Episode 41:This Episode Will Be Delivered in March 2017
We’re working to provide the maximal amount of value from this episode, and we’ll be delivering it then – at which point we’ll be permanently raising the price to $1,000. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
Summary
Nick and Kai cover the mechanics and pitfalls of pre-orders for info products, using Nick’s A-B Testing Manual launch and Kai’s traffic manual as live case studies. They walk through a full launch sequence, why scope discipline matters before you take a single dollar, and how a dead pre-order can tell you not to build something at all.
Highlights
- Nick’s A-B Testing Manual pre-order brought in $16,200 after credit card fees. Actual profit was around $7,000 after a $7,300 video crew cost, which the pre-order was specifically designed to cover.
- Kai over-promised deliverables on his traffic manual pre-order, missed his original ship date, and burned out scrambling through four months to finish it. His fix: reduce pre-order scope and add an exclusive bonus instead of piling in more features.
- Nick’s launch sequence ran six weeks: a teaser PS in a regular newsletter, then weekly what/why emails, a Monday launch with the payment link, a Wednesday objection-buster anticipating common questions, and a Friday urgency email with an 8-hour countdown. He raised the price immediately after and sold more copies at full price within half an hour.
- Kai put a pre-order button on salary negotiation posts that got 6,000 to 8,000 visitors a month. Zero people converted. He took that as a clean signal not to build the product.
- Opening a list email with an apology for not writing calls out a gap most subscribers never noticed. Both Nick and Kai treat it as an instant unsubscribe trigger.
- Expiring bonuses beat straight discounts because they add value without cutting the price. A straight discount signals the product is not worth what you normally charge.
- Sample chapters show buyers you can actually deliver on the promise, and they give the 97% of visitors who won’t buy immediately something to download so they land on your email list.
Read the transcript
So we’re really sorry, but this episode is not available yet. It’s um, we’re working on it. Um, we promise we’re working on it. Um, we have an outline, we, um, we have cover art talking We have some cover art. Yeah. The name of the podcast is pretty firmed up at this point. What is it? It’s Make Money Online? We’re still we’re iterating on it. It’s a working title. Yes. We’ve been working with Make Money Online for a minute. Working at Making Money Online. And we don’t really we think it’s going to come out by March 2017. Which I know that’s a long time from now, but there’s a lot to do. We have to like hire an editor. We have to make sure it gets edited.
We have to record the podcast. I don’t think it’ll take that long, but.
And I mean, when we record it, it’s going to be horrible. We’re going to have to re-record it. And then we’re going to. God, I don’t even want to know how many takes we’re going to go through on this. It’s going to be dismal, really bad.
But it is coming. I mean. This is a thing that you could buy right now, this podcast episode.
You can buy it. We have a buy button. And you can, if you just pay us $500, you’ll be able to eventually. Listen to this podcast. You’ll have a really great outcome when you listen to the podcast. We promise. It’s going to teach you a lot about what pre-orders, I think, is the subject of the podcast.
It is. Is that it? It is. You will learn about once once you pre-order, you will be on the hook to learn about pre-orders by March 22nd.
And we’re not actually. We’re really sorry, but in order to maintain our business’s integrity, we are not taking any refunds for this preorder. No. About pre-orders. No. Got it. No. You can do a chargeback and sue us, and probably you get your money back.
We actually have a separate product on suing us over chargebacks that’s also available for pre-order.
Yeah, it’s actually that’s that one’s gonna cost you. Yes. It’s gonna be like a thousand dollars. It’s an upgrade. It’s an upgrade. Now you can bundle it with this, and you actually get a discount where We’re selling it for only $1,500, which is cheaper than most lawyers. We asked a lawyer. That’s true. Way out against the cost of hiring a lawyer for 20 hours from Kravath.
I’m now stuck on the idea of price anchoring, but just using an absurd thing like, yes, you could buy this course for $14. 99 a month, but compare that to the cost of leasing a yacht. Which one’s more affordable?
I actually thought about putting that on the A-B testing manual where it would be like, compare it against the cost of F-15 fighter jet. You’ll see that this video course on A-B testing is extremely affordable. Compared against the defense budget of the United States between 2003 and 2016. Compared against the Just a round-off error, really. Like, in the grand scheme of things, the A-B testing manual is just, you know, piss in the wind. It’s nothing.
You could purchase the A-B testing manual, or you could order the super complication.
Throwback right there. Heyo. You have to be listening to that’s a make money online deep cut right there. That’s good. So, anyway. Pre-orders. Somebody asked, How do you take pre-orders? What do you do with it? And that is a fantastic question. So I just finished. Launch sequence for a book that I’m writing and a video course that I’m making called the A-B Testing Manual. And it’s basically a video course with a book component. And so The video, of course, is coming out in like probably around four weeks from the time this episode airs, which is great. I’m really excited about it. The book comes out. Literally, we weren’t kidding in March 2017. That’s a long fucking time. I made $16,000 on this launch around. It’s like $16,200. I’m thrilled. And that’s after credit card fees. So, a lot of people are willing to be very patient. And I think that that is fantastic. I’m insanely honored and humbled about it. And what I view that as. is me cashing in a tiny amount of my like professional capital. People know that when this book drops and these videos drop, it’s going to be fucking awesome. They know it because I have a track record of effectively taking preorders on my previous works. The way I did that was through a website called Kickstarter. com. And that’s essentially glorified preorder. You’re using the hedge on business risk so that you can afford a giant expensive print run. But it comes with a deadline and it comes with a certain set of outcomes. And you have to be clear about those outcomes. Promise that it’s going to be great. And it’s easier and easier to do this when you’ve built up a track record for success. So, if you are scared of doing pre-orders, don’t take them. Wait, launch the book, and then take orders, and you’re fine. Have a launch discount. There’s nothing stopping you from taking pre-orders or not taking pre-orders. And I actually think you can push back on this. They’re perfectly valid strategies. The problem with pre-orders is it kind of turns the screw on you to actually ship the thing, and then you feel this like moment of holy terror. I can’t tell you how scary it is to get like a twenty eight grand deposit in your account from Kickstarter campaign. And I know that sounds so world’s smallest violin. Like Nick D just made $28,000. I kind of didn’t. I made seven grand in profit on something that cost a lot of money to produce.
And that now you have to spend time and effort and energy. Manifesting and making.
Right. And I spent seven months staring at drafts bank account balance being twenty-one grand overinflated because I haven’t spent that money on the printer or the shipper yet. You know, like And that’s really actually tremendously scary. And it’s hard to like identify with that type and that like brand of scary unless you’ve actually been through it. I think like Kickstarter project creators are kind of like a secret handshake around it, where like you’ve done this, you’ve been through it. The same with pre-orders, especially if something like an info product. One thing I would recommend is make the preorder very easy to ship on your end. Otherwise, it’s going to be delayed forever.
Yeah, I ran into that exact mistake when I was launching What’s now podcast outreach, but was then the traffic manual. I ran into the fear of, oh, this won’t be a good enough product. So I jammed a bunch of content in. Wasn’t able to, or jammed a bunch of deliverables that I was promising. And when I launched the pre-order, wasn’t able to hit my original target because of everything I jammed in, pushed it out a few months. People were happy, people were fine, people really enjoy the product, but I ended up overcommitting on what I needed to ship by October 2015 and really burnt myself out scrambling through October, November, December, and January to get it all put together and shipped to people. So I think it’s absolutely essential. If you’re doing pre-orders for an educational product, any sort of information product or any sort of thing where you’re collecting money ahead of time, even if you’re including a lot in the different packages or a lot of different features and benefits. Have the pre-order be a very reduced scope. Maybe bundle in something that’s exclusive as a thank you for the people who are pre-ordering it, but really don’t commit yourself to too much work ahead of time. You don’t want to be put in that position.
Yeah, yeah, you definitely don’t. And I know people that have bitten off a lot more that they can chew and they’ve like delayed the delivery of like $1,000 video courses for a long period of time. You don’t want to be that person. You don’t want to be that person. So, my strong recommendation around this is make sure that it’s achievable. If you haven’t read the book Just Fucking Shit by Amy Hoy, she will teach you how to do that. And they were a sponsor of the podcast previously, but you know, I’m just saying this because I think it’s true. You know, I think it’s important to be keeping that all in mind and ensuring that you are. Do it. You have to follow through on your professional commitments. And I know that sounds terribly basic and obvious. But, like, a lot of places don’t actually do it. So, you need to make sure you’re doing it.
Yeah, I think it’s important also when you look at pre-ordering or looking at launching a book of any sort or a product of any sort. Understand the advantages you could put in place well ahead of time to maximize your chance of success. And by that, I mean Have a rep, like you said, have a reputation and authority in the industry already. If you show up saying, I have a thing for sale, and people are like, Who are you? How did you get in here? You’re not going to have a good time selling it. Have an email list ahead of time. If you’re thinking about launching a book about X, Y, or Z down the line, well, Create, you know, a 20-page what-and-why overview of the topic and make it available as a lead magnet. So people are like, Oh, I really want to learn more about this topic. Now they’re on your email list. Slowly drip out content to them. And now you have 50, 100, 1,000 people that when it comes time to launch and say, Hey, I’m going to release a book in six months, you could pre-order it now for this discount and get the special bonus. You have a number of people who already are part of your tribe, who already are a true fan, and saying, Yeah, I’d love to do that. Here’s my money. And then you need to follow through, deliver on it, and make sure that they have a positive experience. But Focusing on the things before launch, or even before product creation. I think pre-launching is a very effective way to it, sort of mixes it together, but pre-launching lets you validate Is this a product that solves a pain point that people have? And is my marketing effective at communicating that to the prospect? The problem is, those two are so intertwined. You might pre-launch something, have nobody buy it, and it’s hard to tease out: well, was this a problem with my marketing strategy, or is it a problem because I’m selling something nobody wants to buy? And I’m not yet sure how to slice between the two, but I’m certain there’s a way to easily differentiate what’s causing what there.
Well, I mean, you need to have like a thoughtful and comprehensive launch sequence for a pre-order. You need to pretend as if you’re actually launching a product, right? And If you’re not doing that or if you half-ass that, you can’t actually get a whole lot of pre-orders. Like the thing that I did with the A-B testing manual was I provided a 10% to 15% discount. for anybody that was buying it. And that probably juiced a lot of the sales, right? You get $100 off of the video course. And that probably sold more than a handful of video courses. And that was probably really, really important for ensuring that I would have enough money to afford the video crew. So the business case for doing it is It’s expensive to produce video. Video crew is actually about $7,300, something like that, right? So that’s a lot of money. And I need to be able to afford that. I can’t afford that right now. All right. Well, I’ll launch the thing. If I sell seven of them, seven copies of the A B testing manual and then however many of just the book, then I’m actually doing pretty well for myself. Right. And I’m in business. And I ended up selling way more than that and feeling really good about it. So, yeah, I think there’s definitely something to be had there. If you don’t have a business case for putting together pre-orders, if it’s just like I want money right now and the money actually isn’t going to like a specific purpose Maybe keep working on making the product. I would caution against continuing to do the pre-order, you know, like that’s definitely something that Is worth considering, you know? Yeah.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of it. So let’s say we have a product, we’re confident in the product, we’ve validated the product, solved some expensive problem. We are starting work on the product and we want to do pre-orders for it. How would you approach building up interest and then launching it? And then I’ll share how I’d approach it. And I’d love to see How we differ and how we approach it in the same way, what we call out as the thing to focus on.
Keeping in mind that my mailing list is very unconventional. I believe the term is asymmetric warfare.
You are engaged in a detente with your mailing list.
Eternal détente. I mean, I literally wrote 1,300 words about pizza this week. So keeping that in mind. I would maybe throw a PS, start talking about what it is I’m about to do, drip out over the course of at least three or four weeks, but ideally more like six weeks. Again, more how or why content, or what or why content. I’m sorry, talk about the how in the actual book. But okay, so here’s how I did for the A-B testing manual. I wrote a PS that said, I’m going to be launching a really cool or talking about a really cool thing that I’m doing next week that’s actually another book. And I actually talked about draft evidence during that post. And I actually talked about draft evidence during that post. Another thing that I did was after that, I launched into: okay, well, why is research-driven A-B testing important? That’s it. And then in the end, I announced the A-B testing manual that it exists and that I’m going to be taking pre-orders on a certain date. The next week was, why is research important? And then the next was, why is A-B testing important? And then the next is, why aren’t enough people actually doing this? And then the next one was the launch email that actually provided the payment link. And then that was on a Monday, which is when my normal letter drops. And then Wednesday was what I call the objection buster email, which was Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to the A-B testing manual. A lot of people had these various questions that I wanted to answer, and I’ve cued that ahead of time because I know what questions people are going to be asking. And I’m just systematically eviscerating every objection that you possibly could provide. I am going deliverables. gif on your objections. And then Friday, I’m saying, okay, there’s eight hours left to get the pre-order discount. That’s it. Here’s the link. You have eight hours. Go. And I tell you that last email converts way good, way good. Then I raise the price and That’s it. People bought like a lot of people were buying video courses at the full price right after. Somebody half hour after I raised the price, right? And that’s just a free Benjamin that I found on the ground for the heck of it. Feels good. No, it is good.
I think the sequence you’re breaking out is incredibly important. You need to. Slowly warm people up to the fact that a thing is coming. You’re going to be releasing a thing. This is a thing that’s going to provide value. Why should they care about it? What do they need to be thinking about? The specifics of implementation or the specifics of how they’ll achieve the outcome you’re promising, or the outcome you’re promising to teach them how to achieve, eh, irrelevant, honestly. The launch sequence is to educate them about the problem, educate them about signs that they’re experiencing the problem. And really, I think. Put the recipient in one of two mind states. Oh, this is an issue I need help solving, or oh, this is an issue I’m not experiencing. The second group They’re saying, Hey, that’s cool. You’re doing a thing. This is not the thing for me. The first group, they’re the ones who are saying, I want to learn more. This is something I need for my business, for my life. Yeah, please tell me more about this. Tell me how it will improve my life. Tell me how I could order. And If you just show up on day one saying, I have a thing for sale, would you like to buy it? You’re going to get a couple of folks slapping down money on the counter, but you’re not going to get as many because they don’t know. Why should they buy this thing? They don’t know what outcome this will help them achieve. And until you educate them in that direction, it’s going to be a fruitful game. You aren’t going to be able to experience The real outcome you should as a business owner when you launch a product.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you. How do I put this? You want to make sure that you’re providing the maximal amount of value for what you’re actually doing. And you want to make sure that you’re setting the right kind of expectations around it. The best way to do that is by priming the mailing list. You can’t just be like, hey, sorry, you can’t go Jim Anchower on it, right? He’s that onion columnist who’s the stoner and he always begins it with, Sorry, it’s been a while since I rapped at you. When I ever see an apology on a mailing list for not posting terribly frequently Instantaneous unsubscribe. Right.
Like, oh, God, I got a rabbit hole on that one for a second. I have a colleague who has a rapidly growing mailing list. Had a sequence set up, but didn’t often email his list. And so he sent to all, you know, X000 people, sorry, I haven’t written in a while. And I just slapped my head and I’m like, buddy. You’ve got people who signed up for your educational course and they’re getting an eight-week trip sequence who now are also receiving an email from you apologizing for not writing in a while. You did not segment this. It’s just going to confuse people. Like, never ever lead from a position of weakness, apologizing for something, because as soon as you apologize for a thing that you notice, You’re going to call it out to the people in your audience. And 90% of them, 99% of them, they’re not going to notice that the thing wasn’t perfect. As soon as you say, I’m so sorry that I haven’t written in a while, they’re going to be like, Why is he concerned? He hasn’t written in a while. You’re showing weakness. You’re showing your underbelly. And people are going to unsubscribe. People are going to leave. They’re going to think less of you. If there are problems, don’t gloss over the problems, but don’t call attention to a problem that’s imaginary or inflated in your own mind.
Right. And more importantly, like if you just drop a payment link on them, like if it comes with also a payment link, it’s kind of gross. It’s kind of inappropriate to just be like, give me money now. Okay, it’s great. Like, you care about that link a heck of a lot, but really, no one else does because you haven’t given them reason to. And I think that’s extremely important to be keeping in mind when you’re doing this. You can’t just launch out the gate, you know. Right.
Yeah, I always think of the. I don’t know if you had them on your campus, but we often had end-of-world prophetic preachers show up at the University of Oregon campus and stand in the quad and talk about how we’re all going to go to hell and everything’s going to burn down around us. And For whatever reason, I think of the type of person who just shows up and says, Hey, sorry, I haven’t emailed my list in a while. By the way, I got a thing, here’s the link, as a person who shows up on campus just ranting at students. What are you actually going to achieve? What outcome are you going to get that’s going to be positive for you? Or are you just showing up and making noise? Yeah, there’s so much, so many more productive ways to achieve it. And I think it does come down to understanding who your audience is, nurturing them, educating them on the why and the what, and honestly. The why and the what, if you have strong positioning in your business, should be what you’re always talking about. Every article you send in some way connects to your positioning and connects to the why and the what of your business. Eventually, people are like, okay, you’ve convinced me. How can I work with you? And you point to your service offerings, or they say, how could you teach me more? And you point to your books or your products. But Every piece of content you’re sharing should connect to the why and the what of the expensive problem you solve and leave them saying, Okay, yeah, I see this, this is a need. I need somebody to help me with outreach. I need somebody to help me. Make more money by optimizing my website for conversions. How do we do this? How do we get started if your messaging is consistent and always focused on the why and the what? You’re educating, you’re nurturing them. So when we talk about educational marketing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be over the top, but it’s just consistent teaching and sharing and explaining. So if somebody shows up and says, Hey, I run a successful business. I don’t quite understand why I need to do this or what it involves. Your content is explaining that to them, at which point they’re able to say, You’ve convinced me, let’s get on a call, or you’ve convinced me, let me order your book.
I think all of these episodes come down to positioning and education. The last one we did did, right? It’s funny. But yeah, I think that’s pretty much it for pre-orders. The answer is it depends. Have a good case for it. Don’t use it as a sack of money button. Prime your mailing list. Don’t be a jerk. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try and provide value to them. I would even go so far as to sometimes drip out your content, like give a sample chapter when it’s ready. And that gets people excited. Post the sample chapter, and then that gets more preorders. I don’t know, that’s I feel like that’s pretty much it. Like, there’s not a hard and fast rule. I’m not going to say yes or no about it, but it does heavily depend.
I’ll say yes or no about a couple tactical things that I’ve seen work well. Sample chapters, I think, are really good. Let’s just consolidate down to we’re talking about launching a book or a book type thing. Yeah, like an info product, too. Yeah, book sample chapters are great because They demonstrate to people that you actually can produce something or that you’re good at explaining the how, which is what you’re promising. So I think it’s always valuable to have a sample chapter if, for whatever reason, you’re working with, let’s say, an outside publisher and they aren’t allowing you to excerpt a sample chapter. That’s fine. Take your notes that you used to write one chapter and write 2,000, 3,000 words on that same topic and have that as a sample of the type of material I’ll be delivering to you. Something that’s available. It’s important to have that sample chapter because people who show up on your website may not be ready to buy today. What’s the standard e-commerce conversion rate? Three-ish percent? Yeah, ish. Yeah. So 97% of people who show up are not going to take action. Well, you need to put some other action in front of them to take, which should be. You know, sign up for this free course and it’ll teach you about this topic, or download a free chapter, and I’ll also send you some more material. Something so you’re grabbing some of that 97% and getting them into your funnel, slowly nurturing them to the point where they’re ready to buy. Having a mailing list is important. Understanding who your audience is and where they congregate online, I think is very important. Is this a product that would make sense on Reddit, on Product Hunt, to launch through joint ventures, to launch through webinars? Where are the people you want to buy this congregating, and how do you get in front of them in a natural way? Launch discounts are effective, I think, even more so than a discount. There’s a concept of urgency. Have an expiring bonus, have an expiring discount, have something where people say, Oh, I need to act by this date or I lose out on something because. If you don’t have that urgency or something to kick people in the tucus and make them move forward, they will never move forward. So it’s so important. Discounts are okay. I don’t like them that much because I think it devalues your product, but there’s an argument for them. If you’re able to include a temporary bonus, even if it’s just like, oh, I wrote this other book, if you order before the state, you’re going to get it as well. If you order after the state, sorry, out of luck. You’re providing additional value and motivating people to say, Oh, I will buy because I want this additional resource.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that Any opportunity you have to continue delivering value. I mean, doing a launch discount, provide a countdown timer. I did that. And it looked, it felt gross to put it up. And then everybody was like, oh my God, it’s ticking. Oh my god, I have to buy it. Anything you could do to like increase urgency on the customer’s part is probably not a bad idea. And printers are great for that.
Yeah, but one reason I really like pre-orders is they help me better validate if I should make a thing. Like, I have a few blog posts I wrote a long, long time ago about how to negotiate your salary or how to get a raise. And they get between them a couple thousand visitors each month. And I kept thinking, I have these people showing up. I should sell them something. I could write a book about, you know, how to negotiate. But before I did that, I decided I’m going to slap some marketing copy, write 500 words, put it on the page with a pre-order now button. Zero people converted. Probably 6,000 to 8,000 people saw that. Nobody actually pre-ordered it. And by putting that pre-order in people’s face and this piece of educational content, I was able to say there’s not enough reason for me to move forward down this path. And it let me focus on the key areas of my business. So pre-ordering helped me disprove a hypothesis and know what I should focus on.
Right, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it’s good for validating market, but like I would also augment that sort of thing with research and make sure that you’re actually creating something people want to buy in the first place, because otherwise you’re going to go down a really deep rabbit hole and you’re going to hate yourself. And you’re going to think, screw this whole info product thing and set your computer on fire and throw it into Lake Michigan angrily. Are we talking about your weekend? Um, it’s Friday, so TBD.