Percentages of sales, Tracking referral fees, sharing mailing lists, client offe

Hey Jill!

These are GREAT questions! I'll tackle them each, one at a time, below...

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1. I asked for a percentage of sales of the info product in addition to being paid for producing it. What % is fair?

Client questioned why a percentage on top of paying me. Shall I discount my fee? (Don't know how many she intends to sell at this point)

Ordinarily, clients expect to pay a percentage of sales in only certain instances. These can include:

a) When there is a substantial discount on the upfront fee. - To the client, this says that you are willing to take on a portion of the risk. Instead of you making all your money upfront and expecting the client to take the risk of not getting any sales of the product, you are both investing in the eventual success! This would usually mean that your fee for creating the info product is reduced by at least 50% or more.

b) For doing things that directly relate to sales.

The mere creation of the info product does not directly relate to sales. You could do your work and create the best info product in the world. Yet, the product could sit on the digital shelves forever and never make a single penny for the client. This means a 0% return on investment for the client -- not something that is very appealing. The client will ONLY get a return on investment if the client is driving traffic. Not just any traffic, though, but targeted traffic that is reaching the RIGHT audience with the RIGHT message at the RIGHT time.

So, what kinds of tasks would directly relate to sales? (And therefore, be something that the client might expect to pay a percentage on.)

Copywriting -- if you're writing the copy, and you agree to keep revising it to improve conversions, this directly impacts sales (provided the client is doing their job and driving traffic to the sales page)

Affiliate Management/JV Brokering -- if you're organizing a team of affiliates and JV Partners and getting them to actually promote a product, there's a direct correlation to sales

Traffic Generation -- if you're driving traffic for the client through any means (i.e. blogging, Facebook PPC ads, banner ads, etc.), it directly impacts sales. It's like saying to the client: "I'll do all the work for you! But, you only pay me 10 cents to 20 cents out of every dollar that you make."

If you're not doing any of these 3 things for the client, it's unrealistic to expect the client to pay you a percentage unless your upfront fee is DRASTICALLY reduced. For info product creation, such as an audio course or an ebook, that would mean not more than a few hundred dollars upfront plus 3% to 5% of the NET sales (after affiliate commissions and other costs are paid out.)

Asking for a percentage higher than 3% to 5% for info product creation, or asking for ANY percentage if the up front fee is more than $500 is just not reasonable from the client's point of view.

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2. I asked if she was willing to share her list in return for me writing an article on her for free.
She said she's been coached not to share her list but wasn't exactly adverse to it.
What is a good response to this?

What would be the reason for the client to expect to share her list?

If you're just writing a single article for her site, why would you expect to share in her list?

The only way I could see an article being something that would entitle you to share in the list would be this...

If you write an article and post it to her site, and that article has a call to action that leads people to an opt in page, I would expect the client would pay you a flat fee of around $20 to $25. For her to pay you more than that or to share in a list would only be reasonable if you were helping to drive traffic.

If you're asking the client to share her list even from traffic that comes from other content on her site, that's just not a reasonable thing to expect the client to do!

Instead, think about the "WINs" that make something a good joint venture...

... What's in it for the client?
... What's in it for you?
... What's in it for the customer?

If you are writing an article for the client and the article is going to appear on the client's website, there are 3 ways that you could get compensated:

a) You could keep your name on the article as the author. This would build your credibility as an expert on the topic.

b) You could keep your name on the article and have a resource box at the bottom that includes a link to your site or your opt in page. This could help to build your credibility AND build your list at the same time.

c) You could put the client's name on the article as the author. You would be compensated by using YOUR affiliate link to the product recommended in the call to action at the end of the article. The client would NOT share any resulting list with you.

d) You could get paid $10 to $25 for writing the article. The article would show that the client is the author. The article would have a call to action for the client's product with you receiving no share of the sales or the list resulting from the article.

Which of these would be the best way to go?

In my opinion, I would choose either (b) or (c) above. Depending upon the amount of targeted traffic that the client's site gets, (c) might actually be more lucrative for you (provided the site gets a decent amount of targeted traffic).

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3. Also, in return for me writing an article on her, she will pay me a 10% referral fee (her products are 3000-12K, sweet spot is 3K).
   How do I track that?
   She has no affiliate link and it all goes through a 3rd party partner.
   She is in financial services and partners with an outside investment firm.
   (Conaway and Conaway is her company) So she said it would be tracked through them.
   What is an easy way to handle this? Redirect link from my site?

This one is a tough question. First, it is HIGHLY unlikely that you will write an article that takes the reader to a sales page and converts them directly on a product priced at $3,000 to $12,000. More than likely, at MOST, the reader would go from your article to a sales page for a $3,000 to $12,000 product and the reader would then register for a list to get more information. If it does convert into a sale later on, it would probably only be from a sales call that took place from having the person's phone number in the list.

If it's not likely to convert from the article sending traffic to a sales page, then no percentage is really going to give you compensation. Ten percent of nothing is still nothing!

If you know that going in, then a better question would be this...

"How DO you get paid for the time and effort it took you to write the article?"

I would consider a) getting your name on the article as the author to build your credibility, and b) getting a resource box added to the bottom of the article that lets people register for a free offer that you provide. This would at least build an opt in list for you.

Now, to directly answer the question you asked originally, how do you track sales if the client doesn't have an affiliate program?

Even if you use your own redirect links, it will tell you ONLY how much traffic your article is generating through the redirect link. It is NOT enough to track the people clicking on a link in the article as this doesn't tell you whether or not they actually made a purchase.

To answer the question, I'll need a little more information...

Are they going to click a link in the article and be taken directly to a sales page? or an opt in page?
Will a sales person be calling on the reader to close the sale?
When a reader purchases, what page are they taken too after the order is processed?

The one thing that you might be able to do is this...

-- You could create a duplicate of the sales page and a duplicate of the thank you page.
-- For the article that you author, you don't send the traffic to the regular sales page. Instead, you send it to the duplicate sales page. Make sure that your article is the ONLY thing that drives traffic to this sales page. (Even go so far as to exclude that page from search results by disallowing the URL in your robots.txt file.
-- When someone purchases from your duplicate sales page, after their payment is made, take them to the duplicate download/thank you page. On this page, have a transparent image appear at the top. Then you can check your stats to see how many unique people viewed the transparent image each week or each month. The number of unique people who viewed that image would determine how many sales you would be credited for. (Again, make sure that the duplicate thank you page is disallowed in your robots.txt file and that there are no other sources of traffic to that page.)

While this is a little cumbersome, it's about the only way to automate tracking if you don't have affiliate software available.

You might also look into using your own ebizac account to process these sales for the client. You can setup a product in ebizac to process through ANY PayPal account. Each product can actually process payments to a different PayPal account. So, you could setup a product in YOUR ebizac account and have it pay to the client's paypal account.

The product setup would show the sales page on the client's site. After setting up the product, you'd simply grab the ebizac order link and put it on the sales page on the client's site. Then you could simply get your own affiliate link to the client's product and use it to send traffic to the page. That way the tracking would all occur in YOUR ebizac account! Each week or each month, you could simply provide a report to the client to show her how much she owed you!

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4. Biz idea feedback:

a. Interviewing experts and writing articles on them - what would be a good price point for that? I've done some for free.

Would you be doing the interviews AND the articles? If so, how would the interviews be used? How would the articles be used? How long would the interviews be?

I'm not sure why someone would hire you to write articles about expert interviews if they aren't also hiring you to do the interviews as well.

The VALUE is what determines how much you charge.

The value of an article about an expert interview will really depend upon the desired outcome from having an article about the interview... Will the article send people to an opt in page? To a sales page? Will the article be purely informational?

If the client is hiring you to interview an expert, how will the interview be used?
Will the expert interview be recorded?
Will the recording be transcribed?
Will the resulting interview - regardless of whether it's an audio, a video, or a transcript - be given away or sold?

If the client is then also hiring you to write an article about the expert interview, what is the purpose of the article?
Are you using the article to sell the recording of the interview? A transcript of the interview?
Are you using the article to build a list by giving away the audio, video, or transcript of the interview?

You need to get VERY specific on what kind of an interview you will be doing and what kind of an article you will be doing before you can even consider how much to charge for the article.

I can find people that will write me an article about an expert interview for between $3 and $10. If you want to charge more than that, you have to figure out what's in it for the client? What is the ultimate VALUE to the client?

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b. Interviewing experts to get their story that they can use for multiple purposes, i.e. writing blog posts, articles, bios etc. Price to charge? I'm thinking $400 for an hour interview.
Then if they want me to write an article, blog etc. another $ 600.

YIKES! What would make it worth $400 to hire you to interview me as an expert? Especially if that just gets me the recording of the interview! What would make it worth another $600 -- for a total of $1,000 -- to get an article about the interview?

If the purpose of your interviewing me is that it would create content for a blog post, that blog post had better have one kick butt product to sell AND that blog post had better to be able to drive one heck of a lot of traffic as well!

Think about it this way...

Let's say that I could at least turn the interview into a $47 product (which, if it's just a bio type interview, might actually be way too high). In order to get $1,000 in value from my investment, I would need to sell at least 22 copies of my product ($1000 divided by $47 = 21.27 sales).

If my sales page for the $47 product converts at 5% (industry average is only 1% to 2% so 5% is kind of high), then I would need at least 440 people to visit the sales page of my $47 product in order to get 22 sales.

If I can get 25% of my readers of the article to visit the sales page for the $47 product, then I'd need to get at least 1,760 visitors to the article that you write about the interview you did of me.

That means at least 60 visitors a day for a month! Unless I've already got a TON of traffic on my site, this would take a LOT of work!

If I were going to spend $1,000 for you to interview me and to write an article about the interview, I would expect that you would give me a flawless recording of the interview. I would expect there to be music intro's and outro's. I would expect that it would be in a finished format that would be worth $47 to my customers. I would also expect that the end of the product would have a call to action to a mid-range product.

I would expect that the article would be almost a sales letter. One that really got the reader in touch with the problem that my interview would help them to solve.

As you'll see on her site at http://www.lwlmedia.com/heather/theunwrapper.html#cost, Heather Vale Goss charges $800 to $950 to interview you as an expert to create an audio product that is 30 to 90 minutes long.

Heather spends an hour or two with you in advance to get clear on your area of expertise and on what you want the interview to convey to the customer. She also researches the topic thoroughly in advance of the interview.

She then outlines some of the questions in advance and sends them to the client for review. She then does the interview and records it using professional equipment. She then edits the recording -- removes the Ums and the Ah's. She adds a music intro and a music outro. The resulting recording has a call to action that leads to the next product in the client's funnel.

When she returns the recording to you, she also sends you the outline that was used to do the interview. This by itself can create a PDF overview if you just add a few of your own notes to it. This can make for a great addition to a paid product!

For an extra $3 per audio minute, Heather also offers a transcript of the interview.

Heather does a GREAT job of making the recording sound incredible! The audio is balanced so that both the interviewer and the subject sound great. The music adds a TON to the quality!

If you're talking about helping experts by creating THAT kind of interview for them, then yes, it could certainly be worth the prices you're talking about. But, know that the one issue with what you're suggesting is that it is NOT scalable! You only have so many hours in a day, so your income will be limited by the amount of time that you have available.

You could do MUCH better by teaching others how to interview, such as what Heather does in her "Interviewing Unwrapped" info product. (NOTE: The product is no longer offered and it's the ONLY one that I've ever seen on the topic! Could be a GREAT opportunity for you! In fact, even the domain name is available!)

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c. I have created multiple package offers like this (I can send them if you like) that I'll put on my site.
Should I put a price on them or just let people contact me? Services can be bundled or a la carte but NOTHING by the hour. Packages only. Includes text, audio or video interview plus copywriting and/or strategy for their products.

Heather has 2 different sites that she uses... The first, www.HeatherVale.com, has no prices on it. It says only "Contact Heather for Rate Card". The second, http://www.lwlmedia.com, offers the rate card at http://www.lwlmedia.com/heather/theunwrapper.html#cost.

As you'll see, Heather's sites are a bit outdated looking. They do not reflect the quality of her work at all!

Which way you go truly depends on the all important question...

What is the outcome that you're looking for?
What is the strategy that you plan on using?

To answer these questions, start by asking yourself who are your ideal customers and how will they find you? More than likely, to get people who are going to have enough money to afford your packages, it will mean a very specific audience. How do you plan on reaching this audience? Are there people who already have access to your audience?

I would think that the best strategy would be to offer a $97 info product that you sell on teleconferences and webinars. Get JV Partners who have lists to do these calls with you. At the end, offer your $97 product on conducting expert interviews and include a complimentary strategy session with their purchase.

Then, get onto the strategy session and ask questions to determine the customer's problem and get them in touch with the pain of the problem. At the end of the strategy session, you should have a clear picture of which package serves that customer best. Rather than giving them choices ("a confused mind takes no action"), tell them about the ONE package that serves them best!

I hope this answers your questions! If you have any others, let me know!

Gina