A couple days ago, brand strategist Chavy Helfgott posted a little case study in my Daily Email House community. Maybe it’s something you can profit from.
Chavy wrote:
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I’ve been working with John on monetizing my list, and after several weeks of asking lots of questions to my readers, we realized the following:
1) Creating a lead magnet was something that would solve problems for many of my readers
2) I myself don’t have a proper lead magnet with which to steadily grow my list with high quality subscribers
So – John conceived of the idea of running a live cohort for a minimal price, in which I would build a lead magnet for myself while showing the cohort members my process, and giving them feedback as they create theirs.
Jan 29 – initial tease to my list and LinkedIn to gauge interest
Feb 4 – official “launch” with an email describing the live cohort
Feb 13 – registration closed
Total marketing: 12 emails to my small list & 10 LinkedIn posts
Zero ad spend.
15 days from concept creation to launch closing.
4 cohort members paying me $99 each.
Our first call is on Monday, and I’ve already built a template that is on its way to becoming my first sellable info-product.
And of course, I started creating my own lead magnet, which will probably be a summary of this lead magnet building process.
So – if you, too, are a barefoot shoemaker, perhaps you can also let your audience pay for the privilege of coming along for the ride as you make your own shoes.
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Like Chavy says, we all have important things we want to do, need to do, aren’t doing….
… so why not create an offer out of it?
You can do like Chavy is doing, and run a cohort program. Charge people some nontrivial but very easy price, and guide them through the same process you are following.
It makes sure you do what you need to do, plus it builds an offer for you, plus it gets you buyers you can sell other things to.
Pr you can do like I’m doing with my “Behind The Scenes” auction.
Fact is, for the past few months now, I’ve been creating “systems” docs for several things I do or want to do better, in which I put real-world data, make hypotheses based on that data, and create systems that get me better results over time.
I’ve created such “systems” docs for promos, for followup, and for auctions, among other things.
Except, I’m not as diligent as I should be at updating these docs and putting in the data and making hypotheses and creating ever better systems.
So I figured, why not turn my “auction systems” doc into an offer, take other people for the ride, get paid a bit of money to actually do what I should be doing?
That’s what’s happening tomorrow.
In case you missed my emails about it over the past few days… I’ll be running an auction.
Bidding starts at $1.
The offer on auction is the “Behind The Scenes” of the auctions I have run already and will be running (I currently have 8 auction partners who are at various stages, and all are still moving forward).
The “Behind The Scenes” I will share will include offers on auction (both public and private)… sales numbers… interesting marketing… sales DMs… “day after” conclusions… along with the “auction system” I am devising based on all this data.
I’m thinking to make bonuses available as well for tomorrow’s auctions, Such as, how I have and will be getting auction partners… a live ride-along with me on an auction, plus a share of the money made… and other bonuses that are suggested by auction participants in real time.
Maybe tomorrow’s auction will be a flop, and winning bid ends up at $13.
Maybe I will be able to do like Chavy, and make a bit of cash, a few hundred dollars or more, by taking people along for the ride with me.
In any case, I figure I will get something out of it, in the form of the “auction systems” doc I should be creating anyhow, plus data (from tomorrow’s auction) that I can put into that doc to make my auction systems better.
If you’d like to participate in the auction (I will have a prize for anyone bidding), here’s where the auction will go down, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 7pm CET/1pm EST/10am PST: