Make Money Online

But we lost a plot in the first episode. I had a friend review every episode of Make Money Online, and she was like. There’s no narrative. And I’m like, obviously, you don’t understand the subtext. And she was like, there’s no narrative. And, well, there wasn’t much more I could say than that. Yeah.

Yeah, you finally have the makings of what I see as a robust mixed product ladder. So I’ve started thinking of Educational product creators, people who make ebooks, courses, and consultants as being two separate ecosystems. But you do have a hybrid class where it’s somebody who is selling both information products and selling high-touch consulting services. There are people who migrate just to one of those exclusively or operate in one of those arenas exclusively. And there’s people who operate in one arena exclusively and then graduate to adding a high-touch offering. Our oft-sight-sighted friend, Brennan Dunn. Was a consultant, switched over to purely information products, now also has a mixture of information products and high-touch consulting for his Personalization service for people doing email marketing and selling online courses. So he ends up in this hybrid realm. But for people like you and I who are saying, well, we have a consulting agency, we do consulting work, we’re independent business owners. But we also have these educational products. I think it’s a nice ladder when you have like the $49 offering, you have the $99 offering, you have the $1,000 offering, and then you start having consulting offerings at around that same point. Thousand, two thousand, three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, laddering up. So if somebody shows up and says, well, I want to work with you You’re able to assess what their need is. I need to understand how to do A-B testing. Great. Here are two options. We could get on a call. Or you could buy my book, and it might be a 10x price difference between the two of them. But you’re able to offer them the choice of the product that best solves a problem. That they’re experiencing. And what I think is important is, first of all, understanding what that ladder looks like for your business. So, do you have a clear flow from service to service? Beyond that, and in our dialogue, I’d asked you four questions that I’ll reiterate in a second. But beyond that, it’s important to understand: well, What exactly does this full funnel look like? And if we’re saying the primary entrance point, and I think we should be saying this, if we’re saying the primary entrance point is either a free course that leads into the book you’re selling or product you’re selling. or the product itself. Well, what does each element of that funnel look like? And how do we optimize that funnel? Along the way? How do we make it make you more money as a consultant? How do we make it so more people are coming in? The four questions I asked you That I think are important just as a basis for this conversation are: one, how do we attract more new people to the top of our funnel? Two, How do we convert more of these visitors into subscribers? So, we’re focusing on moving people from cold website visitor to, okay, now they’re demonstrated some level of interest. They see enough value to give us the email address, they’re on our free course. Three, How do I consistently convert subscribers into buyers? And four, how do we convert buyers into repeat buyers? So Thinking about the A-B testing manual, I think it’ll make an interesting episode to step through each of these questions and just brainstorm and talk through Different opportunities that I see presented for something like the A-B testing manual, and broadly can be applied to people who are selling educational products. This is partly my personal playbook for Optimizations I’m going to be making for my business in 2017 as I focus on selling more of my products, the Outreach Blueprint and Podcast Outreach. But I think are evergreen strategies that any product creator can draw on and apply to build their business. And really, when we get down to it, it’s about thinking about your sales funnel. What does that sales funnel look like? How do we drive people into it? Kicking and screaming or not. And then, how do we nurture and educate them and move them forward to turning into a buyer? And then, once they’re a buyer, how do we level them up into a repeat buyer? How do we get that dream of, hey, A year ago, they spent $49 on the A-B testing manual. Now they’re spending four figures a month on A-B testing with me. That’s really what we look at, I think, as success when we think about. A full product ladder that starts at products and moves into high touch consulting services. But what are the prerequisites? What needs to be in place? How do we Migrate people up that value chain from a no-touch offering like the A-B testing manual book to a high-touch offering, Nick does A-B testing for you.

Well, let’s start with the Course. I think the Course is the most valuable entry point possible because It’s a low barrier of commitment. Somebody has to be able to. Are you talking about the free course or the A-B testing? I’m sorry, the free course.

Yeah. Yeah. Since it costs somebody their email address, they don’t need to. Hand you over money, and they can unsubscribe at any time. So it’s a perfect opportunity to build trust with them and then convert them to buying your A-B testing manual course or book, whichever of the two that they decide makes the most sense for them. So, when we think about your course, I think we’re also thinking about the question or trying to answer the question: how do we attract new people to the top of your funnel? And then how do we convert visitors into subscribers? Converting visitors into subscribers is it’s the second question on the list, but well, we already have that in place partially. If you go to draft. nu right now, and I’ll include a screen cap of the homepage right now for posterity’s sake in the show notes. Nick has a great call to action for the course. Why do research-driven A-B tests improve success rates by 400%? It describes the outcome, describes your opinion on this, and has a clear call to action for somebody to get their first lesson. How do we get more people exposed to this? We have a great course already. We need to get more people into the top of the funnel. So it becomes a traffic acquisition problem at that point. We could look at buying more traffic through Facebook ads. We could look at earning more traffic through search engine optimization. We could look at earning more traffic through referrals, guesting on podcasts, doing joint venture webinars and such, writing guest articles and having a call to action to sign up for the course. But I think there’s also some other optimizations that make sense. I haven’t looked at the Google Analytics for your site, or I guess you don’t use GA, but the analytics for your site. But I start asking questions like, well, What are the top 10 landing pages on Draft and NickD. org where people enter? For each of those, if there is any coherence at all between the topic you’ve written about on that page or in that article and your course. Jam that call to action for somebody to sign up for your course onto that page. If you have a page that results in, let’s say, 15% of your new visitors each month. And it doesn’t have that call to action for somebody to join your course, you’re leaving subscribers on the table. So, step one, I think, is looking through your analytics and figuring out: okay, where are people Entering your site most often. What are those pages? And then making sure that you have your course presented to them on those pages so they’re able to opt in. In addition to that, strategies that I think are valuable. I don’t know if you want to make an SEO play. SEO can be hard. I’m terrible at it.

It’s 50% 50% your own dumb thing, 50% a real thing. You don’t want to overcomplicate it. You don’t want to take on too much, but you also don’t want to put aside a strategy that can be incredibly valuable and profitable for you. Because there is a little bit of upfront work. So, with a course like this, I think you have a significantly sized email list. One easy optimization could be: hey, grab your email list. Jam it into Facebook, generate a look-alike audience from it, and put up, you know, to use Canva or Sketch or something and generate. Two simple-looking graphic ads, and just run these two ads driving people to a landing page saying, Do you want to improve your A-B test results? And see how much you’re acquiring each lead for. You don’t. At least I’m assuming right now you don’t know your average value per subscriber on your email list. But once you know that, once you know, like, okay, on average, somebody who joins my list is worth $5, then you’re able to say, oh, wow, if I’m acquiring an average subscriber on Facebook for $2, my spread per subscriber is $3 per. Great, I’m essentially printing money here. So I think there’s an opportunity to use Facebook ads as a traffic acquisition mechanism and have it be profitable, or at least grow your list and get people on there who are high value prospects. One optimization that I’m not sure you’ve made already, but I think would make sense is a dedicated landing page that talks about what this free course is. Right now, as far as I know, it’s simply the call out box under the opening paragraph on draft. nu. Having a separate landing page, you’re wonderful at writing these sales pages and landing pages. Having a separate page that just talks about, like, here are the six lessons. Let me break it down for you. Here’s what people have said. Here’s a testimonial. Here’s another chance to opt in here. Having that as a dedicated landing page could be valuable for three different reasons. It gives you a specific spot to drive traffic to where there’s nothing for them to get distracted by. I’m looking at the draft. nu homepage right now. There’s a lot of buttons I could click on, or a lot of links I could click on, and there’s a flashing new thing that’s distracting me from my get my first lesson. So, having there be a dedicated landing page that you drive traffic to, if it’s paid traffic, can be valuable. It also allows you to create what I call a catchersman, registering a dedicated URL, like I have freeoutreachcourse. com. And then just setting it to 301 redirect to that landing page. So when I’m telling somebody, like, oh, you want to sign up for my free outreach course, go to freeoutreachcourse. com. It’s really sticky and memorable and takes them directly to that page that tells them what the course is. Brendan does the same with, I think, free pricingcourse. com. Philip Morgan does Positioning Crash Course. com, and it just 301 redirects to a dedicated page. Talking about the free course you’re about to sign up for. Typically, I seek conversion rates on those pages between 40% and 60% because The people who are landing there are more qualified traffic. They’re more interested. You’re able to optimize that page for: hey, put your email address in the dingus and click the button, and more people are likely to do it. It’ll also help you if you have that dedicated landing page because whenever you appear on a podcast, a webinar, or any other type of, let’s call it earned media placement. You suddenly are able to share that rather than the homepage link. You’re able to have what I think of as an off-site content upgrade. Hey, you just read my 500-word or 5,000-word article about The importance of A-B testing for e-commerce companies. Do you want to do research-driven A-B tests that improve success rates by 400%? Do you want to learn why other testing approaches are fundamentally wrong? Go over here to Insert URL here and sign up for my free six lesson course. Takes them to the dedicated landing page instead of the home page. No opportunity for them to get distracted. You’re able to easily convert readers of this article or guest article or listeners of this podcast. Two subscribers on your free course. When I use this tactic for a guest article on Shopify, in one day I added, I think, 300 subscribers to my email list just through Two small calls to action within the article body where I said, Hey, if you want to learn more about this topic, go over here to this landing page, enter your email in the thingy, and you’re going to get some valuable stuff. Very effective call to action there on my part. But I think the important parts here are: you have this free course. The free course should be the entrance point to your ecosystem. And we want to make it as easy as possible for people to go through that doorway. So, setting up a dedicated landing page and registering a dedicated URL and 301ing it. Will be easy ways to maximize that moving forward. When we think about your course itself, I’m ashamed to say, but I have yet to go through the course. I’m entering my email. To the dingus right now, so I could go through this free course. You know it all. You’re a revised weekly subscriber. I don’t have to convince you. True. Well, but I’m more curious about it, so it’s a free six-lesson course. In each lesson, are you pitching the A-B testing manual? Once somebody completes the sixth-lesson course, what Pitch do they get? What’s the bridge look like to move them from the pitch sequence to the educational sequence? What those systems look like for your business? One additional optimization I just did when I put my email in the dingus and clicked get your free or get your first lesson was you could optimize the thank you page here. Right now it’s the default drip thank you page. There’s an opportunity, I think, to either include a click to tweet or a hey, thanks so much, or hey, here’s a great gift, something that just makes a person feel like, oh, awesome, this is joy and happiness and sparks joy in me. Or even just providing the first lesson as text as the thank you page. So, oh, I want to get my first lesson now. I clicked get your first lesson. I am reading the first lesson now, and at the top it says, Hey, we also emailed this to you, and tomorrow you’re going to get lesson number two.

But I don’t actually practice that myself. Right. Yeah, and I think there’s a common theme within the last 53 episodes of the show of. The Cobbler’s children have no shoes. We’re figuring it out as we go along, guys. And thank you so much for joining us on this beautiful journey. But tell me about it. But how do you attract new people to the top of your funnel? I would recommend, I think, podcast placement makes a lot of sense. You have my book, Podcast Outreach, that tells you how to get on podcasts as a guest. Joint venture webinars could make sense. I’d recommend no pitch webinars where you find people who are, let’s say, non-competitors trying to reach the same target market as you. So Right now, your target market is e-commerce businesses. So who are other people who provide services to e-commerce businesses? but are not selling A B testing services where it would be valuable for you to come in and teach their audience something about A B testing. Proposition them as like, hey, I want to just educate your audience. I want to make you look good by coming in and giving a great 30-minute presentation about why research-driven A-B tests are the future for e-commerce stores. Would this be valuable for your audience? 80% of people will say yes. 10% will say, tell me a little more. 10% will say, I didn’t get your email. Sorry. So incredibly valuable to approach it that way and say, hey, can I teach your audience something? Do a webinar trade where you’re hosting the webinar and adding people to your list, and it provides more value to their audience because, hey, you’re an expert coming in to teach them something, but then it also Gets them onto your list, and you could have a strong call to action: hey, if you want to learn more about this, I have a free six-lesson course. Here’s how to get the six-lesson course. Go to this URL. And one of the reasons why I think a short punchy URL is so helpful is because. In the way I see it, there’s three different ways we could approach a landing page for our course. You have it right now with draft. nu on the homepage, which is good. Don’t get me wrong. This is really good. The downside is, we have the call to action for your course. We have four different services, a link to take a look at your writing and speaking. Two links about you and your bio, information about draft. There’s a lot happening on this page right now. So if I’m told go to draft. nu and sign up for the thing, I see it at the top, but I also see a blinking thing next to the A-B testing manual. I click there. And suddenly I’m no longer on the page to sign up for the thing. If instead you say go to like free research AB, this is a terrible URL, but free researchab testingcourse. com. And it takes me to a dedicated landing page. It’s sticky, which means if I hear it in a webinar or hear it on a podcast, but I don’t take action right now, there’s a greater chance I’ll remember that URL. So we have the draft. nu example. I’d contrast that with, let’s say, draft. nu/slash ab dash testing dash course. When you read a URL like that on a podcast or in a webinar, nobody’s going to remember it. It gets too long and confusing. For the longest time, I was like, hey, if you want to subscribe, go to w youraudience. com forward slash podcast name dash opt-in and Opt-in rates were low because it’s hard to remember a URL like that. When I switched over to saying, like, hey, my standard call to action for all of my appearances is going to be freeoutreachcourse. com. It was so easy for me to always say: like, if you want to learn more about the principles behind outreach, if you want to send emails that people will reply to, that people are excited to receive, go to freeoutreachcourse. com. It’s so much easier to remember that than a more complicated URL. So, those are really the three different variations I see. I think the short punchy URL is very effective because it eliminates the memory issue. People don’t have to say, What was that URL for that dedicated landing page? They could just remember it’s like freeabtestingcourse. com. Great. I go there and sign up, and I get my free six-lesson course on A-B testing.

I could use that. I’d nudge you. I think that’s a perfect example. Because your positioning is so focused on e-commerce right now, I mean, your headline right now is Research-driven AV testing. Don’t I literally say e-commerce businesses, yeah. Yeah, you’d want to use e-commerce instead, but you’re absolutely on the right tack there. Paid acquisition. Yelling. party. I still have that. I like that one. I think that’s a good one. It’s memorable. Great. Great. Do you want to learn more about research-driven A-B testing? Yelling. party. Yep. So we talked a bunch about how to attract new people to the top of your funnel. I think finding non-competitors in your target market makes the most sense. Basically, anybody who, let’s say, is targeting Shopify stores or as an agency and isn’t offering A-B testing or is targeting the e-commerce niche at large. Approach them and say, Hey, you know, I’ve written this course, I’ve written these books, I have this paid newsletter, I’m known as an expert in this industry. Can I teach our audience something? And build that relationship and use that to drive more people and more awareness of what you have to offer. I think of people like Drew Sanaki, who targets e-commerce businesses. He being a perfect example of somebody you’d want to build a strategic partnership with, because I don’t believe Drew offers in any way A-B testing services, he offers more business optimization and revenue optimization services. By saying, Hey, I could come in and teach your audience why research-driven A-B testing makes sense to generate more revenue. It looks good for him, it looks good for you, and it lets people who are in your target market, your best buyers, know, oh, you’re an expert who could teach them more about this. Building relationships with non-competitors can be a wonderful, wonderful strategy here.

It’s a tiny tactical thing. I went with free just to communicate to people the difference between a free and a paid course. Like earlier, I was referring to your course, and you were like, Wait, are you talking about the A-B testing manual course or my free course? And we had to clarify that there. So. I think there’s some benefit to having free in the URL just to communicate to people like this is not a paid course, this is a free course. But if AB, you said abtestingcourse. com is available? Yeah, man. Yeah, buy them both. Drop the 30 bucks on hover and just own both of them and see which one feels better. But between the two, I think it’s a tiny tactical optimization. Philip Morgan uses a positioning crashcourse. com. I’m going to A-B test it. Yeah, definitely. Get to statistical significance, please. So, here’s more of a question for you. So, somebody goes through your free course right now. When and where do you pitch them on buying the E-B testing manual?

Yeah. And if they don’t buy, are you asking them why they did not buy? No. That might be an opportunity. I just finished reading the book Ask by Ryan Levenesk. I’m sorry, Ryan, if you’re a listener, I butchered your last name terribly. Uh it’s it’s Desbato Desbino Desabatabo Kevis It’s very focused on using surveys to understand what to sell to your audience, what your audience is looking to buy, why they did buy, why they didn’t buy, and after they did or did not buy, what to pitch them on next. One tactical example from it is the Do You Hate Me survey. So he sends out this email, and it only goes out to people who have received the full pitch sequence. But have not bought. And it’s like, subject line, do you hate me? And the body just says, hey, I was telling you about a thing you didn’t buy. Completely dig it. I’m curious why. Can you fill out this one question survey for me? Links over to the survey, and the question is just like: what prevented you from buying? Or what was the number one thing that stopped you from buying this course? And any answer they give there. Well, A, if they give an answer, suddenly there’s an opportunity to respond back and dismantle that objection. Try and close the sale, yeah. Exactly. Plus, you’re able to then feed that back into your course itself and be like, here are frequently asked questions people have that just happen to be all of the questions or objections. People gave you by filling out that do you hate me survey. So I think there’s an opportunity to add that in and sort of close the loop and get more data. I think it might also be worth saying, I know you don’t like discounts that much, but it might be worth saying, like, hey, here’s a 24-hour discount on the A-B testing manual. Buy, don’t buy, don’t care. But this is a one-day discount. This is the cheapest it’ll ever be. If you’re interested in the in-depth video course, here’s how you could buy right now with a discount. One possible optimization that could convert more subscribers into buyers. Beyond that, I think. What if I hate discounts? If you hate discounts, you could offer bundling. So, do you have since discounts? I think are a way of just increasing the perceived value of the product. So, we’re essentially anchoring the value with the price that’s on the tin and then saying But for a limited time only, you could get it for less than the value I’ve assigned to it. The other way we could approach it is saying, well, it’s normally 900, but I’m including these additional resources that are valued at, let’s say, 100 each. Okay, great. So now it’s normally $900, but you’re getting $1,300 in value. I’m not sure. I can’t say that they. Are identical in terms of results, but they approach the problem in the same way, modifying the value perceived by the buyer by either discounting the price of the product or adding more value into the product. Brian Harris does a wonderful job of this with his launches. What he does is he’ll launch the product, and sales will happen. And let’s say it’s a week buying window. And then on day three, he’ll be like, hey, I got something cool. For everybody that’s bought already and anybody that buys in the next 24 hours, I’m also including these additional bonuses. And suddenly, people who are on the fence and were thinking, eh, maybe I’ll buy. They have a motivation to buy because there’s more value being added in. The people who bought earlier don’t lose out because he backed it or backfills it to include those early buyers, so they get the bonuses as well. And then you have the closing urgency of, well, the cart’s closing, buy or don’t buy, and you get the last flurry of people coming in. But by mixing in Anything additional of value that you can, I think you could offer that same time-sensitive urgency, get people buying the product, and not worry about discounting something when you’re opposed to discounting it. Examples of things you could include: worksheets, cheat sheets, copies of other books. What I often love doing is if I host a webinar with somebody, I’ll request a copy of the video file and ask if it’s okay if I use that. As a bonus, not selling it, but only as a bonus with my product launches. 90% of the time, colleagues will say, sure, I’m fine with that. I’m not infringing on their revenue by selling it as a thing, I’m just lumping it in. And suddenly I’m able to say, okay, cool. If you buy the outreach blueprint, you get these three webinars I did, each are 90 minutes long, and dive deep into the topic of outreach. Well, there’s value there. And by including those, I’m raising the perceived value of the product. You could easily integrate that into a launch sequence and say, hey, for the next 24 hours, if you buy, you’re going to get this awesome thing as well. Suddenly, it provides more of an incentive for somebody to convert from a subscriber into a buyer. Beyond that, one question I’d ask you is: so they go through this five-day course. or a sixth lesson course, and then they move on to your daily newsletter, or do they move on to sort of an educational predetermined sequence? You’re going to hate the answer. You just unsubscribe them at that point.

So here’s a potential optimization. So that’s one op one possible feature. Maybe small issue. They get aggressively upsold or They finish the course and suddenly they get the sandwich letter part two, or 1500 words about deep dish pizza and how people are doing it wrong.

But, but you see the point, I mean, where there’s, and again, I use the term coherence or resonance, where they’ve gone through this six-lesson course about A-B testing. You’re talking to them about how research-driven A-B testing is the most effective proven way to capture lost revenue for your business. And now they’re getting emailed about something that. Is not, let’s say, one step away, but might be like three or four steps away from the topic that they were used to. And I think dissonance there or a lack of coherence. Prompts people to either unsubscribe or start ignoring the newsletter because they aren’t sure what to expect next. So, having somebody join InMedia Res can be good and can make sense if you’re consistently producing content. Focused on that one topic. I think Philip Morgan does this incredibly well. While he switched over to more of an entertainment and educational mix in his daily letters It all comes down to the core tenet of positioning is important for your business. If you aren’t focused on positioning, you are doing it wrong. So you join in Media Res, and his letter might be like, A little oddball and a little goofy, but it still is echoing like positioning is important. You need to be doing positioning correctly. So, what might be a good optimization for draft to do is: okay, they finish your six-day course. Now, let’s move them over to a bridge sequence. And I like a bridge sequence that’s just two parts. First one is: hey, I’ve emailed you over the last six days. I’ve talked to you about how A-B testing, research-driven A-B testing, is so valuable for your business. You’ve probably heard a lot of me. You might be sick of me by now. Here’s an unsubscribe link. Click up the unsubscribe. Click the unsubscribe link if you want. I don’t know. God, I love telling people to unsubscribe for my mailing list. I’m on board with that, man. Yeah, and it gets the people who aren’t on board with your worldview off. Second email comes out two days later, and it’s like, hey, I’ve put together, you know, just a collection of like some of my most popular emails on the topic of research-driven A-B testing. And I’ve also mixed in a couple personal letters because, you know, it’s not all business all the time over here at Draft. I want to make sure that we have a good mixture of what’s interesting and educational. And so once somebody finishes your Sixth lesson course, move them into that bridge, encourage them to unsubscribe. Tell them that you’re going to give them, you know, curated the 10 best letters you’ve written about. Business and some interesting non-business things, since your draft letters are always going to be a mixture of business and non-business things. So we want to prime them for that experience. But we don’t want to just shove them into the pool unexpectedly. So maybe an eight to two or seven to three ratio where you cherry-pick your best lessons from maybe one from Revised Weekly, some you’ve written for draft letters. A couple of your most popular, most engaging, get the most response, most reply letters. And once somebody completes your free course, you move them to the bridge sequence. And then you move them to this ghost background newsletter, where for 10 weeks they get one predetermined letter a day, and that or not a day, a week. And then at the end of that, you transition them over in Media Res to draft letters as they’re firing off in the meantime. Optimizations within that could be in the middle of this ghost newsletter, sort of like onboarding newsletter sequence, you include an additional pitch for the A-B testing manual if they haven’t bought already. That’s really a next level, like 30141-level optimization, but I think. Having this bridge sequence where you’re taking somebody and saying, like, hey, I taught you about E-B testing and why it’s so important. Unsubscribe now if you want. I’m going to send you some more letters. Hey, here are 10 of my most popular letters. Excellent, you’ve enjoyed them. Hey, now I’m moving you over to the live stream as it happens. That’s a great way to both prime them for what to expect. And move them through that narrative journey you want. You want them to slowly come to terms with the fact that you’re not always going to be writing about research-driven A-B testing. but you don’t want to shove them into it too fast. So I think balancing the two of it makes two of them makes the most sense.

I got two business questions left for you before we wrap up. Oh, no. I know. We get the good ones. These are the doorknob questions. Have you emailed every person who has bought Cadence and Slang yet and told them that you have the A-B testing manual and it is a book/slash course they should buy?

Have you emailed everybody who has purchased? Cadence and slang, and tell them you have revised weekly, and it is a subscription email newsletter that they should subscribe to. Question three. How many people have bought Cadence and Slag? About 3,700. Okay. I’ll DM you my address after the show for these Ingridman’s gift basket, I expect, after this makes you multiple thousands of dollars.

I can give you the advice, but you have to do the advice.