I am not sure what drove me to sign up as a JV partner with Dan, though the following factors almost certainly played a factor.

• Supreme confidence in the value of his product just oozes out of the videos he produces (there are lots of them)
• Lots of professional landing pages – it is obvious he has spent a lot of time working on them
• A great JV Opportunity but to be honest I would highlight this anyway… you will see why in a moment

Unobtrusive Marketing

I have spent a fair amount of time since I signed up with Dan chatting with him on Skype – his commitment to his JV partners is exceptional, but I am sure that has also lead to significant improvements in his sales funnel as affiliates give him direct feedback.

We have all seen various improvements to sales funnels over time, and a lot of what Dan is doing will seem very familiar. The overall design of the landing pages, the opt-in etc, but Dan has added a few of his own twists that take things to a new level.

What is special is that the things Dan has added are smart and unobtrusive, but still catch the eye and achieve the desired effect – many of them he has coded himself.

It is a rare thing for me to see something and immediately reach for Skype and ask “Where did you get that script from?”

Long Term Commitment To Success

I am going to swipe a small excerpt that Dan sent out in one of his JV emails – if you are a successful online marketer, this is the kind of email that might make you emotional, because you can almost see before you a guy that is just about to hit a home run.

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1 Year In The Making!
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Someone asked me the other day if I am starting to get excited, because launch is getting so close. I find it hard to put into words how excited i am getting. To give you an idea, I have been working on this project since September last year. 20 hours a week at first, then 50 – 60 hours a week for the last 9 months… and it finally feels like it’s within reach. So am I excited? What do you think?

The fact that I am so exited is only part of the contributing factor to me not sleeping at night. The other thing is the fact that I am on the other side of the world to pretty much everyone, and I spend hours on the phone. Amongst other things, I have spent ages on the phone making sure that I will be able to handle a huge launch in every respect.

The Personal Touch & Proof

There is nothing quite so powerful in establishing relationships with a JV partner than a personal greeting. The one I received from Dan was remarkable, not because of big promises of huge commissions, special access or anything else you might normally expect – the greeting I received was really personal, and at the same time provides me with something more valuable than even a $2000 boxed product… proof

I have been given permission to publish whatever I like, but here is just a small excerpt.

Thanks for coming onboard with TheBossBuster launch. Just thought I’d drop you a quick hello and welcome, and also let you know something that I learned from you that is going to make me a lot of money (and already has done alright for me).

Ok so that grabbed my attention but on its own isn’t much to go on, lets grab a few more snippets…

Originally I bought viral inviter, and was going to use that on my site. After ■■■■■■■, and ■■■■■■■, I went looking for another solution. What I found was a solution on your site, where you can just pass parameters to gmail, hotmail etc, and do effectively the same thing straight through them. This has a number of advantages over viral inviter (which I am sure you are aware of, so I won’t tell you how to suck eggs).

Yes I have ■ out some of this. I will quite happily criticise an application on specific technical issues that represent a risk to my readers, but I am not going to address other aspects that may be hearsay, or subject to specific circumstances.

But I digress…

So long story short, when I tested this with one of my affiliates, I made ■■■■■■■. I was also getting people to do some social networking referrals, but most of the extra was from the emails. The best bit about this is ■■■■■■■, so it doubled my income! Now I am rolling it out on this major launch, and I expect it will make me 6 figures!

I am keeping exact numbers confidential but suffice it to say most people would be able to live for an extra month on the additional income made on one relatively small test.

Now I can’t give you any specific reference, but a frequently quoted figure is that a Tell-A-Friend script, even some of the “viral” ones with features copying Facebook & Myspace rarely add more than 10-20% additional subscribers.

For a tell-a-friend implementation to double Dan’s income, and notice he was specifically tracking the emails compared to social media referrals, that is a huge revenue increase… from one of my blog posts.

Dan absolutely nailed the best possible way to encourage me to write something… providing me with some proof that helps me with any future product launch.

Tell-A-Friend Implementation

Dan didn’t just take an idea from my blog and implement it, he ran with it adding nuances that work so well, he doubled revenue.

Here is just a small part of his Tell-A-Friend page

This Tell-A-Friend implementation I endorse fully (though I did agree to disagree on a couple of details)

• No password is requested
• It is bullet-proof – it doesn’t even use APIs
• Email deliverability is most likely much higher than other solutions
• Emails are sent from a “natural environment” that the end user is familiar with
• Dan figured out a way to even add incentives that are delivered automatically
• The incentive system is multi-tier, rewarding people who refer more friends

Ultimately it is better than anything I have seen used by 6, 7 even 8 figure online marketers, and in many ways better than what is used by Facebook, Myspace and other social networks.

There are a whole load of other smart things he has added to the page that work very well, but I don’t want to spoil it for you for when you sign up to check things out.

It isn’t perfect (but pre-launch doesn’t officially start until Monday)

• The page needs a privacy statement
• A few trust marks could probably boost conversion even more
• I have encouraged Dan to change the way videos are being streamed, but more on that at a later date

Exit Strategy

This is what prompted me at 3am to immediately fire up Skype and contact Dan this morning (there are some advantages with him being in Australia)

• We have all seen corner-peel ads – they are effective to a degree
• We have seen automated “live support” robots on exit, which we all know are fake
• More recently the fashion has been to redirect to a new offer page, opt-in or other alternative, which is often confusing for me which button needs to be pressed to actually stay and read the damn things, I don’t know about anyone else.

What Dan has implemented is different… unique, apparently he coded it himself, and it was quite simple to do

It grabbed my attention as a geek, but I am sure it is something that would grab the attention of any audience, though it is something you would want to split-test extensively – it is something that can be split tested very effectively.

Just watch what happens on the page when you try to exit before opting in…

I am sure the code is very similar to a Page Peel, but the effect is quite different.

Video Use

Dan has made some great use of video in his prelaunch to JVs, keeping them informed on a regular basis. This is one thing I have strongly urged him to tweak however, but more on that at a later date.

I am not going to say he has done things better than others, but he has used video extremely well at every stage of the sales funnel that I have seen so far, and for regular JV updates.

JV Tools

Dan is quite proud of his JV Tools area that is pretty effective – plenty of preprepared emails and banners without the usual long confusing page. I can’t remember the last time I just used even part of someone else’s copy but that is just me. I tend to highlight things in a different way.

Smart Autoresponder Pages

This part isn’t quite unique, I know Big Jason Henderson sells a similar script, but it was very well implemented and no doubt increases email confirmation rates significantly as it is “smart” specific to each email service.

Product Fit For Your Audience?

Who knows, Dan is running a 2-tier affiliate program using Delavo which is fairly robust and has some interesting features in itself. I know lots of affiliates who love it.
The product is a little risqué for some territories, sports arbitrage, but Dan certainly seems to know what he is talking about, and the videos I have seen suggest he is an exceptional teacher – of course he provides a solid guarantee as well.

Apparently he has tested in multiple niches with some quite interesting results.

The Purpose Of This Post?

• Above all, I think Dan has been working his #$%^ off for months assembling this launch
• I love people taking action based upon my blog posts – Dan isn’t the only one who has seen remarkable success, but there is a danger in bragging about things like SEO. I want you to see Dan’s Sales Funnel
• I believe the product might be of interest to some of my audience.
• I love 2-tier affiliate programs and I know some of my readers are a great match. Sign up to JV with Dan

(Note: I will add in the links to the squeeze page on Monday, but you can navigate your way through easily enough – I wouldn’t want to be accused of emailing early for the launch)

Something else to avoid is any mention that you might benefit financially from just an opt-in – the problem there is disclosure, and as more and more launches include a pre-launch opt-in competition with prizes, especially in the internet marketing niche, affiliate program managers are going to specifically have to allow, and encourage disclosure.

Bonus Delivery Hurdles to Overcome

• You are rarely notified about an opt-in – there is a feature in Infusionsoft to allow notifications of opt-in, but most affiliate program managers switch this notification off. Even if you have selected it as on, there doesn’t seem to be a way to control it within the Infusionsoft affiliate interface, and preferably send the email to a different email address than other notifications and mailings.
• Forget about manual processing – as your business scales, manual processing of an opt-in to give a bonus just isn’t possible.
• Circumvention - if you are offering something of value, you don’t want it to be delivered on a directly accessible thank-you page that is indexed, or could be passed on
• Excessive friction – you want if at all possible to avoid adding any process that could go wrong, cause support questions, frustration, etc.
• Lock-in – Preferably if you do this, you want to do it with a marketer who in some ways offers a lock-in of leads that are sent – currently you can’t do anything for back-end promotions of 3rd party products effectively (well unless it is Clickbank), but at least you want them to use that email address for it’s primary intention… to sell your lead their products, so you make money.

Benefits Of Bonus Delivery

Higher opt-in rates – if you can give something of suitable vale, preferably complementary, there is a good chance your readers might opt-in to someone else’s list to get it.

Complementary – what you offer could be complementary to their launch materials, improving the sales process, magnifying “results in advance” and giving you a reason why you are mailing… you really do care about the success of your readers, don’t you?

Tracking & Automation – for slightly more advanced users, if you can get someone to take action, even if it is signing up to a list belonging to an affiliate partner, that is valuable information that can be processed using the automation rules of various autoresponders – business intelligence allows you to segment your lists more accurately, better determine offer choice, or can even steer product development.

Can be turned into a JV bonanza – with smart rebranding or cross-marketing of bonus products, you could potentially gain additional subscribers, covert others to make promotion materials on your behalf, and make more money from multiple streams of income.

Live Example

Over the last week or so, I put together a demonstration system that took relatively little coding and provides me with simple interfaces to automate bonus delivery.

At the same time Howie Schwartz was in the middle of a launch and I knew I could create a fantastic bonus that would complement his launch, so I have been burning the midnight oil.

IM Remarkable Bonus

Some Key Features

• The report isn’t your normal affiliate freebie – it is 50 pages, and was a significant time investment.
• The system isn’t dumb – you are required to submit the correct key
• The whole system can be rebranded – a JV partner could send traffic to my site, and gain 100% referrals to Howie – great excuse to send an additional email, plus help people more.
• The Twitter “tweet” links later in the process are rebranded as well so any viral effect, JV partners can gain a benefit.
• It would take me about 2 minutes to add additional unadvertised bonuses to the backend
• I haven’t asked/forced an opt-in – I didn’t want to add a negative element for JVs
• I didn’t ask for a password to retweet about the site

It is simplistic, there are still some holes, but it is something that anyone could set up.

Take a look at http://nicheexposed.com & http://bonusitem.com