Site profile: thebetterbachelor.com
Goal: to create a bachelor cookbook and sell it to other bachelors online. The price of the cookbook was to be very cheap so that it wasn’t too much of a risk. The book itself was supposed to be picture rich and very verbose. It showed how to accomplish tasks that other books assumed a person knew.
Technology/Process:
thebetterbachelor.com was redirected to /10dish for 10 Dish Cookbook. The thought was at some point to broaden the platform if the cookbook was successful.
This was a one page selling page with a paypal link. It simply talked about the features of the book, the cost of creating your own meals, and compared this all to going out. The cost savings was emphasized.
I also appeared to give an ‘author’s note’ to the potential customer.
If the visitor chose to purchase, it was a paypal IPN process. So they received a success message and then they were emailed a link to download the PDF when paypal finished the transaction. The link contained a special URL that used Zend Framework to read in the source PDF and stamp their name and email on each page.
There was also a coupon system that bypassed the purchase system and allowed an instant copy to be sent.
Lessons Learned
I learned that I really needed to give away a free chapter. Up until receiving the product, visitors did not know the quality of the book. It could have been horrible with no pictures.
After speaking with a SEO expert I know, he set me up with an A/B test. Unfortunately, not a lot was determined from that. His suggestions was to develop the newsletter style approach which seems to work. Hook people for some free information, and make a sales pitch later. I never thought of doing this because when I purchase something myself, I want it. I don’t want to wait till I get a few emails about it first. But, he says this seems to be the best way to market items like this.
Overall, it was a good project. I didn’t sell as many as I’d like but I paid for the cost of the food - and that was enough for me!
Screenshots
Bonus! Download the cookbook free!