This blog post is sort of hard to write but I feel I must say what needs to be said so you don’t fall into the same trap I did.

Over the last few months I’ve been suffering from ‘promo overload’ (I just made that name up) and the result of this has been far to many ‘promo’ emails sent to my subscribers. I feel I must warn you about falling into the same trap I fell into as you will kill your business, luckily I have spotted what I was doing wrong and I hope I can prevent you doing the same thing.

The trap is taking on too many promotions and JV requests in the hope that you will receive a ton of promotions in return. I have learned the hard way it’s simply not the way to operate online. Not only does your list become far less responsive but you actually end up promoting some products you may not normally promote. Now don’t get me wrong here, I make sure to review every single product I promote but let’s say some have been ‘borderline’ in the quality department.

However, the biggest mistake I made this year was simply saying ‘yes’ to too many JV requests. When you send promo after promo to your subscribers they lose faith in you, they unsubscribe and your list becomes less responsive. The result of this was some of my emails had a click-through rate of as little as 500 clicks when it wasn’t unusual to previously get 3000+ clicks from a single email.

On top of that it actually got so bad I was struggling to find time to promote my own products, how crazy is that?

I only have myself to blame for this but as of today it’s going to stop. Yes I will continue to promote products but I will be a lot more strict in the selection process, also I’d much rather send 4-5 emails in one week about one product educating my subscribers than sending 4-5 emails promoting 4-5 different products. Not only does this p**s off your subscribers but you earn far less as an affiliate. So from now on while I may mail out 4-5 times when I see a product I truly believe in I wont be doing so many random cold emails.

If you are reading this and are finding it hard to say no to JV requests have a long hard think about what damage you could be doing not only to your reputation as a marketer but to your subscribers by promoting sub-standard products on a daily basis. You are far better off getting behind a product you truly believe will help your subscribers than randomly promoting a ton of different products. Don’t become a marketer who promotes sub standard crap every other day like everyone else, become a marketer who cares about your subscribers needs as in the long run this is the kind of marketer that becomes successful.

That’s the type of marketer I always have been, maybe I lost my way a little over the last few months but as of today that stops. From now on quality will come before any favor I owe anyone and my valuable subscribers needs will come first.

This was a hard post to write but it needed to be said. As always I welcome your comments.

As you know over the last couple of days I have been promoting Internet Selling For Newbies and yesterday I asked if you thought Omar was right about the rant he had when someone said the offer wasn’t free because he had to pay shipping to have the product delivered to his home. I have posted that email here just in case you missed it.

I received a ton of responses and this prompted me to contact Omar to see if he would mind me writing up a blog post about this. Omar then got back to me with the response below.

*** Omar’s Email Start ***

Hi John,

Here are my thoughts…

We have all been burned at one time or another by some sort of ”hidden charge” or fine print forced continuity option thingy.

We get very angry, we feel deceived, we feel robbed. In reality the truth of the matter is that most times we simply failed to read carefully. I am no exception to this, it has happened to me several times before. We always see those legal links at the bottom of pages and the “click here to agree” radio buttons but we do act impulsively without taking the time to examine the offer.

Then a month later we see a second charge and NOW we yell ”bloody murder”. It’s happened to us all, myself included.

Many marketers out there know that most people just don’t read the page carefully. Bad marketers take advantage of that fact and they impose “silent add on’s” to orders that are easily overlooked by the consumer who’s just excited about getting his/her new product.

Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a lot of this in our Internet Marketing community. Marketers use all sorts of merchant accounts that require consumers to enter their credit card details directly into the website they are purchasing from.

This puts the marketer in a unique vantage point. Once he/she stores that data. Billing, re-billing and the like can be easily tagged on to a checkout process known as a “session id”.

The methods of marketing we use today of upsells, downsells, add on options, suggested products and the like… works very well. These methods are used by companies, like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and many other commerce giants. They are not illegal or unethical in any way.

However – these prudent methods have been tarnished by  unethical marketers and hence our subscribers are now very skeptical when they see more than one offer on a website.  They say… “Ohh No – he’s trying to sell me something else, quick -get off this site!” LOL

That’s like going to McDonalds and canceling your order all together simply because the cashiers asks if you’d like to add a Large soda for 39 cents extra, or if you’d like to super-size your order.  Why are we perfectly comfortable with those upsells but not those we see on websites?

In my opinion the answer is this…  FEAR.  We have been burned in the past and we are afraid of making a bad decision that can’t be easily undone. You see, if they screw up my order at McDonalds I can just walk right up to the counter and tell them to get it right or demand my money back. But online, you have to send emails, create support tickets and hope to hear back from a human.

The fear of re-living this experience precludes us from taking the actions we want to with regards of purchasing a product online. I totally understand that fear, I have experienced it myself and I will not criticize anyone for it.

My rant was about a selfish person that wanted me to do everything for him. He was looking for a hand out not a head start. He wasn’t willing to invest in shipping and he implied that I am a bad marketer because I wouldn’t pay it for him. It is a mentality that I will never agree with. But the “forced continuity fear” is something all together different and it is something that I do completely resonate with.

Mike and I have gone through great lengths to implement a secure alternative. Here’s what’s different about InternetSellingForNewbies.com

#1 We ask that the customer pay for s/h of the CD-Rom and we don’t inflate the cost of shipping. 9.97 is exactly what the fulfillment company charges us per unit to produce, package and ship a CD domestically. (more for international due to postage and customs charge)

#2 We offer an optional 30 Day FREE trial of MDC magazine on the order page. This trial can be easily removed by pressing one button that says “REMOVE FROM CART”

#3 WE USE PAYPAL. (this is key) You see by us using PayPal we are actually empowering the consumer with a huge and powerful advocate. Unlike a regular merchant account. One can easily log into their PayPal account and manage payments and subscriptions and see exactly what has been charged. The customers payment details are stored by PAYPAL not by us. THAT IS HUGE.

#4 The customer has to review and approve their order items a total of FOUR times in the checkout process. Twice on our site and twice on their PayPal account page. Each time their entire order is listed and they can remove anything they may have “accidentally” selected.

Noticed I put “accidentally” in quotes.. I’m not being facetious but we all know that there are many consumers that will intentionally order things and later claim they were scammed. The axe swings both ways.

Rest assured,

We are amongst the first marketers in our community to implement the new PayPal API technology that streamlines all of this additional security and peace of mind for the consumer. We are very proud to do this and we hope to pave the way for other marketers to do the same in the future.

In conclusion I will call upon everyone to always read the contents of any offer before you make a purchase. That is just good, prudent business sense. I call upon all marketers to not hide behind a support desk, we put our email, physical address and phone number right on our website. We make it easy and we even  encourage you to contact us before you make a purchase if something appears unclear. Last but not least we make it easy for YOU to control the outcome by using the worlds most trusted payment system as an added layer of protection and security, PayPal.

Regards,

Omar Martin

*** Omar’s Email End ***

I think Omar has pretty much summed up his thoughts and I once again have to agree. The truth is so many bad marketers have made this kind of offer seem bad but I’d love to hear what you think.

BTW, the offer for Internet Selling For Newbies is here, please make sure you check the offer out before commenting.

Watch the video to see what my Masterclass program did for Omar Martin.

I have created a very quick video that shows you how to maximize your sales process, there is nothing at all for sale. Please allow a few moments for the video to load before hitting play.

This morning I woke up at 6:30AM which is very early for me, what’s even more shocking is my son was awake before me and with my son being a typical teenager you can probably understand why I was surprised. You may be wondering why we woke up so early, well here’s what happened, we got up early and drove all the way to the local Apple store. Yes we were one of the thousands of people who were looking to get their hands on an iPhone 4 and at 7.30 am this morning I was stood in a queue with hundreds of other people and I was thinking to myself “this is just like waiting for a product to go live”.

If you watch what Apple do when it comes to launching a new product you’ll see that it is much the same as an Internet Marketing product launch. They have created a buzz with their pre launch, mostly from the Keynote that was released on the 7th of June. However, apart from the fact the new iPhone looks amazing the biggest tactic I think Apple are using at this moment in time is scarcity. We actually queued up for just over an hour just to register for our iPhones, we couldn’t go in the shop today and buy one because there is not enough stock, you can imagine how disappointed we were when we were told this but that’s how it is, so now I have to wait for an email telling me when more stock is arriving. I do believe that the demand is so high that stocks are running low, but I also think also think a lot of companies (including Apple) use the scarcity tactic when they come to launch a product.

You see this happen nearly every time Christmas comes around, there is always a toy or something that everybody goes crazy for and usually it’s something you can’t get your hands on. The biggest thing about this is, when you can’t get something you want it more, now if Apple had a million iPhones in stock today they would sell a lot but the fact that they are very hard to get hold of at the moment means they are very very desirable, don’t believe me? Go on eBay right now and go and have a look at how much iPhone 4’s are selling for, I’ve seen some today selling for almost $2000. Because of this in the long run Apple will sell more iPhones because stock is limited.

So in future have a look at what’s going on around you and see if there is anything you can learn from the big companies to implement into your online marketing, and have a look at what Apple are doing right now, they’ve created a buzz, now they are using scarcity and now that the product has gone live its very very hard to get hold of which makes it extremely desirable.

Remember! If you can:-

• Create a quality product
• Build a buzz
• Create scarcity

You will have a buying frenzy, today I was part of that buying frenzy and even though I didn’t receive my iPhone 4 today I know it’s only a matter of days before I get my hands on one. Just like thousands of other people out there Apple have got me hook, line and sinker with their marketing tactics.

…Giving

This blog post is unique as I have created it entirely on my new iPad. I must say I think the iPad is great and I find I’m using it more than my laptop, I just hope it turns out ok. Anyway, enough of my new toy, let’s get on with things…

I sometimes think to myself what prevents people from succeeding online. Of course I wrote about this in great detail in my free report ‘Why You’ll Never Succeed Online’ which you can download from my blog homepage. However, there is one point I make in the report which I want to go into in more detail, and here it is.

If you are just thinking about making money you will fail!

There, I said it, but what do I mean?

What I mean is so many people think about the money that they forget about trying to help others, and in this age where competition is becoming more fierce this is a very dangerous game to play.

If I’m honest with myself I think a lot of my success is down to the fact I am willing to help anyone for free. You may have noticed that when I broadcast to my entire list the email comes from my personal email account. This means if you hit reply to any email I send I will personally respond. You may also notice I am now starting to include my office telephone number in all broadcasts sent out. Something you won’t see many people do. If you want to put me to the test with this here’s my number. (44) 191 516 0993, if you ring during UK office hours and I’m not busy you’ll be able to have a chat with me about anything you wish. If I am busy we’ll schedule a time to talk, for free!

Now sometimes I can spend a few hours a day answering emails and spending time on the telephone and often I won’t push a single product, although I will admit if I think one of my products can help you I will mention it. However, my main intention in everything I do is to help my subscribers. Now why do you think I do that?

Well first of all I do genuinely get a buzz when I help someone move forward online, this can be simply offering a tiny piece of advice in an email or spending 10 minutes on the telephone with someone to help with something. Now while I may not receive any form of payment for any advice I give over the phone or via email what do you think happens when I launch a new product or promote a product as an affiliate?

The very same people I have helped will consider what I am offering. You see, because I am seen as someone who is willing to help others the money side of things takes care of itself. My emails get opened, my sales pages get looked at and my reputation grows and that can’t be a bad thing can it?

So let’s get back to what I initially said at the start of this blog post.

If you are just thinking about making money you will fail!

So many people simply think ‘how can I make money’ when that is the complete wrong way to go about things. What you should be thinking is ‘how many people can I help’, have that mindset and I guarantee success will come easier. If you want to see people in action who operate like this have a look at how people like Jim Cockrum and Lee McIntyre operate. They are top marketers who I highly respect who’s main philosophy is helping others. If you watch them closely you will see they sell without even trying to sell.

This is the mindset you need to have if you are going to have any chance of success online. Don’t see your subscribers as a way of making money, look at your subscribers as people you can help, that’s probably why they got onto your list in the first place so why would you want to pitch pitch pitch to them all the time like most marketers do? Now don’t get me wrong it’s ok to pitch but not with every email, plus if you do pitch a product if possible offer a bonus, you will notice I do this a lot. You should also try to provide as much free content as you can but most of all be willing to help your subscribers. Get this right and you will become their hero who will devour everything you produce. However, get this wrong and your unsubscribe rates will soar while your open rates plummet.

I’m going to leave you with a book recommendation today, however I’m not going to provide a link, you’ll have to look for this yourself. That way I can’t be suspected of having any hidden motives by putting an affiliate link in this post. The book is called ‘The Go Giver’. Just go to Amazon or iTunes and spend $10 or so and give it a read. I promise it will make you think differently as it will teach you what giving is all about, and once you learn how to give the receiving (in the form of lots of money) will happen all on it’s own.

So there you have it, a quick blog post that will hopefully make you see things differently and learn to give. As always please feel free to leave a comment.

This is a guest post written by Daniel Sumner

Hey Guys Daniel Sumner here and today I want to talk about you!

Do you ever have days when you find that your whole business isn’t moving as fast as you would like it too? Are those days the days where you just want to bury your head and forget about the whole damn thing in the first place! Hey it happens to the best of us and will happen more than once within our lifetime I can guarantee that.
It’s that deflated feeling to the point where you may just throw in the towel, it is a serious test of your inner strength and your ability to carry on!

Don’t Do it Man! Hold That Towel!

You will regret every minute of it and you will ask yourself in the future should I have done it? Then try to justify your actions to make yourself feel better. I wonder where I would be today if I had given up? Trust me when I say if you give up, then you will never know how successful you can be. The hardest part of your business is getting it started from the ground up.

The truth is there is always a solution to the problems you face if you just seek out the answers. Here are a few examples of excuses we have all heard and most likely used in the past:

• I can’t afford it
• I don’t know how to do it
• I don’t have the time
• I don’t know how to start

The list goes on and on, but let’s take a look at these points in a little more detail and see what we can do to eliminate them.

1, I don’t know how to start – There is a multitude of information out there readily available for free which can start you on the right track. Take blogging for example you can acquire a free blog from Word Press, also a free template to get you started. All you need is a PC it costs nothing to write content and monetize your blog!

Nearly every blog you come across has a free download of some kind which you can use to help you. Free traffic guides, free blog guides, free marketing guides. All of these will get you on the right track in one way or another and offer free advice to move your business forward.

2, I don’t have the time – I know of at least three guys who work all day, look after their children and still find time to post on their blogs and create products! It’s the time you make for yourself to achieve a target that counts. Forget about the TV and structure a little time for you to prioritise your workload and achieve that target. Yeah it may be slower but you are moving in the right direction by taking action.

3, I don’t know how to do it – There is a learning curve for all new activities in the beginning! I never knew how to build a website until I learned. I never knew how to create an eBook until I found out exactly what to do. It’s called building your business knowledge! Yeah it takes time but it’s all worth the effort. You will find ton’s of tutorials and free help on forums, Youtube and blogs to enhance your knowledge. Do you think the likes of Frank Kern, Naomi Dunford and John T stopped thinking and gave up because they never knew how to build their business?

4, I can’t afford it – Possibly the one and only reason which is legitimate here in this list but “and there is always a but” why are you trying to earn an online income in the first place? More income, Better Lifestyle, Financial Freedom the list goes on and it just so happens you are in one of the only businesses in the world you can start with only a PC and an internet connection and very little capital to speak of. You have all seen the video tutorials, the rags to riches stories and the truth is most of us started with nothing in the first place anyway so why worry

Your success is your responsibility and it’s your choice to take action and do something about it. The word of the day is DEDICATION! If you are committed to your business you will prevail but it takes dedication to create success.

Looking to the Future

I dedicate a lot of my time to marketing, product creation and research. I immerse myself in my business to get results. This will assure my future business success and help me overcome any obstacles. If you stay positive about your business and vision your triumphs then you will prevail and secure the future of your online business. Ignore the words Don’t and Can’t and concentrate on the words Can and Will and your reward will come in time.

Success for 99% of people does not just happen overnight, you may get a few in the minority who achieve greatness quick on the back of some A list marketer’s promo. But for the majority its plain old hard work with an outlook to the future, with structure and a game plan which will help you achieve this goal.

Help Yourself NOW

If there is one thing I find I do a lot of is read and research. Less reading more action I am told by my peers and mentors “I also keep telling myself the same thing”. You see one of my biggest fears is not being able to be the best I can be, not being able to write the best blog post, or create the best eBook.

The truth is if I was the best blog writer I would have the best blog, if I was the best eBook writer I would have the best eBooks. If I was the best at product creation I would have the best products (you get the picture). To be honest I’m not the best, if I was I would be a millionaire and I’m not one of those yet either But I never give up and I will succeed, I have the drive to accomplish what I set out to do and I know this attitude will give me the outcome that I am looking for.

Not enough action and too much of the other is common. It’s time to grab the bull by the horns and get up to your neck in it. Stop surfing the net, reading, researching, watching TV, playing games and start making your ideas and dreams a reality. You can’t build your business by talking about it now can you?

A Little Structure Never Hurt

You can help yourself by adding structure to your week. Create a schedule of your week and the items you need to do. Take Monday for example my schedule was:

1, write articles and post them on articles sites
2, read and comment on blogs
3, Product development
4, research

Now all these will take around 3 – 4 hours sometimes more sometimes less, but you can make them as long or short as you like. It’s your choice ‘JUST DO SOMETHING’ however large or small it’s a step forward. Hell it’s only 4 things on a list how hard is that?

If you are stuck for ideas create mind maps and spray diagrams to help you break the ideas down into one main idea which you can focus and use as your new project (Google search for Mind Map Tools to help). Say you are stuck for an eBook you want to create but not sure what to write about. Get your ideas down on paper and brain storm it, do your research and plan out your steps to action. Then TAKE ACTION!

If you remember to be yourself and never give up your rewards will come and when the time comes you will be glad you never threw in the towel.

What’s your motivation for success let me know?

Thanks for reading.

Daniel Sumner

Marketing Through My Eyes

You may recall this post I made on the 19th of March explaining I had been trying to set up an affiliate program to take recurring billing payments. All I was trying to do was set up Infusionsoft with PayPal to accept recurring payments. Not hard to do you would think wouldn’t you? I mean PayPal must be one of the largest payment processors in the world.

Well as hard as I find it to write this blog post I feel I must share my experiences to save you from going down the same road I did as I have had nothing but frustrations for the last 10 weeks trying to set this up.

I had heard many great things about Infusionsoft and decided to check them out. You can see what they offer here, Initially all I wanted to do was use their affiliate program and possibly use their autoresponder service at a later date. The plan was to put all of my products under one roof using one system. Now at $299 per month this was no cheap affiliate program but I decided to contact someone at Infusionsoft to ask about their service. This is where the problems started.

I asked if I would be able to use PayPal to accept recurring billing payments, I was told I would be able to do this no problem and was then told about the wonderful things Infusionsoft would do for my business. (If anyone from Infusionsoft reads this I still have the email from Scott Morrision telling me the setup with PayPal was possible)

So I decided to sign up and get things moving. Now remember I had done some research and while I consider myself to be quite technically experienced I knew this wasn’t going to be easy to set up so I had to get the help of a programmer to set things up.

Without boring you with the details I have now gone through 3 programmers and none of them can set this up for me, the reason they can’t set this up is it can’t be done and Infusionsoft have acknowledged it but that’s not where my problem lies.

You see, during all of this time I have had to contact Infusionsoft support numerous times and I must say their support is non existent.

• They will tell you anything to get you off the phone.
• They don’t reply to support tickets.
• They pass you to another department which sends you to an answerphone.
• They promise to ring you back but never do (this has happened numerous times)
• The guy you need to speak to is always ‘in a meeting’ or ‘away from his desk’.
• ETC, ETC.

They simply don’t seem to care about their customers, now remember this is a $299 per month service we are talking about here. Not some $10 product.

Anyway, to cut a long story short last week I decided to go with a different company and got set up in 3 days, if only I had done this in the first place. So I contacted Infusionsoft to cancel my account and request a refund of the $900 they have as they mis-sold me their product.

After submitting a support ticket last week and making 3 phone calls yesterday and being ‘promised a reply by close of business today’ guess what!

I’m still waiting!

Now get this, I can’t cancel my account unless I talk to someone at billing. When you contact billing you get an answerphone, but what’s the point of leaving a message as they don’t respond.

My next payment of $299 is due on the 23rd of May and I have given up trying to cancel my account. I am simply going to do a chargeback.

How a company that is supposed to help the Internet Marketer can treat a customer like this is beyond me. I may receive some flack for this post but as one of my blog readers I must warn you, if you value your business stay well away from Infusionsoft.

This whole experience has probably cost me in the region of $30,000 as I am now 10 weeks late with an evergreen product launch. Let’s just hope this blog post prevents a few people going through the same experience I have.

They will tell you what you want to hear to make a sale but that’s where the communication ends.

If anyone from Infusionsoft reads this please cancel my account so I don’t have to perform a chargeback. My username is ‘planetsms’

Rant over!

[Update] A lot of people are asking what service I have switched to. At the moment I just put the product in question on ClickBank. That’s one company who value their customers who I’ve never had an issue with in 5 years. If i do go with an all in one system I can recommend I will let you guys know.

[Update 2] I’ve just received this email from Infusionsoft:

Hi John, I tried to call you but there was no answering service. So am emailing you this response. My name is Clay Jeppsen. I am an Account Manager here at Infusionsoft, yesterday I received an email from my boss to contact you regarding your request to cancel. By the time I opened the email it was already late in the evening there in the UK. We are in Arizona, 9 hours difference. It proved to be a poor choice of me to wait and call you today. For that I apologize. And I am sincerely sorry for the fact that Infusionsoft was not able to get your project off the ground. I believe it is still a bug that our tech support is trying to fix, but that is not your problem. And, Infusionsoft is not in the business of taking peoples money. We are in the business of growing businesses; this is what we pride ourselves on. For that reason I have refunded 897.00 American dollars back to your Visa and canceled your account. I hope this helps towards your future endeavors and time lost with Infusionsoft. Like I said, we would have preferred a more prolific outcome. If we are going to part, I hope we can at least agree on one thing – that we wanted you to be successful with our product. Your success brings us success. That is healthy for the both of us. I wish you the best in the future. If you have any questions for me please call or email me.

It’s a shame it took this blog post to get action but there you have it. You have to love the power of the Internet and social media, thanks everyone for your support, I truly appreciate it.

[Update 3] Yet another response from Infusion, it’s strange how they suddenly want to communicate with me now.

John,

I have to say when I woke up this morning, checked Twitter and saw a handful of mentions to your blog post, I was disappointed to say the least. I was disappointed because I know great lengths Infusionsoft has made (and continues to make) to deliver exceptional service to all users. I am glad we’ve taken steps to resolve this as quickly as we have.

I hope you understand that we earnestly worked hard to earn your business and legitimately wanted to help you and your business grow. Our app had all the functions you desired, but it seems the point of failure was on the merchant processing needs. We have hundreds and possibly thousands of users who successfully use our app with PayPal Payflow Pro for recurring billing. I know this wasn’t what you expected and I totally understand why it was frustrating.

I would like to point out that we have been on top of the support cases you submitted. I wouldn’t exactly say we were “non-existent” nor have we pushed you off the phone. We take sincere pride in our 92% customer satisfaction and work hard to push that even higher. We will made necessary accommodations to keep our users happy and their businesses growing. We’ve listened to our customer feedback on help and have made numerous improvements to our Help Center — clearing away the unnecessary and providing more detailed articles, tutorials and helpful videos for users. To date, our support team’s support case ratings have averaged at 4.54 out of 5.0 which leads us to believe most users receive timely, satisfactory service.
We accept and apologize for the difficulty in reaching our account management team. We have sent an internal communication to advise all employees on how to properly handle such concerns. While this does not ameliorate your concerns directly, it will help us improve and provide even better service for all our users.

And one last point — and I want your readers to hold us to this – we commit to following up with every customer concern within one business day. We know it’s unacceptable to wait for a response from a modern, upstanding company and we’re stepping up to the plate to provide excellent service to everyone. We’ve grown quite a bit and that’s no excuse to accept inferior service. Conversely, we will take all the steps to hold our customers accountable once they use our app to use it successfully and accept our guidance in making the most from the app. After all, we’re both in this game and want to keep our customers happy.

I hope you understand we meant this response with the best of intentions. As I mentioned to you on Twitter, any person who endured such a bumpy experience would have been met with such compassionate and rapid service from us. We’re a different company than we were before (Google us and see what mistakes we’ve made in the past) and would like to let you know that we welcome any feedback, suggestions and improvements to make our app and service better.

Thanks for the feedback the opportunity to serve you better. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Warm Regards,

Joseph Manna
Community Manager, Infusionsoft
Email: joseph.manna@infusionsoft.com
Twitter: @joemanna | @infusionsoft
Ph: (480) 289-6814

Reply from John

My only response to that is if you ‘take sincere pride’ in 92% customer satisfaction that’s actually quite shocking as that means 8% of your customers are not satisfied with your service and you seem happy with that. If you were trading on eBay with 92% satisfaction nobody would buy from you and eBay would probably close you down.

Summer Is Here

Hey guys, It’s 11am as I write this quick blog post and the sun is shining, the weather here in the UK has been fantastic lately and under normal circumstances I’d probably get this blog post done, do my emails and give myself the afternoon off. However, I have a ton of consultation calls booked in today and tomorrow so it looks like I’ll have to stay in the office but that’s ok as I know I’ll be generating content while helping others.

John’s Marketing Calls Launches Today

Speaking of consultation calls, this conveniently brings me onto my next topic, I’ve just launched a site called John’s Marketing Calls. The plan is a simple one. I have a video on the main page and I give away some of my previous consultations. No opt-in is required but you do need to opt-in to receive more calls. Once you opt-in I offer you the chance of consulting with me. I’m at the testing stage at the moment but if I make sales I’ll open the site up to affiliates.

Here’s a breakdown.

1, Main page

2, Download page, this can be accessed without the need to opt-in

3, Thank you page after opt-in

4, Example of a page I send people to when they access more calls

You will notice the main aim of this site is to make sales of $497 consultation calls. Something which I feel is great value as I will ultimately promote the calls to my list.

If I do bring affiliates on board this will mean I am building a list from this and generating $497 sales, can’t be too bad if it works. I’ll keep you posted but hopefully this setup will give you some ideas for your own business. BTW, let me know what you think about the video on the main page

Affiliate Silver Bullet.

No doubt you will have received a ton of emails about Affiliate Silver Bullet that’s due to launch tomorrow. I’ve had a good look at this and have to say this looks solid. It’s basically a ‘done for you’ kind of product where everything is provided to help you set up automated affiliate campaigns. I like the look of this product so I’ll be promoting this myself. In the meantime you can find out more and register for the pre-launch webinar here.

Anyone Going To Bristol?

Finally, are you going to the LFMPIRE Workshop in Bristol on May 7^th 8^th and 9^th? If so let me know and we can arrange to have a drink and a chat. I’ll be there from Friday tea time for the whole event along with Dave Nicholson. It should be a blast and I’m sure many long term business relationships will be formed. If you’re quick you still may be able to grab a ticket, get all the details here.

That’s all for today, please leave a comment and let me know what you think about the setup for John’s Marketing Calls, Affiliate Silver Bullet and if you’re going to Bristol let me know.

It’s early on Good Friday morning as I write this blog post and I’m almost ready to go away for the weekend but I thought I’d get this information out to you first while it’s still hot on your mind.

As you probably know this week I ran a Firesale, if you missed it you can check it out here, the sale is over but you can still see the sales page to see what I did. The sale was a huge success and generated over $20,000 in sales, not bad for simply selling a few of my existing products at a discount. In this blog post I’m going to share some tips with you that will hopefully help if you ever decide to do something similar.

First of all I am not claiming to be a Firesale expert, in fact I had never ran a Firesale before and now it’s over I know I made a few mistakes. The main mistake I made was not notifying affiliates sooner. I only let my affiliates know 24 hours before launch, this is really short notice as most affiliates will have promos marked out up to 2 months in advance. I still got quite a few affiliates to promote but I know I could have had more if I had mentioned it sooner.

Another mistake I made was not warming up my own subscribers before launch. I actually never mentioned this sale to my subscribers before the site went live. Looking back I should have maybe sent a couple of pre-launch emails out. Maybe explaining what I was going to do. So if you ever do something like this notify your affiliates and subscribers sooner and you should see better results.

Now I may have made a few mistakes but I know I got a few things right. In fact the biggest thing I got right was adding an affiliate program in the first place. I initially wasn’t going to do this but at the last minute and with the advice of Dave Nicholson I decided to get affiliates on board. This resulted in a ton of sales generated by affiliates (thanks for the advice Dave). I also told all affiliates they would be paid on Friday (today) and I know this appealed to a lot of affiliates. After all we all like to get paid promptly when we promote a product so I decided to pay out as soon as the sale was over. I got round this by not offering a refund on the sale itself. Whether this was the right thing to do I don’t know but I don’t think many people would have refunded anyway as the value was so great.

And this brings me on to the next thing I feel I got right. I piled on the value, not only did I offer almost all of my products for one low price, I also offered extra material such as consultations, business reviews and more. The reason I did this was because I realised a lot of people would have already bought some of the products on offer so I wanted to offer something extra to tempt these people and it seemed to work.

Now, you would have thought anyone who had paid the full price for any of the products on offer would have complained about the price and the fact they paid the full price. This was a major concern for me and it almost stopped me doing the sale altogether but I thought to myself that if anyone complains I will offer them an additional product or two, guess how many complaints I had? None! Yes, not one person complained, this actually surprised me. In fact I received a ton of emails from people thanking me for making such an offer. I did have a few queries from people who had already bought some of my products and I just offered something extra. So if you have ever had any doubts about doing this because of fear of complaints don’t worry about it. Your subscribers will thank you!

So what else do I feel I got right? Well I think the fact I gave the sale a name was a major plus point. It’s no use saying, “I’m having a sale, here it is” is it? You need to make an impact with your sale, so give it a name, a name such as ‘Bob’s Birthday Bonanza’ or Steve’s Summer Spectacular’, you get the idea. Then get a domain name to correspond with the name of the sale and get some graphics created. This will give you a template to work from.

Then list all of your products for sale and link to each product sales page individually, let the visitor see what each product costs and make sure you put the cost of each product on your page and add a total at the end. As you can see the total value of the products offered in my sale was $6673, not bad for a $97 investment.

Next, limit the sale, if you limit the time on your sale you will see better results. However, when you say it ends take it down or you will be seen as someone who can’t be trusted. My sale ended the second I said it was going to and now its over and no one else can get in. Now what do you think that did to people who knew the sale was about to end? Well let me tell you most of my sales were made in the last 24 hours, need I say any more? In fact look around you in the ‘real world’ and see how many companies are having a sale just for the Easter Weekend, how much money do you think they will make as a result of this. I bet DFS have a sale on this weekend (For our international visitors DFS are a sofa company who always seem to have a sale on)

Don’t be afraid to mail often, at least on a daily basis, make sure you keep your subscribers informed about what’s going on, be sure to remind them how much time is remaining, especially as your sale comes to an end. I would also advise you warm your prospects up with some pre launch emails, remember the mistake I made by not doing this?

Add a countdown timer as the sale comes to an end. When there were 36 hours remaining I added a countdown timer and I know this had a dramatic effect, especially in the closing hours, it also help’s people see when your sale ends as things can get confusing with people viewing your page from different time zones. There are a ton of countdown timers available online so they are not hard to find.

And that’s about it really; if you already have products under your belt you should have no problems, remember the key areas to cover.

• Give your sale a catchy name and get a dedicated domain and graphics
• Pile on the value
• Use an affiliate program and notify affiliates early
• Have a pre launch period to warm your prospects up
• Make sure you add up the total value of your sale and let the prospect know how much they’ll be saving
• Add additional material such as personal support & 1 on 1 consultations
• Pile on the value
• Add a countdown timer as the sale ends
• Mail often, at least on a daily basis
• When your sale comes to an end take down the payment button promptly
• Remember! Pile on the value

Now remember, I am no expert and like I have already said I made mistakes, but I’m sure if you do some more research and add your own selling experience to your sale there is no reason why you can’t see incredible success with your very own Firesale. As always I’d love you to share your comments and if you have any tips regarding Firesales please share them with my blog readers.