Advice on selling my product on someone else's backend

Hi folks!

I have what is to me a perplexing situation, but probably just a run of the mill question to you.

I'm working out the details of a partnership, and we've agreed that we're going to take my product, and offer it to my partner's customers as a one time offer. To keep this frictionless for customers, he'll be fulfilling the downloads.

Problem #1: I planned on including an "upgrades for life" document in the download package so that I could at least capture a small percentage of these folks on my list, but is there a better way to go about this?

Problem #2: this requires a certain measure of trust, because I have no way to know how many sales are actually being made because purchases are all processed through his system. Is there any way around this?

Question #3: My normal commission rate is 70%, but I assume in this case, lowering it to a 50/50 split is acceptable. Does that sound right?

Okay, sorry for bending your ears -- but if you have any ideas on how I can work around these obstacles, or ideas on how to restructure this so that it's fair to both of us, I AM ALL EARS.

THANKS in advance.

Shaun

Don't the new Filsaime Videos talk about this? TrafficFusion.com that might be your answer

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Originally Posted by Jay Deiboldt

Don't the new Filsaime Videos talk about this? TrafficFusion.com that might be your answer

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Hey Jay,

Thanks for the reply. It looks like the videos discuss something more on the lines of thank you page swaps. We're actually offering one of my products as an OTO, and it's being fulfilled by my partner.

The idea is we don't want to involve the customer in two separate purchases, downloads, and optins -- so he's doing all fulfillment on his end.

Maybe that's a bad idea, but I know I hate the endless upsells and list signups just to get a product I paid for, so I don't want to put others through that.

Shaun

Yea, you may not like them, but they certainly boost customer value, theres no doubt about it.

And the way I see it, as long as you are giving enough value with what you are selling, fielding a couple of complaints is worth it if you can boost your average customer value a significant amount.

I'm a bit of a boy scout when it comes to situations like this. For my products, I'm willing to take a little heat for conversions, but not at the expense of reputation.

I clicked through to your sales page -- looks nice. I'm going to PM you, as we might be able to help each other out.

Shaun

Sounds good, I replied to your PM.

Having an Upsell, OTO has nothing to do with reputation though. It all comes down to value.

Making the customer feel like they've ripped YOU off because whatever you charged them to buy seemed like peanuts in comparison to the value they received.

People are gonna complain about some aspect of your marketing no matter what. Like Dan Kennedy says: "If they don't, then you aren't marketing hard enough"

Now that doesn't mean be annoying, pushy or overbearing. It just means that the more customers you have, the more possibility there is for complaints just due to the fact that you are dealing with more people.

You can't please all the people all the time.

Shaun,

One of the things I notice in your post is that you will be accessing confirmed customers. We have all heard a thousand times that it is easier to promote and sell your products to customers rather than prospects.

With respect to trusting your partner. You gotta go with your gut...An easy way might be to go through CB for the sale where you both have access to the account....just a thought.

Take Care
Todd

As Todd said, "you will be accessing confirmed customers". That's powerful to your
business. And profitable because you do NOT pay a dime to acquire those people.

And if you don't trust partners... well, don't do it. ;D

Valeriu

I agree with Todd... I'm no JV "expert", but if there's even a 1% bit of doubt about trusting your JV partner, definitely use CB or paydotcom.

Thanks for all of the replies guys!

The trust issue is a small one to me. The biggest issue is that while these will be buyers, I won't have access to them. My product is going into his order process, so there is no optin to my list. I know this will still mean dollars in my pocket, but more important to me is getting a new customer, which I won't. Plus my autoresponder sequence is setup to reduce returns, so without that, I fear the refund rate will be higher than it should be.

But you're right, Valeriu, that really shouldn't be a primary concern. It doesn't cost me a dime and if it performs well, I've got a great partner for a long time to come, so I'm calling this resolved. :) Lost focus on the big picture there.

Shaun

We've put in Fantasos as a back-end, so my thinking is based around its capabilities - and in this application, you could get your partner to sell them a 'membership' to your webpage where they exchange their emails / names to download the product.

Or they could send an email with a link to your download page (requiring a coupon code, name and email fields).

That way you get to see every sale, and you capture emails.

With our back-end, there's an option to allow you to see the details - or integrate to add them to an autoresponder list - but I'm unsure whether this is legal in all territories.

Of course with a good back end system, you'll get real-time updates of your sales too, which should give you some confidence that you're seeing all the sales - but I have to say I agree with Valeriu - If you don't trust 'em, don't work with 'em.

Warm regards,
Philip Greenwood