Exploding Websites for Fun and Profit
I am jealous – a little.
Okay, a lot. But it will pass soon enough.
My pal @elizabethpw remodeled her website. I’m sharing some of the pertinent insights to my audience on my direct sales blog, but today, I wanted to share the discoveries that are pertinent to you.
See I created that site eons ago, when I was just a fledgling online person. I shunned WordPress (not one of my better decisions, I’ll admit). I was creating pages by hand (still do sometimes). I thought I was doing well.
Then the other day, I got an email from Liz Pabon, where she wrote this:
Our inner knowing is like an attic filled with great treasures made up of our knowledge, experiences and wisdom. And sometimes those treasures are blocked or hidden by the cobwebs of self-neglect.
And I got to thinking about all the “stuff” that’s crammed into that site. 2 years of teleclasses (yes, 2 freakin’ years worth). Classes, courses, downloads and handouts. All of it muddled, mixed around, and hard to navigate.
I was making it difficult for people to buy from me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like earning my keep. I enjoy getting paid for the contribution I make. I think I do a pretty good job of sharing what works, and it’s important to my family that I’m compensated appropriately for my “genius work” as my coach calls it.
But buried within layers of links, pages and other subterfuge, it wasn’t easy to do business with me. And the irony is, I tell people time and again to make it easy for customers to do business with you.
I’m accessible. I’m probably too accessible. If someone sends an email, a tweet or a facebook post, I usually respond – and pretty quickly when I’m able. And I answer questions, provide tons of advice and strategies to help my clients and strangers who may never be my clients.
But on more than one occasion, I’ve had people say the very same thing that I read at the top of Elizabeth’s blog post (except that my name’s Lisa and not Elizabeth).
But in my own head, I thought I was being really clear. I was following all the “rules” about building an opt-in list, creating info products, doing launches, and sharing “free content” with my followers (you know, “the what” but not “the how” stuff we’ve been fed).
So I’m blowing it up – for fun AND profit.
I’ve had this vision for an entire training program much like a college curricula for direct sales pros that want to run their business like a real business. But it’s built around small group coaching – classroom style – and that violates “the rules” of online marketing.
See, according to “the rules”, I’m supposed to create content once, get paid to do it, and then re-package it into an info-product I can sell over and over. It’s a great way to produce “passive” income, but if you follow “the rules”, the bulk of that revenue comes during the product launch, and then trickles in over the lifetime of the product. The more affiliates you have promoting the launch, the more money you stand to make when it launches. Which is why you hear a LOT about people that have multi-million dollar launches, but then you never hear how the product does on the back end.
Things that make me go hmmm…
I’ve been doing this “info marketing thang” for a couple of years now, and when I was green, I was following “the rules” religiously. Step-by-step, cranking out teleclasses, setting up continuity programs, etc. And in the last three weeks it hit me that I wasn’t being authentic in my business.
For as much as I enjoy “passive” income. I had become a slave to “the rules” – and they really didn’t fit me or the way I wanted to do business.
Here’s the truth I’ve learned in the past two years in my online business:
- People will buy info products, but they’ll pay more to work directly with you.
- Info products by themselves are mostly worthless. They sit on shelves and collect dust. I think it was Dan Kennedy that said 20% of your customers will never even open the product. And to get USED to that. Um, sorry. That does not compute for me.
- My business is seeing a shift towards hands-on help that guides people through the info products. And that’s because…
- People get better results with hands-on help.
- Small groups rock. The synergy, the energy and the masterminding that goes on is exponentially better than self-study, and bridges the gap between info products and live events.
- The biggest payday happens at product launch. BUT…
- Big launches leave big gaps in your cash flow.
There’s nothing wrong with helping people and getting paid to do it, folks. That’s what teachers and mentors have been doing for centuries. The catch is to price yourself accordingly for the services you perform. There’s always someone who thinks you’re too expensive, and someone that sees you as the bargain basement extra meal deal. The key is to find your own value in that mix and be fair with your pricing. There’s NO disputing the fact that hands-on help is worth more than info-products all day long.
That’s why you’re seeing a surge in live events, big ticket “masterminds” and ultra pricey one-on-one coaching programs – complete with swarming, affiliate-driven promotional launches.
But you can’t feasibly launch a big ticket item every month to keep cash flow consistent.
Even the “guru’s” are filling those gaps with smaller ticket product launches, generally joint ventures in a teleclass (small group) format. They can launch them every couple of months, and both partners benefit. In fact, one multi-million dollar guru has already launched 6 products in the first 3 months of the year. Talk about bombarding their audience!
But between affiliate and JV promotions, the cash flow keeps coming in.
Take a look at who’s doing what this year. You’ll see most of them moving away from continuity-based models (especially in light of the new California legislation), and towards more mid-price ($300-500), “one-time-only” tele-series and product launches. It serves the same purpose, but at a higher price point, and with fewer customer service issues.
My own business is taking a similar stance – albeit at a much lower price point in most instances. We’re blowing up HomePartySolution.com – and the entire online community that goes with it – to create a more streamlined user interface, and a more lucrative business platform for the direct sales portion of our coaching business.
In short, I’m going to make it so easy for people to do business with me that my clients will wonder what happened.
It’s not an easy process, by any means, and we’re considering documenting the process to help YOU shorten the learning curve if you ever want to do this in your own business. I estimate the entire site will be down about a month to test everything and make it all operational again – with all the new content we’re adding to boot.
The only thing that will still be live on that site is the home page opt-in for new ezine subscribers. I still plan on sending out the weekly ezine, and generating content behind the scenes. But we won’t be selling anything for about a month over there.
So how am I going to keep the employees paid and the family fed?
With a GI-NORMOUS product launch over here. 
Tickets for The Renaissance Mom Experience are slated to go on sale April 15. You can sign up for the advance notification list on that page. You have been warned.
The cool thing is that I’m able to continue to do what I love in a way that I truly enjoy. I am able to connect with the very people I enjoy helping and they are seeing better results because of it. I’m able to leverage myself as well (more on that in another post), and continue to grow both segments of my business (both here and on the direct sales side of things). I can’t wait for you all to see what new things we have in store this quarter.
What about you? I’d love your thoughts and feedback on this. Share your comments below, or send me a note on twitter.
Don’t Have a “Fallback Plan”
My mom, as much as she had my best interests at heart, did me a huge disservice. Chances are good your folks did too.
At least, if you’re an entrepreneur like me, you might believe as I do that the phrase “fallback plan” is the most life-usurping ill-advised phrase our loved ones could ever offer.
As a child, my vision was to become a rock star. I had Mozart-like tendencies as a kid, composing music before I stared Kindergarten. And no, not “Mary Had A Little Lamb” kinds of things. I had compiled an entire album of music in a variety of genres by the time I was in grade school. Talent shows were my platform to share my prowess, and I was even party to an all-girl group a few of us founded in 6th grade that performed an original pop-style tune at our talent show.
We rocked the house. It helped that the house was packed with family, but we all had vocal ability, and being in the gifted program, none of us were dumb as a box of rocks.
By Junior High, I had compiled and submitted to the U.S. copyright office my first collection of compositions. I was looking for music composition or music business programs at my universities of choice, and was taking every opportunity to hone my craft. The singer-songwriter route to stardom ain’t an easy one, and I figured I needed to get started ASAP if I was going to “make it big” some day.
I graduated high school with a couple of fly by night record deals – but it was enough to impress my friends and leave me feeling like I was really going to be somebody. As I prepared for college, and focused in on a music composition degree, my mother “gently coerced” me into considering a degree in music education.
“That way, you’ll have a fall back plan if the rock star thing doesn’t work out for you.”
Arrgh.
It takes a certain kind of person to be a teacher – especially in a public school setting – and I ain’t that kind of person. Too many of my aunts, and even my mother, stood at a whiteboard/chalkboard and tried to maintain order in a classroom full of students that didn’t always want to be there, and even worse didn’t always appreciate the hard work they were putting in for so little pay.
Not my idea of a good time, and certainly not a cushion I’d like to fall back to if things in my dream career didn’t work out.
Now I know what Mom was getting at. She didn’t want to see me trodding home, tail tucked between my legs when Universal Music sent me a rejection letter (they did, sort of). She didn’t want me to get my heart broken or end up drugged out on the road. She didn’t want to see me lose everything to an unscrupulous “manager” or something else like that.
She basically just wanted me to be safe, have a nice comfy job with benefits, put in my 40 hours and go home healthy and happy.
Because to her, SOMETHING was better than nothing.
What she didn’t realize is that, for an entrepreneur, that life isn’t something. It’s more NOTHING than you could possibly imagine.
Or maybe she did.
Mom constantly had her hand in some entrepreneurial endeavor. There was a running commentary in our family about the new business venture my mom had every season: snow plow, antique store, ebay, etc. As a child, I remember staying up all night pressing the “print” button over and over for a document she sold in local stores that charted the winning lottery number trends for the past 10 years.
She was quite an entrepreneur. Yet she never climbed out of the poverty bucket. She was a true “Shin-Ob-ite” as I like to call it. Always being pulled from one money making venture to another. As soon as the income would slow down in one venture, she’d move on to the next.
And therein was the dilemma that shaped her perspective and desire for me to have a fallback plan.
She didn’t want to see me starving, scraping together every penny – picking up pop cans, recycling copper wire, holding endless garage sales – just to keep my kids fed with a roof over their heads. She wanted me to have stability, financial security, peace of mind.
That would be great for someone that actually valued that stuff. Much to my husband’s chagrin, those are lesser priorities for me. Yes, I want to be sure my mortgage is paid, and that the kids won’t starve, but for me, taking a risk is part and parcel to the entrepreneurial life I’ve chosen.
The plan b breaks my heart – it’s a crutch. It keeps so many amazingly talented people from ever living their dreams because of fear.
I filed bankruptcy after my ‘young and stupid days’ in my 20′s. Here’s what I learned: If you go bankrupt, your credit will be in the toilet, but you won’t die. You just have to learn to live on less, and financing (credit, etc) is a little harder for a while. You can survive and come out even stronger on the other side.
I worked as a financial advisor for a while. Here’s what I learned: most people have some kind of financial horror story – student loans, old debts from bad relationships, overspending, secret credit cards – and all of it can be resolved.
I was on welfare for a while. Here’s what I learned: It sucks. The way the system worked in my community made it virtually impossible for you to pull yourself out of the system as long as you were using the system. So I got off welfare, and busted my butt to get the bills paid.
Plan B will hold you back. I never got that music ed degree. I do have a degree in music theory/music history, with a minor in vocal performance and 2 albums to my credit. I toured, recorded, promoted and THEN decided to make a change. I wasn’t a Rock Star, per se, but I did all the things I wanted to do as a rock star – including getting a standing ovation from an arena of screaming fans. I didn’t have to live a rock star lifestyle to live my dreams.
Did I settle for a Plan B? Nope. I changed my vision for my life.
I got the degree I wanted, but I still don’t use it in my daily life. I once read somewhere that about half of the degrees in the U.S. go unused because we end up working in different fields. I wanted to be a musician. I did that (I still do from time to time). Then I decided that having a family would be cool. So I’m doing that now. And as my vision evolves, so will my plan A.
But I will never have a “fallback plan” like my mom envisioned. To me, that’s like chickening out.
No one ever aspires to their “plan B”. That’s the safety net we think we’re putting in place “just in case”. What ends up happening, though, is that we spend so much of our lives focused on laying the safety net that we never actually pursue the dream. “Plan A” becomes a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” in our pile of past regrets, and we often never get back to it.
We need to be a little more fearless, and take risks while we can. Pursue our dreams relentlessly.
I was recently interviewed by a smart and amazingly talented high school student. She aspires to be an author some day and wanted feedback about how I wrote my book, and any suggestions I could give her to help her on her way.
“Start NOW.” I said. “Don’t wait. Write all you can now so that you can get better and better over time.”
She’s creative and tells great stories. She’s also self-conscious, as most teenage girls are. She has no clue how much her life will change in the next few years, and the stories she starts writing now may end up being fuel for some of her best work when she’s older.
To her folks, who I’m sure would prefer she select a “safer” profession, I say: don’t let her have a fallback plan. Let her chase this dream relentlessly. Teach her how to manage the little bit of money she’ll earn along the way. Expose her to other options, but never pressure her to choose safety over her dreams. Encourage her to study and hone her craft and fund it without taking on debt. Help her be the best she can at whatever she ultimately chooses as her career path, and above all, let her know that no matter what she chooses, she is loved just as relentlessly.
Let her stumble. Make her sleep on the couch if she comes back home, and don’t make it too easy for her. If she really wants to chase a dream, she’s got to be up for the run – it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. As long as she finishes the race, she’s won it.
And if she decides she’s not up for the run, that’s fine, too. Then she’s just revising her vision. It’s NOT a fallback plan.
That’s what I would have wanted my folks to do for me.
Saying “No” is Sexy Part Two: Size Doesn’t Matter
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of backlash from info-marketers, coaches and others that follow the “freebie opt-in” model to build their lists. In my previous post, I mentioned a new opt-in gift I created for my own list that I think will benefit them, AND will help grow my marketing list at the same time. To be clear, I do not have a problem with the freebie opt-in model. In fact, I encourage it with many of my new clients as a safe, simple way to encourage people to build the “Know, Like and Trust Factor” with their potential customers.
But these “back-lashers” have started complaining about the ROI, “smash and grab” and generally grumbling about how free isn’t really free, because ultimately someone is paying – either for the time to create the freebie, to sustain the giveaway, or on the back end when there’s an upsell.
To me, that’s a red flag that someone isn’t being sexy in their business. They’re saying “yes” because it’s the thing to do, instead of doing it because it’s what they want to do.
In Gary Vee’s book, Crush It, he makes a comment about how he starts his video show the same way every time, and because of that, he loses a percentage of his potential audience because they don’t like his opening. As a business owner, it drives him nuts that he could have more people wat
ching, but he chooses to stay the course because it’s being true to who he is.
Gary’s being sexy by saying “no” to normal and saying “yes” to memorable.
I have my own confession: my list is not large. I don’t have umpteen gajillion followers on twitter. And I’m happy with that. Would I love tens of thousands of people? Maybe. But the thousands that I do have know me, like me, and trust me enough that they spend money with me regularly. My list is incredibly responsive and on twitter alone, I averaged about $15 for each follower I had in 2009. I’m not bragging here. I’m illustrating a point.
When it comes to lists, size isn’t as important as responsiveness.
And yet, it’s the same mentality we’ve been seeing from online marketers. Put your free samples out there, start raking in people, and see who shakes out and who sticks.
Others charge for everything and wouldn’t think of giving away a scrap of their information. I had a teleclass guest once tell me that everything that she says is under copyright the minute it comes out of her mouth. She was so concerned about getting credit for her work, that she was making herself look foolish on the call. Needless to say, I won’t be asking her back any time soon.
Neither option is the be-all, end-all. In fact, I think there are times where both are appropriate. To me, though, you shouldn’t grump and complain when you get the expected results from the work you do.
If you give something away for free, there will always be a trick-or-treater/tire kicker that just wants the free stuff. It’s the nature of the beast. Don’t begrudge them the very thing you’ve offered them. If you don’t feel good about giving it away to everyone and getting nothing in return, you probably shouldn’t be giving it away in the first place.
That’s what happened with our Super Summit. Our very first event was completely free, with the option to purchase the MP3′s after you registered. Right away we had problems with people that signed up, got the dial in number and unsubscribed. It made it difficult to contact them to share bonus content, etc. But instead of grumbling, I figured those just weren’t the kind of people I wanted to work with in the first place.
Now we charge a small admission fee, and while we don’t get as many sign-ups as when it was free, that minimal barrier to entry has resulted in more qualified customers, better conversion rates, and happier people all around. I feel good that everyone that registers will get an amazing value for their paltry investment (and they do), and customers are ecstatic that they only had to pay a few bucks to get such good, pitch-free content.
Another incredible thing that happened was that fewer people were asking for concessions on the event. At the first summit, we had dozens of requests for free access because someone couldn’t make it live to a call. People asked us to make the calls available for individual purchase so they could just buy the ones they missed. Dozens of people already getting free content asking for more free content.
Really? Um. No.
We tried the individual purchases at our last summit – and sold one. One copy of one audio. Aside from the amount of effort we put into creating the individual products, the demand just wasn’t there. So we didn’t do it this time. Instead we kept the registration fee low, and offered early bird pricing for any audios purchased before the event.
You’d be surprised how many people turn down virtually free content just because it’s not free.
And that’s okay with me.
Because the ones that say “Yes, my business is worth $3″ are the people I want to work with. They’re the folks that recognize the real value of the content – and will probably put it to good use. They’re the folks who recognize that you can’t spend $3 to talk to ANY of the people at this event, but they can listen to all of them share their great ideas for next to nothing.
And this time, I’ve had less than five people play the ‘poor me’ card and ask for free access to audios for the event.
And that’s okay with me.
So while this event may not add tens of thousands of people to my list, I DO know that the folks that are signing up want what we’re sharing with them, and are willing to shell out a few bucks to have access to the content. It’s not about the number of folks – it’s their effectiveness, responsiveness, and VALUE to me as a business owner that matter much more.
But I still have my free weekly ezines and my opt-in freebies. I still have a marketing ‘funnel’, if you will. And that’s okay too. Some people are very leery when it comes to spending even $3 with a total stranger. So we feed them a little info from time to time, and encourage them to get to know us so they can make an educated decision. Frankly, if you don’t know me, like me and trust me enough to spend $3 with me, I don’t WANT your money. I want my customers eagerly whipping out their wallets because they know in their core the value I provide. They know that any investment I ask of them will return ten to a hundred-fold. They know that it’s not a cost, it’s an investment and they’re willing to make that investment – not in me, but in themselves.
That’s the kind of list I’m building. It may be smaller than some, but it’s mightier than others.
And that’s okay by me.