The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch Photo by See-ming Lee

The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch

by Alex · 48 comments

As most of you who read Blo­gus­sion know, a cou­ple of weeks ago we launched our first prod­uct. It was our first real attempt at mak­ing pas­sive income, and we have learned a lot from doing it.

Prior to that launch, I pub­lished an arti­cle on what it really takes to make money blog­ging. On that list, I talked about how a prod­uct was prob­a­bly one of the eas­i­est ways to make money pas­sively. That is, money made with­out putting in any effort.

This was my first expe­ri­ence at mak­ing money through a blog, and mak­ing money as I slept. These last few weeks of plan­ning, devel­op­ing, launch­ing and mar­ket­ing have been hec­tic. A lot of good has come out of this prod­uct launch, and I feel like I have learned enough from hav­ing done it that I can write about it to you in this arti­cle. I have high hopes that the infor­ma­tion I cover here will moti­vate you to pos­si­bly cre­ate your own prod­uct one day, and expe­ri­ence the same amount of suc­cess and hap­pi­ness I have these last few weeks.

Like any­thing else, it’s hard work

I just talked about this on Mon­day, to achieve suc­cess in any­thing, you have to earn it through hard work. The way you decide to approach your project will deter­mine how much suc­cess you will enjoy after launch. If you get that far.

Through­out devel­op­ment of the Blo­gus­sion Theme, I was con­stantly work­ing hard. I could sit here and give you a ton of tips for man­ag­ing time and stay moti­vated, but I would be repeat­ing a lot of the thing I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles here.

The one thing you need to know about sell­ing a prod­uct on your blog is that it requires a lot of work ini­tially, and once it’s launched — it will really do most of the work itself. Of course, a lot of any work that remains will depend on what you are sell­ing, but the one thing that any­one who sells a prod­uct bet­ter do is this thing called cus­tomer support.

Cus­tomer Support

I know, this goes against what I said when a prod­uct left you with no work, but it was just as much of a sur­prise to me when I had to come up with my cus­tomer sup­port sys­tem. You will dis­cover instantly that one of the best ways to sell a prod­uct is to show that you offer some sort of sup­port sys­tem for peo­ple who buy your prod­uct. Noth­ing sells bet­ter than a sense of relief.

Set­ting up some sort of sup­port sys­tem for your prod­uct is almost as impor­tant as the prod­uct itself! Your cus­tomers need to have a place to go if they have trou­ble with the thing they bought from you. I have learned this very fast, and this is very true if you are sell­ing a theme like I am.

The way I chose to set up my cus­tomer sup­port sys­tem was by pur­chas­ing a license of the vBul­letin forum soft­ware. vBul­letin is a very pro­fes­sional forum script, and absolutely the best in the market.

I highly rec­om­mend you use a forum if you plan on sell­ing many copies of your prod­uct. Of course, it’s hard to pre­dict how your prod­uct will per­form. But a forum is as mind eas­ing as it gets when it comes to cus­tomer sup­port, and chances are, they have already joined a forum before and will know how to work it.

Another great thing about using a forum for cus­tomer sup­port is that every­thing will b pub­lic. If cus­tomers have sim­i­lar ques­tions, you can always point them to where they need to go. Every­thing is very straight­for­ward after setup, and if you have a great script like vBul­letin pow­er­ing your sup­port forum, you will be run­ning a very secure business.

An Oppor­tu­nity for Expansion

This prod­uct has given me a great oppor­tu­nity to expand the com­mu­nity here on Blogussion.

For one, it brought many new peo­ple to my blog who were inter­ested in pur­chas­ing a theme. These peo­ple then signed up to the forum, and if they ever need help with the theme, they know where to go — Blogussion.com.

With the cre­ation of the forum, it will feed off of the traf­fic from the main blog here, and start its own com­mu­nity of its own. With a side com­mu­nity now brew­ing, there will be a lot of new things we can do to bet­ter the author-to-reader inter­ac­tion here. Obvi­ously a dis­cus­sion forum is a quicker and more orga­nized way to chat about things than a blog com­ment is.

It goes even fur­ther than a dis­cus­sion forum. Some peo­ple choose to use a mail­ing sys­tem to sup­port their cus­tomers, and that is by far the best way to cre­ate rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple because it’s a con­ver­sa­tion between you and another per­son. It’s all about the peo­ple you know, and you never know who may have bought your prod­uct and how much respect they will gain for you if you offer them fan­tas­tic support.

Sta­tis­ti­cal Improvements

One last­ing effect that I can say releas­ing this prod­uct has brought here is the effect on our traf­fic. Ever since launch­ing, we have had abnor­mal spikes in traf­fic (now being con­sid­ered nor­mal lev­els of traf­fic) and it has remained con­sis­tent for almost three weeks now. If you can cre­ate enough hype around your prod­uct, in prelaunch AND after launch, you will def­i­nitely see these same traf­fic patterns.

Traffic jumps after a blog product launch

A new traf­fic pat­tern formed after launch­ing our product

Is it all worth it?

After read­ing this arti­cle, what do you think about sell­ing a prod­uct? It def­i­nitely takes a ton of work ini­tially to build it, and often times, even more to han­dle cus­tomer sup­port. How­ever, there is no greater feel­ing than wak­ing up one morn­ing and see­ing you have earned money while you were asleep.

I have enjoyed releas­ing my first prod­uct to the world, and have earned plenty enough from it to want to do it again!

Have you already released a prod­uct on your blog? What was your expe­ri­ence with it, and would you want to even­tu­ally do it all again? How do you sup­port your cus­tomers who need help with it? Share your expe­ri­ences here, because I am still new to this whole shop­ping thing!

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Article by Alex

I'm the 17 year old blogger & designer behind Blogussion. I live in New Jersey (but root for the New England Patriots), and am a Junior in High School. You can check out my rarely updated personal(ish) blog, Asnio, or connect with me on Twitter.

  • Summary

    Recently, the Blogussion Theme for Thesis was released for sale. This is the first attempt that was made at making money through a blog passively, and it was a huge success for us. In this article, the most important things we learned from doing this are explained.

  • Key Points

    • A product takes a lot of work initially, but once it is complete and up for sale - there isn't much you need to do besides offer support to you customers and market.
    • A product is one of the greatest ways to earn passive income from a blog.
    • Customer support is a very important feature to have with your product. If you offer something that is obtainable only through money, it is an absolute must you have somewhere for those people to go if they need help.
    • A product can have an everlasting effect on your blog's traffic, and an impact on your community as it offers major opportunities for expansion.

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Liane January 20, 2010 at 12:27 am

I can relate to the “hard work” part. It’s the do or die principle of a successful product, and yes, again I’d have to say the Blogussion Theme Launch was impressive. Good job Alex!

A little bit of news on me which I think suites this topic: I just did a small launch for my new website-slash-small-business named Twarks | Twarks Dot Net. I decided to start one because I figured out how much I enjoy (love rather) designing Twitter backgrounds… and of course to finally make use of my Photoshop addiction and the looong hours I spend on it (just doing random design things. lol).

So another key I’d like to share to this is finding your connection with your product… because most people who develop products, or businesses for that matter, only do so because of the profit opportunity. It’s vital that you have a strong personal connection with your product first.. something that you ca and will be willing to do even f you’re not paid for it. ;)

I love this post. Alex, keep it up!
Liane´s last blog ..Rebuilding Lives: Continuous Support is Needed for Haiti Disaster Relief Operations

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:22 pm

Thanks Liane, I appreciate the kind words there. I couldn’t be happier with the theme launch myself!

I don’t see too many Twitter background services out there, that’s awesome you’re getting into it. Sounds like the beginning of any great startup – starting something you love doing. Best of luck with it. :D

The “connection” thing is something I didn’t go into at all in the post, but I really agree with you on it. It was easy for me to connect with the theme because I designed the original theme, and I love looking at it even to today. I guess that’s why I didn’t feel very stressed while working on it for so long.

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Dennis Edell January 25, 2010 at 8:36 am

Hey Liane, I just left a comment at your place and subscribed to your blog….thought you should know though, your Twarks link gives me a page not found error; it only has 2 “W’s”.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…

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Tom | Build That List January 20, 2010 at 12:28 am

Congratulations on a successful product launch. I had no idea this blog had a forum! My first product launch was an ebook that I sold for (I think) $10 each. It sold about 15 copies and for my first product I was quite happy. Now I am looking for an opportunity for something bigger.
Tom | Build That List´s last blog ..Squeeze Page Tutorial

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Seth January 20, 2010 at 7:45 pm

Congrats on being a product producer! Let us all know what your next product will be and if we can help in any way.

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Nick Tart | JuniorBiz January 20, 2010 at 12:48 am

Hey Alex! This is an awesome follow-up post. I was wondering how your launch went. I’m still wondering more of the specifics, like, how many people purchased, when they purchased, if they purchased after the 10th. But I’m not sure you’re willing to release that information ;) .

Anyway, congrats on the successful launch. I didn’t even think about how the forum is driving more traffic to the blog. Cool post!
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Target Your Customers Like You Eat Your Pizza

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:25 pm

I’ll tell you that I made a pretty big profit, and made back my initial investment. The theme and PSD have sold over 120+ combined. Went very well man, but maybe we’ll go into more details in the interview. :D

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ZK @ Web Marketing Blog January 20, 2010 at 2:25 am

Alex I was expecting some more details from you.

When I read the title I was eager to read what steps and factors you tried but I was really disappointed first time.
ZK @ Web Marketing Blog´s last blog ..Online Profits – Learn Online Marketing from Top Internet Marketers & Bloggers

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:25 pm

I can always write a followup post – what kind of information were you looking for specifically?

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ZK @ Web Marketing Blog January 26, 2010 at 1:22 am

Basically I was looking for what factors you consider for marketing … how you manage them all. How do you manage your social media specially for this launch …

I mean everything and every factors you consider for marketing.

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Anil January 20, 2010 at 4:24 am

Wow, the post was amazing, Alex you are really impressive…. I hope you will give your little experiences to the world ..

you had inspired me a lot ..
regards
Anil Chopra

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:25 pm

Thanks Anil, glad this article has helped you!

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Kevin January 20, 2010 at 5:57 am

I would also just add that patience with your customers is absolutely essential. It goes a long way in relieving the concerns of those who are HTML/CSS challenged and in making us feel welcome.

Thanks for all of the help.

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:30 pm

Definitely Kevin, I have definitely learned that from freelancing and have brought that lesson into the forums. :)

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Chris Peterson January 20, 2010 at 7:27 am

Thanks for lunching your product. Hard work and customer support is major key to lunch product successful. Customer support is more important then hard work. Coz customer will suggest what’s wrong or right. They give few or more suggestion which will be easy to us to make our product more useful.

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:31 pm

Without customers, your product really wouldn’t serve much purpose to you right? Everything depends on the people who use the things you have to offer, so you have to pay attention to them!

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Debra Hamer January 20, 2010 at 8:57 am

Thanks for sharing your experiences. As a newbie, I can use all the help I can get.

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Krish January 20, 2010 at 9:29 am

The best part of getting succeded with any prodct wether its launch or selling is PROMOTION.The more people get ur product noticed the more successful it will be.But it sould be worth for the cost they spend else all our efforts will be wasted & success moves far away from us….
Krish´s last blog ..Tools to Track Your Social Network /Brand / Product/ Website Popularity

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:38 pm

Good marketing is important for anything you have, that’s for sure.

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Agent Deepak January 20, 2010 at 9:46 am

I have never had my own product but I would surely love to create one. After reading your experience, I have learn some new things.

I believe you need to have good promotion to sell your product and a good support to keep it selling more.
Agent Deepak´s last blog ..SELL Your Blog to Your Readers

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:38 pm

It’s actually really exciting to get your first product up. I really had a great time doing this, and learned a ton.

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Gabe | freebloghelp.com January 20, 2010 at 10:36 am

I’ve managed and produced many products in my corporate life but never as a blogger. With my experience, one would think that it would be easy for me. However, those experiences simply managed my expectations so I actually don’t want to launch my own product. It’s more work than I’d like to take on at this moment.

That said, I can certainly appreciate the time, energy, and stress it takes to kicking off a new product. Kudos to you for making it happen!
Gabe | freebloghelp.com´s last blog ..Stop struggling — 54 article ideas for ANY niche

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:41 pm

That’s great you had experience. I wish I could have said the same thing when I started with this theme launch. Probably would have saved me from making a few mistakes – but it all mad a good learning experience.

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Eric C January 20, 2010 at 11:00 am

It seems like you guys have been busy, but congratulations on starting to make some real money!

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:41 pm

Thanks Eric, it was a great experience and has been very beneficial to this site.

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Rob January 20, 2010 at 7:02 pm

Great article you wrote here Alex. One thing that instantly caught my eye, and I’m truly glad you added it was “Customer Support” I have seen and it has become a proven fact to myself that customer support is the #1 key in a quality business, the product is #2. Because you can have a wonderful product, but bad customer support and your product is almost guaranteed to fail.

A great addition to running a forum is it gives your customers a opportunity to build relationship with you and other people within the forums.

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:43 pm

All of out Gchat discussions really made me think over the whole customer support thing. I probably wouldn’t have gone with vBulletin if you didn’t make me realize how important customer support was, so yeah man, thanks. :D

The forum has definitely been interesting to run. I really want to evolve it into something greater later, but there is still plenty to be done first.

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Dennis Edell January 25, 2010 at 8:45 am

OK then, now you have to write up why you chose vBulletin over others. ;)
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…

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JR January 20, 2010 at 9:02 pm

I imagine that selling your own products would take a lot of work, much more than just regular marketing and also you have to always worry about your reputation.

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 5:46 pm

It does take a lot of planning and hard work, but it was definitely worth it.

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Steven Corbett January 20, 2010 at 9:40 pm

I’ve found that, depending on the type of product, extensive testing is a huge essential… a couple of times I’ve been part of a release that wasn’t quite ready, and the results are predictably disastrous. On the other hand, I’ve launched a couple of products that were well tested in a variety of conditions, and the response was like a breath of fresh air. Customers love not having to contact you for support. :)

Thanks, Alex, for your sharing your experience and tips with us!

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 6:14 pm

I made sure to do as many tests as possible, but people still found things that needed fixing! Nothing is perfect I guess is what I learned here, no matter how much you think it might be.

That’s true, the less they have to talk to you the better I suppose. But it’s always reassuring to know they have somewhere to go to if they need help. :)

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Steven Corbett January 25, 2010 at 7:22 am

Absolutely! I agree… and I use a forum for support as well- people seem to like it because they are able to see up front what kind of support they can expect to receive. It also provides a little extra incentive for me to treat customers with respect, even if they are difficult, because I know that many more eyes are watching. :)
Steven Corbett´s last blog ..Free Flash Contact Mod for PHPmotion

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Dennis Edell January 25, 2010 at 8:50 am

Nothing will be 100% on launch (ask Microsoft), otherwise the word BETA wouldn’t exist. ;)
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…

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Keith January 21, 2010 at 10:13 am

Glad to hear your first product launched was successful, I am sure you are working on the next one now!
Keith´s last blog ..Why Blog For Business

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 6:15 pm

Unfortunately I have to take a lot of time off to do school things. But I want to jump into my next project ASAP as I had a lot of success with this one.

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Dennis Edell January 21, 2010 at 5:20 pm

You will be unique in my eyes if you’re actually in the forum. Just the mention of “support forum” when I go to buy something makes me cringe…it’s usually an easy way for the product creator to skip out on support hoping others in the forum will respond to questions.

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Steven Corbett January 21, 2010 at 8:01 pm

So true! I’ve seen this numerous times, and I completely agree.
Steven Corbett´s last blog ..Free Flash Contact Mod for PHPmotion

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 6:16 pm

I’m all over the support forum man. I check it all of the time and reply to every support thread. I’m doing good there, believe me. :D

But hey, if other people help – that’s awesome! A few people have helped me, and I certainly won’t discourage it.

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Dennis Edell January 25, 2010 at 8:41 am

Oh by no means did I mean for you to discourage it. It’s like threaded comments when others jump in to help, it’s awesome.

I just think it’s great that you’re actually doing support yourself as well, there are so many that use forums to avoid it….like the “help-desk” that takes 3 weeks for a response. lol
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…

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Reza Winandar January 22, 2010 at 8:10 pm

You guys in Blogussion are rocks! Maybe I can be like you someday, but as fast as you did, language is my only obstacle for blogging.
Reza Winandar´s last blog ..This is blog is now Do Follow

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 6:16 pm

We all have our obstacles to overcome Reza…you’ll get there in no time, just keep studying. :)

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Sarah January 23, 2010 at 10:54 am

Enjoyed the article you provide some great info here, but I would like to add the importance of establishing rapport and credibility with your targeted customers. If they percieve you as having credibility, then theyre much moe likely to buy your product. More info on how credibility relates to the internet and launching products can be found at Internet Credibility
Sarah´s last blog ..What is Credibiliy and what can it do for me?

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Alex January 23, 2010 at 6:17 pm

I like to think we are pretty creditable as we are basically selling our own image and have received many requests to sell the theme already.

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product feed January 25, 2010 at 11:24 pm

I realize from your article that the main key factor for a product launch is the customer support.
product feed ´s last blog ..Intecca 3.0 is nearing its production release

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