The Forex Power Strategy (FXPS) course is a video-based training system that teaches beginner-to-intermediate forex (foreign exchange currency market) trading skills. The product was first sold beginning in April 2007. I personally designed the course, recorded all of the videos myself (using Camtasia Studio) and I therefore own all rights to the FXPS course, sales page, videos, etc.
The new owner will receive the following:
- The domain name
- The sales page & videos it contains (you get exclusive rights)
- The FXPS video lessons - 33 videos covering 21 lessons (you get exclusive rights)
- The FXPS email list containing the email addresses of 610 customers who subscribed
- Complete ClickBank sales records of all 1,285 customers including date of purchase, full name & email addresses
- A “getting started” document explaining:
- How I kept refunds low (about 9.7% which is really good for a forex product sold through ClickBank)
- How to re-launch the product once per year and work only about 4 weeks per year.
- The new method I discovered to make my upcoming re-launches bigger (I expect 4-5x bigger)
This course is unique because it doesn’t offer customers some “robot” that automatically trades the forex (foreign exchange) market for them. Instead, it is an actual training course that teaches the customers to understand the forex market and how to trade it intelligently. Many customers don’t want to rely on some questionable “robot” to trade their money for them, but would rather trade based on a solid understanding of how the market works. So, although the course was recorded in 2007, in a sense the training is timeless. The only time the videos may need to be updated is if the interfaces discussed in the videos change.
How much time does it take to operate?
It takes about 4 weeks (8hrs/day or less) of concentrated effort per year. Then maybe an hour a week after that to handle refunds, or answer simple questions.
How much money does it take to operate?
It cost me about per month to run a dedicated server. There were absolutely no marketing or advertising costs. I just grew my own email list and used that in conjunction with affiliates to drive all sales.
How fast can the new buyer have money coming in?
This depends on your available resources (time/money/effort):
- If you have access to an email list or a high-traffic website that is geared toward the home-business niche, then you could probably launch within a week.
- If you have no access to any medium that allows you to reach a lot of people quickly but you have money to spend on marketing and advertising, you could launch within a few weeks to a month.
- If you have little to no marketing money and no existing way to reach people quickly (email list or website) you can (a) grow a huge email list organically like I did and/or (b) you can get a lot of affiliates on board prior to the launch. This will take a little more effort, but it is probably the most profitable way to launch. This method could take as little as 3-4 weeks before launch and could cost little to nothing. (Plus, I can give you some pointers on how to do this.)
Looking forward…
The course, up until now, has been sold exclusively through ClickBank. The price was set at for only 5 days - from April 26, 2007 until May 1, 2007. On that date I bumped it up to 8, where it has remained ever since. The course sold very well at that price but, I suspect the optimal price may be higher…possibly somewhere in the 5-5 range.
It can be difficult to get ClickBank to raise the maximum price they will allow, so it took some convincing to get them to approve me for a price of 8. I believe that moving forward, it may be a good idea to test the product using a new affiliate network…maybe PayDotCom. This would allow the new owner to raise the price even higher than 8 with no problem. Doing so would give the course a higher perceived value and is probably more in line with what customers actually receive.
Many forex courses sell for ,000 or more and the quality and quantity of information contained in the FXPS course seems to be out of the league of most ClickBank products. I have received many positive statements suggesting exactly that from students (customers) since first releasing FXPS. Unfortunately, I never planned on selling the FXPS business and didn’t retain copies of those customer emails.
It’s possible to monetize the FXPS course far more efficiently than I have in the past. For example, you could produce, buy or affiliate with a back-end product selling for far more and offer it to your customers. You could also hook up with a forex brokerage (as an affiliate) and earn money for referring your customers to that broker, etc. The forex market is a very profitable niche and I didn’t take the time to monetize my course very effectively.
What is and isn’t available for inspection?
The following items are available for inspection…
- The revenue screenshots
- The revenue CSV file
- The traffic CSV file
However, the lesson videos and sales page are not available for inspection prior to the sale.
I know that may seem unusual, but, I know many serious buyers would happily purchase this website with those items “sight unseen”.
Please allow me to explain my rationale…
This is a very valuable product/business. In just 20 months (Apr 2007 - Dec 2008) it generated over 7,000 in net profit (that’s after covering refunds and affiliate payments). But, the problem with this type of business is that it’s virtual. It’s digital. The entire thing could be stored on a USB thumb drive and carried in your pocket.
If I give access to the videos and sales page, it would be tantamount to giving away 99% of the business for free and in my opinion could be very damaging for the new owner.
In the past the sales page and videos have (obviously) been available publicly to a certain target audience…an audience I didn’t expect to try stealing my Intellectual Property. However, I now consider them to be “trade secrets”. That is because in this auction, I am presenting to a different audience. I am now showing exactly how successful this business has been…and this audience undoubtedly includes many individuals who are likely to try duplicating my website and stealing my success.
I know from prior personal experience that these types of auctions attract a lot of people whose sole intention is to find what businesses are “hot” and then steal as much intellectual property as they can while posing as a potential buyer and “inspecting the goods”.
In reality, seeing the sales page and videos won’t matter to most serious and experienced buyers. You know who you are. What matters to you is that this business has earned what I claim it has and can continue to do so. The quality of the sales page can easily be inferred from the number of sales and the quality of the videos can be inferred from the very low refund rate. This can also be corroborated by searches for the product online.
By withholding the sales page and videos from inspection, I am protecting the eventual buyer (and myself if there is no buyer) from unscrupulous bottom-feeding fraudsters. So, the videos and sales page are not available for inspection. They will be delivered only to the eventual buyer after receipt of payment in full. Period.
If you don’t like that arrangement, please move on to another auction. I won’t change my mind on this issue. My main concern is the protection of this business for the eventual buyer.
Who is the right buyer?
The right buyer for this business must recognize its true value and be able and willing to pay what I know it’s worth. The right buyer will also have either: (a) an existing network of contacts looking for home-business type opportunities (i.e. a mailing list, a high-traffic website, etc.) or (b) be willing to do what it takes to launch the product starting from ground zero. If you need it, I will provide detailed instructions that will teach you everything you need to know for your first launch.
Why am I selling?
Divesting myself of this business will allow me to free up more mental energy for my current projects.
The FXPS course has been sitting on the back burner for too long. My last proper launch was in Feb 2008. The mini-launch in Oct 2008 doesn’t really count in my mind. The problem is, I am too busy at the moment with other projects to re-launch it properly myself. And also i am in the need of some money and a quick sale is what i am looking for.
So, if you’re interested in being the new owner of the Forex Power Strategy course, place a bid or send me a message and well see if we have a deal.
Revenue Details
In an attempt to be as thorough as possible, I have created month-by-month screenshots of the ClickBank reports from April 2007 until December 2008 (the entire time FXPS posted any sales or refunds). I have also included a CSV file to allow you to sort and manipulate the data any way you want. Both the screenshots and the CSV file contain all transactions related to FXPS including sales, refunds, chargebacks, etc.
Please note, I have removed all sensitive information from the financial documents in order to maintain the privacy of all involved parties. Again, the new owner will receive a full CSV file containing all customer data (full name, email, etc.) downloaded directly from Clickbank.
Costs of Operation
I originally ran the website on a shared host for about /month. Then eventually moved it to 1&1 on a dedicated server to handle the higher bandwidth from the video downloads. This server cost me 0/month…but there was a big down side. The problem was that after a launch, the the bandwidth needs would drop dramatically until the next launch. I have found a wonderful solution that will allow the new owner to run the website on a smaller shared hosting account (maybe -/month) and then offload the video to another service that is pay-as-you-go…so you only pay for what you use and significantly reduce your monthly costs over the long term.
The only other cost I had was an Aweber account to manage my mailing list and that cost me per month until the list grew beyond 500 subscribers, then it went to /month.
Three Launches
The FXPS course has been launched three times since April 2007. Rather than steady month-to-month sales, the annual launch method allows me to only be “busy” with the site about 4 weeks of the year. The rest of the time I can work on other projects.
The data below shows actual net profit from all three launches. Remember, this is pure profit after handling refunds and paying affiliates. The first two launches were proper launches with a good degree of affiliate participation. The third launch was more of an emergency “mini-launch” to raise some quick cash. That mini-launch had almost no affiliate involvement and earned only about 20% of the normal launch amount.
Note: The “5-day Net Profit” shows how much net profit was earned within the first 5 days after launch. The “Trailing Net Profit” shows how much net profit continued to come in until the next launch.
- Launch #1: April 26, 2007
- 5-day Net Profit: ,961
- Trailing Net Profit: ,472
- Launch #2: February 22, 2008
- 5-day Net Profit: ,959
- Trailing Net Profit: ,871
- Mini-Launch: October 3, 2008
ClickBank Sales Screenshots
- Launch #1 (approx. dates)
- Launch #2 (approx. dates)
- Mini-Launch (approx. dates)
ClickBank Sales Spreadsheet
Download the ClickBank CSV File (88K) (Includes all sales, refunds, chargebacks, etc.)
Scans of ClickBank Checks
Here are a few checks I received from ClickBank while I ran the FXPS business. This is not a complete collection, but rather just to show a couple of examples. Also, please note that ClickBank withholds a percentage of each check as a “reserve” for possible future refunds. So these checks are slightly smaller than earnings shown above.
See the first check I received after launch #1 (29K)
See the first check I received after launch #2 (419K)
