cool.

– Most important: A free affiliate training course that will guide you to your first sale even if you’ve never made a penny online.

Yes, that is how I’m structuring the affiliate program for How To Live Anywhere when I release Version 1.0. The free affiliate training is definitely something I could charge for, but that’s not my game plan. :)

A Perfect Affiliate Program?

There’s no such thing. This is not about being perfect. It’s about being cool with your affiliates and doing what you would want a merchant to do for you if you were an affiliate.

Your affiliates are probably your business’s life blood. Treat them well and I’ll meet you at the blood bank. ;)

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If you know of a quality affiliate program that treats their affiliates like rock stars please leave it in the comments or e-mail me (KarolGajda AT Gmail dot com) and I will add it to the list. Assuming you’ve got a kick ass product and a kick ass affiliate program I’m sure other Freedom Fighters would be happy to promote your stuff. :)