This is a great question… “how early should your pre-launch start”?

Let’s see what Michael Cheney’s doing for his upcoming launch of The Golden Thread.

He has a JV signup page which describes the product. I found out about that page on August 5th, but when I checked out the page, I saw that Michael says he already has 23 JV partners signed up (does that mean they’ve agreed to do a mailout, or they’ve just opted in to the signup form on the page?) and he shows pictures of them all.

Now, this is interesting because it does two things… 1: provide good “social proof” that other marketers have decided to opt-in which serves to endorse the product and 2: it shows that Michael has been working hard to get JV partners on board for at least a few days before he contacted me on August 5th. With a launch date of 23rd September, that means that Michael has started pre-launch about 8 weeks before the launch date!

So, there’s a good starting point… for a big launch, with a high ticket item and lots of JV partners, plan for about about six to eight weeks of pre launch!