So you ask, What is a Launch Jack?

Despite my bootstrapping philosophy, I do spend money on things that I believe will bring me value. As affiliate marketing is the first strand of my digital nomad / escape the rat race / make money at home business strategy I read a number of blogs targeting this market. One element I keep coming across is launch jacking – but I didn’t really understand what it was. so I bought a very well priced online course where a successful internet marketer shares his launch jacking strategy.

So, all this is good, but what exactly is a launch jack?

Briefly, when a new product is set to be launched there is generally a lot of “buzz” about it, and not a huge number search rankings for it yet, therefore by taking advantage of this unique combination of circumstances it is possible to make a number of affiliate sales.

My multipronged approach to earning money online starts with generating ongoing income from affiliate marketing. On the first review of the training I purchased, focusing only on a product launch phase appears to generate short term returns not the long term passive returns that I require, and that was my original impression before starting too.

However, I try to avoid taking anything at face value. As part of my focus on creative techniques, when possible, I like to involve my subconscious in the decision making process. So, for this exercise I undertook to do a load of research – including working the full way through the course videos plus looking up some training from other super affiliates in the launch jacking arena, and then I procrastinated.

My mother used to hate my procrastinating. I was constantly told off for it as a child (especially when it meant I had to stay up late on the last day to finish my homework), so imagine my surprise when, as part of the MBA study, I discovered that procrastination is actually a valid technique for increasing creativity and innovation!

If you don’t believe me, check out this article The Perks of Procrastination, published by in the Harvard Extension School Professional Development blog, in which there is a fascinating study discussed featuring the venerable Microsoft Minesweeper computer game. Now, before you get too excited, you do have to use procrastination effectively to harvest the benefits – for launch jacking I decided to engage my subconscious in mulling over what I had learned. I did this by diverting my attention to other areas of this blog, reading new training information (on writing effective copy this time – I’m sure it will be a blog topic soon) and undertaking exercise over the period of a few days.

When I returned to the idea of using launch jacking as part of the FleeCorporate passive income strategy upon further consideration, there are a number of advantages that need to be weighed in my decision making process:

• Early Entry for SEO – lots of low competition keywords
• Focused external demand from launch activities
• Buyers searching will have some intention to buy already
• Products selected for their longevity could continue to drive long term conversions once the launch period has finished

How does this fit into my brand?

I spent a few days mulling whether launch jacking was appropriate to the FleeCorporate brand. I do have to admit that I went back and forth a number of times on this front, but in the end, I’ve concluded that it is a valid affiliate marketing technique and that sales techniques are necessary and valuable within the entrepreneurial space. Although in keeping with my brand, I will be exploring launch jacking as only one of an arsenal of techniques.

I don’t feel that I can effectively create resources around earning money online unless I try some of these techniques myself, therefore as I expand into product reviews I will include some launch jack products. This will also give me opportunities to create case studies and explore different approaches, strategies and promotion techniques as well as tracking the data – one of my favourite things!

Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone

Having worked through the full launch jacking course in a day, the one thing that really stood out to me was not that this was a very labour intensive way of doing things – it is, but I expected this, I think Vince Lombardi said it best:

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”

Vince Lombardi

Rather that the thing that was going to hold me back from trying launch jacking was that it was a big step outside my comfort zone.

There are a number of reasons for actively trying to step outside your comfort zone – for me, I firmly believe in trying to do one thing that scares me every day, because that is how to grow and develop as a person. If you’re a regular reader you know by now that I’m a proponent of creative techniques for increasing innovation. Another way of stimulating innovation is to try new things, and expand your boundaries because this gives your brain additional areas of experience and context to add to what it already knows.

Something that very few people know about me is that the only job I was ever fired from is selling telephone contracts door-to-door. I was fresh out of university, new to living in the UK and the company was so high energy and full of passion that I really wanted to be successful – but a natural salesperson I was not. However, I took a number of sales skills from that experience and its high time I started using them here! So, I’m going to add launch jacking to my arsenal of techniques.

What resources did I use to learn about Launch Jacking?

I purchased the training after seeing a review written by another affiliate marketer who also uses the Wealthy Affiliate platform for their hosting and training. Before you get concerned about Wealthy Affiliate, just to be clear the platform does not encourage selling to fellow members, in fact, it is actively discouraged. However, I was reviewing a blog post made by this member and the training program was exactly what I needed at that time.

You can read about why I’ve chosen Wealthy Affiliate in this post.

Now, I have a general beef with training like this – and it is that most affiliate marketing training is selling you a process to follow, a step-by-step recipe for success. As a keen student, I’m generally distrustful of recipes – but that doesn’t mean that I can’t learn from them. This is why I continue to undertake training of this type, and I am happy to report I did learn a number of valuable bits of information from this video course which will be put into practice as I explore launch jacking.

For the sake of clarity – just because I am wary of recipes, doesn’t mean that they are bad (I even often follow them when cooking). It is more that I disagree with blindly following recipes without critically engaging with what they are doing.

if you think about it – if you were baking a cake and one of the ingredients were anchovies, it would trigger you to make a considered decision as to why the recipe would say such a thing. You would consider it within the context of your experience – perhaps the recipe was written by an avant-garde chef with a reputation for using strange ingredients, or there is a desirable quality of the anchovy that makes for a fantastic cake or it might just mean that somewhere the spell checking process went a bit awry. But you would make this evaluation within the context of what you already know – and I implore you to do the same when purchasing affiliate marketing training – try it, test it, but also engage with it in the context of what you already know.

A summary of what I learned includes:

• Where to find launch jacking opportunities
• Which opportunities to target as a novice, and how to progress as my reputation and experience increases
• Techniques for gaining affiliate approvals on various platforms
• How the standard launch jacking squeeze page is put together
• YouTube and Canva tips for creating professional review videos
• The techniques and tools that super affiliates are using
• Some of the top names of Super affiliates and content creators

Where to from here?

So, having evaluated the launch jacking training within the context of my business strategy and determined that it does actually fit, my next step is to try it out and see how I get on with it.

So to progress with this, I actually purchased another program, from a different creator, a Newbie Marketer who had achieved fantastic success and wrote a “tell-all” guide – The Newbie Affiliate Playbook, pop across and see the review.

I’d love to know what you think about elements like this, is this kind of information helpful? Would you like to see more or less? Please drop me a comment with what you’d like to see!