A couple of months ago a person approached me to see if I was interested in becoming an affiliate for his “Make Money Blogging” eBook. In his email he explained that he had great plans for the eBook. The price would be $29, and he was expecting to sell 10,000 copies in the first six months.
The numbers got me curious, so I went to visit his blog. According to his “Advertise” page he received 50,000 monthly visitors, and had 2,000 RSS subscribers.
Hhmmm, I thought.
I didn’t want to rain on his parade, so I replied to his email politely saying I was busy with some projects and wouldn’t have time to join as an affiliate (which was true), wishing good luck for the eBook launch anyway.
What I had in mind was something else though, which is: There was no way on earth he would be able to sell 10,000 copies of that eBook in 6 YEARS, let alone 6 months!
How come? First of all because the product was not a novelty, nor revolutionary, and it aimed at a saturated market. Second, the product creator didn’t have a strong name/reputation, nor a big audience in place ready to buy from him.
In fact if I was to make a guess I would say he sold 100 copies at most.
Probably this was the first time the guy was trying to sell a product, and that is why he grossly overestimated the numbers.
I have been there myself. When I launched my first eBook I already had a blog with 20,000 subscribers. The topic of the eBook was appealing, and I had put a lot of work on it, so I figured that at least 10% of my readers would buy it (i.e., 2000 people). Boy I was wrong!
After 30 days or so I had sold only 200 copies. I was really frustrated, but the whole experience taught me a good lesson: selling is never easy, no matter what.
Practically speaking this means that you should aim to have a great product, with great marketing, and possibly with a great audience in place who is eager to buy from you, before you start selling. And even if you manage to get all these 3 factors, remember that it will still be hard to convince people to buy.
Again, selling is never easy. If it was, everybody would be rich!
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