I thought you might like a bit of a peak behind-the-curtain into a major product launch that’s happening right now…

As I type this Eben Pagan’s launch for his “Self Made Wealth” program is going to be closing down in a few hours.

And this is a launch that’s had a few twists and turns. It hasn’t been all beauty and grace.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Eben is a good friend of mine and I have huge respect for him and his business training products. I’ve actually attended three different workshops he put on – that was a total of 12 very long days of listening to Eben teach.

And trust me, it takes an awful lot to get me to sit in a conference room listening to 12 days of lectures!

In any case, Eben’s almost done with this launch – and there’s something that’s a bit unusual for one of his launches…

It didn’t go so well.

Or to be more accurate, it didn’t start off so well.

Now before I go any further, let me say this… I think the actual product – “Self Made Wealth” is AWESOME. And I think it’s really, really important – it’s the material that everyone needs.

I mean, not everyone needs a product about SEO or about outsourcing – or even about product launches.

But I think everyone NEEDS to understand how money works, and how wealth works. Because a lot of it is counterintuitive… and our brains are naturally wired to screw up our finances. Plus, lots of us have really bad “mental programming” when it comes to money and wealth.

So I think the product is IMPORTANT. And I think that Eben’s course does an amazing job of teaching it – taking a complex subject and making it understandable AND actionable.

So why didn’t the launch go so well, and what’s this “Product Launch Parachute”?

Well, in my opinion… people aren’t so interested in buying “education” these days. And I think, in most people’s minds, education about wealth is a bit removed from what they really want – which is actually having more money in their pockets.

In other words, people just want more money. They don’t care about learning about wealth.

I’m not saying that’s smart – in fact, I think it’s very short-sighted. But, in my opinion, that’s the way many (most?) people actually think.

And so, in my opinion, Eben’s offer just didn’t have the “gotta have it” appeal that it needed to sell to the masses.

(And just so I don’t come off as some Johnny-come-lately, I actually had this exact conversation with Eben before the launch… I called him and told him I was worried about his offer for these very reasons.)

In any case, Eben opened the launch last week… and the sales on the first couple of days were pretty slow. Don’t get me wrong… he still made more money on those days than 99.9% of the people in the developed world – but he didn’t get the huge sales numbers that we’re used to seeing from one of these big launches.

But this is where the “Product Launch Parachute” came into play…

You see, the Product Launch Parachute is something that I taught in my latest version of Product Launch Formula.

Basically, when you’re in one of these launches, you can afford to make some pretty major mistakes… and still come out fine. There’s lots of reasons for the Parachute – but two of the biggest are:

1) since you’re giving out great content, you build up a huge amount of goodwill during the prelaunch that people are very engaged and forgiving.

2) you get so much feedback during the launch that you can really read the pulse of the market… and you can re-adjust your strategies to meet the market demand.

And that’s exactly what Eben did…

He looked at the feedback, and he realized that in addition to the wealth training, he needed to give some great BUSINESS training. In other words, people wanted to know how to *make* money, not just a way to manage it and grow their wealth.

So after a couple of days of scrambling, Eben put together a massive bonus offer for Self Made Wealth… an offer that included two complete business training programs (with a total real-world value of $ 3,994). And that was just the START of the bonus package… there was LOTS more in the new offer.

According to Eben, it is literally his highest value offer that he’s every had.

But the important part about the bonus was not the crazy over-the-top value… the important part was that the bonus filled in a big gap that lots of people perceived in the offer. They were interested in the “wealth and money” part… but they really wanted training on how to put that money in their pockets in the first place.

And the results?

Well the Product Launch Parachute came through… the day after the new bonus offer was announced was the BEST DAY of the launch – and the next day was EVEN BETTER.

And the orders are spiking today in a HUGE way. Of course, it’s the last day of the launch and the product is getting pulled off the market tonight… so the big spike today is pretty typical. People like to wait until the last second to jump onboard. It happens every time.

In any case, that’s a real-time story of how the Product Launch Parachute came through once again.

And in the end, Eben ended up with a very successful launch… AND he did it by creating more value with a better offer – so he wins, and his new students win as well.

JeffWalker.com

Technorati Tags: launch, Parachute, Product