E. Brian Rose is an expert in the art of self promotion. He is the founder of JVZoo.com, one of the world’s largest affiliate networks, and teaches thousands of students how to grow an online following. Rose has authored two books, Millionaire Within and Expert Fame, both being released this year by Morgan-James Publishing.
In the interview below, E. Brian Rose shares insight into how he created a digital product network that has made over $160 million in sales in the past four years. He talks about getting started on a shoestring budget, leveraging social media and provides his tips for those brand new to online marketing.
Interview with E. Brian Rose:
[00:00:24] Ron Douglas: Hey guys this is Ron Douglas and Alice Seba. Today, we have a very, very special guest. Good friend of mine. He is the 164 million dollar man, founder of JVZOO, he is an Internet Marketer Extraordinaire, and I’ll give him a round of applause, thank you for coming on today.
[00:00:26] E. Brian Rose: From the sound of that applause it sounds like we have a huge audience here.
[00:00:35] Ron Douglas: Let me tell you about E. Brian Rose before we dig into some o the projects that he’s currently working on. And I probably never told him this privately but he’s one of the marketers that i always follow and always pay attention to he’s an entrepreneur that always knows how to jump into a market, organize things, spot an opportunity, put a team and resources together and completely take over a marketplace.
For that, I completely admire him. He’s a master worker, a master organizer and just an overall great entrepreneur, I can’t really pinpoint one thing he’s great at, I mean in terms of like, he’s not a coder, he knows how to get traffic but he’s not the top traffic guy, he knows how to make sales pages but he’s not the top copywriter, but he’s a guy that’s just a go-getter.
[00:01:28] E. Brian Rose: I’m average in a lot of things. How about that.
[00:01:40] Ron Douglas: He’s exceptional at putting the pieces together and that’s what I admire about him. I strive to be more like him in that regard. Master at networking and organizing and putting the pieces together and making it happen and thinking big. 164 million dollars, JVZOO that’s nothing to sneeze at, in just what four years?
[00:01:53] E. Brian Rose: Less than four years actually. It will be four years in January 2016.
[00:01:59] Ron Douglas: Wow, that’s amazing. When you guys first told me, JVZOO, you were going to build another affiliate network, I had no idea it would be big, but you kind of did. Talking to you back then you were saying stuff like we’re going to get there, don’t worry it’s going to be huge, watch. You had that vision and it is really the go-to place if you have a product you want to promote and want to get a bunch of affiliates on board to promote it.
You guys are really the only game in town right now. Especially for Internet marketing related products, software and things like that. Sure you’re running these guys. Like click bank some of these other networks are scrambling to figure out what are we going to do about these JVZOO guys. What’s crazy is you know you guys have a team but you still work from your home office right?
[00:02:47] E. Brian Rose: I do, actually, the three co-founders, myself, Bryan Zimmerman, Chad Casselman — we mainly work from our houses, Chad has an office full of programmers that he goes to from time to time, again in South Carolina. I am in my man cave and it’s kind of in the back yard. This office that I’m in used to be a shed. I turned it into my office. It’s my way of getting away from the dogs, the kids and the family and just kind of focusing on things like this. So, yea — we are all home based pretty much and a lot of our employees are home based as well.
[00:03:23] Ron Douglas: If you can’t get inspired by that as a freelancer, as a home based entrepreneur, I don’t know what else to tell you but that’s crazy. So, Alice Seba is here with us. (phone rings) Keep your eyes on her phone.
[00:03:35] Alice Seba: (laughing) It’s not my phone. I’m just checking that it won’t be me, not that my phone ever rings.
[00:03:45] Ron Douglas: (laughing) I’m going to put my phone on vibrate too.
[00:03:48] E. Brian Rose: (laughing)
[00:03:53] Ron Douglas: Today we’re going to talk about you have a new book!
[00:03:57] E. Brian Rose: I do. I do. It’s actually coming out on November 9th, 2015. It’s called Millionaire Within and (shows book to camera) I got the first few boxes of it the other day and I have smelled every page of every book. It’s a great feeling definitely. The book is kind of the road map that I took to get from just kind of learning that there was this world called Internet Marketing and what steps I took to kind of break into that market and what I did to make a splash and make a name for myself.
All the way up to where I am now. I’m on the speaking circuit, writing books, and of course there is JVZOO so everything in between and it’s filled with some crazy stories. This is not your typical book about how I made Millions in my underwear that you read about these Internet Marketers that say “Oh I spent six weeks at the beach and made a million dollars.” It’s not like that at all. These are colorful stories, and Ron I think you got an advance copy of it. In fact, let me show you this. The very first page, is a review from Ron Douglas right here.
[00:05:11] Alice Seba: Wow
[00:05:14] E. Brian Rose: I would like to read your review if you don’t mind.
[00:05:17] Ron Douglas: Go ahead, it’s from the heart. After I read your book, that’s the first thing that came into mind, I just spoke from the heart, that’s what it is.
[00:05:24] E. Brian Rose: Ron says, “Wow! You can’t make this stuff up. A raw and uncut roller coaster ride that will leave you thoroughly entertained and enlightened. This book is like being a fly on the wall, witnessing the bold power moves, and persistence necessary on your journey toward financial freedom. Buckle up, and prepared to be shocked and inspired.” I love that review, thank you, Ron.
[00:05:50] Ron Douglas: Yea Man, Yea Man. It just flowed naturally.
[00:05:55] Alice Seba: Is there one story you could share with us from there because I am very interested now?
[00:06:00] E. Brian Rose: Oh there are a lot of stories I can share. So, here’s an interesting story. This is before he dot com boom, this was before I even knew really what the Internet was, I guess the year was 1993 and I was talking earlier to Alice and she said one of the things you wanted to talk about was leveraging power. Like with JVZOO, it makes money off other people’s work just by providing the platform and taking a percentage of every sale that comes through. I am a firm believer of providing a service to somebody and using their end product to make a profit. It’s a win-win situation for everybody.
Where I got that mindset is back in 1993. I was in Mogadishu Somalia; I was in the military in the unit called Combat Camera. Combat Camera was that we were making news shows and video clips for the pentagon and the president. We were in the middle of the thick of things. We had to practice the fine art of when to put the camera down and when to pick the rifle up. It was a war zone, a horrible place to be. One day I was sitting in this air conditioned tent where our editing equipment was and this guy comes knocking on the door about midnight.
He was dressed really funny, had a crazy accent. He was from South Africa. He said “I’m a journalist from South Africa, and some of the networks just realized that the one year anniversary of the Marine’s storming the beach here. It’s tomorrow and they’re frantically trying to get as much footage as they can. I understand that most of your footage is classified, but do you have any unclassified stuff?” He went through all the proper channels, that we told him to go through and he came back a couple hours later with his freedom of information act paper work. We were able to give him about 90 minutes’ worth of footage that we dubbed onto a tape for him of raw footage of things happening around Somalia. And he went on his way.
A few days later I ran into him. I said “Hey whatever happened to that footage.” And he said, well I sold 20 minutes of it to ABC news for 2000 dollars a minute.” I, Oh my God, this guy spent an hour of his life you know knocking on our doors saying hey, can I get some stuff that you guys worked on that you guys risked your life to get, that you guys edited, and that you guys put on tape for me, and then he went and sold it for 2000 dollars a minute. He made 40K off of our work.
The bells just went off in my head. The light bulb went on. Wow, you can really make money off of other people’s work. That’s something, I’ve been inspired by that. I like to create a win-win situation in those cases. This was a win-win situation as well because when I got home I was able to see the actual broadcasts, that played on ABC nightly news and Peter Jennings was doing voice overs over footage I shot. That went on my resume after that. I looked at it as a win-win because I got the exposure that I needed to advance my career and this guy made 40K off work he didn’t do. It was an exciting moment for me because I realized something that I was going to take with me for the rest of my life.
[00:09:56] Alice Seba: Wow. That was wonderful and like you said with JVZOO there is obviously a win-win situation. The sellers make money and JVZOO makes money. Sometimes I feel annoyed because I miss out on affiliates. Ron and I do have one product on JVZOO and Ron has others, but all I have there is that product. Sometimes I feel like if I use JVZOO more affiliates will be attracted. What is the secret to get more affiliates what is t that is so attractive for affiliates?
[00:10:46] E. Brian Rose: Well first of all, for vendors, JVZOO makes it so easy for them to create funnels. They can easily create up-sells and down-sells. By creating these funnels the vendor makes their product more attractive to affiliates because all they have to do is promote the one thing, the entry level product, the low price product, and then they get commission on all the products that the customer they send buys. Also with JVZOO they’re paid instantly or until they meet some sort of threshold, instead of having to wait to get a check in the mail. Then you have to take that check and go to the bank, it’s just a lot of hassle. People are very attracted to the fact that instant payouts occur with JVZOO.
[00:11:30] Ron Douglas: You guys weren’t the first to do the instant payouts, you just kind of created a system for making it better, you guys innovated and made a system better and everybody kind of flocked to you guys. So, I mean you’re also a master at social media marketing and you have your project coming up Expert Fame. You want to talk a little bit about that? With JVZOO you built that up with your own personal contacts, you didn’t have a huge budget to put into it. You want to talk a little about Expert Fame and how you can take something from nowhere and build it into this big enterprise?
[00:12:15] E. Brian Rose: You know, I’m a firm believer in the word Perception. I think perception is everything. I often ask the question to colleagues and masterminds when we’re sitting around the bar at conferences. I like to ask this question to my fellow co-workers in the industry, which is better to have the best product available or to be perceived by the marketplace as having the best product?
It’s interesting the number of different replies I get to that. I think that my answer is correct and they think theirs is. My answer to that question is that perception is the more important thing. If buyers think that you have the best product, they’re going to buy your product and that gives you the opportunity to take some of that money and reinvest that into your product to make it better than it was. It keeps snow balling from there.
So eventually if you’re first perceived as having the best product, if you do things right, you really will have the best product. So, that’s the kind of concept we had with JVZOO. When we launched JVZOO I don’t think we were the absolute best that there was out there. I think we had some innovations and we focused mainly on those new things. Not the parts that we weren’t as good as the competition on. We focused on the new things.
Hey the competition doesn’t have this, we have this, and we put so much focus on these new features we were bringing to the marketplace that no one had seen before that all of a sudden the perception was that we have the best absolute best product available. Eventually that perception became reality because the money we made by being perceived as the best we reinvested into the company and now actually have the best product available now.
So those are some of the things I teach in Expert Fame in that course. Also in the book is how to use perceived value and actually turn it into a win-win situation by over delivering with great value to the customer.
Also, using that feedback you get from customers and the money they give you to reinvest into yourself, your product, your service and actually make it become the best. The funny thing is this can happen in a very short period of time if you have the right tools. If you have the right concept. If you have “the way”. The number one thing is the right way of thinking. If you’re on the right thought process if you’re on the right thought path, then you can get there much, much faster than any tool or any software will ever allow you to do it.
[00:15:07] Ron Douglas: Right, I have to give you applause for that.
[00:15:15] Alice Seba: Yes, people are always worried about the tools and things like what little details but that holds them back and you just gotta get out there and do. Do.
[00:15:27] Ron Douglas: When does that program come out Expert Fame?
[00:15:29] E. Brian Rose: I’ve been giving expert Fame speeches throughout the country at various events. I’m speaking this weekend at Gorilla Marketing Global event in Orlando Florida and giving the Expert Fame speech.
This is really interesting group. Gorilla Marketing is a brand that has been around forever long before I was in the marketing world. I remember seeing Gorilla marketing books at the bookstore. It was just really exciting to have been asked to speak.
One of the cool things about it, I am speaking right after Seth Godin. That’s very exciting. One of the greatest speakers in the world is actually speaking right before me. Of course, I am telling my friends and family that Seth Godin is opening up for me.
[00:16:26] Ron Douglas: Oh, but you have to follow Seth Godin too.
[00:16:28] E. Brian Rose: I do, and you know what, I’m up for that challenge. I think it’s great. I used to into events, going oh; I hope I speak after that guy. You know when you’re doing Karaoke in a bar, you want to sing after the worst singer, you know. So, I would always try to want to speak after who I was totally polar opposite of. I’ll make myself better because of perception. Go after the guy who speaks monotone. Then you got crazy me coming out and waking up the crowd. This is actually a big challenge for me, that I am ready for, excited about. Can I hold the audience’s attention after Seth Godin? (Laughs) So, I think I can. I think it’ll be fun. I’m up for the challenge.
[00:17:46] Ron Douglas: A lot of our audience watching are product creators, or want to create their own product. What types of products do best on your network JVZOO?
[00:17:59] E. Brian Rose: That’s a tough question. We have the buyers that are hungry to learn more. For those people info products do best. Case studies, things that teach them how to get from point A to point B are the big sellers for that demographic. Then you have more savvy people that already have businesses online and offline, and they’re looking for tools to make those business produce better or just get a little bit more out of their business whether it’s graphics production or video production — things like that. They’re looking for tools. Those types of audience members, buyers are looking for software that’s going to make their life easier. There’s a lot of innovative software.
But, whether you’re selling a software solution or an info product I think that they key is to make it simple. If you can teach someone how to get from A to B, once you get there, they worry about how to get from B to C… so if you can get them from A to B you open up a world of opportunity to actually resell these people how to get from B to C and C to D and so and so forth.
A lot of people will try to pack so much information into one product that it’s information overload. Those types of products don’t get received as well as a product that teaches one trick. Learn how to do one thing and that’s it. If you can focus on that one thing and make the end user an expert in that one thing, your info product is going to get rave reviews and the affiliates are going to flock to.
[00:19:53] Ron Douglas: Especially, if that one thing is something that people really want to learn.
[00:19:57] E. Brian Rose: Sure, find a problem and solve the problem. Whatever, the niche. I don’t have a six pack abs but I want six pack abs, so how to get Six Back Abs, don’t teach them also how to get huge calves. Tackle one issue at a time. I have acne; I want to learn how to get rid of my acne, so you buy an info product that teaches you how to get rid of acne. It’s the same in the business world; you want to get more traffic. So great, I’m going to go looking for a product that teaches me how to drive traffic to my website. I don’t need to know the intricate of every single aspect of internet marketing in that one book. Save that for when I get traffic to my website. One problem. One solution. That is the making of a best seller.
[00:20:52] Alice Seba: Yes, and it’s easier not only to sell but to make too.
[00:20:57] E. Brian Rose: Absolutely! It’s easier to make. It’s easier to market because your sales page isn’t just bullet points of all these different things that make the reader go “oh this is too much for me” and they get scared and walk away. It’s one problem, one solution.
Makes it easier all around, not only to market the product, but to take in the product as the end user. It also leaves you the opportunity to up-sell them right away or later on down the road. You can email your client base and say, now that you’ve learned this, I’m going to teach you this, because it’s the next step.
[00:21:29] Ron Douglas: I’ll tell you I launched on JVZOO and it did really well for me. I can tell you after I launched I did a bunch of private promotions with people giving them a coupon code and you’d be surprised, just this week alone I had four or five people that bought the product twice, back in September and then bought it again, it goes to show you that they didn’t get to it. They just buy products and say I’m going to get to it later and if you have a product like you said, that goes overboard that’s intimidating for some people and they’ll say they don’t want to buy it because they already have so many products they didn’t even look at from last month.
[00:22:35] E. Brian Rose: Focus like that is important for affiliates as well. Todd Gross is the number one affiliate on JVZOO he sells millions of dollars of product very year by sending out emails to his lists. How does he do it? Well Todd build an email list of one particular type of buyer.
Buyers that are interested in video production online. Different aspects of video. It is highly targeted. Every product he sells himself has to do with video. Every product he promotes has to do with video. He built not one of the biggest lists, but a very targeted list. That’s his expertise, that’s what he’s known as. When he sends an email out that he’s about to get an affiliate commission on, his followers, his tribe, they flock to the product because they trust him. They know that the product will have to do with them. That’s something that many affiliate marketers don’t do. They’ll build a list and start bothering their market with other things. With email marketing remember: One problem. One solution. And you can have that kind of Todd Gross Success.
[00:23:58] Alice Seba: Yes. Or you know, relate it back to them. Like Video marketing, but they want to sell something on email marketing they can show how that enhances the video marketing, if you connect that for your audience it can work.
[00:24:11] E. Brian Rose: Yes. Connect the dots.
[00:24:16] Ron Douglas: Alice does a lot of that as well. I have to give her credit. We have probably 20 different email list and they’re all based on what people signed up to get. So someone signs up for something Kindle related, she’ll promote Kindle related things to them. It will convert very well to that small micro segment of the list. It makes a big difference. I find that if people are interested in my Facebook course, if I sell them other stuff related to Facebook or pay per click traffic it does much better than if I try to sell them something related to making money on line or copy-writing or SEO or something like that.
[00:25:03] Ron Douglas: What tips would you give someone who is just getting started out in this business for those who want to share their expertise to the world but don’t have a huge budget to do it.
[00:25:19] E. Brian Rose: I think that the number one thing that you should be doing, in any business, whether it’s Internet marketing or not is to build a targeted list of perspective buyers. Without that list it’s an uphill battle, you’re going to have to pay for everything. I think you should provide content to people, take advantage of cheap advertising opportunities to send people to squeeze pages. One of those advertising is Facebook ads, of course, which Ron, you’re an expert on. Drive traffic to squeeze pages where you deliver huge amounts of content, to your blog, where you get them to sign up where you deliver huge amounts of content.
Some of the mistakes people make who are trying to get into the information marketing business is that they say “I’m not going to share this as a free give away, I’m not going to put this on a blog post, this is my premium information, I’m going to sell this.” So people always ask me, hey where do I draw the line between giving my best content away for free and saving stuff for later. If you’re saving your best content for a product you’re going to sell later, you’re not putting your best advertising out there.
Your blog side, your eBooks you give away, even your posts you put on Facebook… that is all native advertising, that is all advertising you, you’re on display 24/7 and people are judging you, whether they want to follow you or not, whether they want to buy your products or not.. so if you’re just putting out the mundane stuff, the OK stuff, not the greatest stuff, then you’re not telling them that you have great stuff to offer. Give your best stuff in small bits, you don’t have to give them the whole thing, give it to them in small pieces of information, so they always want more.
In fact, one of the things I used to do in webinars, is I would hold webinars, I would give incredible amounts of information. I’d find one problem, one solution, I’d give them incredibly easy way to follow that solution and get whatever their problem was fixed. Then I would sell them a product at the end that basically included the exact same content, that I gave to them during the webinar, but in a few different formats and they loved it. Give away your best stuff because that is your best advertising to make people want to buy your stuff.
So, build a list of highly targeted customers, and then shower them with value. But, don’t forget to sell them. That’s the second problem I see. “Oh I just want to give value.” Every time you delivered value there should be a buy button afterword. Always be selling. Always be closing and always be advertising yourself and always be building your lists. So those are my tips for a newbie getting into any business whatsoever, especially the Internet marketing business.
[00:28:35] Ron Douglas: Yes. Definitely. You can get good at something and people are going to want to know how to do that. So, you just put it out there to show that you’re the expert at it. It works both ways getting into a marketplace where people who promote those types of products start seeing you as the expert on that topic and want to promote your product as well based on the content that you shared. So you’re recruiting customers and affiliates and people who want to partner with you. You can do that all on social media.
[00:29:06] E. Brian Rose: One final tip I would want to give to a newbie is, don’t be afraid to find a mentor, a coach, somebody that has done what you want to accomplish in the past. Don’t be afraid to pay this person to help you, to buy this person’s book, to buy this person’s course. I’m not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars. Sometimes the best information comes in a 17 dollar book (holds up his book) that you can buy. (Laughs)
But this is the type of thing that a lot of people shy away from because they think “oh I can do it on my own.” Find someone who’s already done it, don’t try reinventing the wheel. Pay them for their knowledge. Nobody goes to college free in this country, and no one gets an education that is worth anything for free. So, I’m not saying spend thousands of dollars, but I am saying, don’t be afraid to invest in yourself.
[00:29:59] Ron Douglas: Right exactly, so right now we have well over 125 people watching this live right now which is good. We usually have less, and a lot of people watch it on the replay because they’re at work. I expect all of you to go out and buy this book. I mean it’s really that good. The stuff I said about it, is just the tip of the iceberg, what’s shared in this book. It’s an amazing testament to what you can do just by having the right mindset. This book will give that to you. When does the book come out?
[00:30:35] E. Brian Rose: It comes out November 9th, you can get on the early bird list where I’m actually sending out some cool excerpts and some cool things at http://millionairewithin.com/early/, same name as the book. Get on that mailing list and I will send you out some free excerpts from the book and as soon as it’s available I’m going to have some huge bonuses that same day. I’ll shoot you an email when that is available. It’s going to be a fun day. November 9th. Get on the mailing list and you will be one of the first to read Millionaire Within.
[00:31:10] Ron Douglas: It’s one of the most entertaining marketing business related books I’ve ever read. I’ll definitely say that for sure.
[00:31:20] E. Brian Rose: Thank you.
[00:31:23] Ron Douglas: So I can’t let you leave here. I know that you are, kind of like privy to a lot of market data. You know what a lot of these people are making; you know what price points are doing well. You know what conversion rates are typical on average. So we have to ask you some market related questions to kind of pick your brain a bit. So, what price points are you seeing right now for different types of products, whether it’s software or information products?
[00:31:49] E. Brian Rose: You know, I think… I can tell you what the averages are, I can tell you what most people are doing, but it doesn’t always mean that’s the right thing to do. I think that a lot of marketers, even the ones making huge amounts of money, thousands or even millions of dollars every few months, I think a lot of these guys don’t sell products for what they’re actually worth. People are afraid to charge what they’re worth. People are just starting out and you want to sell something for 7 dollars or 9 dollars, or 17 dollars — great — but there comes a point when you have to realize that hey, you know what, I’m worth more than this and I think people will pay more than this. Oftentimes I’ve found in my own business, when I’ve doubled or tippled the prices of information products or services that my sells went through the roof.
A lot of times people think “hey you get what you pay for.” But to get back to your original question, I’m seeing a lot of information products with entry level prices of about 17 dollars with an up sell of something for 47 dollars and a second up sell for 97 dollars. That seems to be a common scenario with information products. Also a common scenario with software products: It starts with 17 dollars, and then has an up sell with a super duper version of the software for maybe 47 dollars, and then going up to 97. Then there are some people who are able to turn that into high ticket coaching. They use the info products to get them into their coaching program where they charge thousands of dollars. That’s not right for everybody, every buyer, not everyone can afford that but it’s a right fit for some of their buyers, and people make a lot of money on the back end that way. So 7.97 to 17.97 is a common trend that I’m seeing.
[00:33:53] Ron Douglas: One of the really cool features of JVZOO that I used was that when people buy you can automatically register them for a webinar if you’re using Go To Webinar, and it’s an amazing thing, you can position it as a customer workshop where you’re giving them extra value but then you can sell them on working with you personally in terms of coaching, or you can bring in an expert and sell them on their higher ticket coaching programs. So that 17 dollars can turn into a huge sell because that customer gets on your webinar. And, it’s automatically done on JVZOO. That’s a great feature.
I made the mistake when I first launched my product, I was depending on Wishlist. Wishlist member is software that registers people automatically to a webinar but they have to register in Wishlist. So they have to go to your site and take that extra step and actually register for your site and you’ll be surprised at how many abort and plan to get to it later. Out of 4K customers about 1700 never took that extra step or took it weeks later after it was over. Once I switched it to JVZ00 it’s done automatically, so now every customer gets put into the webinar.
[00:35:16] E. Brian Rose: And then, you don’t even have to remarket to them after that. Aweber then does the reminding for you. So, it’s a great feature.
[00:35:29] Ron Douglas: You can schedule the reminders in Go to Webinar too and Then those who are registered get reminders automatically including what you want the emails to say.
[00:35:39] Alice Seba: So I wonder, if those people who don’t register for the product, but they get automatically signed up for the webinar do they show up? To me I think they might be the kind of people who would, because they do things like in the now so if you say come here at this time they go, but if they have to do something like set up an account they won’t. But I’m just curious if they are the ones who are buying more stuff.
[00:36:02] Ron Douglas: Yes, the people who do show up they’re all customers so the 25 to 35 percent who show up, they ones who didn’t go can come to an encore presentation maybe it was the time. Sometimes it’s just the awareness that there was a webinar and they’re eager to watch a replay. They can do that at their own convenience. So I mean, 17.47 or .97, if I’m launching an info product what’s a good conversion rate, what’s a good earnings per click, what’s a good up sell conversion based on what you’re seeing? What’s about average, exceptional, not so good?
[00:36:59] E. Brian Rose: As far as earnings per click, I you know I’m an affiliate marketer myself, I look for products that fit my list, that are quality that my list will actually use, and appreciate. So, once I have that list, then I look what’s in it for me, I’m going to deliver value, I’m going to deliver my recommendation, I’ve scoped out the product, what’s in it for me. I look at the EPC, expected earnings per click and I look for 1 dollar or more. That means that everybody that clicks on my link to the sales page, I can expect an average for every click I receive to get 1 dollar or whatever the EPC.
One dollar is the minimum I look for, however, I am seeing some guys like Chris (unintelligible), and they’ll get EPCs of five dollars, 7 dollars. I’ve seen EPCs of 12 dollars, for products that aren’t that pricey. The beautiful thing about JVZOO you can actually see the EPCs for the entire funnel not just that one product that you’re sending them to buy. It’s for every product in the funnel so you get the average EPC. For the average EPC I like to see somewhere around 3 dollars which is a little above average, but anything over a dollar is good.
I know that your product that you launched got some really got some really high EPCs for a while.
[00:38:37] Ron Douglas: Yes, it was like up to over 4 dollars at one point. You guys made it product of the day and sent so much traffic so then it went down a little bit. But, I think it’s still around 3 dollars right now.
[00:38:50] E. Brian Rose: That’s very impressive. That’s the thing when someone sends a lot of traffic to you, your EPC level does go down but the amount of sells you get out of that huge influx of traffic is enormous and eventually it’s starts creeping back up. But anything, you’re over 3 dollars that’s very impressive.
[00:39:10] Ron Douglas: Thanks. EPC you can equate that to a conversion rate if you can do the math.
[00:39:23] Alice Seba: That’s good for people who are doing affiliate marketing, selling their own stuff they know a lot of people are worried about conversion rates and how much they can earn per sale. But I think the conversation about earning per click is very important and I want to stress that to people that that is the thing that you ultimately want to be looking at.
[00:40:12] E. Brian Rose: Well of course. Even in the retail business you want to sell products that are going to make the most amount of money off of. It’s the same with affiliate marketing. You want to sell the products that are going to make you the most amount of money and at the same time deliver what your buyers list wants to receive. Because, if you just start throwing a bunch of crap at the wall, seeing what sticks, people are going to start unsubscribing and not see value in your recommendations. So it’s important to recommend products that you think people will use and achieve some sort of success with whether it’s software or info products. You want it to be something the like, use, and that they’d recommend to a friend. Otherwise, they’re going to unsubscribe from your list.
[00:40:57] Ron Douglas: After you guys finally got your budget together for JVZOO, you mentioned you started out with a small budget and then later started reinvesting your profits, what kind of efforts did you put into promoting it. What type of special things did you do to make it grow even bigger?
[00:41:14] E. Brian Rose: We did some kind of off the wall type of promotions. We used that expert fame mindset. That perception is reality mindset and that really made a big difference for us. one of the first things we did is we went to a live event in North Carolina and threw a party. We didn’t have a big budget. We had about 2500 dollars and we threw a party that had an open bar, about 150 people showed up to the party, we had a DJ, free beer and wine, we couldn’t even afford the real alcohol there so free beer and wine and the key to this party wasn’t to get those 150 people that showed up the party to sign up for JVZ00.
I think that worked, and that was something that was a residual effect of our efforts, but what our real effort was to get their friends to join JVZ00. We set up what’s called a step and repeat sign. It was basically a white wall that had nothing but JVZ00 logos on it, and before you got into the party, you had to stop in front of this wall and take a picture. We got everyone’s name and Facebook information and friend-ed them on Facebook. We then uploaded the pictures from the party and the step and repeat sign and tagged them. Then we had this little cheesy red carpet with the velvet ropes that we rented for 50 dollars from rent a center down the street. In person it looked cheesy, but in pictures it looked you were at a red carpet event. It was really cool.
So, we uploaded hundreds of these pictures. People were taking individual pictures, group shots; we uploaded them on Facebook and tagged every single person who was at the party if they were in the picture. So their friends saw it on their news feed, and people started saying hey, wow you went to this big red carpet party and then people saw the JVZOO logo and thought these guys are really shelling out the dough, they must be huge corporation , you know with lots of money behind them let me try them out. We just started using things like this. We knew we had a great product. We knew we had a great service. What we didn’t have was the customer base, so we didn’t have the budget to tell these people we have such a great product.
So, we went out there and kind of tweaked their brains a little bit so they’d automatically think that, using the perception is reality concept. Then when they started using us they really liked us. But, in the beginning we had to use some tricks that were outside the box.
[00:44:01] Ron Douglass: Gorilla marketing like you said.
[00:44:04] E. Brian Rose: Gorilla Marketing, That’s Right.
[00:44:08] Alice Seba: I remember from early on, you did have a lot of people talking. You always had that great reputation right out from the beginning. It’s pretty impressive. I didn’t realize it’s only been four years, it seemed like it had been longer.
[00:44:28] E. Brian Rose: Yea because that’s what we want you to think. We’ve been around since the dawn of the Internet.
[00:44:38]Ron Douglas: I know you guys had some parties where you invited guests too. Performers like Vanilla Ice and Coolio and who else?
[00:44:49] E. Brian Rose: We took the same concept of making ourselves look huge online and as our budget grew and we started getting huge customer bases and were able to afford more and more stuff. We said OK we’re going to throw these parties at different events and let’s step it up a notch. Let’s get someone in there that people are going to take pictures of, and really spread the word that “oh man JVZOO went all out”. My goal was to find performers that were highly recognizable.
Not everyone is a big rap fan, or anything like that but everyone pretty much between a certain age group knows what Coolio looked like and he was affordable and everyone knows the one song he had, Gangsters Paradise, it won a Grammy, and an Oscar. He has that hair, so everyone is going to want to take pictures with him. And, where are those pictures going to go in today’s day and age, not on a photo album or a wall, they go on their Facebook Wall for all their friends to see. They can say, I went to the JVZ00 party and met Coolio.
When we had a bigger budget, we brought Vanilla Ice in. Vanilla Ice is believe it or not is one of the top 25 most recognizable people on earth. So, that’s a true fact. We were able to bring him into the concert and what did he do? He took pictures with every single person there. Everyone uploaded these selfies and it made JVZ00 look all that much greater and gave us the reach.
This is advertising that you can’t buy. You can’t pay money for this type of advertising. We did the same thing in San Diego, we brought in Flavor Flav and we brought others in too. It was the social media pictures and the excitement of people that got to meet some celebrities that are on TV and MTV and movies. It brought back memories of people’s childhood and everyone was excited. It was a way for us to spend a little bit of money and get a huge, huge bang for that buck. So many people don’t think that way.
[00:46:33] Alice Seba: I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. (Laughs) I remember seeing pictures of Ron like that and thinking I better go next time.
[00:47:33] E. Brian Rose: So we know it worked on someone, at least one person. Confirmed.
[00:47:37] Alice Seba: And I’m going to come again because, you got me. (Laughs)
[00:47:44] Ron Douglas: When is the next Marketing Mayhem?
[00:47:46] E. Brian Rose: The next Marketing Mayhem, which is the live event we’ve been putting on once a year, is going to be March 17th – 20th, 2016 in Orlando Florida. It’s a green event. I don’t mean with electric cars. I mean a Green event because it’s over St. Patrick’s day. We will have green beer and we will have a good time. Not only with the parties and entertainment but we’re going to bring in some of the smartest marketers and Internet marketers from around the world, and bring them in to teach them to take their business to the next level, but green beer too.
[00:48:29] Ron Douglas: Do you know who’s going to perform yet or can you disclose it yet?
[00:48:34] E. Brian Rose: I am bound by secrecy. Soon enough we’ll be making some announcements about that.