For newbies, the terms ‘launch jacking’ and ‘site hijacking’ may sound ominous and dangerous and all that bad stuff.
That’s what I thought so too at first because whenever I search for product reviews (especially Internet Marketing products), I see a lot of scammy and dodgy looking sites on the web telling people they’re giving 80% discount and $20,000 worth of bonuses for a $27 product (does this look familiar?).
So I decided to write this post to tell people that there’s a better and more ethical way of doing ‘launch jacking’ or ‘site hijacking’.
Watch the video below (if you don’t want to read) or just scroll down to read everything.
What is ‘launch jacking’ all about? Why should you know about it?
Firstly, launch jacking is when an affiliate marketer will try to ‘hijack’ or ‘jack’ an upcoming product launch by ranking their ‘review sites’ or ‘review videos’ in Google ahead of the product launch.
So when the product finally launches, and marketers email people on their list, these people (email subscribers) will see their review articles/videos on top of Google.
More often than not, these affiliate marketers a.k.a. ‘launch jackers’ offer obscene bonuses (thousands of dollars worth of freebies) for a product that costs a mere $27, $47, or $67.
Unsuspecting people will often fall for this crap. Unfortunately, many still don’t understand the saying, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” 🙁
Here’s a graphic to help you understand:
Secondly, you should know about this marketing technique because there is a LOT OF PROFIT POTENTIAL.
There is usually a lot of ‘buzz’ around these product launches especially from big-name product vendors.
These product launches are very competitive because these big-name vendors often hold ‘affiliate contests’ to encourage their affiliates to promote the said product to their subscribers and win bonus cash (with some going up to 4 digits in cash bonuses) in the process!
Here’s how savvy affiliate marketers usually do launch jacking:
There are many methods by which you can launch jack but this is the most common one that I see:
(1) go through the list of upcoming launches on Muncheye.com, JVNotifyPro.com, WarriorJV and other similar sites to look for the most profitable products
(2) create a new website from scratch (with domain name closely matching the product’s domain name) or create a product review on existing website (could be Youtube video or article)
(3) rank that new website / product review page / product review video on Google
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this model per se. However, some marketers take it too far because instead of providing actual product reviews (meaning they’ve used and tested the product), they just COPY and PASTE the vendor’s salespage and use their sales videos too (without having used the product at all)!
So, in short, these sites are nothing more than copies of the product sales page and provide ZERO VALUE to customers who are looking for honest reviews.
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Here’s an example of Launch Jacking
1. I checked the upcoming launches on Muncheye.com and see that tomorrow, 1st August, Cindy Donovan will release a product called ‘Commission Bullseye’.
2. I type this keyword into Google ‘Commission Bullseye review’
3. Lo and behold, Google’s page 1 is full of crappy review websites that are nothing more than copy and paste jobs of the Commission Bullseye sales page and their sales videos:
Can you guys see what I mean??
These scammy review sites are up days before the actual product launch so when the product hits the market, i.e. launches, they are on top of Google which means people who are searching for reviews will eventually end up on their websites.
How do launch jackers make money?
These savvy but scammy marketers make a lot of money when people search for product reviews and click on their affiliate links!
They get a credit for the actual sale even though all they’ve done is just copy and paste the vendor’s website.
So for example, you click on any of the links above.
And you click on the link that says ‘Click Here To Buy Commission Bullseye‘ or ‘Get Your Discount Here‘ or whatever their call to action button is, then their affiliate cookie is saved on your computer.
When you buy the product, and their affiliate cookie is saved in your pc, then they get a commission (usually 50% but some products offer up to 100% commission!).
This is why they would have instructions on their site asking you to ‘clear your cookies’.
This is to make sure THEIR affiliate cookie is the most recent one on your pc so they get the $$$ commission.
The process sounds really simple, right?
This is the main reason why ‘launch jacking’ is so popular.
Unfortunately, this is also the reason why many people are turned off by affiliate and internet marketing in general. Really? $30,000 worth of bonuses??? LOL.
But a lot of people do fall for that crap and end up being burned in the process.
So how do you ‘ethically’ jack an upcoming product launch? Is it even possible?
Yes, of course it is possible. And it’s fairly quite simple too. You don’t have to scam and lie to anyone.
Here’s how you do it:
1. Contact the product vendor and ask for a review copy and test it to make sure it matches the features advertised on the sales page.
When you’re done reviewing, write all the pros and cons, write about the 5W+H (what, when, where, why, who and how) of the product to make your review as thorough as possible.
Then do SEO to rank your review article on Google so when the product is launched, people will see your website at the top of search engines!
Now, no one’s going to accuse you of copying and pasting someone’s salespage!
Easy, right?
Well, not exactly.
Unless you are an established marketer with a good reputation, no product vendor is going to give you a free pass to their product.
So what do you do?
Proceed to the second option.
2. Wait for the product to go live and buy it as soon as it’s available.
But that won’t be launch jacking anymore, will it?
Well, no, NOT in the traditional sense of ranking webpages on Google via traditional SEO methods BUT the fact is SEO is not the only source of traffic nowadays.
Even a tiny budget (say $5 per day) can go a long way in paid ads (Google Adwords, Bing Ads, FB Ads) if you do proper targeting.
Read the next section for exact steps on how to do this step.
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Step by step guide to ETHICAL launch jacking with ‘Super Jacker’
Super Jacker is a cloud based software developed by Brett Rutecky. This awesome software allows you to ‘hijack’ other people’s websites and legally use their content and authority to get you opt-ins and make you sales.
Again, I would like to stress that you should only ‘hijack’ websites whom you are affiliated with!
This way it’s a win-win relationship:
You use their content to get sales for both yourself and the product vendor.
If you hijack any other website without being affiliated with them, then I think that’s just stealing and obviously unethical.
Especially if you jack their website and promote ANOTHER non-related product on the jacked page. That’s just wrong on all levels.
Alright, so let’s start off with how to use Super Jacker to ‘hijack’ product launches ethically:
In this example, we will be ‘hijacking’ the VideoMakerFX sales page because I am an affiliate of this product. 🙂
1. First of all, you have to sign up to be an affiliate of the product and make sure you’re approved before you do anything else.
If you’re applying for a product on JVZOO, here’s a screenshot of how you do it:
2. When you click on the Request button, you will be directed to a page that looks like this. Take note of the text in red.
3. Once you are approved as an affiliate, you will need to click on the green ‘Get Links’ button and copy your affiliate link as shown in the image below.
4. Login to your Super Jacker account and click on ‘My Slides’ then click on ‘Create New’
5. You can change the slide settings as you can see below.
6. Here comes the fun part: designing the ‘slide’. You can mix and match any of the elements which I’ve described below to achieve the ultimate goal of making the reader click on your ‘slide’.
Here’s a sample slide I’ve made for this tutorial:
7. Now, we go to the ‘My Jacks’ section:
There are 2 ‘jack types’ available: cURL jack and iFRAME jack.
cURL jack is best for people who only want to use the authority of the website.
This is NOT for affiliate marketers or anyone who relies on COOKIES dropped on their potential customers computers in order to make sales.
For affiliate marketers, you should make sure you use the iFRAME jack to get credited for affiliate sales.
8. Next, we click on ‘View Jack’ to see how our jack looks like on the actual website. This is what we see:
9. Notice the domain name on the jacked URL. All jacks are hosted on shwit.us.
You can use a link shortener like bit.ly, tinyurl or goo.gl to hide the shwit.us domain when you share your link on social media.
OR
You can use a plugin like Pretty Links or a self-hosted solution like Easy Redirect Script.
I personally use Easy Redirect Script because it gives me so much more flexibility and control when it comes to cloaking my affiliate links.
With regard to our example, the jacked link URL is http://shwit.us/videomakerfx
I will use EasyRedirectScript’s Stealth Page settings to change the jacked URL to https://angiearriesgado.com/go/videomakerfx-superjack-demo
Click on this link so you can see first hand the magic of ethical launch jacking!
https://angiearriesgado.com/go/videomakerfx-superjack-demo
It looks just like the original VideoMakerFX website (because it is) and if you wait 10 seconds, you will see the demo slide with our bonuses on it!
10. That’s it! All we need to do now is share our jacked link with the whole world! How? By sharing it on your blog, your social media channels, forums, etc.
This is a super awesome tool and it’s very powerful for jacking websites and product launches.
There’s nothing to install and you can create your ‘slides’ and ‘jacks’ in minutes. I highly recommend this software!
Note, however, that it wasn’t designed with SEO in mind because obviously the content would be 100% duplicate.
But this is PERFECT for those who have plenty of friends and followers on social media. They can just post their links and people will click on them because they trust these marketers.
My Final Thoughts
Launch jacking (and site jacking in general) are really powerful techniques that marketers use day in and day out to make serious cash online.
But you can’t just ‘jack’ any website you don’t have the authority to do so because it’s just plain stealing.
I’m sure you wouldn’t be happy if you someone used your content without your permission and profited from it!
This is why I recommend only jacking websites whom you are affiliated with.
I’m positive these vendors won’t mind you using their content since they will also profit from any sales you make! So it’s really a win-win situation for you both.
Also, you have to choose the products you want to ‘jack’ carefully as not all product launches happen.
Some are moved to a later date (this is generally fine) while some don’t happen at all (this is bad news if you’ve done a lot of work already).
The good thing is if you are using Super Jacker you don’t have to go through the hassle of setting up a review site or video and ranking it on Google.
You can just simply create a jack and share the link with your audience!
Lastly, I also wrote a few related posts and you might be interested to read to know more about my other methods of making money online:
- The 5 Best Online Businesses You Can Start At Home In 2017 (Without Spending Big Bucks!)
- Affiliate Marketing Without a Website: A Step-by-Step Tutorial On How To Promote Affiliate Products Even If You Have No Website
That’s it for now. Let me know what you think about launch jacking and site jacking in the comments below.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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