My Monthly Product Marketing Model is under siege. I’m NOT making this up. I’m NOT exagerrating.

Just start watching emails, blog posts and sales letters for references to the Monthly Product Marketing Model or Product Of The Month model.

It’s being attacke in the realm of ideas by other marketers. And you’re on the jury so YOU get to decide.

Here’s the thing:

You either are already sucking money out of pages on the web — or you want to. You want the fabled Internet lifestyle. And thus you know that you need sales to generate the money it takes to live the lifestyle.

In order to do that, you need a model of how you’re going to bring in money to support your lifestyle.

Hardly anyone understands Writer’s Secret because of the name I chose for it. I’ll probably rename it shortly.

Writer’s Secret is REALLY about a marketing model. And I call that model “the monthly product marketing model.” And it’s about a marketing model with this simple premise:

Create and launch a new product each month.

That’s what the model says.

I misnamed Writer’s Secret to some degree for different reasons. But it’s REALLY about a marketing model.

And lately that marketing model has been under attack. I’ve seen a NUMBER of other marketers reference the monthly product marketing model with different barbs, references and attacks:

1. You need to do continuity and recurring billing as your primary offer, NOT a product of the month.

One of my friends recently wrote about continuity vs. the monthly product model. He advocates a continuity model vs. a monthly product model.

I don’t disagree at all with the value of continuity and recurring billing. You could look at a membership site as a product-of-the-month with guaranteed, locked-in buyers (the subscribers).

But I prefer to look at it as the back end. If you’ve read Amazing Formula, you already know the terminology: You have the front end of the business (your initial sales to customers).

Then you have the “back end” which is your follow up sales.

You CAN have continuity as your primary front-end product. The new FTC rules in the U.S. make this confusing for a lot of us marketers. It isn’t real clear yet what the laws are or how they’ll be interpreted.

To sell continuity (a monthly membership site or recurring billing), you need to have a low-priced offer like $1 to $5. And lots of bonuses.

The Monthly Product Model does NOT keep you from having continuity or recurring billing. Here are the problems with contiuity-as-front-end:

a. After a period of time, the concept of the membership site is no longer new and the enthusiasm wanes for affiliates to promote it as a front end.

b. This results in the need to rename the membership site which causes confusion.

c. In the U.S. the FTC has created confusing laws that may or may not cause issues with promoting a low-priced trial offer with many bonuses as an incentive for buying.

2. The Product Launch Model is where the real money, real fast is at.

I can’t argue with speed with which a product launch as the potential to bring in a great deal of money.

If you can pull it off, it’s like winning a Trifecta at the races. But what are the odds. I LOVE Jeff Walker. Super, super nice and bright marketer. But with all due respect to Jeff and his marketing model, I feel that in the world of ideas, it’s fair to discuss the model:

a. If you don’t have a great record with your merchant, you can get your account frozen when a whole lot of money hits your account all at once.

b. Do you have the support staff to handle a massive influx of orders?

c. Oftentimes, they money that comes in all at once was set up by doing reciprocal emails for all the joint venture partners for six months before. So what goes off in a one-week time period was actually worked on for six months.

So legitmately, it’s often more like the six month marketing launch model.

d. It takes a great deal of time and work to appear to effortlessley pull off a large launch.

e. Gross does NOT equal net.

Some very large launches that appeared to be mega hits are reputed to have a lost a considerable amount of money.

Your merchant account will hold a portion of the money back for six months but you have to pay affiliates now and you have to pay out refunds now.

Again, I love Jeff Walker. And his products are top notch as well as his ideas. But the product launch model, while it can bring in mind spinning amount of money seemingly overnight, also has the drawbacks listed above.

The monthly product marketing model does NOT have any of the above drawbacks and brings in steady sales, which is the objective.

3. The Pure Affiliate Model

The pure affiliate model says to promote ONLY affiliate products and don’t bother creating your own. The money is in the list, not in the products.

My experience is that the BEST way to build your list is to have your own products and recruit your own affiliates.

A lot of affiliate models are built off of leeching off of big launches by competing on Google to get organic listings for the names of the product.

If you don’t get those listings coinciding with the launch or if the launch flops, then your income can take a big hit that month.

Having said that, if you build a list, you can always promote affiliate products to your list.

4. The PLR Model

The PLR model says don’t create your own products. It’s too hard and takes too much time. Just promote PLR products.

In the past I never promote PLR at all. PLR stands for private label rights. The problems with promoting PLR products are as follows:

a. You have no protection against someone else selling the product for really, really cheap, thus resulting in refunds to you from disgruntled customers.

You can offset this by creating your own bonuses and also repackaging the PLR with a different title and graphics.

b. It’s hard to find quality PLR products

It isn’t like there’s an endless supply of high quality products.

c. The product does NOTHING to build your OWN name and brand unless you rewrite it.

You can edit or add to the product to offset this.

d. The product usually doesn’t have a value proposition.

If you’re in my new ROUND TABLE, you’re going to find out all about Value Propositions and why they’re the foundation of your entire business.

You can counteract this by re-writing the sales letter and the product.

e. By the time you re-write the sales letter and they product, you probably could have created your own product.

Having said that, recently I’ve promoted several PLR products I felt served my customers well. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time. But on select products on occasion, I do see the value.

A $250,000 Car Bought Using The Montly Product Marketing Model?

So last weekend at Pat’s Unseminar, I got to make contact again with Joe Vitale which is always a pleasure.

If there were a “Poster Boy” for the Monthly Product Marketing Model it might be Joe Vitale. While I’m not saying he produces a new product every month, he’s an absolutely prolific writer and promoter.

He has written I believe 48 books (maybe it’s more).

Actually, Joe promoted bookstore books and there’s a big advantage I see in that twist because it builds your reputation in a way that ebooks sold online doesn’t.

As a result of publishing so many books, Joe began being viewed with credibility greater than the average marketer. This resulted in him being featured in the movie The Secret and many other movies.

Joe is nothing if not prolific.

Anyway, Joe recenlty bought a $250,000 car called a Spyker. There areo only 30 of them in the U.S. Amazing car!

Joe publishes and promotes new books as his front end. He does a lot of public speaking to generate leads, which is to an extent manual labor. But Joe loves it.

He promotes his front-end books via a lot of online promotion to his email list and via joint ventures and affiliates as well as sometimes hiring a publicity firm.

His back-end product is called Miracles Coaching and is sold and delivered by an outsourced company as I understand it. I’m sometimes against this but the company is in Austin which isn’t far from Joe.

And he can easily go there in person and train the coaches. Not a bad deal at all.

Joe doesn’t do huge product launches, although he does sometimes put together a pretty good push for a book.

He does have a monthly membership for this Gold Hypnotic Persuasion club or whatever he calls it.

If you want to see a great example of a squeeze page that makes a lot of money go to:

http://www.attractmoneynow.com

Also, one of my OTHER favorite sites that Joe has is:

http://www.attractanewcar.com

I like the video on that site. Don’t know who did it. But with a little work or outsourcing, there’s no reason you couldn’t have a similar video.

Here are my points about Joe Vitale:

1. He just kept writing and promoting books in a prolific fashion, very similar to what I advocate in my product-of-the-month model.

2. He has a killer back end in place

3. He has a clear Value Proposition

4. He articulates his Value Proposition very well

5. His proliferation of books separated his credibility from the herd

I’ll have a GREAT deal more to say about the Value Proposition in the Round Table meetings.

Best wishes,

Marlon Sanders