It's no secret that there is a lot of money to be made by marketing informational products. While the products can vary in topic, many of them are devoted to the subject of making money. The market for this type of product seems insatiable, and it is not unknown for ebooks or software that are related to making money to amass six figures in sales in just the first few weeks after publication. The sales of these products are often good for a lot of people; the author makes money, and so do the affiliates who promote the product in exchange for a portion of the sales price.

Given that a tremendous amount of money can be made in a short time selling informational products via an army of affiliates, authors sometimes have a tendency to rush their product to market prematurely. While it is understandable that an author would want to get his or her product to the market as quickly as possible, it can hurt sales tremendously if everything isn't properly in place prior to putting the product up for sale.

Here are two examples of problems that have been seen recently as a result of incomplete preparation:

Traffic snags - The release date of an information product is generally known several weeks in advance by the affiliates that promote it. Extensive e-mail promotion by affiliates may result in thousands of people visiting the product's Website within the first few minutes that the product is available. It is not uncommon to discover that there is so much traffic to these Websites that customers who want to read about the product or actually buy it cannot connect. If customers cannot connect to a products sales page, then no one can buy the product and the author and affiliates won't make any money. Worse, potential customers who cannot connect may give up and not return to the site later. It is vitally important to have some idea of how much traffic to expect when setting up a sales page with a Web host and to make sure that you have the capability to handle the expected volume of traffic.

Insufficient documentation - A recent software product flopped tremendously on release, despite what appeared to be sufficient preparation. The Website was set up on a robust server, and a seasoned professional wrote the sales page. The sales copy was quite compelling, the affiliates set out e-mail messages to their lists touting the software's potential, and customers were genuinely interested in obtaining this software product upon release. Upon release, the product was a complete flop. The reason? The software came with virtually no documentation, and its user interface wasn't particularly intuitive. Customers who bought it couldn't figure out how to use it, and people started demanding refunds. Even worse - they started letting their friends know about the problems with the product, and within a week, sales of this potentially useful product had dwindled to nothing.

It is certainly important to make sure that your product is complete prior to putting it up for sale. Having the product ready isn't everything, though. It is equally important to make sure that everything else that is necessary to make sales is in place. Failure to make sure that everything is ready can result in an affiliate marketing catastrophe.