A lesson I have recently learned (the hard way) is how to best launch a new product online. One of the websites we run is a reviews website in the health industry. We review products in the industry and then have affiliate links for people to buy the products we are reviewing.

Well one of the companies that we have an affiliate program through came to us and offered to allow us to create our own ideal product in this industry. We got to choose all of the ingredients so we knew the product would be top quality. He also said he would give us 50% of all sales generated of the new product since he was only going to use our reviews website to market the product. I jumped at the chance and we moved forward with the project.

I had no experience with a new product launch in this industry. The health company gave us complete control of building a website and marketing the product. All they would do was create the product and then do order fulfillment (take orders and ship out the product). So we created the website for the product itself and then added the new product as our #1 product on the reviews website.

Things started out great as our reviews website and the website for the new product were the only websites ranking for the name of the product. Quickly though, our competitors caught on and started writing reviews of their own bashing our new product. They started to show up in the rankings as well because there was no competition for the term. Even though our product was far superior to theirs, they bashed it to no end (That is typical of this industry).

I knew we were losing sales because of the unwarranted bad press the new product was getting. We were still making good money (up to $800 a day) with the new product because people trusted our reviews and recommendations since we took the time to do in depth quality reviews. But I wasn’t satisfied. After speaking at length with the creator of the product he explained to me the right way to launch a new product in this industry (which should apply to almost any industry).

Get A Jump On The Competition

Your competition is in business for one reason, to make money. If you come out with a competing product that is better than theirs they could lose money so they will do what they have to do to beat you. In many industries ethics are thrown out the window.

Because we were launching a new product with a name no one had ever heard of, here is what he said we should have done.
Create several websites that talk about the product favorably. This is very easy to do as you can go to worpress.com and get a new blog called productname.wordpress.com. You should write as much as you can about the product so the website will rank better for your product name. Then have it link to the products website.

You then go do the same thing at blogger.com and this time write completely unique content.

Then you go to sponsoredreviews.com and pay to have seasoned bloggers to write positive reviews about your new product and have them link to the products website. This can cost anywhere from $10-$50 per review. Try to get at least one really good (high PR) blog to do it. These reviews will also start to rank high for your product name.

If you do these things by the time your competition catches on you will own almost all of the top 10 spots of Google when someone searches for your product name and your new product launch will go much more smoothly.

The biggest thing to remember is to take an aggressive approach to protecting your new brand in the beginning so your competitors aren’t able to bring you down easily.