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AppSumo Deal + Launch Blueprint + Results

This post includes a Launch Blueprint for AppSumo and I will update it with my results.

I just launched the ViSPR SEO Network as a one-year AppSumo deal for 59 USD instead of 1439 USD for the similar Expert Plan.

ViSPR is a backlinks exchange network that solves SEO with a ready-made partner directory. Basically you just need to embed the directory code on your own partner page to donate links to and receive a backlink from every partner in the network. This is 100% hands-off link building on autopilot.

You can check out the AppSumo deal here:
https://appsumo.com/products/marketplace-vispr-seo-network/

AppSumo is best known for Lifetime deals, so why did I launch a one-year deal instead? Sure, a Lifetime deal is a bigger plus for new customers and cuts deeper into your own pocket. But in this case, It´s not that I am greedy, but about keeping the product functionality alive:

ViSPR is a backlinks exchange network and "linking out to other websites is encouraged by Google, so your website does not look like a dead end. Backlinks is an important ranking factor for Google Search. In fact, not linking out to other websites can get your page penalized." (Summary of quotes by Matt Cutts, former Head of Google Search).

BUT, and this is a big BUT: just creating a solid block of backlinks from dead websites will be flagged as a spammy linkfarm, which is an older black hat SEO strategy that Google has shut down some time ago. In order to keep the network fresh and alive, there needs to be only active websites with organic traffic. No dead SPAM pages are allowed. And there needs to be new users coming on board all the time and some natural churn from unsubscribes as well.

The reason for the one-year deal, is that people can come and go at any time thus keeping the partner directory alive.

I know this decision is limiting my deal and will cut into my sales, but I prefer to keep my customers happy and safe from any future algorithm changes or penalties. Of course, this might not be necessary for your product and I would recommend you run a lifetime deal any time.

On the other hand a one-year deal leaves the option to retain a user after 12 months or even upsell them to a better subscription plan offered outside the AppSumo platform. In any case this might become a perpetual source of income for people that are really loving your product.

Another reason for the deal is that building backlinks from scratch is a pain in the @55. I have dome this several times for different customers and recognized a pattern. Most people in one niche will partner with the same people from that niche. So why not just hook em all up directly? With ViSPR I just found a way to build links only once and automate the process for every single partner connected to the network. So every new partner adds more value to the network.

AppSumo is perfect in this regard as it allows me to reach a huge target audience that mainly consists of startup marketers, serial entrepreneurs and agency owners. A perfect fit for my partner network which can help me accelerate the initial growth from zero partners and links. I don´t even limit the number of partners or backlinks, so this exclusive AppSumo directory could grow pretty big over time, pumping out a lot of SEO juice for everyone.

So if you need early traction to grow your user base, AppSumo might be a good place to start.

My Goal:

My goal for this AppSumo deal is to sell 500 codes, which would translate into 29500 USD revenue before fees.

Drawbacks to consider:

There are also drawbacks when launching on AppSumo: This is a marketplace deal and as such is not being actively promoted by AppSumo themselves. It does not get a shoutout to their email list or any social media recommendations. You only benefit from the organic traffic to their website and have to promote your product all by yourself.

Launch Blueprint:

Promotion Trick #1:
Promote this in special Lifetime Deal groups on Facebook and Reddit. You will see an instand spike in traffic to your website. and your first sales almost right away.

Promotion Trick #2:
Build some viral recommendations into your registration process. I did not include this with ViSPR, as we tested it before and got a ton of SPAM submissions, but I used a Raffle competition instead of a real viral invite, so most likely my execution on this just sucked the first time around. Note to myself: Revisit and improve!

Promotion Trick #3:
Leading up to the original launch I was doing 1:1 lead gen on Betalist and Product Hunt and combined it with a cold outreach campaign on Mailshake. I only tested around 100 people and these are my results:

Cold Outreach Results to 100 ice cold prospects (but highly targeted and hand-curated)
80% Open Rate
33 Clicks
10 Leads
6 Sales

Not that bad! I just need to find a better way to scale this as the lead are all hand-curated. My next step is to use Scrap.in to collect more leads from LinkedIn and play around with the possibilities of Phantombuster.

Promotion Trick #4:
Content Promotion with relevant postings sharing your idea and approach on social media. (You are reading it right now). Submit to Indiehackers, Hackernews, Growthhackers, Hackernoon, and whatever other engaged community of early adopters you can find.

Go look for the biggest and most engaged groups on Facebook and Subreddits on Reddit. Make sure you comply with the group guidelines or approach the group admin to support your deal as an affiliate. (Something that does NOT work with AppSumo marketplace deals, as they are not being offered to affiliates!) Darn...

Promotion Trick #5:
Launch on Product Hunt. Sorry, this is still in my pipeline for after the AppSumo deal. I think this works best when you already have first engaged users that can help out making a fuss. There is also an advertising opportunity to get listed in the Product Hunt newsletter for several times, so maybe that is just the better approach anyway.

Promotion Trick #6:
Social Listening. Use Gummysearch.com to find people talking about your niche and competitors and jump right into the discussion to help out and recommend a solution. There are other social listening tools that accelerate the discussion discovery but you can also search on Facebook, Linkedin or Quora.

Promotion Trick #7:
AppSumo Competitors. Always keep launching... right after your AppSumo deal you should be talking to Pitchground.com. It´s a much smaller community, BUT they only run a dozen deals at the same time and always actively promote your deal with paid ads. This cuts deep into your share as they are asking for 60% of the sales revenue vs. only 10% from AppSumo. But lately I was talking to one of the ViSPR partners and he told me that they launched on Pitchground and make some 175000 USD from it. Even though they will only get 40% from that the active support was making them more than an unpromoted marketplace deal on AppSumo on page 30 where not many people even click through.

So much so far...

I don´t want to annoy you with too much talk, so please let me know in the comments if this was interesting to you, could help your own launch campaign and if you want to keep track on my results?

  1. 1

    so, how many sales did you get from AppSumo? :-D

    1. 1

      Hi Daniel, even though AppSumo did not help to promote our deal at all, we still sold more than 70 deals with 51 active deals as of today. Even though I had to remove some 20 applications because of bad matching or SPAM, I consider that quite O.K. and will update our original pricing for a new SaaS and Startup-related directory starting in January 2022.

      AppSumo helped us to determine the need in the market, learn what questions and concerns people have, and address those needs. Funny thing is that we have a large proportion of SEO and marketing agencies on the list, which we did not see coming...

      If you ask me if I would do an AppSumo deal again, then NO, I would not! Unless it´s a freebie and to use it for traffic only. I would opt for lead gen on Linkedin with a cold outreach approach. (using Expandi.io for example).

      AppSumo has launched more than 7.700 deals in 2021 alone, so you can estimate how many they will really support. It´s just become quantity over quality.

      Hope that helps :)
      Regards, Thorsten from https://vispr.net

      1. 1

        @Thorworx thanks 10x for your reply, it was everything that I needed ... I'm asking this because I'm actually working on exactly what I think would have helped you big time ... setting your expectations right about AppSumo's true growth impact on your business

        as a token of appreciation, here is the link - https://thebootstrappedway.com/#appsumo-breakdown-thank-you

        p.s. the numbers are the bare minimum in sales ... in a couple of days I will finish the algorithm that will allow me to forecast the revenue for over 700 AppSumo deals with a crazy close to reality accuracy

        1. 1

          Hey Daniel, sorry to say that these sales numbers must be completely off. I have several of these deals and they have even more reviews than the sales numbers you counted. Not sure what exactly your intention is here, but it can only work if your numbers are correct. I suggest only including deals that are over, so you can approach and ask them for the real results.

  2. 1

    Interesting idea.

    I have some feedback though.

    The whole app sumo promotion aspect is really confusing to me as someone unfamiliar with them.

    My second concern is that this is still link spam and people should be aware of that. See bullet points 2 & 3 in Google's advice on Link Schemes

    1. 1

      Hi Jack, reading this guideline basically every link that you set to promote your blog posts that redirect to your own website from any social media post or profile would be considered link spam. There is no way for Google to check or enforce this guideline, else Facebook and Twitter would be the biggest SPAMMERs on the internet. But content promotion on social media WORKS, that´s a proven fact.

      There are more than enough other sources that confirm that backlinks are important for your website else it looks like a dead-end to Google and we have proof this works for our customers, and we have taken measures that it will not get flagged or penalized. I agree there surely is room for discussion, but in the end, it is your decision...

  3. 1

    No SSL on your site? Anyway lots of good nuggets here. Thank you for sharing.

    1. 1

      Of course, we use SSL. Don´t know what you mean.

      1. 1

        That’s a very defensive answer. Not sure what I mean? I’m going direct to your site from mobile in safari and it says NOT SECURE … I click on the URL and there’s no https. That’s what I mean, obviously.

        1. 1

          Thanks again. The SSL is now being enforced on mobile as well. THX for pointing this out!

        2. 1

          Looks like the mobile browser does not add the https:// automatically. So I am going to enforce it through our website. THX for pointing this out. technology...

          1. 1

            Oh legit okay I’m glad you caught that.

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