Continuity Programs

Why I won’t promote your paid community

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Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, a paid community. A reader who also has a paid community wrote in to ask:

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Ronin is $111/mo. Mine is [a similar price]. If I invite you to be a lifetime member and provided you like what I’ve built inside, would you consider promoting it?

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I appreciate the offer, and the answer is, I would not consider promoting this dude’s paid community, or really, anybody else’s paid community.

The fact is, it’s close to impossible to promote somebody else’s paid community with any success. Because of this, the promise of money isn’t much of a promise at all. I only keep promoting Travis’s thing because I’m a true believer, because I’m in the community myself and get a lot out of it.

If I did promote somebody else’s paid community primarily because I was hoping to get paid, I would do it the way Travis is preparing to auction off a recurring affiliate offer now inside Royalty Ronin.

Travis will be offering people a “Hero Package,” which provides a sexy outcome and overcomes all or most of the objections people might have when they are promised that outcome.

He’s gonna sell that Hero Package, rather than the continuity offer. He will make the continuity offer simply the condition for getting what people really want.

Of course, this model is well-known.

The magic is the way that Travis puts together his Hero Packages so that people are willing to pay 5x, 10x, 20x of whatever the underlying subscription might cost.

If you would like to observe Travis in action as he does this, and learn something you can use to promote recurring offers, whether your own or from affiliates:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Readers kick my stupid analogy to the curb

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In my email yesterday, I asked for my readers’ help for a sticky way to illustrate the distinction between a “predictable income biz” and an “uncertain cash grab biz.”

My best idea was “Rolls-Royce business” vs “DeLorean business.” I thought it was clever. The people who replied almost uniformly thought it was unclear and ineffective.

Fine. Have it your way.

Fortunately, I also got some good suggestions from readers about better analogies than the the unlucky Rolls-Royce/DeLorean thing. A few of my favorites:

A vase of cut flowers versus a potted plant that keeps blooming…

… a deli business (which just has a bunch of expenses on the first of the month) versus the water company (which has a bunch of income on the first of the month)…

… and foraging for food in the wild versus picking fruit in your orchard.

I got other kindsa help, too.

One reader (not sure he wants me to share his name), wrote in to challenge the very premise I was writing about yesterday.

He wrote me a reasoned argument why continuity offers, which provide predictable income for a business, are overrated. He focused on paid newsletters and raised the following points:

1. Paid newsletters have to keep delivering a lot of value or people will unsubscribe, defeating the point of the continuity offer

2. People are more reluctant to sign up for a subscription like a paid newsletter, and are unwilling to pay as high of a price as they might for a one-time purchase

3. It takes a good amount of work to produce a decent paid newsletter every month, and you can’t take any month off

I agree with this, particularly part 3.

Yes, some people make paid newsletters work. But many people, including myself in the past (I had a paid newsletter that I killed after 2 months), fail or give up on them because a lot of work or simply the ongoing commitment gets grating.

BUT—

Paid newsletters — or really personal access to you in whatever form — is not the only kind of recurring/subscription/continuity offer you can make.

They are certainly not the only way to have the equivalent of your own orchard you can pick a ripe peach in whenever you like… instead of having to head out into the dark forest with a little basket, in search of wild turnips and maybe a rutabaga.

But I’m not sure if this is of interest to you?

Maybe you can tell me. I’ve got a little poll below. If you like, tell me your attitudes and experience with continuity recurring offers:

#1. Recurring is a major part of what I do and the money I make each month

#2. I tried selling recurring offers but people on my list don’t want ’em

#3. I am reluctant to promote recurring offers because I don’t want to commit to delivering month after month

#4. I prefer the thrill of going to the woods to forage for roots and tubers rather than picking fruit from my orchard

If you can spare the energy to hit three keys — reply, your choice above, and send — you can tell me whether it’s worth me talking more about continuity income that requires ZERO ONGOING DELIVERY from you.

Of course, if you wanna elaborate on your answer in more words, that’s very welcome also. Thanks in advance.

help

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Maybe you can help me?

All day long, I’ve been trying to come up with a sticky way to think about the difference between:

1. A business built on predictable income, where 60% or more of your desired income each month is covered with near certainty on the first of the month, by things like continuity and subscription offers, retainers, regular work with long-term clients, or payments on payment plans, and

2. A business completely lacking predictable income, where close to 0% of your monthly income is certain in advance, and each month is a series of scores or cash grabs, whether that’s launches, promos, or one-off work with new clients.

I’ve been thinking and thinking, pondering and pondering, summer autumn winter spring.

How to present this distinction in a more succinct, immediately understandable way?

My best idea so far is an analogy to two famous makes of car.

I thought to call the first type of business, the business built on predictable income, a “Rolls-Royce business.” That’s coming the famous David Ogilvy headline:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

In other words, even at high speed income, there’s not a lot of noise, stress, or smoke in a Rolls-Royce business. It’s very efficient, comfortable, and even conservative. It’s likely to stick around for a long time, just like Rolls-Royce the company, which has been in business for 120+ years.

The other kind of business, completely lacking in predictable income, I though to call a “DeLorean business.”

DeLorean, you might or might not know. was an 80s sports car, which was only produced for two years. Today it’s only really known because it was used in the “Back to the Future” movies.

DeLorean was flashy with its gull-wing doors and low profile. It was also unreliable, uncomfortable, and ultimately led the company to bankruptcy. As Car and Driver magazine put it:

“Hopping, darting, and corkscrewing motions are not the stuff of confidence.”

I don’t know though.

What do you think of this analogy?

Does it carry the emotional impact I want it to have, if I’m trying to promote the stable and comfortable Rolls-Royce biz at the expense of the flashy and unstable DeLorean biz? Or are the gull-wing doors and the Back to the Future association too positive, and does a DeLorean biz sound too cool to give up?

Please hit reply and let me know what you think. Or let me know if you have a better sticky way to present the difference between a “predictable income biz” and an “uncertain cash grab biz.”

Thanks in advance.

A tiny shift for a big difference in passive income

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I got an intriguing reply to my email yesterday from a mystery man named Paul do Campo.

Paul is a copywriter who has been working in the real estate investing space for a long while. Eventually, Paul created OmniDrip, his own productized service, which he has been selling successfully for years to real estate investors.

I’m giving you that as context, because Paul replied yesterday with his own experience around OmniDrip and creating passive income:

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For your business owner, I think a tiny shift in the offer can make a big difference in passive income.

For years I sold a high ticket upfront product-as-a-services (semi templated sms/emails flows and installed for them). Never had a subscription.

Then someone told me: “Just tack on $97 a month for the updates you make.” I did that, and it has been a huge blessing on my business.

At first it was more of a mental hurdle, thinking, “No one would buy that”…

But now I just tell them on the phone that there is a $97 charge that automatically kicks in (I don’t present it as an option). 99.9% of the time no issues. And really high retention. Truly (almost) passive.

I make a couple of meaningful changes to my master template every month or every other month (I never promised monthly changes). I pay my VA to make the physical changes in the CRM (which takes her 30-60 mins per). People seem to value it.

It shows that our perception of what people will pay for can be off.

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I am quite an old dog, but let it never be said that you cannot lead an old dog to water… err… I mean, teach an old dog a new trick.

And so I would like to announce that I am updating my offer for my upcoming Most Valuable Offer training, which I started promoting yesterday.

Most Valuable Offer is a live training I will hold on the topic of how to sell and hold paid live trainings, which I call Most Valuable Offers.

As part of this Most Valuable Offer training, I will share my own SOP for running a Most Valuable Offer.

The fact is, I continue to run these Most Valuable Offers, and I continue to advise coaching clients on how to run them.

I will be updating the SOP as I do that, and going forward, I will also be including the results of Most Valuable Offer campaigns I run or advise others on.

Because of this, the investment to join the Most Valuable Offer training is $97 today, and after that, $2/month for updates.

(If you bought Most Valuable Offer yesterday, rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for you are getting grandfathered into this new feature without any extra investment.)

The Most Valuable Training training will happen live, next Wednesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. Yes, there will be a recording if you cannot make it live, but you and I both are sure to enjoy it more if you come on the actual live training.

If you’d like to sign up, and see how a tiny shift in your own Most Valuable Offer can make a big difference in your (almost) passive income:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

How I sell recurring affiliate offers

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Over the past year, I’ve been promoting a recurring affiliate offer.

I won’t name the offer here because I am not promoting it in this email, and I don’t want to muddy the waters. But I’ve promoted it in other emails, and if you read my emails on occasion, there’s a good chance you know what offer I mean. It’s a $111/month community by another dude, built largely on that dude’s authority.

Frankly, a recurring affiliate offer, particularly one built around a person, is a very hard sell.

People are in general not crazy about being billed recurring, and you typically have to bribe, bully, or bamboozle them into it.

But selling a recurring offer, built around another guru’s authority, as an affiliate, is a much harder ask.

People are willing to buy, however grudgingly, continuity as a way of being closer to their favorite guru.

But if that guru is not their favorite guru, or if they don’t know him at all, a continuity pitch becomes doubly hard.

And yet, I have lately had success selling this recurring affiliate offer.

I haven’t had TREMENDOUS success — I am not yet living in Margaritaville, drunk and flipflopped, wishing I had a reason to go back to work, but damn it — the passive affiliate income just keep rolling in.

No, I’m not there yet. But I am getting people to sign up for this affiliate recurring offer. One person here, another there, sometimes two at a time, including with a couple emails last month. It begins to add up.

What’s my secret?

I don’t have one. I have 10. (I sat down yesterday and made a list.)

I will tell you the first item on my list. Let me set it up by sharing what I heard from one guy who signed up for this recurring affiliate offer last month. I asked him what made him do it. He replied:

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You sold me on it when you promoted it a year or so ago, I just didn’t have the cash — now I do, so I’m making the investment!

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He wanted to join last year… but didn’t. Conditions weren’t right then. Now here’s a little thought experiment:

Do you think this dude would have remembered and decided to finally sign up for this recurring affiliate offer last month, had I not reminded him, and stoked the fire, a dozen times over the past year, including several times last month?

My guess is, no. No. NO.

And therein lies first great “secret” to how I’ve been able to sell recurring affiliate offers:

Regular, ongoing promotion.

That might seem… obvious. Painfully obvious.

But how many people do it?

What most people will do is, write an email or two, or still worse, drop in some affiliate “swipes” that the offer owner gives them.

Most likely, this makes them ZERO sales. So folks conclude that 1) affiliate marketing sucks 2) email marketing sucks 3) the offer they promoted is no good 4) their list sucks 5) the world is a dangerous and dark place.

I think my point is clear but I’ve been wrong before.

So my point, once more, is to keep emailing, to keep repeating yourself, to keep putting your offer out there. It works with recurring affiliate offers, and it works with other kinds of offers too.

Let me take my own advice:

I have a recurring offer. It’s called Daily Email Habit.

Maybe you’d like to sign up for it today simply because you like my emails and you feel warm and fuzzy about me.

Or maybe you want to sign up for it today for your own self-benefit — because you want to start and stick with a daily email habit that allows you to sell your own offers, or affiliate offers, including recurring affiliate offers, while having lots of knock-on benefits, like greater standing in your industry, greater expertise, and greater stability in your life and work.

Either way, to encourage you to act now, rather than next year, I have as a bonus a mini-report I’ve prepared called how to sell “How I sell recurring affiliate offers.” It contains all 10 items — I hesitate to call them secrets, but you can if you like — that I identified with yesterday.

The first one you know. The other 9 you don’t, and while you might be able to guess a few, I doubt you could guess all.

I will be linking to that “How I sell recurring affiliate offers” mini-report in tomorrow’s Daily Email Habit email, which goes out at 9am CET/3am EST/12pm PST, a little over 12 hours from now.

If you want to get that mini-report, you will have to be signed up to Daily Email Habit before then. For the full details on this recurring offer, or to sign up in time for the mini-report:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The most ironic, hypocritical, and ridiculous business model of all time?

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Here’s a fun 3-act parable for you:

ACT 1: A guy starts a business to help you cancel subscriptions to services you don’t use any more. Think AOL, or the home security at you old house, or getting milk delivered to your doorstep.

ACT 2: The guy gets a bunch of users interested in the service he is offering, but he struggles to make money with it. He tries charging a one-time fee. He tries doing affiliate deals. He briefly considers selling user data. All of it is no-go.

ACT 3: Wrestling against the irony of it all, the seeming hypocrisy, the sheer ridiculousness, he finally decides to change his business model and starts to charge… a monthly subscription. For a service that helps you cancel subscriptions.

EPILOGUE:

The guy’s company takes off. I mean, takes OFF.

Several years later, it is sold for over $1B.

ONE BILLION SHINING AND CRINKLING DOLLARS.

(True story, by the way. Look it up. The guy’s name is Haroon Mokhtarzada and the company was called TrueBill.)

Lots of lessons in this little parable I think.

I want to highlight just one today, because it is the core of the entire direct marketing business. It’s this:

Sell people more of what they have already bought, preferably earlier this month.

Seems crazy at first, but the best prospect for a tennis racket is someone who has bought a bunch of tennis rackets already, maybe even yesterday.

Same is true for books… supplements… courses… sneakers… coaching… and apparently, subscription services.

Which gets me to wondering.

It’s January 2nd. I mean, just the second day of the year.

What significant purchases have you made already this year? Write in and let me know. I’m… curious.

The “magazine model” for your paid membership or continuity offer

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A couple days ago marked the 1-year anniversary that my Daily Email Habit service has been going out, day after day after day, to members all around the world.

Following that announcement, a new subscriber to Daily Email Habit wrote in and asked:

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Wow. Happy Bday to your DEH!

I am curious to see the first seven. Any chance to send them to me?

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My response was some icy staring across the Internet, a bit of finger tapping on my desk, followed finally by a cold hard NO.

Like I’ve been telling people since I launched Daily Email Habit:

I don’t send out previous puzzles to new subscribers. The idea is Daily Email Habit works like a magazine subscription — you get the issues that go out from the time you subscribed, and not before. It’s a way to encourage people to sign up now rather than later.

After hearing my cold hard no, the DEH subscriber above replied to say:

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I know. I was just curious to see how it started. I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.

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I’m a-telling you this because this week, I launched a new 1:1 coaching program.

On Tuesday, I got on the first call with one of the coaching clients who already signed up. Let’s call her Ms. X.

Ms. X runs a paid membership and wants to increase the number of paying subscribers and reduce churn.

But like lots of other people who run memberships, she has so far been promising new subscribers access to everything inside her membership, including all the stuff that happened before they subscribed.

But what’s the incentive to join today… when joining tomorrow will give you everything you get if you join today, plus some more stuff… plus you get to hold on to your money for an extra 24 hours?

Not much incentive.

Fortunately, Ms. X already came to that conclusion before she even got on this coaching call with me.

At this point, her bottleneck is technical. Her membership software makes it hard to restrict/allow access to different members like this.

My Yoda-like suggestion was, “Many simple option you fail to see.”

I suggested some low-tech ways to deliver content that’s only available to current members. Ways that make it easy to test out this idea for impact. If this magazine model makes a difference, as it most likely will, then Ms. X can worry about the long-term tech later.

A magazine model is something to think about if you too are running or are thinking of launching a paid membership, or really any kind of continuity offer.

Not only will treating your membership like a magazine give people a legit reason to sign up today rather than tomorrow… but it will give them a reason to stay signed up instead of churning (thinking they can always come back later and get everything they missed in the meantime)…

… and if your subscribers are anything like my subscribers, when you introduce and stick to this “magazine” rule, you might hear them say, “I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.”

In other news, I have already signed up a few coaching students since launching this coaching program a few days ago. I am also looking for a few more.

The coaching I’m offering is specifically about list monetization, or as I say, about using your email list to pay for a house.

The coaching is 1:1, and runs for a year.

It’s also reasonably low-cost, because accountability and whip-cracking are not a part of it.

In order for me to be useful to you at all with this coaching program, I need to see you have some runway already.

In case you’re interested, hit reply and tell me a bit about your situation with your list.

Specifically, I’m interested in things like how many people you have on your list… how many new people you’re getting in an average week… what kinds of offers you’ve made so far… and how that’s gone for you.

Why I ignore a great way of selling more monthly memberships

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A long-time reader writes in with a great marketing suggestion, which I won’t be applying any time soon:

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Yesterday, on my lunch break, I watched this great YouTube video: “Storytelling & Marketing for Musicians & Teachers w/ Master Copywriter John Bejakovic.”

I found it very interesting.

Then, a suggestion occurred to me: you could add a monthly bonus (such as a 30-minute video, a written lesson in the form of an article or a podcast episode, etc.) to all Daily Email Habit subscribers.

The subscription could be even more attractive.

It’s just an idea and I wanted to tell you about it because in the company where I work – every time we add an exclusive bonus to the monthly memberships – the number of subscribers grows.

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Like I said, adding bonuses to a recurring offer is a great marketing suggestion. If I were working with clients, which I’m not, I would advise them the same.

That said, I have no plans and even less interest in committing to creating more content on a schedule.

I like writing this free daily email. That’s about where it stops.

I don’t want to promise prospects a regular paid newsletter, podcast, weekly call, monthly article, video, or really anything else, even if gets me more subscribers and pays me more money.

(I’ve done it before — a paid monthly newsletter, a group coaching offer with a weekly call — and I quickly ran away.)

Does that mean I’ve renounced creating new content?

Clearly no, as I happen to be writing a book, and I have plans to start writing a new one as soon as this one is finished.

Does it mean I’ve given up on selling recurring offers?

Again no. My Daily Email House community, small as it is, doesn’t make any promises beyond being a meeting place for business owners who write more or less daily emails. (More generally, there are ways to make recurring offers that aren’t built on content of the person selling them.)

I’m not sure whether this email can be useful to you in any way, except maybe to validate how you yourself might be feeling.

And about that:

Over the past week, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership. One of the reasons I’m personally inside Ronin, and willing to 100% endorse it to others, is that I feel validated by the underlying philosophy of Ronin. As Travis wrote inside the Royalty Ronin community a few days ago:

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Ronin have one focus:

Stop selling our life.

We have many tools to do it, but don’t forget what we are building.

A life that is our OWN.

Not one owned by a banker, clients, expectations of others, or even the squeals of the lil dipshit that sits on our shoulders:-)

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Incidentally, you might be interested to know that Travis makes most of his money via his “back-end agency,” and not by teaching others how to do Internet marketing.

He teaches inside the Ronin community, without a schedule and without obligations, because he enjoys it (that’s the reason for the chatty, three-hour Zoom calls he puts on from time to time).

If you resonate with the philosophy above, you might get value from the many tools inside Royalty Ronin to help you live life on your own terms. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses, including my Heart of Hearts and my Inspiration & Engagement trainings, which are waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

If you’re struggling to sell continuity…

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This morning, I got a DM on Skool from a business owner in Australia, who wrote:

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Hey John, I saw you promoting Ronin, how’s the signups going on your side? I’ve sent a couple of emails but only 50 odd clicks which is pretty low. I’m finding it a challenge to convey the real value of what Travis teaches without sounding like a scammy hypester!

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The background is that the past few days, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership program. It’s a membership I’m personally signed up to, as is the business owner from Australia above who wrote me this morning.

So far, I’ve sent 4 emails to promote Ronin. I’ve had a few hundred people click through, but I have only had a handful of people sign up for the free trial.

I’m not bothered by that result.

Travis’s community is after all built around Travis, and selling my audience into a paid community built around a person they don’t really know is a tough ask.

Plus, Royalty Ronin is very expensive, and I figure people are wary of signing up for a $300/month subscription, even if they get a week’s free trial to make up their minds.

I keep cheerfully promoting the free trial of Royalty Ronin because 1) every day, I’m still getting more people to opt in, and 2) even if a few folks decide to stay signed up past the trial, it’s going to be long-term good for me and good for them.

That said, I thought it was actually a curious choice from Travis Sago to start selling Royalty Ronin as a per-month subscription (something he only started now, as far as I know).

That’s because I remember one training of his, and the question of continuity programs came up. Travis explicitly shared his philosophy, which was “Don’t sell continuity.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t get paid recurring month-to-month. It simply means how you price and position your existing offer (yes, the one you’re selling via continuity) in the audience’s mind.

Travis had a small, counterintuitive twist for making recurring sales, which gets you a bunch of money up front as well as more people to pay you month-to-month than if you just offer a monthly subscription.

If you yourself have a continuity program that’s not making as many sales as you like, this info could be gold for you. Or it might be something you choose to ignore, the way Travis seems to be doing now, for reasons of his own.

In any case, if you’re already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin, you can find this recurring-income-without-continuity tweak inside the “$1k a Day in 1 Hour a Day” training in the Ronin course area.

And in case you haven’t already signed up for trial of Ronin, but you would like to see what it’s about, and whether it’s worth your time and attention, then here’s more info on the membership from Travis himself:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line. I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses that’s waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

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