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Procrastination
I understand if you need to post your comment below under a "fake" name (but I will still be proud of you when you use your real name)...
But I have a very simple 2-part question for you today:
Part #1: What's one thing you know you should have done today, yesterday, this week, last month... that you didn't do? (you can be as detailed or vague about this as you want)
Part #2: What's your excuse, reason, or story for not doing it yet?
I'll explain why I'm asking this question and what I'm going to do with your answers in the next blog post... what's important is you quickly answer both of those questions below and I'll talk to you very soon.
Blog Scarcity
If you don't have a blog, you need to get one. If you do it right, it's just 10 minutes out of the month writing/scheduling that month's blog posts and maybe 30 minutes a month moderating and responding to comments.
But here's where my blogging style gets controversial... blog scacity. Limiting the number of comments.
Why on Earth would you limit the number of comments people can leave under your post? Here's why...
- Social Proof: Without comments, your blog looks empty. Many people are on the brink of commenting. Give them a reason to comment right now.
- Time Limit: Even if people want to comment, they take too long to think of an idea. This forces them to write what they're thinking right now.
- Interactivity: It makes your blog a fun and interactive place.
- Up-to-Date: Have you ever had someone comment on a post of yours that was a year or two old? Me too. It's annoying. I want people to comment on what's hot right now.
- Simplicity: When all the other blog posts are closed, there are fewer calls-to-action on the page.
- Perfect Fit: You can adjust the limit depending on the size of your blog. On a big blog, go for 100. On a smaller one, set it to 10 and then personally reply to everyone's comments.
- Exclusivity: It makes the early commenters special, they're the only ones with a comment on there.
- Schadenfreude: Everyone likes to watch ice skaters because they're secretly hoping they'll see someone fail... what if you don't fill up your number of comments?
- Differentiation: Most blogs haven't thought of this, or they're too chicken to try it, so you'll stand out just by doing this.
- Marketing: To fill up the number of comments, you might have to mail your list or more or stick the link in your autoresponder sequence (a good habit to have).
- Launch: To make sure everyone gets their comment in on time, you might have to announce the post a couple days ahead of time (another great habit).
- Results: It just plain works! You know you want more blog comments so implement this strategy of closing comments down after a certain number, and see what happens.
Which reason do you like the best? Do you think blog scarcity is a good or bad idea? Leave your quick opinion in the comment form below and click Submit Comment.
The Accordion Method (And Now You Never Run Out of Content Ever Again)
Here's something I've been doing for years, that literally saves me a MINIMUM of at least an hour per week, which is 52 hours per year.
Because things are more fun to discover (and remember) when we assign cutesy names to them, let's call this the Accordion Method.
When it comes to blogging, e-mailing, Tweeting, creating membership content, or anything... they simply don't manage their time well. They burn out their blog too fast.
You can be better. You can be cautiously optimistic and schedule your content ahead of time.
And here's how to do it:
- Schedule six short blog posts, one month apart. That means where most people have six weeks or six days of content, you have six months worth...
- When you have time, write six more blog posts -- remember where talking SHORT posts or re-use your old articles...
- Now, compress it back down into six months -- so it's a new post every 15 days...
- If you have less than six months in the queue, schedule more monthly posts -- but if you hit 12 months, compress all posts 30 days apart back into 15 days
Get it? It's like an accordion... out, and in, and out, and in...
At the worst case, you only have a post or two, which means you have 1-2 MONTHS of content.
- Maybe this is for a $7/month membership site... add more content, bump it to $17/month or $27/month or higher
- Maybe this is for a blog... you can leave it on autopilot for months
- Maybe this is for your email sequence... you can actually have that thing sending messages automatically
The average person might get excited about their blog at first, write a bunch of stuff, then have nothing new to say... but not you! You used the Accordion Method!
Do you pre-schedule any of your blog or autoresponder content this way? Are you going to, from now on?
Best iPhone Apps: 2011 Edition
There are three things you should know about me when you look at this post: one is that I delayed getting a cell phone until age 20 (2004). I then delayed getting a smartphone (iPhone) until 2008 because I was worried it would kill my productivity. What it ended up doing was making me even MORE productive.
Even though smartphones "can" be huge time wasters, and can very easily distract you due to various apps, pop-ups, and games... but if you are holding off on a Droid or iPhone, you would be amazed at the health and productivity benefits you get when you use the "right" apps.
Here are my top nine iPhone apps for this year...
2011 "Health" Apps
#9: AmbiScience Power Sleep & Nap: If you haven't heard of binaural beats, they're special sounds you listen to using headphones. They emit one tone from the left earphone and another from the right, and when they combine in your head, they create special pulses that (depending on what kind they are) can get you more focused, make you more alert, or even put you to sleep. I use these to fall asleep on airplane flights.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzfSWBec4U
#8: MyNetDiary: I don't watch what I eat or how much I exercise religiously or anything, but every now and then I like to see how much water I drank today, along with how much sodium, calories, fiber, and protein I've ingested, plus how much weight I've gained or lost this week. You input everything you eat into this app and it charts all your levels for you.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFxL8oYLM6c
#7: 100 Push Ups: Three times a week this app tells you how many sets of push-ups (and how many in each set) to do in order to get you to 100 push-ups in 6 weeks. I started out only being able to do 25 push-ups at a time and by week 3 I was up to 80.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4UbI4jYCjc
#6: Nike+ GPS: Track your runs and walks, what routes you took, how many calories burned, your speed, distance, and all that good stuff. I used this while walking the Zappos.com Las Vegas Rock n Roll Marathon last year.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyphz5H1DSE
2011 "Travel" Apps
#5: Kayak: This finds way better deals on flights and hotels than Expedia. Lance and I were recently able to score flights to Thailand for $4K each (first class) when Expedia told us they would be $10K each.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1tjU04PdUo
#4: Hulu Plus: For 7 bucks a month, you can stream many TV shows and several documentaries over 3G or Wifi. What's even cooler is this app also runs on the iPad, and the Roku (a box that connects to your TV).
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4--ctn4Mpc
2011 "Communication" Apps
#3: Skype: If someone sends you a text message on Skype, or calls you on Skype (even if it's a video call) it rings onto your phone. And yes, when you answer the Skype call on your phone, you can make it a video call with the user-facing camera, even if you're not on Wifi -- the official "FaceTime" app requires Wifi, but not Skype. You can also send Skype texts and make Skype calls right from the phone.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QLjFdGZYw
#2: Find My iPhone: Locate, lock, and wipe your phone if you lose it anywhere.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vkTCeZN5Ts
#1: Amazon.com: Buy things even when you're not at home. I know I mentioned this one last year but it's still cool to be able to send someone a gift while you're waiting for a plane or buy something you forgot at the store. I've ordered some weird stuff lately from Amazon including supplements, Metamucil and grass-fed beef.
Those were my favorite apps for this year... what were your favorites?
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Put a Button on It
When people come to your sales letter, how many of them actually buy? When they come to your optin page, how many of them signup to your list? Do you even know?
Here's something you CAN know with 100% certainty. Consider these three pages:
- A sales letter you haven't put online yet
- A sales letter with all the text on it but no order button
- A sales letter with some or no text and an order button
Yep... even if your sales letter totally sucks, if it has an order button, people can buy!
Maybe you told shared the details in person, on a webinar, on the phone, or on a forum... they still have a way to buy.
You might not have the "perfect" headline or "perfect sales letter" but there's no such thing as a "perfect" order button.
Either it's there or not. You can mess around with making it bigger, putting fancy stuff around it... but if I can't buy, I can't buy. Even if you have the BEST "everything else."
Before setting up a web page, whether it's a sales letter or email optin page, make the button first!
- It's a lot better than staring at an empty page
- You can always go back and make parts of the page better later
- You know you're not going to feel like doing it later
- You actually have to let it be "good enough" because someone might find it and buy
Do you put your optin button / order button on your web page the very first thing? If not, are you going to do it from now on?
How to Pull Confidence Out of Thin Air, Starting Today (Easy 4-Step Process with PROOF!)
I was talking to someone the other night who was afraid to run a webinar. A lot of people are. Many of you have "enough" technical skills to do it, enough knowledge about your topic to present, but "something" is holding you back.
Let's change that in this blog post, for you, right now!
Go ahead and look at this page carefully, because it's going to help you make a sale (if you are a marketer), help people (if you are a teacher), conquer public presentations (if you are a speaker), and so on.
First, I am NOT a self-help expert of any kind. But I have run 359 live webinars (697 hours) so I know a couple of things about webinar confidence and public speaking.
You and I both have our own unique set of problems. Let's solve those problems for you, not in one huge step but in a couple of SMALL pieces at a time...
News Flash:
You Have Only Have 8 Emotions (Seriously!)
As a nerdy computer programmer, I like to take apart what makes us work. And according to psychologists (I'm not one and haven't read ANY books about psychology) you have 8 basic emotions:
- joy
- trust
- anticipation
- surprise
- fear
- anger
- sadness
- disgust
That's it! Anything else you feel is either one of these in greater or lesser intensity (i.e. rage, jealousy, distraction, annoyance, interest) or is a combination of these (i.e. love or guilt).
"But dammit Jim, I'm a computer programmer, not a psychologist." That "psychology" explanation looks like a bunch of ideas thrown at me. I like to deconstruct and simplify things.
This information isn't available in any book, only right here. At least not assembled in the way I've done it here. Let's get it into a step by step formula you can apply today.
Eight things are a lot to keep track of... are four key concepts easier? Of course they are. So let's keep in mind that each of these 8 emotions has an OPPOSITE... for example, the opposite of being "happy" is "sad", right?
Four Positives and Four Negatives
That means you really only have four negative and four positive states:
- ANTICIPATION (positive) <--> SURPRISE (positive)
- JOY (positive) <--> sadness (negative)
- TRUST (positive) <--> disgust (negative)
- fear (negative) <--> anger (negative)
(I've put positive emotions in ALL CAPS and negative ones in lower caps to make this more readable.)
The "green" and "orange" colors don't mean good or bad, it's just so you can tell which are the opposites of one another. For example, "joy" and "sadness" are opposites because they have different colors. (This is important for later.)
Here's something else you should notice from these (2 + 2 + 2 + 2) eight states:
- With 2 of the "positive" emotions, the opposite is a positive
- With 2 of the "positive" emotions, the opposite is a negative
- With 2 of the "negative" emotions, the opposite is a positive
- With 2 of the "negative" emotions, the opposite is a negative
You can have all the knowledge and all the skill in the world, but if your emotions (especially fear) hold you back, if you can't "get over yourself" so to speak... then you can't do anything!
This is why so many people have trouble putting up an optin page, can't YET run a live webinar, and so on. Too many negatives holding you back and not enough positives pushing you forward.
How to Change Your Behavior
(The Way That Really Works)
And I think the reason so many people can't get past it is they either let it take them over, try to ignore it, fight it or even go against it.
You have to REDIRECT it and USE it to your advantage. When I was young, I was in (music) band, played sports and gave school presentations probably just like you.
Anytime I "fought" what I was feeling, it distracted me from hitting the baseball. BUT... if I was nervous about playing saxophone in concert, I would use that alertness to do an even better job than I would otherwise.
(Maybe that explains why I was always stuck in leftfield/shortstop/3rd base in baseball, but was 1st/2nd chair in band class?)
To improve any skill, you need to go from:
- unconscious incompetence (unaware you're doing it wrong), to...
- conscious incompetence (find out WHAT you're doing wrong), then to...
- conscious competence (doing it somewhat right even if you have to work at it), and finally...
- unconscious competence (doing it automatically as easily as breathing or driving a car).
The seven stages of grief (shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, acceptance) take you up to "conscious competence."
Twelve step recovery programs (problem, awareness, decision, inventory, admission, readiness, openness, details, repair, inventory, meditation, repetition) stop before you get to "unconscious competence."
Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence
There are a lot of things I don't know. But I DO know about overcoming your fear of public speaking to run webinars because I've done it. And the secret isn't figuring it all out at once, it's focusing on ONE issue you have (i.e. running one in the first place, slurring your words, stopping for questions, silence or dead air... slowly fixing things, until one day you realize you don't have to try at all...
- 0% of the way there: ground zero
(not online, not doing webinars) - 20% of the way there: unconscious incompetence
(running your first webinar, just doing "something") - 40% of the way there: conscious incompetence
(aware of little things you're doing wrong on a webinar) - 60% of the way there: conscious competence
(fixing little issues i.e. breathing on a webinar) - 80% of the way there: unconscious competence
(running a great webinar automatically)
If you've heard of the 80/20 rule, you know that 20% of the effort will bring you 80% of the results.
Life's 80/20 rule applies here in that the last 80% is the hardest... you can put in just 20% of the effort to achieve an 80% skill level (the beginnings of "unconscious competence") ... but now you're running webinars and doing them correctly: making sales, being a good presenter, recording it, all that good stuff.
Let's connect your "skill" (good or bad) your "emotion" (good or bad)... we want your negative state to be in the past, and your positive state to be in the future, right?
Anger, disgust, fear, and sadness should somehow fit into past -- the "unconscious incompetence" and "conscious incompetence" areas.
Anticipation, joy, trust, and surprise are in your future -- "conscious competence" and "unconscious competence."
When you're incompetent, you're in a negative state. When you're competent, you're positive. But how do you GET there?
Why Don't You Go "Confuse" Yourself!
The key is confusing yourself and let me explain. Think about when somebody won you over by making you laugh, overloading you with information or just confusing you with conflicting information until you gave up. You change your state through confusion.
The lack of confusion is also how you stay in a state, and why you're stuck in the state you're in now. Let's see what happens if we pair the "unconscious" states (beginning and end) with emotions that are NOT opposites, and "conscious" states (middle stages where we're improving) with emotions that ARE opposites -- to add the "confusion" factor where we make a change?
The Exact Roadmap to Do It Today
We get this roadmap of going from "guilt" to "love."
- unconscious incompetence = sadness + disgust = guilt
- conscious incompetence = anger + fear (opposites)
- conscious competence = ANTICIPATION + SURPRISE (opposites)
- unconscious competence = JOY + TRUST = love
(Remember, both "green" or both "orange" next to each other, means they're the same, "green and orange" means they're opposites.)
What you'll do is use fear and anger to rise above the guilt, take some action out of impulse, experience anticipation and surprise once you realize what you're doing, experience the joy of completion and the trust that it's possible to repeat.
Here are the steps you need to go through in order, for example, to get confident with webinars:
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: (sadness + disgust) Do you feel bad because you're not making enough money? Feel guilty because you're not doing enough? It's okay to blame your "past" self for not doing enough... cry it out so you can move past it. Your present and future self WILL run one webinar this week, it's going to happen.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: (anger + fear) Remember when someone said you weren't good enough to do something? That same person would probably say the same about you and webinars.Prove them wrong. Are you jealous of someone else, who has more than you do? It's not fair, you deserve it more than they do! Get mad enough to make a difference.
Maybe you could do a webinar better than "they" would... now you have something they don't.
In any case, your marketing message isn't getting out now -- you need to run at least ONE webinar. Try it. What you've been doing so far isn't working it... attack this head-on.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence: (ANTICIPATION + SURPRISE) You're allowed to be a "little" bit nervous trying something, like webinars, that you haven't done before.But one of the cool things about doing a webinar is that you don't know what's going to happen. Doing a webinar means you have to move outside your comfort zone a little bit, but what have you got to lose?
The absolute worst thing that happens is that no one shows up, or no one likes your webinar, and guess what... you're at the same place you are now! In other words, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Once you do this you'll know where your limits are.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence: (JOY + TRUST) You completed the hard part... that first 2 minutes of the webinar when you were nervous, and you powered through it to the fun part.You finished your first webinar, and you're already excited about doing another one. Even if just one person said you were great, that made it all worthwhile, didn't it? You can't believe it took you this long to run a live webinar like this. You want to do it again and again. Your next webinar will be even better.
If you're not ready to run webinars, replace "run a webinar" with "make an optin page" ... "setup a payment button" ... or even "exercising" or "quitting your job" or "dating" ...
I'm not saying I know everything about everything, but you can apply what I know about webinar confidence to your own life, so that you can tackle that problem of having a SKILL but not yet having the CONFIDENCE to put yourself out there.
What do you think?
Curiosity Actually Increases Your Conversions! Here’s How…
Want to know the easiest way to get more of your e-mails read, and to get more blog comments?
Is it to say less in your e-mails? And less in your blog posts?
I wanted to finally know the truth, I did what any programmer would do... I took the word count of 100-plus of my blog posts and the comment count of 100-plus of my blog posts.
(My blog posts are an average of 539 words and I get an average of 28 comments per post... cool, right?)
I dumped the whole thing into an Excel spreadsheet and calculated the correlation between the length of a blog post and the number of comments it gets.
I was dead-set on telling you that shorter blog posts get you more comments, but guess what happened?
I Was Wrong... and The Answer Really Surprised Me!
Excel is supposed to give me a number between -1 and +1. -1 means a negative correlation. That would mean shorter blog posts get more comments. +1 would be a negative correlation, meaning LONGER blog posts get you more comments.
But the correlation was: -0.050037583
Almost No Relationship Between
Length of a Blog Post and Number of Comments!
There is no difference between a short blog post (my shortest is 40 to 100 words) and a long blog post (my longest is 1000 to 1300 words)...they get the same number of comments!
If you're a boring blogger, it doesn't matter if your post is short or long. You'll still get the same number of comments. And if you're exciting, whether you're short or long, you'll get the same number of comments.
It's about the content, not the length.
That Means Size Doesn't Matter... Or Does It?
So does that mean you shouldn't care whether your posts or short or long? It means your posts should always be short. Here's why...
Scenario #1 - One Long Post: Let's say it takes you an hour to write a 1000 word blog post. You could post it once and get 10 comments and be done.
Scenario #2 - Three Short Posts: Or you could split it into three blog posts, post there 333 word blog posts and get 10 comments once, 10 comments the next time, and 10 comments on the third part for a total of 30 comments.
So if you're trying to maximize the number of comments on your blog, why WOULDN'T you write short blog posts? Since it makes no difference?
And on top of all that, it's easier to "tease"... arouse curiosity...by saying less. When you try to get curiosity by saying MORE... it becomes more and more like an episode of "Lost" which to me is just too much work.
Keep It Simple....
Say less in your blog posts (keep it at 500 words or less) and say less in your e-mails leading up to your blog posts to get them to click.
I'll leave you with the template for Lance's BEST converting e-mail message ever. It's fill-in-the-blank and it's such a short and vague message it'll make your head spin...
This is what me and Lance joke about as the "What's That About?" e-mail template. Just replace anything inside (parentheses) with your own words related to your product and your niche.
Why (insert technique here) is the worst way to (get the result you want).
What (number) other techniques work much better?
What are other keys to (desired result)?
(Guess)?
What's that all about?
Discover the secrets...
(url)
Go there now...
That's right. A simple 39-word e-mail converted better than a year's worth of longer e-mails. Crazy, isn't it?
As usual, I need 50 comments to continue blogging... and after I get 100 comments... I will CLOSE all future comments to this thread. Looking forward to your comments below!
Question:
What's Your Weirdest Curiosity Technique That's
Gotten You Clicks, Optins and Sales?
Or what technique from an e-mail guru has sucked you into either clicking on an e-mail link, opting in or buying? What single line has aroused your curiosity more than anything else?
How to Attract Super Affiliates
Affiliate sales are your ticket to an income that runs on autopilot. It might be fun to launch a few products on your own, write a bunch of articles and optimize pay-per-click campaigns, but at some point that is going to become boring, almost like a chore. Wouldn't it be great to hand the reigns over to someone else, to have someone else focus on the marketing while you sit back, collect the money, and only deal with customer support? There are three simple tactics you can use to attract super affiliates to your offer.
The first thing you can do is write a solo ad. When a well-known internet marketer launches a new product, do you notice that many of the e-mails you receive for it, from different marketers, all say the exact same thing ? That is because the product vendor gave out solo ads to his affiliates. A solo ad is a pre-written cut and paste e-mail advertisement for your product. It contains a catchy subject line and some text to get people to click on the affiliate link in the e-mail.
That is the only job of the solo ad... to get people to click. If that means you have to educate people a tiny bit on the product to get them interested, or you have to share a few bullet points, do it, but get people to click. Many marketers give affiliates multiple solo ads, but I believe in keeping things simple and only giving them a single solo ad. I make sure to remind my would-be affiliates that they can use the ad as a blog post, e-mail message, rewrite and submit it as an article or press release, record it into a video, do anything they can to stay ahead of the competition.
Affiliates also care about metrics. Tell prospective affiliates what the conversion rate is for your site. How much commission do they make? Is there an upsell or recurring commissions? Are there affiliate incentives? Do affiliates get free access to the product or a higher commission after a certain number of sales? What is the visitor value? All of these pieces of info are very important to your affiliates so they know what kind of traffic to throw at it, what to bid for keywords, and so on.
Finally, don't forget to train your affiliates, especially in niches outside of internet marketing. Tell them about list building, landing pages, forum marketing, blogging, and so on, so they have all the tools they need to get your product out there, and make you both some money.
Those tips are what you need to get started in gathering super affiliates: solo ads, giving the proper metrics, and training affiliates.
The Correct Way to Blog About Your Business
Why do I keep seeing people leave posts on their Marketing Blog just to post about it?
If you are adding content to your blog "just because", you are adding an extra chore for yourself, you are preventing yourself from actually getting real work done, and you are missing out on a lot of the opportunities having a blog can give you.
As you probably know, Google loves blogs. And that means if you blog about one of your products, or about your niche, or about something that you are doing, it is going to be ranked highly in the search engine, especially when that is brand new.
That means that if you just blog about any old subject, you are going to get ranked highly for no reason at all. But if you are about to come out with a new product or are about to re-launch an existing one, you should be blogging about it - that way it shows up in the search engines. And when you send your list to that blog, you are already overcoming many of the objections they are going to have when it comes time to buy. Plus your subscribers now feel that you are giving them value and not simply hard-pitching them.
The next time you make a blog post, stop and think for a second: "What can I talk about that will get people ready for my next product launch or re-launch?"
There is also nothing wrong with recycling your auto-responder content. And this can go either way. If you have an auto-responder broadcast or follow-up that got a lot of response, there is nothing wrong with expanding that into a blog post, or even just posting it as is.
Likewise, if you had a really good blog post that got tons of response a year or two years ago, but people simply can't find it now, there is nothing wrong with scheduling that as an auto-responder follow-up.
We all need more follow-up emails in our auto-responder sequence. You should definitely start off with ten - but you have less than two years' worth of an auto-responder sequence, you should add a little bit to it every month.
And finally, while it is great to make a blog post about an upcoming product, it is even better to blog about that once it is now live. I don't do this as often as my pre-launch posts, but every now and then I will create a blog post and disable comments, and make the Call to Action at the end of that blog post via a link to whatever it is I am talking about: I hard-sell people directly on the blog.
Most bloggers seriously underestimate the power of the Call to Action - whether that is to get comments for social proof, to make your upcoming launch look even better, or just to promote something you have just launched. Or even to re-launch something you launched in the past.
And that is the correct way to blog about your business. Frame people and pre-launch them for whatever solution is coming up from you. Recycle your auto-responder follow-ups - and even use those blog posts as auto-responder follow-ups. Market the stuff you already have. And deliver a strong Call to Action to get people to take action and do something at the end of your blog post.
Which of these three items are you missing in your blog? Please share this with me in the form of a comment below and let me know what you are going to do better in your blogging business next time you make a post.
Package Selling: Can I Buy This Car With No Tires?
One thing you are going to notice over and over again when you put out information products, when you offer your services - and more, is that the average person loves to save a couple of pennies, even if they have to bend over backwards to do it.
It is totally fine for your customers to do that when they going to Wal-Mart, but you should train them not to have that mentality with you. If somebody can't afford what you have to offer, or it is not the right fit, they simply shouldn't buy it!
When it comes to selling your product online, you need to be up-front and clear about what you are giving them; don't be afraid to say "No", and to market more.
Car with No Steering Wheel?
Let's say you went to a car dealership and you were going to buy a car; looked at the car and you said, "I like it but I already have my own steering wheel. Can you sell me the car without a steering wheel?" Or "I already have a stereo. Can you sell me the car without the stereo?" They would almost always tell you "No!"
But it aggravates me when I offer membership training that includes a membership plug-in and people ask, "Can you offer me the training without the plug-in and make it cheaper?"
A few years ago, when I didn't make as much money, I might have tried to negotiate with them. But nowadays it is a lot easier to simply say, "It is all a package deal." I don't try to sneak in any charges; I don't try to say that they pay once but accidentally get re-billed over and over. I am very clear about the monthly recurring - but they can't pick and choose what they want. The offer is "Take it or leave it!"
And it is totally okay to throw in extra features that you already offer, because many of these people who try to negotiate the price down don't look at everything you have to offer; they are only looking at the price. For example, if someone is trying to get my training without the plug-in, I remind them that after all the payments have been made, they are in for LIFE!
Lump Sum?
On the other hand, here is an offer I get every now and then: I get people asking me, "Can I simply pay you some lump sum fee and get access for life right now?" And what they are usually looking for is a way to cut the price because they are paying it all up-front.
As much as I would like to be the "Nice Guy", this gets back to the price training and customer training. I want my customers to get used to paying me month after month, and not buying the whole thing out - so I say "No."
Never be afraid to say "No." It's okay if this person who is asking you is not a perfect fit. This definitely does not apply to everyone. And this definitely does not apply to you. But I have found that if someone is trying to negotiate the price down with me, they are the kind of person who always is trying to find some extra reason for why they shouldn't do something.
For example, they are not buying because the price is too high. That is one roadblock they have put into place. Then, when this type of person finally gets in, they put in more roadblocks for why they can't watch the videos, why they can't take action on the things I've talked on, and why the things they have read about and been taught are not exactly the way they have implemented them.
I don't want that kind of person in my membership sites. I want the kind of people who are willing to try something once without trying to be fancy or reinvent the system until they have tried it. People like me! If someone is trying to remove the packaging or trying to buy your membership all up-front, don't be afraid to say "No."
So what do you do and say? How do you overcome these kinds of price objections or nickel and dime strategies? It's simple! You market more. You create a better sales letter. You split test. You add more follow-ups. You remind people more. You are more confident on your Webinars. And you price your OTHER products at the same level as the thing you really want them to buy.
You want to train people to pay you more. You don't want to be the "Bargain Basement marketer"; you want to be the marketer that actually gets people to do things.
What This Means for Your Offers
So when somebody asks you, "Can I buy this car with no tires?" (And by "car" I mean can they buy into your "Membership site with only half of the components for half the price") tell them "No!"
You made an offer. Everything in your membership site is totally necessary. So they have to pay the full price - and they get the whole thing.
Just remember, the average person loves to save a couple of pennies. But you need to retrain them so that they will actually get something out of your marketing!
This is just as much a favor for them as to you. Be clear about what you are offering, don't have forced continuity, don't fall into the trap of selling "life-time access", don't be afraid to say "No"; and market more, sell more - and price more.
