Payment Terms

Credit card companies hate this one weird trick

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I listened to an NPR podcast a few days ago that discussed “buy now pay later” plans.

Basically, it’s what I did last year when I offered a 10-part payment plan my Copy Riddles program:

1. The course normally costs $997.

2. for a few days only, I offered a 10-part payment plan: $97 today, and 9 more monthly payments of $100, adding up to exactly $997.

I ended up making a nice number of sales of Copy Riddles that way, and payments trickled in, without fail, throughout this year.

The podcast I listened to says “buy now pay later” has spread to all parts of the economy in past few years because of a new breed of companies that provide this kind of financing as a service.

Unlike credit card companies, these “buy now pay later” companies offer payment deals that add up to exactly the same price or something very close to it.

Because this is all happening in place of regular credit card payments, it has cost credit card companies billions of dollars in lost processing fees and interest payments.

Of course, credit card companies hate this, and are battling these new startups that threaten to eat their lunch.

But even if credit card companies end up successful in driving these “buy now pay later” companies out of business, there’s nothing preventing you from offering such a payment plan yourself.

The whole reason this new system has appeared is that customers love it, and end up buying way more than they would otherwise.

“Yes but,” you say as you look up from your glasses, pen in hand, eyebrows arched, “is that a good thing?”

The NPR podcast clearly tried to give this “buy now pay later” thing a sinister, manipulative tint.

They started out the episode by featuring a dumb and out-of-control 20-year-old girl, who ended up buying a bunch of overpriced bikinis, designer tights, and sneakers using these plans, because it all felt effectively free, until the payments started arriving in a pack.

All I can say is that the two times I ran “buy now pay later” plans, I saw that a bunch of people who bought were people who are successful and who I assume have enough money.

I further assume they bought because the payment plan made it psychologically easier to get something they already wanted, and not because it tricked them into buying something they couldn’t afford.

In other words, maybe “getting people to buy from you more easily” and “keeping dumb and out-of-control people from buying from you” are two distinct topics, rather than a single concern.

And now, entirely unrelated to today’s clickbait subject line:

I’d like to remind you of my Daily Email House group, where the mission is “Use your email list to pay for a house.”

I’m planning some exciting things for that community soon. In the meantime, I keep sharing stuff in there related to list growth and list monetization for free, including some stuff that I should really be selling. If you’d like to join us inside Daily Email House:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Millionaire math used by the wealthiest people, but not me

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Yesterday morning, my time, I concluded the “Unannounced Bonus” promo I had been running all past week.

As usual, the final day of the promo was an exhausting barrage of emails.

The last thing I wanted to do yesterday was to think or write more about that promo or how it went.

But today, I did what I usually do and looked at my “Unannounced Bonus” promo — how it went, how it compared to previous promos, what I can learn.

Let me shoo the elephant out of the closet right away, and make the gray beast dance:

This “Unannounced Bonus” promo made fewer sales of Copy Riddles, across 7 days, than I made last year during the last promo I ran for CR, which I called the “White Tuesday” promo, and which lasted just 2 days.

Before you either feel too bad for me or start to maliciously gloat, let me say that the “White Tuesday” promo surprised even me by how well it did.

And though the “Unannounced Bonus” promo did less than that, it still made more in a week than I would likely be making in a month if I had a proper job. It also paid me an effective per-email rate that’s many hundreds of dollars higher than I was making back at the peak of my freelance copywriting career.

But, with all that self-reassuring done, the fact remains I made fewer sales now, over 7 days, than last year, over 2 days.

What’s going on?

I made a list of 10 possible explanations for myself. All of them are legit, and all possibly contributed. But there’s one big one that stands out to me, and that I want to highlight to you too:

During the “White Tuesday” promo last year, part of the offer was a payment plan for Copy Riddles.

95% of people who bought during that promo took the payment plan.

During the “Unannounced Bonus” promo that just ended, part of the offer was once again a payment plan for Copy Riddles.

But just 33% of people who bought during this promo took the payment plan.

The difference is that this time, I was partnering with Lawrence Bernstein, and offering a lifetime subscription to his Ad Money Machine as a bonus for Copy Riddles. (And vice versa — Lawrence was also promoting the offer to his list.)

Due to the uniqueness of this arrangement, I agreed with Lawrence we’d offer the same payment plan as he offered the last time he made the offer of a lifetime subscription for Ad Money Machine…

… which, as I said, 33% of buyers ended up finding enticing.

On the other hand, last year, I followed a very specific payment plan philosophy. 95% of people found that payment plan enticing, and much more importantly, a greater total number of sales came out of it.

Maybe you remember what the payment plan was that I offered for White Tuesday. If not, my emails are all archived on my site, and you can find the campaign there. You can look it up, and see what the exact payment plan was.

But I’ll tell you one thing:

Even if you know the specifics of what I did publicly, you’re unlikely to glean the underlying payment plan philosophy, or the most exciting and valuable marketing trick resulting from that philosophy, which is applied behind the scenes.

I’ll tell you a second thing:

The payment plan philosophy I followed last year came from a 13-minute video by Travis Sago, titled “Millionaire Math Used by the Wealthiest People.”

If you’ve already taken me up on my recommendation to sign up for Travis’s Royalty Ronin community (I myself am a paying member), then you can find this 13-minute video as a bonus inside the Phoneless Sales Machine course, which normally sells for $2,000, and which Travis gives away as a free bonus for those who are in Royalty Ronin.

If you haven’t taken me up on my recommendation to sign up for Travis’s Royalty Ronin community, then I can only tell you Royalty Ronin is expensive. Very expensive. Particularly if you sign up and do nothing with the information.

On the other hand, if you are selling offers online — specifically, info products like courses or ebooks — and if you apply just this one idea from Travis about payment plans, it could well be worth thousands of dollars to you by the end of this week alone, and much, much more in the coming weeks, months, and years.

If you want to invest in a month of Ronin, and see how quickly and thoroughly you can make your money back:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Copy Riddles is expensive… or maybe not

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This past Monday, as I started my “Unannounced Bonus” promo for Copy Riddles, I got the following message from a long-term customer (I don’t know if he wants me to share his name):

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Gadzooks! What a bonus!

I was going to wait, but I don’t think I can pass this up.

However, I will take a day or two to run my numbers because I was NOT planning on dropping a grand on a new course this month.

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This customer has since gone to join Copy RIddles and get access to that gadzookin’ bonus, which is a lifetime membership to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

Except, something sneaky is going on:

This customer didn’t lay out $997, which is what Copy Riddles sells for. That’s because he took advantage of the (so far unannounced) payment plan for Copy Riddles, which I’m offering this week only, as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” event.

I’ve only offered a payment once before in the 4+ years of Copy Riddles, and I only did that for 2 days.

I was pleasantly surprised it 1) helped drive sales and 2) the people who bought via the payment plan weren’t buying because they couldn’t afford the full price, but simply because it was psychologically easier.

(I have interacted with many of those customers before, and I know they are successful marketers and business owners.)

That’s something to consider if you too sell high-ticket info products.

Here’s something else to consider. The total offer for Copy Riddles during the present “Unannounced Bonus” promo, which ends this Sunday at 12 midnight PST, is now:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

(Previous customers have said Copy Riddles is “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, for the next three days only, you can get started with Copy Riddles for $399, and then two more monthly payments of $399.

About that price:

I’m not saying Copy Riddles is not expensive because you can break it up into payments, though that can help reduce the psychological sting of a lump sum.

I am saying Copy Riddles can stop being expensive if you take the attitude that you will get your money’s worth from it, and more.

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious pontificator:

I’ve forced myself to develop the habit that, whenever I spend money on courses, memberships, events, I sit down and make a list of 10 ideas for how I could make that money back, and more, by a given date, thanks to what I’m learning or getting inside that course/membership/event, ideally before I’ve even paid it off fully.

No, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

Sometimes it takes me longer to make my money back, and sometimes I don’t manage it all the way.

But sometimes, I do make my money back before the deadline I had set for myself. And sometimes it works out much better than planned.

This is a good attitude in general if you spend time in the world of direct response marketing and copywriting.

That world is built out of intangible, feathery ideas, which can nonetheless quickly translate into real and tangible things like gold, houses, and cars.

I’ll have a real-world example tomorrow of how a Copy Riddles member applied this mentality to get more out of Copy Riddles than he paid for it.

Meanwhile, the deadline is nearing. Once again, it’s this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to get Copy Riddles and the free lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine… be part of “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort… and even potentially take advantage of the payment plan, giving you two extra months to recoup your investment in this offer, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Payment plan lapsed buyer stats

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A few days ago, a reader and customer named Alexander wrote to ask:

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Hey John,

I bought your Copy Riddles on a payment plan, but I’ve just recently changed my banks, so I have new details for the charges. I believe I’m due to be charged again in about a week, so I’d like to change the details so you actually get the money you’re owed… Can you let me know how to do that?

Thanks mate!

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“Well hot damn,” I said. This kind of email early in the morning definitely cheers me up.

Not that I’ve really had much cause to be worried.

The fact is, over the past six or so months, I have sold 100+ things on payment plan, whether of my own products or affiliate offers.

To date, I have had exactly one lapsed buyer.

The rest have all paid as agreed, updating their credit card numbers when they expire. A few particularly diligent souls, such as Alexander, even do it in advance.

Does this mean that all people everywhere have always been and will always be fundamentally good and decent?

Maybe. I don’t know enough people to be able to say one way or another.

But based on my amateur research into the human mind, I do know a few things:

– We all tend to mirror and adapt to the unspoken context or “frame” of an interaction

– Time is a factor in creating a frame of intimacy, trust, and respect

– So is frequency of contact

What drops out at the bottom of this funnel is that the longer you stay in touch with people… the more often you stay in touch with them… and the more you treat them with trust, respect, and intimacy, the more likely you are to get the same treatment in return.

One way to do this is what I personally do, and that’s to write daily emails like this one.

Which brings me to my offer, which helps you start and stick with writing emails for the long term, every day, or at least dailyish. For more information on this way to create the right frame with the people in your audience:

https://bejakovic.com/deh