john martinelli

Hey,

Once you’ve developed a product or an offer page that’s ready to send traffic to, it wouldn’t be the best idea to immediately scout high-ticket media buys or establish relationships with joint venture candidates. Those are relatively large investments, and unnecessary for testing a new offer.

What if the product flops? Not only is your credibility going to be tainted with JV partners, you will have a difficult time securing more JV partners when all of your connections friends ask him “how that one offer went.” You also wouldn’t want to risk the $5,000 to $10,000 minimum for media buys.

It’s much better to test small to find out what works, then scale up to get more data. I’ve designed a scaling process that has worked for me.

1. Start with instant, free traffic to get an immediate idea. You can do this through targeting your niche on Twitter using something like Twollo.com, or posting on forums your niche frequents. Although most people frown down on ‘auto direct messages’ on Twitter, it does work for niche audiences.
2. Pay-per-click traffic. With optimization and testing, this will allow you to see what exactly which keywords you should be targeting later on with SEO. Shoot for over 1000 unique clicks before determining your true conversion rate.
3. Once you’ve got solid numbers with PPC, you can do a few things. Find authority sites on your niche and look for a media buy opportunity. Directly contact them if nothing is apparent on the site.
4. Use your contacts you found in point 1 to JV with you. From ‘forum celebrities’ putting an affiliate link in their signature to having competitors mail advertisements for your product out, there’s really unlimited opportunity once you have a sales page with a proven conversion rate. Package your data up into a case study, and shoot it off to potential JVs!
5. Search engine optimize. Take the keywords that are working for you on PPC, and have your website optimized for these keywords. Build strong backlinks so you can rank for these keywords and get free traffic to your offer.

Using this formula, you’re cutting off the potential to upset people or lose money in an investment that won’t produce a profit for you. The key is to start small, plugging “leaks” in your sales process through split-testing, and scaling it up with little risk.

Good luck!

-John