In the first article of this series, we looked at how to get things set up before the product is released.

The goals at that time were simple:

• get a head start with search engine listings
• collect email addresses of potential customers before the launch

Because I was able to achieve very good search engine listings, the signups for the "launch announcements" came in strong.

By the time the Venetian Plaster DVD was ready to ship, I had signed up 270 people. These are people who wanted to be notified when the DVD was available. A perfect target audience!

The Launch Response

A week ago Monday, we sent out an announcement to the list. It explained that the DVD's were in.

Truthfully we weren't 100% the best price to charge, so we first set the full price at $29.95. That seemed to be in an acceptable range but we would be testing that also.

As a thank you for their patience, we offered a 20% discount off the price of the DVD's. The email included a special link to the discount page and it was sent.

The first order came in within minutes.

By the first hour we had several orders and they streamed in all night long.

Overall, we received a double digit response rate to the offer which helped kick things off to a good start.

Best Price?

Of course in addition to this, I had put the true sales letter in place to accept orders through the site.

The actual sales for the full price were a little sluggish so I knew I had to do some testing.

My "secret" testing weapon?

Ebay of course.

Ebay is a fantastic way to give you a very strong indication of what the market is will to pay for your product.

We put up a few Ebay auctions for the DVD and they all ended up in the $20 - $25 range.

This was great feedback for us.

Within hours of dropping the price on the site to $24.95, I had two orders. The price difference made a dramatic impact on the sales.

Would they sell better for $19.95? I will test that but right now sales are good for the amount of traffic the page is receiving.

There is a fine line with pricing. If you price it too low, then you are making a subtle statement about the quality of it. People want a quality product but aren't necessarily looking for the dirt cheap product.

Where To Go From Here

We are now into phase 2 of the launch.

We have put up some google adword campaigns and they are turning out very well. We are converting 12% of the clicks into sales (which is very, very good).

So far the results from the google adwords have been very good.

With only a few days of them run so far, there have been 3 sales directly from the ads. The cost involved was much less then the profit from them.

We'll keep a close eye on the campaigns but so far the initial stats look good.

We are working on other marketing angles for the product which I will share with you in the next article. This will help take sales to the next level.

Hopefully you are keeping in mind some of the tactics outlined here. They can be applied to just about any situation online whether you are trying to promote your site or product.

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