When launching a new product, what is the best way to get your initial testimonials for the site? Can you launch without them?

Yes, you can release a new product without testimonials… If you have previous products with testimonials, you can list them as a “character reference”.

You can also use the fact that it’s a brand new product to reduce the price temporarily in exchange for user feedback and potential testimonials.

As far as getting testimonials for a new product:

• Contact people who sell related products and ask them to review the product and possibly give you a testimonial, offering to link to their website in their testimonial (so there’s something in it for them).
• Post on a related discussion forum that you’re looking for testimonial/reviews, and offer to give your product to the first 10/20 people who respond offering to possibly give you a testimonial.
• List “industry testimonials”… in other words, they’re not specifically related to your product, but they’re quotes that reputable people have said about the type of product you’re selling (it’s not exactly a testimonial, but when done right they can add credibility to your presentation)

A couple quick points:

• It’s illegal to make up testimonials
• You need permission to list someone’s comments as a testimonial if you plan to use their full name. (It is permissible to use just the initials of someone who’s given you feedback without their permission, although it adds much more credibility if you use their full name).

I hope that helps, and best of luck rolling out with your new product.

Please give me your requests by either adding to the comments below, or using the http://www.timgross.com/contact form.

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Before you upgrade, you should deactivate all plugins, upgrade, reactivate the plugins, and then make sure they work.

Case in point: Before leaving on vacation I upgraded Wordpress, and the upgrade caused my comment spam image to not show up, so if someone tried to leave a comment,  they couldn’t  view the image to answer the  question.   Oops.

Hey, it happens. (I’ve temporarily disabled the image “challenge question” from the comments until I get it straightened out.)

On the island of Mykonos, Greece (great place by the way!), there’s this sign, painted on the storefront itself:

Heh, heh… If your “Sale” sign is painted onto your building, it’s not a sale, it’s your price. Sales are temporary.  I’ll be posting mildly relevant things about my trip later to pretend that it was business-related, and I’ve got lots of exciting stuff to tell you about soon, so stay posted!

- Tim

Create & Sell “How To” Training Products - The number of sales I’ve made of downloadable ebooks is in the six figures. If you can teach people something valuable that makes their lives better, you’re in business.

Sell Membership Subscriptions To Password-Access Websites - I’ve sold thousands of subscriptions at around $500/year, and also lower-priced subscriptions for $20/month. Again, if you’re providing value, the sky’s the limit.

Create Content Websites That Draw Free Traffic - I’ve created websites that have gotten millions of hits a month, and made money from affiliate commissions. The benefit is that there’s no customer support since you’re not selling anything directly, so it’s “hands-off”.

Develop Software Tools - I had a free downloadable program created that brought in thousands of dollars month after month from affiliate commissions from users. I also created a paid version that users voluntarily upgraded to.

Provide Services - I’ve done website creation/development, copywriting, online advertising, and consulting for clients, both on a per-hour basis and on a percentage of profits. (Sidebar: Full details on how I originally got clients can be found here.)

Buy & Sell Domain Names - I’ve bought and sold multiple domains for a profit, although it’s not something I’ve specifically focused on. If you’ve got a good domain name, people will contact you about buying it. The most I’ve spent for a domain name is $5,000, which I sold for $10,000 with virtually no effort. I had a secondary use for the domain name though; I wouldn’t recommend you pay a lot of money for a domain name on speculation.

Writing Articles & Blogging - If you like to write or want to establish credibility in your field, you can make money writing articles and posting them online on your own blog, to article directories, etc. By linking to affiliate products in your articles, you can earn commissions without having your own product to sell. (For full video walkthrough of how to set up your own blog, click here)

As you can see there’s a wide range of things you can do to make money online, and that’s just a partial list of course. I hope this gives you some ideas if you’re still in the start-up phase.

Important Note: I’m going to start revealing some very inside info on the above topics soon, but you’ll only get it if you’re on my subscriber list. (No worries, it’s free - Just use the top-right subscribe box or click here)

Blech.

Well, disgusting or not, the free sales letter generator can help you quickly pump out better sales letters, give it a try (after all, it’s free).

Hopefully you’re selling something better than intestinal parasites, ay?

But have you ever tried to figure out what factors are the most important for your customers? Most people don’t… and if you ask them, their answers may surprise you.

I’m in the market for a new vehicle, and if you look at expert reviews/ratings of cars and trucks, you’re only getting half the story. Consumer satisfaction ratings for those same vehicles are often completely different.

Why? -Because buyers are looking at different factors than expert reviewers are.

The Hummer H2 gets lousy expert ratings in virtually all categories except for offroad capabilities, and the vast majority of is’ customers never even TAKE it offroad (who wants to scratch up a $60,000 luxury vehicle??!)

However, customer satisfaction for it has traditionally been extremely high, because people who decide to buy don’t care about the things experts care about it.

• Edmunds Expert Rating is 6.5
• Edmunds Consumer Rating is 8.9

On the other side of the coin, the Toyota Yaris is about the cheapest basic vehicle you can buy, it gets great gas mileage and it’s low on comfort and extras.

• Edmunds Expert Rating is 6.9
• Edmunds Consumer Rating is 9.4

These consumers love the fuel mileage and are happy with the vehicle considering how cheap it is.

So back to YOUR business and YOUR customer satisfaction…

Are you really proud of your fancy packaging? Your customers may or may not care

Are you comfortable with shipping your product by 1st class mail? Your customers may be annoyed they can’t get it rushed to them overnight.

Consumers often gauge their product opinions on very minor things.

Example: I didn’t buy a washer/dryer set because the door hinges felt flimsy. Yeah, it’s superficial, but superficial things are often how consumers make decisions because it’s all they’ve got to go on.

I can’t tell you what your customers value most - And neither can you, unless you ask them.

Go ahead, ask.

The legal tide may be turning against many of the most popular companies on the Web. Numerous Internet companies, from YouTube and Flickr (YHOO) to eBay (EBAY) and MySpace (NWS), have built their success on the participation of their users. In the past, the courts have been quite clear that if those users violate laws — by posting copyrighted video of Viacom’s Comedy Central shows on YouTube, for example — the Web company is not liable. Increasingly, however, the courts are siding with rights owners and ruling that Web sites are responsible for illegal submissions.

Taken to the extreme, the original Napster model was nothing but a method for users to share copyrighted files illegally.   Now they’re trying to iron out the “shades of gray”.

Anyone relying on user-generated content should pay close attention to this case.

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom’s copyright material. Google argues that the law provides a safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright takedown requests.

This is going to be a HUGE online precedent, it’ll be very interesting to see which way this goes. Similar to my article a few days ago about eBay profiting from its sellers’ copyright infringements and not being motivated to shut down sellers, Google/YouTube is in the same boat.

Google argues that they’re working hard at deleting copyright infringements, it’s a bit of a wink-wink nudge-nudge process. If YouTube hadn’t been sold to Google (ie were still a small company), they would be SO crushed by this Viacom lawsuit.

Fair warning to small-time operators running a similar business model out there…

I new Chipotle Grill restaurant was just built near my house, and I wanted to find out if they were open for business yet.  I found their corporate website here.

If you want to find out why I’m calling it terrible website, click that link first before you keep reading.

Go ahead, I’ll wait….

waiting…

waiting…

waiting…

waiting…

Did you realize that if you mouse over the logo  that an entire menu drops down? I first assumed that the page didn’t load correctly, and discovered the menu by accident.

Terrible.

Besides that, it’s a nice looking website, fun stuff happens when you click a link, etc, but what good is that if a large percentage of people never even figure out how to enter your website?!!

This is a extreme example, but there are a hundred other things that most websites accidentally do that hurts readership and sales.  Usually, simple is better, and the flashiest websites don’t make the most money, they plain easy-to-use ones do.

eBay claims that they pull down fraudulent listings as soon as they’re notified of them. From my personal experience and observation, they could easily do more than they do… But doing more costs them in revenue.

From what I’ve seen, they only pull down individual auction listings when they’re flagged as selling an illegal product, whether its a knockoff of a brand name, or a copyright infringement of some sort…

What they DON’T do is automatically review the similar listings of the seller.

(News Flash: If someone is selling 10 Rolex Watches on eBay and one of them turns out to be a counterfeit… most likely they’re all fake. However, when I’ve reported a seller’s listing for copyright infringement, only THAT listing is removed, not all of their listings (even when it appears that all their listings are similar, IE, all copyright infringements)

Bottom Line: eBay profits from copyright infringement sales and from illegal sales of knockoff products. They make a profit from every sale, so how motivated are they to REALLY catch every infringement?