Product Launch Tips - Have You Considered Handling Refunds?

This is probably a topic that many marketers haven't really considered. Let's face it. Most of us spend our time focusing on making sales right?

The truth of the matter is that once you launch your first information product and begin to make sales there will be a certain percentage of that will ask for a refund.

That is assuming that you're offering a refund for your product in the first place. If you're not, you are at a huge disadvantage in competitive niches. Nearly all products sold online offer a refund of some sort on product purchases.

Plus, you'll make only a fraction of the sales when you don't offer a refund for online purchases. After put yourself in the customer's shoes. You're asking them to buy something when they've only seen a picture or video describing it. On top of that there are still many consumers who are skeptical to buy online. A refund policy reassures them that they are safe when they buy from your website.

Handling Refunds For Physical Products:

With a physical product you'll have a distribution center that handles the product delivery as well as the product refunds and returns. The sad reality is that if a product is returned it is often damaged. So, you're losing money on the deal. And that is on top of the actual money you refunded the customer for his purchase. Also, your distributor will charge you a fee for handling the returns and repackaging the product for resale if possible.

While you will be losing money by refunding physical products, the huge increase in overall sales should more than cover these small losses.

You will pay for the distribution center to handle the refunds and product returns, but on your end it is a fairly simple process. You essentially are outsourcing the job to them.

Handling Digital Product Refunds:

With digital products there is almost always a 100% money back guarantee involved. By the way, this is a huge selling point that increases your sales.

Why?

It's simple. You can just let them keep the digital product if it's an eBook or something they've downloaded. Likewise, if it's a membership site, you can block them from further access after the refund has been issued. You as the business owner did lose the sale, but at least you didn't lose more than that.

Issuing refunds for digitally formatted products is far easier than handling physical product refunds.

Typically, online marketers who sell digital products allow the customer to keep the product and simply refund the purchase price electronically to their credit card.

All of this can be done automatically using credit card processing and shopping cart applications. It can be managed by the individual seller, or he may elect to have the task outsourced to his VA.

For membership sites, marketers sometimes elect to issue a refund for the last subscription payment made. However, many times, there is no actual refund, but a cancellation instead.

For example, if you paid for this month's membership on the 10th of the month, you would have access to the member's area until the 10th of next month. At that time you would automatically be billed the subscription amount to pay for the next month's membership. If you decided to cancel your subscription on the 28th of the month, you would not get a refund, but you would still have access until the 10th of next month. Then you would no longer be billed.

The great thing is that all of this can be automated with membership site software.