The ‘Cheater’s Way’ to Validate Your Product Idea Using Email

Ever notice that sometimes knowing MORE about a topic (like copywriting), makes it HARDER to take action?

Subscriber David, who runs a blog about website optimization, has himself all wrapped around the axel over a landing page:

Before I go right down the whole build a course thing, I’m going to cheat a bit. I want to setup a landing page, drive a few people to it and see whether some people will give me their money.

Thing is, when it comes to the landing page copy, I’ve hit a blank. Zero. I think I’ve really mastered the writing email thing, thanks to you 🙂 But now I’ve got a new challenge. Actually getting people through the door … once I’ve mastered that, I’ll start writing the course 🙂

This isn’t really “cheating”—more like just plain smart.

David wants to take his audience’s temperature before he dives into full-scale product development mode.

Here’s another “cheat” to avoid investing a lot of time writing a big long landing page:

First, put together a short-but-info-packed webinar on the topic that you’d cover in your course.

Then set up a dead-simple landing page—just the title of your presentation, a few details, and a “Buy Now” button.

Decide on a price for your webinar, say $29. Enough to prove that your audience is willing to pay for your knowledge in this area.

Then pitch the webinar to your email list, using your finely-tuned email copywriting chops.

Because you already have a relationship with your email subscribers, you can get by with a very minimal “sales page.”

And packaging the presentation as a live webinar creates a real deadline (and hence urgency).

This way you’re not investing a ton of time into writing copy and building a product before you give your audience a chance to “vote with their credit cards.”

Give yourself a baseline “go/no-go” target for your webinar sales.

Then when you exceed that threshold, you’ve got some validation for building a bigger product.

P.S. If you’re interested in learning how to create email courses to sell your products and services, register for my upcoming webinar Behind the Scenes of a Six-Figure Email Course.

The fee to attend is $29. 😉