Money back guarantee to get more orders?
How likely is it to work for you?
While an online perfume offer seems like an unlikely
candidate for a money back guarantee, there
are serious reasons why it could work.
Money back guarantees were once standard. Advertising tests proved they could produce more orders. Then things changed. Marketers fudged their guarantees. The fine print took away what the large print offered. Buyers became skeptical and mistrustful. What did the money back guarantee really mean? The promise lost its power.
Then the internet came along, full of spammers and scammers. Now not only are the buyers fearful of being tricked, the sellers – with little understanding of the technology behind their platforms – worry that, unless they are careful, they will fall victim to online grifters. Out goes the money back guarantee.
Selling perfume online is a tough proposition. You need all the tricks in your bag to get the attention of prospects... and then – what's really hard – to get them to give you an order. I'm talking here about largely unknown (small, like mine) companies selling absolutely unknown fragrances. Can a money back guarantee have any value?
If you've come across my ads for $timeout and Mimosa, you've seen my money back guarantee. I offer a full refund, no questions asked, and no need to return the bottle. This is not as crazy as it may seem.
First, notice that this is an online offer which can be withdrawn at the click of a mouse. Are you thinking that so many people will respond that I'll be overwhelmed? I have never seen that happen. More likely I'll get fewer takers than I want, so it is extremely – extremely – unlikely that I'll get bombarded with orders from people who just want a free bottle of perfume.
Think about that aspect of the proposition. These people are not anonymous. To accept my offer they must send me their name, street address, and credit card information. They must trust me to deliver the perfume they ordered. I have their payment before they have the perfume. Then they must trust me to honor my guarantee. In spite of all the risks and scams on the internet for this offer to work there must be mutual trust.
Right now these offers are a test. I'm curious to see how customers behave and how well they like my fragrances. My suspicion, based on much past experience, is that although I may find myself with a few tricky customers, most – most – will respect my offer and NOT take advantage of the easily available refund UNLESS the fragrance really fails to please. If the fragrance really fails to please and I get too many refund requests, this feedback will help guide the development of my next fragrance.
There's one more reason why I'm experimenting with the combination of free shipping and the money back guarantee. It has to do with trademark rights. A trademark is established by offering "goods in commerce." In other words, putting your fragrance up for sale. To establish trademark rights you have to make a serious effort to sell your product; not to friends and relatives but to the public – to strangers. Then, if your name is unique – nobody else is using it or even a similar name – you acquire legal rights to the name.
If, in the future, you are approached by someone who wants to buy one of your names, one piece of information they will want from you is the "date of first sale." That helps establish the fact that not only have you offered your fragrance for sale but you have made sales. You really went out there and did it.
By making my two perfume offers no-brainers for anyone who is halfway interested, I'm seeking to establish a pattern of sales at the earliest date possible. The fact that a sale might result in a refund has no bearing on the trademark rights. Once, in the past, I did sell the name of one of my fragrances. It may never happen again but, I want to be prepared.
Homemade perfumes generally lack commercial value, regardless of how wonderful they may be, because their creators fail to record how their perfumes were made. To profit from a perfume, to sell it, to sell the rights to it, or have somebody sell it for you, you must be able to make more of it. To make more you need the formula, the record of how the perfume was made: what materials were used and how much of each material was used. While the formula is nothing more than a recipe, a simple piece of paper, it is the key to unlocking your perfume's commercial potential. With the formula in your hand you have the ability to make a few dozen bottles more or, like the celebrities, tens of thousands of bottles. How to create an international production formula for your homemade perfume is a guide to getting you started on the right foot, correctly documenting everything you do as you are doing it, and then using these notes with some basic mathematics to write a simple, accurate, universal formula for your perfume. Writing formulas for your perfumes can change the way you think about them. With your formulas in hand your creations are no longer "here today, gone tomorrow." Now, thanks to your library of formulas, your perfumes become immortal!
While much is written about perfume – the beautiful fragrances... the beautiful bottles – little is available on the "mechanics" of perfume production – the steps that take place on the "factory floor" where a beautiful vision is turned into a finished product, a "ready to sell" perfume. Now you can experience all of these steps, hands on, by making just one quart of your own perfume. If you follow each chapter and do what you are instructed to do, you will end up with from 8 to 64 bottles of your own perfume, depending on the capacity of the bottles you select. Along this "insiders journey," each step is profusely illustrated with professional color photographs and you'll learn — • Exactly what alcohol you'll need and where to get it • Why you'll want (just a little!) water in your perfume • What type bottles you'll need and why you cannot use others • Why you will use a spray and not a cap • How to fill and seal your bottles • How to label your bottles with the correct information so they will be legal for sale • How to select a name for your perfume that will allow you to acquire powerful trademark rights free. If you are a developer of scents you are encouraged to use one of your own for this project. If you are not a scent creator yourself you'll learn how to get a fragrance oil that is exactly right for this project. Online sources are given for all required supplies and materials. Nothing can hold you back from starting your project immediately!
Perfume is famous for the markup it can achieve, even for a middle market fragrance. While "everybody knows" that perfume costs next to nothing to make (not completely true) the making of it is often considered an esoteric secret. "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!" details how a 3-person company with no experience created their own fragrance in response to a marketing opportunity that was too good to pass up. The book explains exactly what was done to create a fragrance for that opportunity but it is far more than a history of the author's project. "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!" lays out every step in the process of creating your own perfume, either as a do-it-yourself project – and without the benefit of automated equipment some compromises and workarounds are required – or full bore professional production under your supervision. Either way you will be producing a quality fragrance at a remarkably low cost. Do you have a marketing opportunity that would be wildly profitable if only you could obtain your fragrance at a ridiculously low cost? "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!" is the guide you need to do it.
Now when you make your own perfume you can make it fully "commercial" meaning you will be creating a product ready for regular, continuous sales to friends, relatives, and the public! If the fragrance you've made has already won praise, why not share it with others? Some might pay you for it and want it for their web stores or retail boutiques! Creating your own perfume from dropper bottles: Methods, mechanics, and mathematics guides you through steps that can turn your hobby project into a perfume business. Discover how close you are now and how little more you must do to take what you made with essential oils and dropper bottles into a business of your own! For an introduction to this book, watch this video.
You can build a perfume business of your own using this business plan as a guide. By following its detailed strategy you learn to identify motivated groups of potential perfume buyers. Members of these groups are near the tipping point of desire for a new perfume. You don't know these people and they don't know you but you know a marketer they trust, one who does not currently sell perfume and might never think of selling perfume were it not for your approach. Here is where you step in with a professional plan, promotion, and perfume to take advantage of this ripe opportunity for mutual profit. Before your first promotion has peaked, you will already be developing a relationship with your next marketing partner. Following this plan, you will gain more and more profit with each new marketing partnership.
A really great name, a special name that is just right for a particular perfume or perfume marketer (or entrepreneur with money to invest!) can be worth a ton of money. But few individuals with great ideas ever manage to cash in on those brilliant ideas. Instead they wait while others "discover" their idea, acquire legal rights to it and make all the money while they are left out in the cold without a penny having been earned for what was once THEIR idea.
If you are struggling to name your perfume and are looking for a name that will have real value, "Naming Your Perfume And Protecting Your Name" will help you weed out low value names and point you to names that have better marketing value plus the potential to become valuable assets in themselves.
If you have a great name you want to protect but no fragrance, "Naming Your Perfume And Protecting Your Name" will guide you through the simple steps you must take to acquire a legal right to that name before someone else grabs it! Best of all, "Naming Your Perfume And Protecting Your Name" shows you how to gain strong legal protection for your name without a lawyer and without spending more than pocket change.
Never had an idea for a product name? Never thought much about perfume? "Naming Your Perfume And Protecting Your Name" may stimulate your interest in a whole new game that, when played well, can make you lots of money without your having to leave the comfort of your home office.
When you name a perfume you create a valuable asset – the name itself. To sell your perfume you want the most effective name possible. But a good name can have value beyond the edge it gives your sales. In naming your fragrance you are creating a trademark and a trademark can have value independent of the product. The value of that trademark can vary. Much depends on how well, in naming your perfume, you follow the trademark "rules." How To Create A More Valuable Name For Your Perfume first helps you develop a name that will be effective in selling your perfume. It then prods you to make use of certain techniques that can turn a good name into a great trademark, strong and valuable. If you have questions about how to protect a name, How To Create A More Valuable Name For Your Perfume will answer many such as:
- Can you protect your name yourself or do you need a lawyer?
- Can you register a trademark without a lawyer?
- What does it cost to register a trademark?
- How do I enforce the rights I have established?
How To Create A More Valuable Name For Your Perfume covers both state, federal, and international protection.
For article updates, etc., add your name to Phil's mailing list.
Philip Goutell
Lightyears, Inc.
