Bits du Jour Results are In.

As you probably know, yesterday my new ebook, MicroISV Sites that Sell! was one of two featured discount items at Bits Du Jour (BDJ). The ebook, which normally sells for $19, sold for that one day for $10.
The results, at least to me, were impressive:

Total sales: 228.
Gross revenue: $2,280
Less PayPal/2Checkout.com fees: -$146.49
Less 30% to BitsDuJour: -640.46
Net [pretax] revenue: $1,493.46

Let me add few words about before, during and after the sale, and a few suggestions re timing, promotion and a warning.

Before the sale:

Working with Bits du Jour could not be easier. I use E-Junkie to track and fulfill my sales, and BDJ worked with their system, PayPal and 2Checkout.com many times before. Setup consisted of:

• Adding a PayPal discount code to E-junkie (Make sure to add a reminder to remove it after the sale!)
• Creating an extremely simple page in WordPress page to act as the purchase form from BDJ.
• Supplying BDJ with artwork, testimonials and sample copy – they do the rest.
• A few temporary changes to 47hats.com’s sidebar.
• Adding tracking code from BDJ to E-Junkie’s after purchase page.
• Temporarily reducing the price of the item from $19 to $10 in 2Checkout.com since that system does not support discount codes – a major limitation.
• Only pain involved – staying awake Sunday til 9 pm (when my day started at 3 a.m – don’t ask.) to activate the above since the sale starts 12.01 am Eastern time and I’m in California.

During the sale:

Don’t plan on getting much done – you’re going to be glued to your email/ecommerce pages, watching for sales and tech support issues.

Two kinds of technical issues arose during the sale for about a dozen customers – neither problem was BDJ’s. The first? DownThemAll primarily and a couple of other download manager/accelerator Firefox Add-ons that open multiple connections to download a file.

Normally a great idea – but not when dealing with downloading purchased bytes because E-Junkie and most others let the seller cap the number of downloads allowed before expiring the link. The result – going from being able to download up to 5 times to link expiration in one bang. Fortunately, E-Junkie let’s you resend the a download link or a free llnk (which I though had a bit more class, given the situation).

The second technical issue that arose was a couple of declined sales – PayPal doesn’t like South Africa this week and 2Checkout.com fraud control zapped a transaction by with a Chilean credit card with an IP in Angola – except that the buyer’s an a very understanding Chilean engineer working in that country. These are the normal false positives that happen every so often in our business – but you better plan on being at your laptop that day because the sales clock is ticking.

After the Sale:

Sales today are about double pre sale, which is good, if a little bit of a let down. Watching that many sales happen in a day was, at least for me, a taste of what I want to see every day. Something changes in your head when you see that many sales in a day, even if they were discounted. And that change is life changing, in my opinion.

A few final points:

Did I have a 27-point marketing plan for my BDJ day? Nope:

• Went to Business of Software Forum and searched for Bits du Jour, reading how others had done and what they’d done. Then I swiped the good ideas.
• Got the sense that right way to do this one day sale was let people know it’s coming, that it’s a temporary thing, but they had a substantial opportunity to save if they wanted to.

Yes, sales dropped the three days before the sale by roughly 20%, which might be linked to the sale, but given my product’s price, few customers are that price sensitive. BDJ gave me an opportunity to reach a whole new audience in a trusted way because these people trust BDJ.

Any surprises:

The number of sales from outside the U.S. and U.K. In fact, I plan to post about this particular point later this week if I can mash up the numbers.

Final thoughts:

This was the first time BDJ has sold an ebook rather than an app. Your results will vary. My price for this ebook was and is deliberately low to attract new readers who’ve never heard of me. But enough people have taken me to task on having too low a price that as counter-intuitive as it may seem, my sales overall would have been higher if my price was higher.

I can see several scenarios BDJ (and other daily discounters) make huge sense:

• About a month, 6 weeks after you release your 1.0 or a major release as a way of accruing a whole new cohort of new customers and hopefully supporters.
• When you have a mature app with flat sales – why not breathe some life into it?
• Far sooner after your release if your primary goal is to build community for upcoming products/releases.

Finally, do I plan to do it again? Definitely. Daily Discount sites can be an excellent way of reaching new corners of the Internet. And did I mention the four new consulting clients I got during the sale? <grin>

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Tagged as: Bits du Jour, microISV