At the beginning of last December I re-launched my freelance blogging guide. What was once a PDF (originally launched in November 2012) became a fully fledged online course, re-branded as Paid to Blog.
My main reason for updating and re-launching the course was that I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the original. I wanted to create, beyond a shadow of my own doubt, the best guide available for aspiring and existing freelance bloggers. I felt I needed to get that monkey off my back before I moved on to other projects.
I wanted the course to be a “critical” success (and if the lack of refund requests is anything to go by, people are pretty happy). However, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t want it to be a financial success too. If you’re interested in finding out how the re-launch affected my bottom line (and how you can learn from its successes and failures), read on!
Investment
First of all, let’s talk about what creating the new course cost me.
I outsourced the design of the site to my designer, for which I paid $500. In hindsight, I think I paid over the odds and could’ve achieved a decent result for fraction of the cost. It’s a pretty basic design.
I also outsourced the coding as well the membership plugin setup (MemberMouse, which I heartily recommend) to my programmer extraordinaire, Tito Brahmanto, which cost another $200 or so.
So, my total outgoings were $700 (plus the $20 per month MemberMouse subscription).
However, the real expense was my time. While I could’ve just repackaged and released the original guide under a new name, I chose to go back through the content line-by-line. I ended up re-editing a lot of the original guides and added a not inconsiderable amount of fresh content.
I also conducted interviews with three more people to serve as extra resources and to give me additional insight with which to improve the guide itself.
I didn’t record how much time I spent on the re-launch, but I probably spent nearly as much time on it as I did on the original guide. It needed to be a pretty big success to justify my time and money investment.
The Launch
I launched Paid to Blog on 2nd December without much fanfare.
Besides the announcement on my blog, I wrote a handful of guest posts for a few related blogs (such as Be a Freelance Blogger and The Write Life). Unfortunately, my attempt at tracking clicks failed, so I don’t know whether those guest posts generated many (if any) sales. However, if I had to guess, I would say that they generated very few, since the number of visitors from those sites was pretty low.
As you would expect, I also announced the course to my email lists. This included my main list, along with smaller lists associated with my old Kindle publishing attempts and existing purchasers of the guide.
I offered 25% discounts to all email list members, which led to $1,515.87 in sales. When it came to existing owners of the original guide, I gave them a free upgrade to the basic course and offered them a huge discount on upgrading to the full course with all of the extra features. This proved to be quite popular, generating $1,521.01 in sales.
So in total, the re-launch generated $3,036.88 in sales, which after expenses was around $2,300. Given the amount of time I put into the new course, I would say that was a decent (if not particularly exciting) return on my time investment.
Regular Sales
To be honest, I didn’t intend for the course to be a huge success in terms of a “launch” — more importantly, I hoped that its improvement would lead to greater long term monthly sales.
So far, that hasn’t really proven to be the case. Before the re-launch, the old guide generated around $1,200 (on average) per month. In December it generated just $640.55.
However, it’s not really fair to cast judgment on that month, given that an additional $2,300 was generated in December through the re-launch. I felt that January would be a far better indicator of future sales.
Unfortunately, we’re nearly at the end of the month and January isn’t showing particularly encouraging signs either. Sales for the month to date are $976.95, which on a pro-rata basis would equal $1,121.58 for the entire month — slightly under the historical average.
So, even if sales are greater than average in the long run, it would appear that they’re not likely to be greater by a considerable margin. From that perspective, I consider the re-launch to be a bit of a failure.
Having said that, I don’t regret what I did. I made some money and I created what I consider to be a far superior resource to what came before it. That’s a win in my book (albeit not an emphatic one).
What Can I Do?
Of course, there’s always something one can do in an attempt to increase sales. However, at this point I’m not sure what solid option I have.
The course currently has three price points:
- $29 for just the two guides,
- $49 for the guides plus lots of extras, and
- $149 for all that and job-finding resources.
Sales in January have actually been quite evenly split between the packages, although the top tier product did of course generate the bulk of the income. With the above in mind, I don’t think I want to mess with pricing.
Another option would be to drive more views to the site itself. I’m not sold on guest posting as a way to promote a product, so I’m not interested in doing more that. I also think that the guide is about as prominent as I would like it to be on this site (with a button in the sidebar and contextual mentions within posts), so I’m not sure what else I could do on that front.
Alternatively, I could work on tweaking the sales page. To be honest, that kind of work doesn’t really excite me, and the sale volume is so low that I don’t think I would get reliable results anyway (unless I ran split tests for months at a time).
A final option would be to write more about freelance blogging here on LWB. In fairness, I think I should be doing that anyway — given that I feel I have a lot of value to offer in that area, I should be writing about it more regularly. I intend to do that, and hope it will lead to an increase in sales as a nice side effect.
At this point I think I am accepting of the course’s fate. Of course, if I manage to attract more relevant traffic to Leaving Work Behind, I should expect more sales, but I won’t be devastated if I don’t. I’ve got lots of other projects I want to be getting on with and I don’t feel particularly inclined to try to wring every last drop out of Paid to Blog.
Over to You
Now I’d love to know what you think. All things considered, would you say the re-launch was a success? How about the performance in January? Would you have done anything differently and/or would you do anything differently to what I plan? Finally, do you have your own product launch stories to share? Let us know in the comments section below!
Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com
Giles Lascelle says
Hi Tom,
Obviously, you turned a profit, so it wasn’t a failure as such, but just as obviously the return on the investment wasn’t quite what you might have hoped. I have a number of thoughts most of which people pay me good money for coaching them on 🙂 but the main one I am very happy to share with you absolutely free …
The main problem is that with your experience you should be positioned as an expert in your field, but your price points actually position you as bargain basement. They are way too low. Forgive me if I’ve got it wrong, but the $29, $49 and $149 are the full prices, not the discounted prices? I would be thinking in terms of $49 being your discounted entry level price point. That way, more realistic price points would be:
Entry level – $99 discounted to $49
Mid level – $299 discounted to $149
Premium level – $749 discounted to $349
By setting your price points higher, it sends a clear message that you are fully confident in your material (as you should be), and will attract more customers at the mid and premium levels. The amount you lose at the bottom end would be negligible in comparison.
Of course changing the price points alone won’t necessarily give you more customers (though it will help give you more high paying customers), but the other things you could change about the marketing are a bit complicated to go into here.
I have to be honest and say I didn’t buy into the course, which is not a comment on the quality, but rather on the fact that blogging for me is an ancillary activity to my main business, so it’s not the sort of thing I would be likely to spend money on training for. However, if it was my main business and I had to choose between buying into something at your price points and A.N. Other’s training at price points more like the ones I have suggested; all other things being equal I would go with the higher priced course, as the pricing would give me confidence that I was getting good value.
Hope that helps
Giles
Justin says
Hey Giles,
Loved your thoughts and found myself nodding my head as I read through your comment.
Tom’s awfully good at what he does and because of that, should position his product at a higher price-point. I love the writing he’s able to do and his hustle. If aspiring writers and/or pro-bloggers want to learn from him (and they should) I think it’s worth it.
And – this is coming from someone who’s not generally a fan of info products!
I didn’t buy the course either, but I’m not his target market for this. Still – totally agree that it’s worthwhile to test different price points.
I read an article recently talking about someone who was selling a course and tested through different price points, placements, etc. I’ll look it up and see if I can find it to share…totally worth Tom checking out, though.
Tom Ewer says
There was a great post on Think Traffic like that: http://fizzle.co/sparkline/most-common-pricing-mistake. In fact, Nathan Barry has great stuff to say about information product launches in general. Thanks for the feedback Justin!
Justin says
Yep, that’s the article, Tom! Although I could have sworn I read it somewhere else first. (Nathan’s blog, maybe?)
Tom Ewer says
Quite possibly…
Tom Ewer says
Hi Giles,
To be honest, I hate the marketing tactic of “discounting” prices — it means nothing and really isn’t my style.
The prices were originally $49, $99 and $249, but after a period of split testing, I discovered that lower prices resulted in a higher income. Admittedly, the split test wasn’t exhaustive, but making the course more accessible to people with lower budgets encouraged me to go with the lower price points.
Cheers,
Tom
Jawad Khan says
Hi Tom,
As usual, thank you for a very transparent account of your product performance.
I think it’s still quite early to declare success or failure on this project. I think you need to promote it aggressively for the next couple of months to see where it lands you.
In my opinion, you can do 2 things to increase your sales:
1) Guest blogging – I know you didn’t find much success with it, but I think if you target blogs like Problogger, Copyblogger etc. you’ll get a much better response.
2) Facebook Marketing – Why don’t you create a Facebook Ad campaign and route visitors to your Paid to Blog page? It’s a very cheap marketing channeland won’t cost you much time either. I think you can get a significant rise in your sales if you get it right.
Best of luck!
Jawad Khan
Tom Ewer says
Hey Jawad,
I’ve had enough of guest posting for now, but I think you’re spot on with Facebook advertising. I’ve just put it on my to do list. Thanks!
Cheers,
Tom
Alexis Grant says
I’ve had luck with Facebook advertising too! Def worth trying.
nader says
Tired of guest posting because you cannot freely write what you want?
I just invested a couple of dollars in a “Page Likes” campaign, let’s see how that goes.
Tom Ewer says
What’s that?
Gina says
Hmm. Wasn’t going to comment but then read Giles’ reply and I have to give the honest truth.
First, I was a new buyer for your launch, so it was a success to me. And it’s a decent course. I felt like I got good value and I think it will end up paying off for me that I bought it, although after going through the content I found myself wanting something more. This is typical for me when it comes to products like this because I’m hard to satisfy on claims of “value”, but I was overall happy with it.
Secondly, the price point was part of why I ultimately bought it. If you’d marked it up the way Giles suggests, I wouldn’t have bought anything from you. I’d look at Giles’ prices and think it was just another example of somebody overhyping and overcharging for materials that are just as obtainable another way for less. These courses are not college courses, in no way match the rigor of a college course, and shouldn’t cost more than an academic textbook.
Remember in this day and age, that I can go look on amazon and buy a Kindle on the same topic for less than $5 – it wouldn’t have all the nice features your product does (which is why you can charge $149 for it) but it would provide content, and you’re competing with practically free.
Bottom line. It’s good to reflect on the high and low points of your campaign. Please don’t do what too many people do and overinflate the prices.
Gina
Tom Ewer says
Hey Gina,
Don’t worry — I’m not going to. And you articulated my own thoughts on Giles’ idea better than I did!
I would love to know what the “more” was that you wanted; that would help me a great deal in terms of improving the course. Now that’s online, updating it becomes a cinch!
Cheers,
Tom
Gina says
P.S. – Since I took the time to refute Giles, I’ll give my opinion on what I’d do if I were you (since you asked 🙂 )
I think your idea of posting more frequently on the topic is your best bet, and perhaps following your own materials to do some guest blogs to other people’s lists.
You already have a couple of cheap Kindle books – make sure at the end of that to have a leader page promoting the course if you don’t already have that. I find that an effective way to capture my interest in something I didn’t know I was looking for.
I don’t buy anything from Facebook ads so wouldn’t bother there. Further, I ran a Facebook ad for a product of mine, and was really annoyed to find that far from getting to my targeted niche, it attracted all sorts of likes from people who aren’t even my target audience.
Finally, I think one of your best bets would be to go ahead and work on your new projects – and when you find those, find a cool way (not the standard “oh and one more offer” approach) to let your target audience there know you also have this product over here.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks for the suggestions Gina — I appreciate it!
Gina says
Mea culpa, it’s late/early and I clear need a proofreader!
Gina
Razwana says
Tom – I agree with Giles that the price is far too low for the quality- especially for the most expensive package. Although I wouldn’t pay any more than $400 for it. That’s my take – but for others? Having all the resources they need to create the independence they desire most? It could be worth a whole lot more.
Ramit Sethi and Derek Halpern charge far more for their courses – why wouldn’t you?
Whether your re-launch was a success/failure is pretty subjective. For someone with your gravitas, I would have expected higher sales. You’re one of the leaders this niche – I’d like to see you guest posting more to ‘get your face out there’ so to speak !
Tom Ewer says
Hey Razwana,
To be honest, I think online information product prices are absurdly overinflated. I guess I’m not drinking the same kool-aid everyone else is, and I appreciate that I might be damaging my bottom line by offering “discounted” prices, but I just don’t understand some of the prices floating around.
Let’s rewind 20 years or so, before information products existed. What comparable products were there? Books; perhaps mail order CDs too. Books would cost you $10-$20 and CDs might cost $50 or something. I just don’t understand where these outrageous online prices come from.
Ultimately, I want to benefit my readers and subscribers. I don’t think I do them justice by charging a disproportionate amount for my products — even if everyone else is.
I could change my mind on this, but that’s where I’m at right now.
Cheers,
Tom
Rudiano says
Hi Tom,
From where I’m sitting, this is a success. But for it to be a recurring one, I would have thought that you have to mention it regurlaly, in passing, when the subject of the post lends itself to it, whether on here or in your guest posts…if allowed?
Re the price point, I think you had a really well thought out strategy, but yeah maybe Giles is right, increasing the price just that little bit affects your perceived credibility. But it’s a fine balance. Over-hype is easy…and smaller wallets who would want your product the most risk being alienated…
Tom Ewer says
That’s right Rudiano, and I think that most of my customers are on a pretty tight budget. It’s not like I’m selling a guide to buying luxury yachts 🙂
I’m pretty comfortable with where the price is right now, but I totally agree with your suggestion regarding contextual mentions. I will be working on that for sure.
Yaro says
Hi Tom,
First congrats on making sales – that’s hard enough and proves you have people who trust you enough to hand over money, which is awesome.
Have you ever looked at growing this into a fully fledged sales funnel? I think you have the basis here to start one already, you just need to expand your product offerings – especially some kind of continuity and high end coaching – and then work on conversion.
Once you have the product funnel, only then would I start looking at adding on new traffic sources.
I think you have the foundation for perhaps the second level product in your funnel here with your course. I’d look to add an irresistible front end product at around the less than $50 price range, then the course as an upsell, then a continuity offer and finally high end coaching for people who really want to work closely with you.
Assuming you know your customer avatar well – why exactly they come to you and what their goal is – you could easily turn this into a ten, twenty or even thirty thousand dollar business.
I’m more than happy to have a chat with you about it sometime if you want to flush out the details of your funnel. That’e exactly what I am working on myself right now so it’s very fresh in my mind.
Cheers,
Yaro
Tom Ewer says
Hey Yaro,
I really appreciate you stopping by and offering your advice. The concept of a sales funnel is pretty Greek to me, but I can certainly appreciate the potential and I’d love to chat with you about it! I’ll drop you a line via email.
Cheers,
Tom
Willlaim Kennedy says
Maybe you should give it some more time Tom. It’s kind of hard to judge the success of a product in the first few months. I would give it a good six months before making a decision and analyzing what went wrong.
Also what would the definition of a successful launch mean to you if you were to be specific? Money? Customers? E-mail acquisitions of customers who have already bought your guide? Those are the metrics I would look at
Tom Ewer says
Fair point William; I’ve always been the impatient type 😉
As for defining a successful launch, I suppose it would have been recouping a decent return on my time/money invested in the product. If I spent say 50 hours on the project and the net launch profit was $2,300, that’s $46, which isn’t a lot considering where I am.
But as you suggest, there’s a lot more to it. Thanks for opening me up to another perspective!
Alexis Grant says
Hi Tom!
Few ideas…
+ I, too, like to get my products out there without too much fanfare of a launch and depend on sales over time. Most of my sales at this point come in through SEO — the person lands on a post I’ve written about the topic, then purchases the product (and often later purchases another product related to that).
+ One thing that has helped me rank high in search for keywords related to my ebooks is guest posting. While you say guest posting didn’t drive much immediate traffic, it could boost your SEO and result in more visits over time.
+ One other thing that has worked for me is a freebie related to my ebooks. When people from search land on a page about how much to charge as a social media freelancer, for example, a pop-up asks them if they’d like to grab a freebie, a social media strategy checklist. That checklist sells in two ways: it has links to my related ebooks at the bottom, and it also adds people to my newsletter list. (And I segment them so I offer things that are related to their interest in social media.)
All this to say, you’ve already put so much work into creating the course — now it’s time to push on direct or indirect promotion. As you know, creating is 30%, promotion is 70%!
Thanks for sharing,
Lexi
P.S. Have you considered running Paid to Blog at certain times, rather than making it evergreen? That gives you an excuse to encourage people to sign up by a deadline (a few times each year).
Tom Ewer says
You’re right Alexis — the problem is that I love creating, but I’m not a big fan of promoting!
I’m more convinced than ever that simply more relevant content is the right way to go in terms of building sales, so I’ll definitely be working on that.
I understand the scarcity argument behind making the course available only a few times a year, but I’d rather make sure that people can get it whenever they want to.
Sophie Lizard says
I second Lexi’s comment — having run my Client Hunting Masterclass as both a self-guided product available on demand *and* a fully-supported program that’s available three times a year, I can confirm that a registration deadline always brings a peak in the registration rate.
But of course I can’t tell how many students might have signed up for the fully-supported program if it were available on other dates, or how many bought the on-demand product only because the supported program wasn’t available at the time. 😉
Tom Ewer says
Interesting…you’ve given me an idea Sophie. I’m going to tuck it away in my “Future Projects” rather than jumping on it immediately, like I would normally 😉
Summer Calloway says
I really enjoy the information you put out. Your blogs are interesting to read and I usually make it a point to read them, because of the quality of information you usually put out.
Now for the products. Althought valuable and I’m extremely interested in them. The cost is prohibitive for a lot of people.
To reiterate what another commentor stated, you are competing with amazon and it’s price point.
Yes you need to make fewer sales with a higher price point, but you will move fewer products. With fewer products in the hands of people like myself you will have less people to review and recomment on your product.
Personally I would have bought if the prices were lower. There is so much information out there. So much of this information is just a rehasshing, Now I’m not afraid to spend money on quality information but I’m not sure it’s worth the investment. I would need a more compelling argument and/or better price point.
Still love reading your blogs, keep up the good work.
Tom Ewer says
I’m glad you like my content Summer, thank you!
I understand your argument, but I feel that the prices I have set are fair. You have to draw a line somewhere I guess…besides, if people don’t want to buy, I do have plenty of free content available here on the blog!
Cheers,
Tom
Marc Andre says
Tom, I’d be interested to know if you considered adding an affiliate program. I don’t see anything about one, so I’m assuming there isn’t one.
I’m glad to see that you like Member Mouse. I have a very limited experience with it but it seems like a great option. I had a site that used aMember for a few years and from the little bit that I used Member Mouse I really liked it much better.
Tom Ewer says
Yes! I’m working on an affiliate program. It’s on my list 🙂
Eric Gati says
Tom,
I’ll echo what Marc said – I don’t know if you have an affiliate program (it doesn’t sound like you do), but from what I’ve read about product launches and whatnot from other people, affiliates can be HUGE.
There are certainly reasons to not have an affiliate program, but from a financial standpoint, I think this could potentially be a large source of sales.
Regarding other comments above on price points – I agree with the ones who said it could be higher. I wouldn’t say your products are priced way too low, but I wouldn’t stop testing them further. While I know you don’t want to show phony “discounted” prices, you can still price higher, and that will give you flexibility to offer REAL discounts in the future (holidays, or other times of the year when you decide to offer it).
Also, I disagree with whoever says you are competing with Amazon Kindle books on the same topic – I don’t think you are. While yes, “technically,” you are, you have to act as if you are not. Price should never be the grounds on which you primarily compete. Your course is positioned to offer much more value than a typical Kindle eBook.
On the low end – if I really want to read your guides at $29 – a $39 price point (for example) isn’t going to scare me away one bit. Then again, I probably wouldn’t be one of the buyers “on the fence.”
Ultimately, you know your product best, but you probably still have a lot to gain by testing further (and can speed up this testing with things like Facebook ads, as I think someone else suggested).
One final note – While I know you stopped writing regular income reports, I think they could be a huge driver. They motivate people like crazy, and really offer some “proof” to back your course. While there is still plenty of proof all over your blog and its archives, seeing this on a monthly basis would motivate a lot of people who otherwise may not even consider your course.
Just my $0.02. 🙂
– Eric
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Eric! I’ve made my mind up on the “no income reports” front I’m afraid 🙂
Danielle Hanna says
Tom,
I agree with Eric. I liked seeing the income reports. Far from alienating me, they gave me motivation. 🙂
Danielle
Tom Ewer says
I’m sorry you miss them Danielle. I suppose if there was a big outcry then I would have no choice but to bring them back, but the protests were fairly muted when I made the announcement to retire them 😉
jamiealexander says
Was it a success? Sure, it’s a grand per month passive(ish) income that will increase in the future with a little nurturing/ when your traffic grows.
The only problem I see might be with positioning. I’ve bought a few $300-500 products and it was because of the way they were positioned. The outcome was sexier than just becoming a freelance writer.
I agree with you that some prices are outrageous, but there is probably better content in your course than the two previously mentioned (which were pretty crap btw). If you were to make it sexier and more niche you might get people paying a lot more for it.
This is all just a guess based on my opinion. I want to quit writing, so haven’t bought a course teaching me to do better at it lol. That brings up another important point. Maybe come out with a product current freelance writers would buy. They might feel they don’t need help with becoming a freelance writer, but they could buy something else (so would I if it was something I needed).
Tom Ewer says
Good suggestions all round Jamie, although I’m not sure how to make freelance blogging “sexy” 😉
Sylvia says
Tom,
I am replying as a paying customer.
First I want to mention that I totally agree with Eric Gati that your income reports could generate more sales. People read those and think, “Hey, how can I get in on this?” I’m one of your readers that was hugely disappointed when you decided to stop the income reports (And I thank you for writing up this post with the income report for your Paid to Blog course.) I have been very curious because I want to do something similar.
My suggestion to drive more sales (and I too consider a recurring…hopefully…$1000 a month a success) would be to change out your side bar Paid to Blog box. It needs more of an explanation as to what it is. It is not attention grabbing at all. Maybe even switch it out with the sign up form at the top right. You already have that nice and huge on the home page and again at the end of posts.
Without being able to give specific suggestions for improvement on the course itself, I too was left feeling a little like I was hoping for more. It is very, very good and helpful, but it could have had more content. I bought the middle package. I did not buy the full package with the job postings because I can get that info for free elsewhere.
I still don’t understand why you are giving up on guest posts. I think it was last month that you were everywhere! I would be reading a post and immediately thought, “This sounds like something Tom Ewer would write.” Only to discover at the end that it was indeed you. I can’t imagine that those guest posts did not result in new readers. New readers can eventually become paying readers.
As everyone has said, it hasn’t been long enough since your launch to declare it a (sort of) failure. And $1000 a month (a month!) is awesome. Ok, it’s not $50,000 a month ala Pat Flynn, but $1000 for one product is great in my book! Congrats!
Sylvia
http://businessplanmentor.com
Tom Ewer says
Thanks for the feedback Sylvia!
Your suggestion regarding the sidebar button is a good one — I’ll give more thought to that.
I’m afraid there is little I can do with the “hoping for more” feedback — anything more specific would be most appreciated!
I’ve not “given up” on guest posts, per se, I’m just not doing (unpaid) ones at the moment, nor do I intend to in the future.
Cheers,
Tom
Sylvia says
Just a note to say I took my own advice and switched out my sidebar sign up button at the top right with a button for my ebook linking to the sales page. http://businessplanmentor.com/how-to-write-a-business-plan/ It’s rather ugly, but I have seen a huge increase (relatively speaking) in views, which should result in an increase in sales.
Tom Ewer says
That’s good news! I’m definitely thinking about changing up the button.
JoDavies says
I agree with *most* of the above 😉 about it being too early to judge, give it more time!
I actually thought that Sylvia brought a unique point about adding more to your “Paid To Blog” feature box to get people to click on it… (or do you notice lots of people clicking on it?) I think it would be interesting for you to try Crazy Egg like Pat Flynn did to see where people are clicking…
Alexis & Sophie also had great points about the registration deadlines… for some people that spurs them into action!
As a customer of the course I can say that the content is great and personally, I think the price points are perfect where they are. If you were to consider an increase, I would hope it wouldn’t be a major one. I agree with you that some of the courses out there are insanely priced… That being said, you probably could get away with a bit of an increase.
I think success (though $ is important, everyone has bills) would be better measured by how many people are buying the course, and how many people you are helping…
I think you have put a great program together! Jo
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Jo!
Your penultimate statement carries a lot of meaning for me; most specifically, how many people I help. The only way in which I could justify charging a seriously premium price for a product would be if I was personally invested in trying my best to ensure that every customer succeeded in becoming a successful freelance blogger. That might be a road worth going down for me (rather than selling tens and hundreds of copies to people of who most aren’t necessarily that serious about freelance blogging).
Cheers,
Tom
JoDavies says
Yeah, I think you can safely say that you could charge a higher fee if you were to personally coach people through the process… Maybe 5 at a time or something SUPER exclusive and not overwhelming for you… I believe Carol Tice only takes 3 mentor clients at any one time.
JoDavies says
Also, forgot to add Webinar for promotion!! I can tell you that as you know people love free webinars, and your prices compared to the prices for courses introduced in other Webinars could translate to HUGE sales boost….
Tom Ewer says
Ugh, hate webinars. Sorry!
JoDavies says
I don’t blame you…
Joe says
Hey Tom,
Agree with Jo above, a webinar would have been great boost for your launch. Everyone does them because they work.
Secondly, and this was mentioned up top. Facebook ads. Targeted, specific ads at people who freelance already or strongly thinking about it. You can even get software that can extract IDs of people who are fans of other groups and pages. Slightly grey hat but very specific.
Oh and Yaro dropped you a line to chat with him.!!! The original. Very jealous.
Tom Ewer says
I agree that webinars work; I just hate the idea of doing them unfortunately!
J Munro says
Tricky one. I have two products up on my website. I have regular traffic of between 25-28K hits a month and yet I don’t make that much money from the paid downloads despite knowing they are incredible resources that I poured my knowledge and heart into.
I intend on promoting mine a little more but I also think the sales pages could do with being professionally re-written by someone who specialises in that. You mentioned that you weren’t interested in doing that but maybe a professional would be more successful at it? We both specialise in other things so naturally we’re not amazing writers of sales pages – and I’d get someone to rewrite mine if the people I wanted weren’t so expensive!
Personally I think it’s been successful because, whether people buy it or not, you know that you made a really good, honest product. Financially you didn’t do too badly out of it either, but mainly you should be proud that you had the integrity to rewrite a better product.
Tom Ewer says
The problem is that a professional is very expensive — I would need to be generating far higher sales to justify the investment. It’s a catch-22!
J says
I agree with what most are saying. It is too early for you to tell whether it is successful or a failure. I also agree with the person who said that info courses are not college level courses and they should not be priced as such. I am not saying you should not price the course so that it is profitable and the price shows the value but there is a point where the price is ridiculous and I will not buy.
I also agree with others. I liked the income reports because they did provide me a lot of inspiration. I usually look at income reports just for entertainment purposes and really ignore them but you seem to be a lot realer than others and I did like to see the progress or set back.
Even if you don’t post income reports, I will continue to read your blog. I enjoy the information.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks J! Yet another person commenting on the lack of income reports…more comments like this and I may have to re-think my decision!
JoDavies says
I refreshed the topic in the ‘community’ if people want to weigh in with more thoughts 🙂 Because I have noticed lots of chatter about how people missed them.
Ivy says
Hi Tom,
I think you did a great job with PTB. I have been reading your blog for months and bought the original guide because of the great information I have received through LWB. I wanted to take advantage of every resource you had to offer because of your experience and knowledge and your writing style which is easy for me to read and understand.
I enjoyed my free upgrade to PTB and the only reason I did not purchase the full package is because I am on a tight budget and I had just spent a few bucks on purchasing my hosting and domain name. Otherwise I would have taken advantage of that huge discount.
I had already gotten through most of the original guide before switching to PTB and I think you added a lot of great content. I really enjoyed the extra interviews as well. I think that you should feel great about what you have accomplished, and that writing more about blogging is your best idea for increasing PTB sales. Considering I bought it because of LWB, the more readers you are able to bring to the blog, the more sales you will generate for PTB.
Thanks again for your product and blog, they have been a great help to me on my journey. I look forward to emailing you soon when I launch my blog!
Tom Ewer says
My pleasure — thank you for the kind words Ivy!