Last night, I finished the promotion I was running over the past week, which started when I ran a classified ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter last Sunday.
I had a free offer in the actual ad, Simple Money Emails, and a paid upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, for people who opted in.
I turned off both offers last night, as I said I would, once the deadline passed.
For my own benefit, I wrote up my conclusions about this experience.
If you like, you can read some of my conclusions below. It might be interesting to you if you’re looking to grow your list, monetize your list, run classified ads, or put on quick and simple offers that your readers appreciate and buy.
But as FBI negotiator Chris Voss likes to say, the last impression is the lasting impression. So let’s leave the good for last, and let’s start with the ugly first.
THE UGLY:
I haven’t made back my money on the Josh Spector ad.
I mean, I made a bunch of sales over the past week, but not enough from new subscribers, who came via the classified ad, to cover the $350 I gave to Josh to run the ad.
There’s a fair chance I will make back my money in time. But of course, there’s also a chance I won’t.
I have various hypotheses as to why it hasn’t happened yet. I might write about those down the line, but some include options in the next, coulda been better section.
THE COULDA BEEN BETTER:
I made a nice number of sales of the paid upsell last week — but at only $100 per sale.
The promotion I did last month, for Steve Raju’s ClientRaker, ended up with a comparable number of sales, but at 3x the price.
Had I raised the price higher, I prolly woulda made more money — there’s a lot of elasticity in info products. Maybe that way I would have already recouped my money on the Josh Spector ad.
But maybe it wasn’t the price. Maybe it was the copy, the core appeal.
Simple Money Emails is something I thought about carefully. I planned out that name, and the core appeal. The number of people who took me up on that offer confirms it’s something attractive.
On the other hand, as I’ve written already, the upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, wasn’t something I carefully planned or thought about — at least as far as the packaging goes, because the content is thought-through and very valuable.
I might have packaged up that same valuable content into a different-patterned box with a different-colored bow, and sold 50% or 80% or maybe 100% more.
THE GOOD:
One good thing was that I got a buncha new subscribers.
In fact, I grew my list 7% list over past week. From what I can see from new subscribers who have custom domains, these are high-quality prospects. Whether I manage to convert them in time is probably up to me.
The other good thing was I made a buncha sales to existing readers.
One of those sales came from somebody who joined my list back in 2019 (my guess is I had ~80 subscribers at the time). Several sales came from people who joined my list in 2020… and lots came from people who joined 2021, in 2022, and earlier this year.
Most people who bought 9 Deadly Email Sins bought multiple offers from me before.
The fact they are still with me is encouraging. It means I’m doing something right both with the products I’m selling, and with this marketing, the email that you’re reading right now. It must be engaging enough to keep people around, and reading, and buying, years down the line.
THE AMAZING:
I tell myself I have to have an offer at the end of each email. My offer at the end of this email is my Most Valuable Email course, which is amazing. But don’t take it from me. Reader James Harrison bought MVE last month, and wrote me about it last week to say:
===
Also, a few days ago I finished going through your MVE course. I thought it was amazing. I especially loved what you did at the end, with the MVE Riddles. Not enough courses get their students actively using their brains.
Thank you for all that you do.
===
Maybe actively using your brain isn’t something you’re into. But maybe it is. In that case, if you’d like an amazing way to do it, and to win bigly in the process: