My free + shipping test launch

On Tuesday I launched an offer I had been planning for a while.

It’s a free + shipping offer for one of my overstocked books. I’m used to burning through about 2,000 books a year at least at conventions.

Even taking into account running four Kickstarter campaigns in 2020, there was NO WAY I was going to get close to that this year without shows.

I have roughly 7,000 books in my garage, and I generally get about 2,000-3,000 new books a year. I rely on outgoing Kickstarters and conventions to keep my inventory at a manageable level.

Specifically I was going to use 2020 to burn through inventory on Pixie Dust, which is overstocked by about 500-600 units. I expected to have about 1/4-1/2 a palette left of it by the end of this year, and I had a full palette left, which is no good.

That palette is taking up space I desperately need for new books.

Luckily, I have been studying marketing for a long time, and I knew there was a specific offer called a free + shipping offer that a lot of marketing gurus use to sell courses and other things.

Basically, customers get a free book, as long as they pay for shipping and handling.

I had never seen it on fiction books or comics before (though I later learned of at least one other person how had tried), but since I have so much additional stock of Pixie Dust (along with 2,000 copies of Ichabod #1 and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos, along with 1,000 copies of Cthulhu is Hard to Spell), I thought this would be a good way to try out the offer and see if it had any legs.

If it did, then I could rotate the offer to help burn inventory and keep my stock manageable.

I was going to start running ads without making the offer to my list, but after talking with Tyler James Vogel​, I decided to do a test run and see how it worked.

I set up the offer, which was $9.60 for shipping + handling to get the book. Then, I made a bump offer on the checkout page, which was that people could get three more books (Cthulhu is Hard to Spell #1, Katrina Hates the Dead, and Monsters and Other Scary Shit) for $59, a 33% discount.

Once they finished their checkout, they were offered a $40 upsell to complete the collection with Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter #1 and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos.

I sent one email on Tuesday and another on Saturday morning, and made a Facebook post about it on Wednesday, and then again on Saturday.

Since I have a BIG Kickstarter launch in two weeks, I didn’t want to overwhelm people with emails, ESPECIALLY since I will be overwhelming them in two weeks with lots and lots of emails.

So? How did it go?

We ended up with 106 orders, including 10 people taking the bump offer, 2 people taking the upsell order, 3 people taking the bump + upsell offer, and 1 person taking the downsell.

I planned for 100 being the barometer of a successful campaign.

In all, we raised a total of $2,081.60 in revenue, easily the best single non-Kickstarter week ever.

After purchasing Thrivecart, which is what I used to run the cart, processing fees, and shipping fees, I ended up with a profit of $617.42.

How did I make a profit on a free book offer? Keep reading to find out.

All of the books are packed and I will be taking them to the post office tomorrow.

Would I recommend this to other people?

Well, I would DEFINITELY recommend it if you have overstocked books, especially if you’ve already paid off your whole run.

Now that I have paid off Thrivecart, I don’t have to include that in the next round, but I DO have to include advertising and potential affiliates, which will probably be in the $1,000 range.

I’m hoping that I can still break even or have a little profit when push comes to shove.

We burned through 156 books at the end, which is comparable to a show like Phoenix Comic Con and slightly more than Denver Comic-Con.

Generally, at a show like that, I have $1,500 in expenses and make about $2,600-$3,000,

We made less revenue by a considerable amount, and with shipping our costs were higher, but we still did have a profit on a FREE book offer, which was all thanks to the bump and upsells.

14% of people who bought took those upsells which led to $1022 in revenue, and you’ll see that our total profit was less than that amount.

Overall, 16,7% of people who viewed the offer took it, which according to my research is quite good. Anything over 10% is a very good offer.

However, this was sent to my list, and not to cold traffic, so I am sure it will go down considerably when I make that change.

I’m not sure exactly what this data shows, except that if you have a ton of overstocked merchandise you’ll likely never sell, and you don’t have access to shows, this is something I would definitely consider.