I just launched a subscription site. People are buying turnkey marketing sites for a network marketing business (Send Out Cards). These people are independent distributors and are looking to improve the marketing of their business. I already have a personal team of 850+ distributors so I had a good base of people to start with.

See some of the sites at our custom greeting cards web site.

Setting out for my launch, I read through the Butterfly Marketing manuscript. I had already been using a blog and emails to build some prelaunch buzz. I had attended a blogging class last year where they suggested this method, plus I learned by watching Mike launch Butterfly Marketing. I didn’t have the manuscript at the time, I just sort of got lucky that I was doing some of the right things.

I had also been allowing people to get marketing sites for free from me. I had 532 people getting free sites from me.

Going into the launch I used some of the pre-launch formula’s in the manuscript. I used the prelaunch email headlines Mike describes. Plus I listened to the bonus call on email marketing to help a bit with the crafting of the messages.

I also had a private introduction with my leaders. In Network Marketing you have people building teams. So I met with 4 team leaders in advance to give them a sneak peek of the sites. I knew that they could help answer a lot of questions for me and that they could also help me build the buzz by marketing it to their teams. In your ventures, you will probably have JV partners that will fullfill the same rolls.

So far so good. I was building buzz.

I got a 99 line conference call system setup.
I got a 50 seat web conference system setup.

I wasn’t sure if this was enough or too much.

I’m also the progammer on this project.. because this is one of my first big projects I don’t have someone like Ionut to help me.

So pre-launch I was working on getting everything finalized. I was working on thank you page which led to my One Time Offer which was a cross promotion with a JV partner. I was also trying to sort out database issues and move over code from test to production. I thought 2 hours would be enough time, but at 8pm when my launch was supposed to happen I was still fixing code.

Mistake: I ended up having to get on my conference call and tell people that we would have to delay the launch for 30 minutes…

Mistake: I only had a 50 seat web conference room I ended up not being able to get into my own web conference because it filled up so fast. I had to ask someone to log out so I could get in.

Mistake: I had a 50 seat web conference room and a 99 seat teleconference. I ended up having users on the telconference that couldn’t get on the web conference. And people in the web conference that for some reason couldn’t get their speakers working. That wasn’t too bad because we had a little extra room on the teleconference and they could switch.

Mistake: I hadn’t taken into account that some people on the teleconference wouldn’t be able to see my presentation in the web conference room and didn’t even think about the fact that the people on the teleconference might want access to the same presentation. I had to quickly put the presentation on the web for them to view.

Mistake: I had tested a couple of features but hadn’t allowed myself enough time to get all the code in place before unveiling. This meant that when I launched and people started looking around the sites we had some major errors. For example: People could subscribe but when paypal sent them back to my site it was erroring and they were not being automatically upgraded. I had to go through a bunch of orders and manually upgrade people. Plus the errors just made the system look poorly designed.

A lot of things I did right:
I obviously built good buzz as I had more people on the launch than I expected.

I had a launch day special (similar to a One Time Offer (OTO)) where people could get a 2 year subscription for about 2/3rds the cost. Plus a bonus with my Joint Venture (JV) partner. I’m not sure how many people have registered with my JV partner, BUT I do know that 25% of my total paid subscribers have also purchased an upgrade from my JV Partner. I’d say thats a pretty good match. I know my JV partner might be disappointed because I only sent him 7 sales, but 7 sales out of the 28 people to upgrade from my site is not bad. I’m sure we’ll continue to increase those numbers over time.

15% of my subscriptions are coming from people who can’t afford (or don’t see enough value in) the 2 year special and are purchasing monthly subscriptions.

I had a support person (my wife) who works with me and was logged into the web conference room with us. This person was able to handle some questions and was able to save the hard questions for me to answer at the end of my launch call. I also had a new support person listening in to learn what all the buzz is about and learn how to answer some basic questions.

Even with the bugs I still launched. I think this was a good thing because you have to set a deadline and go out and launch! If you wait until everything is perfect you will never launch. Obviously people still loved what they saw because I was getting a lot of upgrades.

Lessons Learned:
I would take more time to prepare. I would freeze all changes to my site a few days early so I could do more thorough testing.

I’m not sure exactly which one I’d do. I’d either get more web conference seats so that I have an equal number of web conference seats to teleconference…. or perhaps I’d only go with one service or the other. I really like the web conference system since I’m selling web sites it allows me to show off the sites in a controlled enviornment, and to control the flow of the question and answer session better.

I’m also going to work harder at Toastmasters. You guys are probably like, what the heck is Ben talking about Toastmasters for… or maybe you are asking… What is Toastmasters?

Toastmasters is a public speaking club. They have them all over the world.

I think I’ve learned a lot already about how to write a good presentation and how to present it, but I know there is a lot I can do better. Toastmasters is a way for me to get better in a casual environment. It allows me to learn these lessons in front of 20 friends instead of 150 business prospects

I’d also look to offer additional thank you OTO bonuses. I need to develop my own bonuses so that I can keep 100% of the profit instead of a JV where I’m splitting the profits.

All in all, I think I had a really successful launch. So far with 14 hours left in my launch day special, I’m at 130% of my goal. I’ve already made 30% more than I expected.

This is definitely as a result of reading Mike’s Butterfly Marketing materials and listening to the conference calls.

Now the question is when the launch buzz settles down, can I keep my Viral Exponent (Vx) up. (You’ll know more about this when you read your butterfly marketing materials.) I’m taking launch day profits and hiring a copywriter to craft some additional marketing materials to provide to my members, which should help keep up the Vx. I’m also buying Camtasia so I can create some training videos.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and I hope I have been able to offer you guys some advice you will find useful doing your own Butterfly Marketing Launches.

You can also follow along with my progress in the butterfly marketing section of my blog.

Popularity: 5% [?]