I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff in my IM career over the years, most of which has raised my stress levels for a few minutes if not longer.
I once prepared a broadcast email when launching out a new product but didn’t realise I’d put the DOWNLOAD page URL in rather than the salespage.
So everyone who opened the email got it for free.
That stressed me out a bit.
Got some nice emails though.
Then there was the time I launched a product after a few beers. I did it from a hotel room while at a seminar….
All went well until I realised I hadn’t quite finished the salespage completely and didn’t have any of the necessary passwords with me to access FTP or any of the members areas.
A few frantic emails and phone calls back to base sorted it out, but it also gave me a few grey hairs.
It went on to make over $100k though so it all turned out well.
But those small glitches pale into insignificance when it comes to the WORST and most stressy 5-10 minutes in Internet Marketing.
Adding the WSO buttons to your WSO thread and upsell pages when you make your Warrior Special Offer live.
If you’ve not run a WSO before you might not realise what a bloody FAFF the whole thing is.
(For non Brits a ‘faff’ is an inconvenience or a long drawn out process that isn’t straightforward)
Here’s how the process is supposed to work:
1. You write your WSO thread offering your deal and submit it to be approved.
2. When it’s approved you then have to pay $40 to make it go live. Approval can take five minutes to 24 hours in my experience.
3. Once you’ve paid and it’s live you THEN need to go over to WarriorPlus and buy a $19 license to use a WarriorPlus button on your thread (this is advisable because your thread then gets listed in the WarriorPlus system and you can track all your stats. But more importantly it attracts affiliates who promote your product)
4. Once you’ve bought your $19 license you then have to complete 15 or so fields for each one with info such as download delivery page, title, commission for affiliates, keywords etc.
5. ALL THE TIME YOU’RE DOING THIS YOUR THREAD IS LIVE BUT WITH NO PAYMENT BUTTON ON IT
6. Then you get the button code and you have to edit your thread and add the code.
7. Hopefully the button shows up. IF you’ve done it correctly.
8. This all takes me about 5 minutes but I can’t relax yet, because…..
9. I also have two upsells in my sales funnel and they both require me to buy a £19 license, put the code onto my OWN pages (there’s no forum thread for upsells so you usually host them yourself)
10. Then you’ve got to FTP the sites up to your sever to make them live.
While all this is going on you’ll be getting comments on your thread saying things like
‘Where’s the payment button?’
and ‘How am I supposed to pay for this’
and worse, once you DO get the payment button live on your thread, and you’re FAFFING about using DreamWeaver or whatever to put the button code into your OTO or upsell pages people are buying your main WSO and then saying’I saw your OTO but there was no button on it’
I find it a VERY stressful 5 or 10 minutes.
Actually on my latest WSO it took me more like 20 minutes but that’s because the button code wouldn’t go in the right place on the thread and it took me another five minutes to work out what I was doing wrong.
You’re thinking ‘nob head’ right? Getting worked up about nothing.
Let me tell you chaps, I’m no newcomer to IM but this whole putting the button code on isn’t fun.
And if you speak to pretty much anyone who runs WSO’s they’ll mention the button ‘jig’ that they go through each time. It’s like watching a fat bloke trying to tapdance. Metaphorically speaking of course.
That said it’s WELL worth running Warrior Special Offers and I thoroughly recommend them as a source of highly targeted traffic on tap and a relatively fast source of publicity, list building and profit.
You can visit my lastest WSO by clicking the link below:
http://www.jobhaters.com/oneyear
And if you check out the comment I left on the bottom of my thread in the ‘reason for editing’ box, you’ll get an insight into my headstate at the time I was doing the ‘button faff’
Comments welcome below – thanks!
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Hey Tony,
This is indeed a very stressful moment, but I’m going to give you a little tip that has saved me many gray hairs…
Set up your Warrior Plus pages first!
I know – it seems backwards, but stick with me here…
1. Buy the licenses at W+ and fill out the form
(don’t worry about the “thread” part – just skip it for now)
2. Go write your WSO thread and include the buttons using the license you just purchased
3. Submit thread for approval
4. After approval you have to pay the $40 (of course)
5. After payment and the thread goes live simply head back to warrior plus and open up each listing and simply choose the thread and activate it. 🙂
If you do it this way next time you should only have about 1 or 2 minutes of anxiety as you activate the threads at Warrior Plus but it will save you all the other steps.
Hope this helps…
Cheers,
Coby Wright
Nice one Tony, a few beers and you make a $100k, immediately incorporating this into my marketing efforts. Less stressful with some ales clearing the cobwebs!
Coby mate!!
What can I say?
I just didn’t know the system let you do that, and I’ve not run enough WSO’s to work it out for myself.
I know you’ve run quite a few though 🙂
Well that’s also pretty much buggered up my blog post too lol.
I’ll obviously leave your comment there because it’s going to be a great help to anyone who runs a WSO.
Not least of all me.
Thanks again bud.
Tony
Sadly not sure I understood any of the above lol!!!!
Never donea wso yet
but really enjoying reading through your site my friend
from sunny bouremouth!!
cheers
Never mind Tony – it only bears out one of your regular sayings (but you’ve got so many home-spun truths I can’t remember which one now) – maybe “there’s allus an easier way – if only you could remember who kna-aws eet”!
Apologies for mixing my Yorkshire with my Lancashire there!!!!
You’ll have to come up with another WSO quickly now to test that out before you forget it……….. forget what??
What the Heck – Keep your hair on!!!
John
And the funny thing about it is that people are telling you there is no button like you didn’t know and skipped that part or something!
DUH! 🙂
Lisa~
For me, one of the most stressful moments is when I create a membership, start promoting, then I ask myself “How in the world I am going to come with new content each month?”
You know that you already have customers waiting for the next issue, so you don’t have over choice to create the content. I know that many marketers prefer to outsource this part, but for my IM newsletter, I have to do it.
Hi Frank,
Yes I couldn’t imagine outsourcing my newsletter either.
Coming up with content is easy though – I just write about what’s worked (and sometimes what hasn’t) for me over the past month.
I think it shows the mark of a pro if you see that producing your content is stressful but you go ahead and launch anyway.
I’m a big believer in ‘don’t get it perfect get it out!’
Obviously you need certain standards and have to look after your subscribers but if you go for perfect you simply NEVER get there so nothing launches.
Great comments Frank thanks
Tony
Hi John and welcome.
It’s all a bit weird to start with, the WSO thing.
I wasn’t comfortable setting my first one up.
If you can I’d advise giving it a go, not because it’s fashionable or because everyone’s doing it at the moment…
But purely because the traffic source is fabulous.
We’re talking 14% conversion rates as compared to maybe 2 or 3% on a normal ‘cold’ salespage.
Great value if you ask me
Thanks for posintg!
Tony
Mr Reed!
How are you doing?
Thanks for posting John. If you were from any other county on Earth I’d think you were taking the piss out of Yorkshire wisdom.
But since you live here you’re allowed 🙂
Cheers
Tony
Hiya Lisa.
Yep you’re spot on.
On my last WSO as soon as I checked the post, still sweating after 15 minutes pratting around with button code someone has posted:
‘There’s NO BUTTON on your offer!!!!’
(with the same punctuation)
If I could have reached into the forum I’d have pulled him out by the nether regions.
Not his fault of course – my bad reaction.
But I’m getting it under control 🙂
Thanks for posting
Tony
Hey Tony
Thanks for this post which is very interesting. To do a WSO offer seems to be something you are advised to be well prepared for. I don’t think I’m keen on it.
I just want to say Coby hasn’t taken away from your post. This shows the sharing and comradeship between marketers.
Coby is the most helpful person online that I know.
Thanks for your sharing Tony.
Janny
Hi Janny and welcome to the ‘tribe’ 🙂
I’m just as glad as you that Coby helped us out with his advice. I’ll be more prepared next time.
I’ve been on his mailing list for a while now. He seems like a really nice bloke.
Don’t let a bit of worry put you off running a WSO. The rewards vastly outnumber the few minutes of worry.
Thanks for posting
Tony
Hi Robert,
Thanks for posting. Sounds like you have just the right attitude towards internet marketing!
Cheers
Tony
G’day Toby
Haven’t yet made a WSO, but I plan to, and while reading your blog ‘ere (before seeing Coby’s awesome “Post Of The Year!”) had thought to say to you about nabbing that first post after the actual WSO salesletter and saying something like:
Reserved for FAQ’s:
Q) Will Tony try reaching through the screen to rip me back through sideways by my nether regions if I ask where the buy button is?
A) A resounding YES!
(then quickly edit once everything’s in place mate;)
Sorry mate, meant to say G’day Tony (bloody phat phingers!) {o.O}
That’s not a bad idea Paul.
Makes a change from those boring FAQ posts heh.
Thanks for commenting!
Tony
Came back to check on this post and I’m blushing a little.
Thanks for the kinds words from Tony and Janny.
I know there is about as many ways to do this as there are ways to “skin a cat” (not that I’ve ever tried to do that, but I’ve heard there’s more than one way)…
Unfortunately – neither the WF or W+ make it very clear about what the best route to go about is…
Then you add all the “no buy button” comments and it can become very stressful very quickly…
In fact, now that I’m thinking of it – someone could turn this one thing into a complete product, lol.
Hopefully now others can save some stress 🙂
Cheers,
Coby Wright
Hi Tony – I was laughing a lot when I read your description – simply because it is pretty stressful & I launched my 1st WSO last week – although I did use the same method as Coby to get W+ sorted out in advance, (here’s the slaphead moment) – I forgot to assign the WSO in the W+ setup.
Talk about hahahahaa Dumb…….
Anyway, I’ve thought about using JVZ00 or Digiresults (I think Coby favors Digiresults as the alternative) instead, but they just don’t have such a large number of affiliates on board yet.
Sooo…it Warriorplus tap-dancing for a while yet methinks 😀
Dez
(Fellow Brit!)
Posting a WSO makes me pull my hair out and reach for the bottle. Is it just me? As soon as I hit the save button it screws with my spacing. It un-centers some paragraphs or lines, adds extra lines between paragraphs, messes with my headline, and so on.
I’ve tried pasting from Word, from text, and typing the whole thing in manually and still have issues. Grrr…
I haven’t done the WarriorPlus thing yet, but plan to this week. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have my bottle of headache medicine at the ready.
Thanks, Coby, for the easier way to work with WarriorPlus!
Peggy
Hey Tony,
Thanks for the laughs man AND explaining the whole WSO process thing.
I was really laughing when you started writing about the complaints for “where to find the pay button” and such because I have seen that at least a dozen of times and now I know why.
“It’s like watching a fat bloke trying to tapdance.” LOL man, that’s funny and just from reading your experiences with WSO deployings, I’m pretty sure that I would be sweating bullets on my first one.
Looking forward to your next articles and starting to love your stuff here man, awesome job, take care!
Sergio
You created some neat visuals in my mind, nice writing, loved the picture of your daughter, belongs on a Christmas card.
Merry Christmas
Dale
I stumbled across this blog post while looking to see if MY blog post had been indexed yet. I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of that email going out with a direct download link instead of the link to the sales page.
Anyway, thanks, as I needed a good laugh after having launched my first WSO yesterday. The above sounds like something I would do, which is why I was sweating profusely an hour before launching. Finally I was like, “Just do it already, Liz!” I did save myself a lot of headache I suppose, in that I set up everything on W+ beforehand. However, I’m not sure about going back and activating on W+? Never did that, tho that may be something they have since worked out as I got a ton of affiliate requests through W+ so I guess I did everything right…
Putting one of those things together is stressful enough without having to bounce around inserting button codes. At least now you know there is an easier way 🙂
Thanks for the post!
Liz