Offer a Payment Plan Or Not?

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Topics: Price Training

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

Any time somebody teaches membership sites, you always see the question come up, "Should I offer a payment plan or should I offer some kind of a trial?"

And while it seems like a lot of fun, and while it seems like you might get a lot more subscribers and customers into your funnel by offering a payment plan or a trial period, I recommend you stay away from them, for these three reasons:

You are always training your subscribers (whether you realize it or not); you are training your buyers as well; and trials just plain suck and attract the wrong kind of customer that you do NOT want to be a part of your business.

How Do You Train Your Subscribers?

Even if somebody doesn't see everything that happens behind closed doors within your membership site; even if they have not bought a lot of things from you, they still see the way you market your stuff.

If you are always offering a payment plan, or if the reason for you offering a payment plan is because no-one is buying, you look desperate!  If you are not emailing to your subscribers enough, then they get the feeling like you are not much of a marketer.

If you keep dropping the price or keep piling in more bonuses without actually marketing your product, you look like somebody who will simply pile on more "stuff" in order to get a sale; and not really marketing and not convincing people and giving real good REASONS for them to join.

And let's say somebody does join.  You are training those buyers as well. If someone is used to only paying you $1 or $5, and they have been doing it for years, it might be a little bit of a struggle to get them to the $100 or higher mark.

It might take a little bit of time - but if you can get your buyers to pay you more money to get more stuff, instead of paying you less money to get less stuff, they will be used to dedicating a larger portion of their monthly budget to getting your solutions.  And that includes payment plans and membership sites.

I am totally for having a membership site where with every payment they get some new kind of concern.  But too many times I see launches happen where someone is offering a product for $100, and people split it up over five payments: they pay five times but they only get one thing at the very beginning!  How much sense does THAT make?

And the reason why many marketers offer payment plans like this is to claim a high number of sales. They get a lot of people to pay them $20 and then they claim that every sale was a $100 sale, when really it was only a $20 sale, and many people canceled along the way - because after all, why should somebody continue making payments if they already got the product they paid for?

Payment Plans Are Good If There Is Ongoing Content...

But they are not good if there is just a single-time delivery and you are doing it to inflate your sales numbers.

And finally, payment plans, and trials, and low barriers of entry just suck!  I have tried membership sites with and without a trial - and with the trial there were lots more dropouts.  There were a lot more people not logging in and not using the material because they didn't really have any motivation to; the price was low enough that it didn't really hurt their pocketbook, and they didn't have a good reason to make their money back - because there was so little to make back.

Trials really do suck. The new credit card laws are moving everyone slowly away from trials.  And I would definitely recommend you TRY marketing your site without a trial.  If you are having difficulty, it might be because you haven't trained your subscribers or your buyers enough.  Tell them why you are not offering a trial, and turn it into a good selling point.

For example, there is no trial because you want to reduce the number of people who get access to this information; there is no trial because you want them to take action on what you show right away; maybe certain bonuses are worth a certain amount of money and a trial would cheapen that.

And that is why you should only offer a payment plan for ongoing content, not for a single-time product:  because it trains your subscribers, it trains your buyers - and trials draw in the worst kinds of customers.

Do you offer a payment plan or not on your website? And what is the reason?  Please comment below telling me.

Do you want more blog posts like this? Comment below telling me you want it...

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iPhone 5 Wishlist: 30 Things I Want to See in the Next Big Smartphone

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Topics: Question

Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes

It's pretty amazing when you stretch your imagination a bit and think about new uses for existing technology.

I'll give you an example: years ago I had the FIRST script that caused Clickbank ads to appear on your site looking like AdSense.

It sounds silly now, but this was back when Clickbank was hot and AdSense was hot.

Although I was first, I had about ten (mostly free) competitors within the first 14 days of launching, including people like Joel Comm and Armand Morin.

How did I Differentiate Myself?

1. My script was the only one that was contextual... the ads were targeted to the content "magically" just like AdSense... no one else had this feature.

2. There was a built in referral system for points, only a couple other people had this feature.

3. It showed images of over 750 Clickbank products directly in the ads, no one else had this feature.

4. It allowed anyone with the script to establish their own pay-per-click AND/OR traffic exchange network... no one else came close to this feature.

And Now You See Phones That Let You...

1. Use it as a turn-by-turn GPS.
2. Let you access your usual time-wasting sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, from anywhere.
3. Take HD photos and videos.
4. Turn it into a roaming wifi-to-3G hotspot.

Every time a new iPhone, Blackberry or Droid comes out, it adds new things people can do with phones.  On that note, here's what I want to see in iPhone 5:

Likely Features

1. 128 GB storage (reasonable to expect by summer 2011)
2. 12 hours of talk time (improved battery life)
3. Video calling with non-iPhone4's (iPhone to webcam)
4. Recurring billing for some apps in the App Store
5. Built-in network file sharing (wifi and bluetooth) and the ability to download a FILE from the internet to the phone
6. Better Google Maps: works more like the Droid where it has voice recognition, turn by turn voice directions and a street view screenshot when you arrive (might happen when Google releases its free GPS app)

Communications

7. 4G network and gigabit wifi (maybe possible once iPhone isn't stuck with AT&T service)
8. Automatic syncing over Wifi (Steve Jobs has promised this eventually)
9. Tethering and mifi hotspot capability
10. Incoming Skype calling (Google Android competition will make this a necessity)
11. RFID or digital wallet
12. FM/XM radio receiver or HD TV receiver (might not be necessary if there's 4G)

Hardware

13. Dual speakers for louder and better sound quality
14. Touch sensors you can program it like the "virtual buttons" on the front and back
15. Ability to stream video to TVs with a USB dock or wireless HDMI
16. USB attachment instead of Apple's proprietary plugin
17. Smudge-resistant glass (might not be possible)
18. Keyboard attachment (I used to use a "stowaway keyboard" on my Palm pilot that folded up into a nice tiny square)

Software

19. A better notes app that acts more like EverNote and AudioNote combined
20. Better file management (plug into USB, drag and drop pictures and notes instead of importing)
21. Different skins or themes
22. Integrated RedLaser, Facebook, FlightTrack, Twitter, GPS, Bump, Amazon and Skype into the OS (seriously, buy out the "Bump" company, guys)
23. Integrated and standardized mobile banking
24. Gestures, i.e. put the phone into airplane mode by signing a figure-eight

Pie in the Sky Wish List

25. Unibody: no physical buttons whatsoever
26. Call screening logic, such as: direct straight to voicemail after hours or from unrecognized numbers
27. Ad-hoc (phone to phone) wifi capabilities
28. Solar panels for recharging (Apple has this patent but it's still probably a few years away)
29. Facial recognition and "maybe" biometric (fingerprint) security it can be accomplished with the camera
30. Presentation projector (maybe a 3rd party should create a special stand so it doesn't suck up battery life)

What features do you wish your phone had?  Will smartphones 100% replace computers someday?  Or do you think this is all ridiculous and a phone is just a phone, is doesn't need anymore features?  Please comment below, right... now.

What about you? What do you think?

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The Ideal Clickthru Rate for Your Squeeze Pages, Sales Letters and Blog Posts

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Topics: Copywriting

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized?  How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing?  I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.

A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave.  I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.

But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!

Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next.  (Opt-in to your list.)  If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.

After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you.  Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave.  There are no other links in this long, one-page web site.  Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.

If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch.  The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.

That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs?  What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites?  The answer is that you shouldn't care.  Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources.  They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.

Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.

What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.

Please post your thoughts below...

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The Number 1 Way to Create Your Next $97 Or Higher Training Course

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Topics: Product Creation, Product Launches

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

I really do want you to succeed and the way I made the change from a college student with no money to someone who had a residual income was by phasing out freelancing and creating info-products.

Freelancing is good to start off but you definitely need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and make a product that people can buy that has your name on it that proves you know what you're talking about and teaches them what you know.

I have made all kinds of training courses about PHP, webinars, list building, WordPress and more and I want you to do the same in whatever niche is your favorite with these simple steps.

Step 1:  Four Part Outline

You can take any problem and solve it in 4 steps. If you take it in even more steps, you aren't solving it simply enough. Let's use creating a website as an example. Here's 4 steps: Get a domain, get a web host, set up a WordPress blog, write your first post. How about writing a sales letter.

Have a headline that tells a story, list benefit bullets, explain features, then demand a call-to-action. If you're explaining something to someone, the best way is in 4 steps. No more, no less. Figure out how to solve a problem in 4 steps.

Step 2: Audio Dictation

Most people hate writing. I have gotten to the point where I liked writing but still it's not my favorite thing to do and I know that I could speak more consistently and faster than writing. I'm pretty sure you are the same way. Hence, you know your subject well enough that for each of the 4 steps, you can explain at least 3 things about it. Let's go back to the webpage example before where I said you need a domain name, a web host, a WordPress blog, and content.

When I explain how to get a domain name, I could tell people why you should only stick with dot com, how to decide on the perfect domain name that's not too long but is also short and explains what it is you're going to be offering.

I could tell people which registrar to get their domain and then what to do after, which could – this is into the second part, the web host – how to choose a web host, how to register with this web host, how to set up automatic billing, how to connect that domain name to the web host and how to get support from that web host and so on.

If you can talk for even 10 minutes about each of these 4 things, that's a 40-minute audio product. That's almost a complete CD. Chances are that especially on some of the advanced topics, you might talk for longer than 10 minutes, and if you can speak for an hour, you're doing great.

Step 3: Sales Letter

From that 60-minute audio, I'm sure you can find lots of things to talk about, reasons why your audio is the best, what people can expect to get out of the audio when they're done and why you are the most authoritative person to listen to. Your sales letter doesn't have to be that complicated.

If you can list 10 good reasons why people would want to buy what you have to offer, you can take some of the better reasons, turn them into sentences, take the really best reason, turn it into a headline, add an order button, and you have a basic sales letter.

Now, all you have to do is promote it to your list and to high-traffic areas, like forums, and get a handful of initial sales. Now, what re you going to do with that money?

Step 4: Reinvest Into a Transcript

Every minute that you speak is about 150 words of written material or a little over half a page.

That means your 60-minute audio is going to be over 30 pages in length. That's a complete report.

If you can add in things like bullet points or checklists, the report will be even longer, but the point is you now have a book and an audio book to distribute digitally, and that means that if your audio was only $10 or $20, now that it is bundled with the written version, it is now $30 to $40.

(Optional) Bonus Step #1: Membership Site

You do want to get that price point to $100, don't you?

Then put it all into a membership site. The simple fact that people can come back into your membership site for eternity, even if they lost their password, is worth slightly more. I have bought CDs of software before that charged me an additional $5 to have a lifetime download area. In this case, don't give people the choice, make them purchase access to this membership site where they will receive your report, your audio, and lifetime updates.

At any point in the future, if you decide to sit down and speak for 10 minutes, that is a bonus that can be found in your member's area. That means at this point, you now have your membership site priced at $50 or $60.

(Optional) Bonus Step #2: Live Q&A Bonus After Six Months

Now, here's the final step towards getting people to the $100 mark. There's something weird about the price point between $50 and $100 and that's why people don't really by in that range. If someone is willing to buy or pay you more than $47, they're probably willing to pay $97.

Don't bother pricing at $57, $67, $77, or $87. Just skip right to the $97 mark. I only price in this range if I am steadily increasing my price to $97.

Because you're a marketer, you could price your training at whatever it's worth and whatever you want. What I like to do is offer a live Q&A or a question and answer bonus, people can ask me any question they want for an hour or 90 minutes.

Once that's done, I will put the recording in the member's area and now, that member's area contains a report, an audio, additional bonus audios, and a Q&A video webinar recording, which is all worth much much more than $100 but just because you like your subscribers so much, you are going to price it at $97 and that price will be a bargain and that's why you take one idea and turn it into a $97 or a higher training course.

If in the future you want to increase the price beyond $97, throw in some live training and make it a webinar course.

Is this the way you create your $100 training courses? What is your method? Please explain it to me...

Does this help or do you have a problem with this?

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Four Ways to Get More Out of Your Followers by Challenging Them to Take Action

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Topics: Membership Sites, Productivity

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

If you've seen any of the comments on this blog, you know that my posts get a lot of response.

If you've been inside any of my paid webinar classes, you know that I have a lot of successful case studies and success stories from people who did exactly what I told them to.

How do you clone exactly what I did? You use one of these 4 methods to get your followers to take action.

"Know" Phase #1: The Blog Comments

Something you can do right now without launching a new product, even without making a new blog post, is look at the most recent post you've made on your blog and cap the number of comments at 10.

Put a note that says "as soon as that blog post gets 10 comments, you're going to disable comments." You would not believe how many people have told me at live events that they had no interest in leaving a comment on my blog until they heard that they might miss out on it. That's how most of your viewers are as well. They are just barely on the fence about whether or not to comment.

It's up to you to give them that one extra reason. If having 10 blog comments seems like a lot, here's a secret. You should be replying to your blog comments. This means that if 5 people leave comments on your blog and you reply to each individual comment with a comment of your own, that equals 10 responses total. When I say you should cap your blog post at 10 comments, you really only need 5 people to leave comments and then for you to respond to each one.

At first, you might have to pay people $1 per comment or have some of your friends leave comments, but after a few posts, when the social proof is there, people will leave comments as long as you are sending traffic there from your forum and from your list.

"Like" Phase #2: The Retweet Campaign

When I launch a blog post, after it has filled up the 100 or so comments I like to have, I will close out comments and then mail my list a second time, telling them to re-tweet that blog post.

In the past, I tried to tell people to comment and re-tweet but this works a lot better if you devote one day and one email just to commenting, and after you've gotten what you wanted, devote one day just to re-tweeting one of your posts. On my blog, I use the TweetMeme plugin and just by having that button there, I do get 10 to 20 re-tweets or one click mentions on Twitter.

But when I specifically ask people to re-tweet, it jumps to 50 to 200 re-tweets. That means that 200 different people have mentioned that specific blog post on Twitter which gives me more traffic and more social proof, and I like that at this point, the comments are turned off because that means anyone who comes to my site now has to sign up to my mailing list to be notified when they can comment again.

You can also have fun with this re-tweet campaign by re-tweeting your blog post once per day to drive the count-up and add some kind of prize. For example, if you can get 20 re-tweets of your latest blog post, you will make another blog post this week.

"Trust" Phase #3: Free Live Webinar

Most people have no strategy when they're leaving a blog post. I always do.

When I make a blog post, it's usually to pre-launch my next class or my next email offer. You should be doing the same.

Use the responses you got from that last blog post to create your presentation or to improve the next class you will be offering.

Even if you only have 10 comments, you can pick out about four things that people are having trouble with.

For example, I once made a post on my blog called Forfeit the Race to Free, telling people not to gravitate towards trials but instead be moving their price higher, and although a lot of people agreed with me, some people told me things like they were at first afraid to launch their product and now this advice got them to do it. Some other people argued that more people bought at a low price, which in my experience was false. More people bought at a higher price.

My favorite response to that post was that some – one of my commenters told me that somebody didn't buy from them because the price was too low and the average person thought that because it was so cheap, something must be wrong with it.

All those responses can make a great presentation or augment a presentation that's already ready because it speaks directly to people's fears and frustrations and the best part is you can use the same language, the same phrases people say to you and use that to make a killer headline based on your pressing issue.

"Close" Phase #4: Pitch And Close

You've already taught people something from your emails leading up to your blog post, from your blog post itself, and during your free live webinar. At the end of that free live webinar, all of that info should be coming in together - the emails, the blog posts, the comments, and this live training into a relevant and special offer.

You gave people a lot of tips on overcoming roadblocks but now it's time for them to pay you to get access to the step-by-step how-to system to get them from point A to point B.

Make it a special offer just for people on the call that will be increasing in price soon, have a real deadline so that there is real scarcity, and send them to at least a short sales letter explaining your offer exactly in black and white terms. That way, when people join your class or purchase your report or get your video series, they know exactly what they are getting.

Is your business model anything close to this, the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, and CLOSE step-by-step system? If not, why not and how soon are you going to implement this? Comment!

Leave your comment below...

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5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business

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Topics: Mindset, Price Training, Product Launches, Social Marketing, Traffic

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

There are many things that I do on a daily basis that almost are not worth my time – things like maintaining a free blog or submitting free articles or posting on forums or even updating my Twitter status.

None of those things directly make me as much money as landing a new joint venture, as writing a sales letter, sending out emails or running a webinar course.

Why do I do them? Because they demonstrate social proof. If someone is thinking about buying from me and they look me up, they'll find hundreds of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of forum posts.

What will I find when I look you up? Will I find lots of social proof or will I find negative social proof? I'll find a lot of good things about you if you follow these 5 steps.

Element #1: Blog Comment Scarcity Or Blog Responses

You probably do have a blog, right? If I go to it, will I find it's being constantly updated or it has not been updated in the last several years? Are there lots of posts or only 1 or 2? And out of those posts, are lots of people commenting? I decided very early on that when I created my blog, I wanted to have lots and lots of comments.

Otherwise, it would look like I was talking and no one was listening.

When I make blog posts and I get dozens, if not hundreds, of comments for every post, everyone can see how much of an authority I am. When you have the same thing, people can see how much of an authority you are. I got a lot of comments on my blog at first by limiting posts to only 10 comments.

I told people that if I got 10 comments on my blog, then I look at either the post content, otherwise I would stop.

Eventually, I escalated this to saying after I had 10 comments, I would close comments completely and now I have this at 100 comments per post and that's how and why you should have blog comment scarcity and blog responses.

Send traffic to your list, to your latest blog post, but have some kind of deal either that you will turn off comments or stop writing unless you get a certain number of responses because people read but they don't like to respond.

Element #2: Price Scarcity

How do you show that what you're offering has lots and lots of value but still get people to buy when you are first launching it and don't have a huge list? If you're entering a new niche or at first building a list, offer your product at a low price but set a deadline for when you will increase that price and then actually increase it.

This way, if people are buying your product for $20 but you are about to increase it to $50, people realize that the regular prize is $50. Don't run a discount because that will anger your early adopters, but this way, you will reward your fast action-takers and early adaptors by letting them buy low, and then once you have a proven selling record and you have testimonials, now you can increase the price at the time and date you said you would.

Element #3: Webinar Replay Scarcity

Are you starting to see a pattern where I'm talking about social proof?

People can be trained to give you a certain reaction. When you make a blog post, you train them to leave comments. When you are increasing the price, you train them to buy. The same should be true for your live instructions. When I run a webinar, I want the maximum number of people to show up live. When somebody shows up live, they're kind of a captive audience.

They can't fast-forward, they're usually not multicasting and they're sure as heck can't pause your presentation either. It's as close to real life as possible.

That's why you shouldn't always offer a replay of your webinar. Maybe you're not going to offer any kind of replay of your webinar or you're going to offer a replay only available for the next 48 hours or even you're only going to offer a replay inside of your paid membership site.

Either of these 3 strategies will motivate people to attend your webinars live and even if they don't believe you now, they will believe you after you stick to your guns and do what you said you will time and time again.

Element #4: Testimonial Follow-Up

The number one problem I see with sales letters is a lack of proof – why should I buy from you, why should I trust you if you can't show me anyone else who has benefitted from your training? That's why the easiest form of social proof is the testimonial.

Ask your buyers what they thought of the product they just bought from you. What I like to do is add this message as an autoresponder follow-up in my autoresponder sequence. This means that when someone buys from me and joins my list after 7 days, which is enough time to look at whatever product they just bought, I will ask them what they thought of it and have them directly reply to me and then I will use their testimonial on my sales letter.

It's important though to ask not for a testimonial but for an honest review, good or bad.

Element #5: Feedback Survey

I told you a little bit about getting testimonials and training people not just to read your emails but reply to them as well. I use this in many of my pre-launches when I ask people things like "do you want to see this product, do you want to see me explain programming?"

And then the next day, I will tell people how many responses I got. This does many things. First of all, it shows everyone that there is a high demand for what I am about to offer and it makes people part of the process. It makes them know that they have an interactive role in my marketing. When they respond to me, their "yes" answer goes into the total number of yesses I receive over email.

If you take any of those 5 elements of social proof, blog responses, price scarcity, replay scarcity, testimonial follow-ups, or feedback surveys, you should notice a slight increase in sales, a slight increase in response, and a slight increase in popularity.

Are you using any of these 5 elements yet? And which one?

If you're not using any of the 5, which one do you plan on using within the next week? Please leave me a blog comment below with your speedy response.

Ideas anyone?

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3 Myths of Subscriber Burnout

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Topics: List Building, Product Launches

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

If I ask someone why an email I sent didn't get a lot of clicks or why an offer I'm promoting didn't get as many sales as I would like or even when a blog post doesn't get as many comments as I'm used to, the usual cop-out I hear from other marketers is "your list must be burned out."

We've all wondered about this at one point or another. In fact, at one time, Lance and I thought we had burned out our list when we're mailing for a $200 training course.

Then, flash forward 6 months later when we're launching a $997 training course 1 week, a $497 training course a couple weeks later, and a $27 per month membership site at the same time and everyone is buying in, and in fact, the people who buy now tell us the price should be higher.

What's the difference? The difference between that $200 era and the $1000 era is that we trained our list not just to receive these offers but also to purchase and be happy at a certain price point.

Burnout Myth #1: Non-Responsive List

If you think your list is non-responsive, the problem is either from your traffic source or from your marketing.

I have seen way too many marketers come out of the gate one day and say, "here you go, here is my $1000 training course."

They have no teaching, no build-up and no pre-launch and they just expect people to purchase their $1000 course at a moment's notice. When people tell me that they do not purchase a certain product because of price, the problem could be that they can't afford it and would never buy under any circumstances or it could be they just did not have enough advanced notice to clear their credit card or save up that money.

That's why you need a pre-launch sequence and you need to mail more often.

This leads me to many marketers recommending that you only mail your list once a month or once a week. But the problem with that is we need to push a lot of people into buying an offer quickly, you really do need to mail them once a day during your launch sequence, and I see marketers try to get by with mailing just once a week or just once a month, and then when they have to mail once a day, the subscribers aren't used to it.

The solution is to mail everyday, whether you're selling, teaching, or doing a little bit of both.

Mail everyday, mail more often, and mail on topic. If somebody is telling you to buy their AdWords product over and over again and then one day turned around and tried to buy a product about forum marketing and there was no transition whatsoever, there is no consistent marketing message.

Have a real launch, email every day, and email at least 5 times when you're promoting something new.

Burnout Myth #2: It's Too Expensive

If no one is buying the things you have to offer at any price, consider where your traffic is coming from. I built my traffic up from a free forum but what I did differently is most of my subscribers had to buy something from me before they could get on my list.

They were all people who have been proven to have a credit card, have room in their credit card, and trust me enough to pay me. If you're building a list from ad swaps, safe lists, or JV Giveaways, you're getting the worst subscribers possible.

You're getting people who have not been proven to buy anything but who you do know get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails everyday for other free offers. You need to build a better list. Build a list that gets traffic from a better neighborhood. Get joint ventures. And above all, make a better offer.

It's one thing to offer a 100-page eBook or 5 hours of videos but what will those videos allow me to do? If you just tell me you are selling a real estate course, that's not very exciting, but if you told me that this course could get me to find the perfect property to flip in one day and I could flip it in one week and make a certain amount of money, that would be more exciting for me.

You need to position your offer to be more benefit-based and to be more exciting and fast and explain the answer to the question "what's in it for me?"

You might have to weed out freebie stickers. If there are some subscribers who yell at you or ask you repeatedly to drop the price, there's nothing wrong with removing them from your list if they are never going to buy from you. It seems harsh but you are doing them a favor because they don't like your emails.

Burnout Myth #3: The Wrong Niche

If I subscribe to your email list about copywriting and one day, you started emailing me about stock market trading, why should I even care? I didn't come to you as the authority for stock trading. I came to you as the authority to copywriting. You need to give your subscribers what they want.

If somebody joined your list because you offered them a free report on copywriting, give them more stuff about copywriting, give them a course they can join on that same subject.

Don't hop around in different niches. Give them the same stuff that they want and need. And build your list from the correct source. If you have a copywriting product, build your list from a copywriting forum, not from a stock trading forum and vice-versa.

You might not have to give up and change your niche overnight... just start offering your list what they want.  What they'll buy.

Did this post help you overcome any of the 3 myths of subscriber burnout? They were a non-responsive list, a list that thinks your stuff is too expensive, and a list that's in the wrong niche. Which one applies the best to you, 1, 2, or 3? And what are you going to do now?

Comment below telling me, please!

What are you going to do with this information right now?

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© Robert Plank, 4280 N. Berkeley Ave, Turlock, CA 95382, 408-277-0904, jx@jumpx.com