Part of the guide: Affiliate Marketing
I’ve launched my fair share of products in my time as an online marketer. I can tell you, launching products isn’t easy. If you do one thing wrong, it can destroy your launch and ruin your reputation.
I’ve had a whole list of things go wrong; from my server going down to payment buttons failing. There’s nothing worse than sales not going through when affiliates are mailing for your product.
To ensure I never screw up any of my launches again; I’ve created a 10 step product launch checklist:
1. Test The Sales Process
You’d be surprised how many people don’t even test their sales process. If you’ve got a simple product with one offer, you shouldn’t have to worry about the sales process not working. But when you have three one time offers, upsells, downsells, software that needs licensing and more; things tend to screw up.
To make sure your sales process works, buy everything from the start. Click on your email link that you’re going to mail your list, buy through the sales page and purchase any one time offers you have setup. Make sure you get access to all the products you purchased quickly. Make sure the members/download area works along with the download links.
2. Get A Dedicated Server
You wanna know how to really screw up a big product launch? By using a baby hostgator package, yes I did it. It was early days and I didn’t know I’d get so many sales. If your hosting package is cheap, check into its bandwidth allowance, see how many visitors you can have at one time. During a launch all of your affiliates and JV partners mail their lists sending their subscribers to your offer.
This means A LOT of people will be going to your sales page at the same time. During a launch, upgrade your hosting package to a dedicated server or something slightly less expensive depending on your needs.
3. Test Your Product
Obviously, you should always test your product. Make sure it works properly and delivers on all of its promises. You do not want a bug in your software or a link to be broken in your ebook – refunds suck.
4. Perform Multiple Browser Check
For some obscure reason, some things work on one browser and not on others. Something common is broken images on one browser and not another. Check your sales pages and images on Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer AND Safari. Make sure everything looks good and nothing is broken.
5. Spelling & Grammar
You look like a real idiot when you have spelling mistakes in your product or worse; your sales copy. Triple check your spelling and grammar.
6. Backup WordPress
If using WordPress, make sure you backup the site before you launch. It’s also a good idea to update all plugins and WP themes.
You have been paid late before
You have watched the number on the dashboard not match the number in your account. What is different now is simple: it settles on a public contract you can check yourself, not a dashboard I control.
Read the contract →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
7. Autoresponder
Make sure all of your opt-in forms are working and customers are automatically being added to your list.
8. Affiliate Program
The most important part of your launch is its affiliate program. You can’t expect to drive the sales yourself. All big launches are successful because of the vendors affiliates. Affiliates should drive over 90% of sales, make sure the affiliate program is working properly and affiliates get access to their links.
9. Beta Testers
This is especially important if you are launching software or a WP plugin. Never launch software without thoroughly testing it. The more people who install it, the more bugs will appear and the more problems they’ll have. Make sure you gather a handful of beta testers to iron out most of the bugs before launch.
10. Have A Support System
It’s vital that you have a support system in place to handle customers problems immediately after launch. If customers run into problems and don’t get them resolved within a day or even hours; they will likely request a refund. You should have a graphic/button inside your members area linking to your support page. You should encourage customers to get in contact if they find any bugs/have any problems with your product/s.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below. Also opt-in to the email list on the right for more product launch tips, tricks and secrets. (Insert video here)
Comments
Alex Thompson, March 22, 2023, 10:15
Great checklist! It covers all the essential steps for a successful product launch. Thanks for sharing.
Lisa Patel, April 5, 2023, 14:45
Very informative post. I particularly like the emphasis on testing and having a support system in place. It’s so important!
Michael Johnson, May 12, 2023, 09:30
Excellent advice. I’m going to implement these steps for my next product launch.
Three posts a day. One email a day.
Everything I publish, in one short daily email. Real numbers, no hype, unsubscribe in one click.
Get paid 100%, on-chain, the second the sale clears
Most affiliates earn little, and that is disclosed up front. The difference here is not a promise about what you will make. It is that you can verify every payout yourself, on a public contract, in about twelve seconds.
See how the payout works →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
The checklist is solid mechanically, but step 8 is the one that actually decided most of the launches I watched — the affiliate program, not the tech. When the bulk of sales comes through other people’s lists, the entire launch lives or dies on relationships you built months earlier, not on anything you fix in launch week. That’s not a criticism of the list, just a note that the real preparation happened long before day one.
Samir’s right about where the risk actually sits. Worth adding: most people evaluating this checklist have no affiliate relationships to call on yet. The list assumes you’re already someone affiliates will mail for, which is a rare position, not an impossible one, but step 8 quietly does the heaviest lifting while looking like the shortest bullet point.
Sorry if this is a silly question but I don’t even have a product yet, I’m still learning, and reading step 2 about needing a dedicated server because of how many people show up at once made my stomach drop a little because I don’t think my little website could handle two visitors at the same time let alone a launch, is that something I need to worry about later or right from the start?
Later. A dedicated server matters once affiliates are mailing traffic at a set time. For one person’s site with no launch partners yet, standard hosting is fine.
Ten steps. Not one of them asks whether the product should exist in the first place. Step 5 wants perfect grammar. Step 3 wants a working sales page. Fine. But nowhere on this list is ‘did anyone independent of you validate that people want this before you built it.’ A checklist can make a bad launch fail smoothly. It cannot make a bad product into a good one. Polish is not validation. Spelling mistakes lose you some credibility. Building something nobody asked for loses you the year you spent making it, and no browser check fixes that. Nobody puts that on a checklist because it’s not a checklist problem.
Step 10 frames support entirely around stopping refunds rather than actually helping the person who’s stuck. Those often look the same from outside, but they’re not the same motive, and people can tell the difference even when the response time is identical. Worth asking which one you’re actually building before launch day forces the question.