The unexpected SalesBully pre-launch results
The reason we pre-launched SalesBully yesterday to our list was to test things before we did a full-scale launch.
Here’s the results and the secret bit I couldn’t tell you until now.
We did the math. Based on open-rates on emails, the size of our list and figuring for above-average conversion rates, we wouldn’t even sell 100 copies.
And yet, I made 250 copies available to make sure that everyone who wanted to could get the chance to pre-order SalesBully.
As I write this, there are only 1,114 people on the SalesBully email list who got the secret order link.
We were not expecting to or planning on selling out.
To do so, a whopping 22% of those people would have to open the email, visit the site, read the sales letter and buy.
With many people happy to get a conversion rate of 2% AFTER people arrived at their site, selling 250 copies of anything to an email list of 1,114 is not only unrealistic, it is darn near impossible.
And things did not go as well as planned.
Despite my perfectionist ways, there was a typo that sent everyone to a misspelled domain. That didn’t make us look good.
Then, those who did come back went into an endless loop, each of them hitting our server dozens of times and ending up on the wrong page after. During this, we couldn’t even connect to the server to fix it.
That made us look worse.
(This is exactly why we pre-tested the site before letting affiliates send mass traffic.)
When the more persistent and forgiving of those people finally got to the site, we learned that people weren’t quite getting what SalesBully did.
We got several comments where people only thought it was useful for large launches. They focused on one single feature because I didn’t get across to them well enough that SalesBully also improves your sales funnel so that you can make more money per visitor, even if you have very low traffic.
So, with all that going against us, what were the results?
We let one affiliate promote to a small list to test that aspect too. That person was Tim Erway who, along with his partner Jesse Jameson, helped us with SalesBully.
I just got off the phone with Tim. His own numbers show that 25% of the people who clicked the link in the email he sent out, opted in to our list, read the sales page and bought the product.
This is an unbelievably high number, far higher than our record-setting GoTryTHIS launch… and he emailed out just before the launch, so I didn’t have a chance to “pre-sell” them at all.
Those results show how well SalesBully works. Even with small numbers, glitches in the sales process, a sales letter with no testimonials and pre-ordering a product that they won’t get for a week, using these techniques resulted in astounding sales.
No, we didn’t sell out. There are currently 82 copies left and 4 sold while writing this letter.
However, we surpassed our expected sales by far. We also learned what we needed to and gave everyone ample opportunity to get the discount.
So, even if there are still copies left, tonight I’m going stop sales and switch the site to the pre-launch state so that I can start sending out affiliate links tomorrow without confusing their lists with talk of pre-release discounts.
Thank you for everyone who participated. I would very much like to hear your feedback about the sales process and the information I sent by email. If you have something to share, please post it at as a comment here. I read every comment.
And if SalesBully wasn’t for you, I hope you’ll stick with us as we continue to innovate and come out with new software products to help you make more money in Internet Marketing.
If you haven’t and want to check things out, you can still visit www.SalesBully.com (and even buy it) until later tonight.
Take care,
John.
P.S. Totally unrelated: Tonight, after a four or five year year break, I’m starting to teach martial arts again. A new Yoshinkan Aikido dojo has opened up here and I’m the big kahuna. 
John,
That’s remarkable considering all the hassles, even though I didn’t get to experience those same problems, I was impressed at how the whole new process works. I accidentally came across your second chance page after exiting the main one and got to see how truly this Salesbully actually works especially after the time ran out..
Glad I was able to use my work’s computer to pre order it…phew…..
John, I truly see the power of this. I already knew of the methods that salesbully deploys to increase your sales. The problem was implementing them successfully and easily with each of my products. So when I read about Salesbully, I instantly knew of the power that it could bring to increase my sales dramatically.
Thanks John! (especially for the discount)
Sean Mullan
CreativeToolsinaBox.com
Left by Sean Mullan on June 13th, 2007