Quick recap of part 1: My business partner John and I were launching a product to our list—a “whitelabel” version of a popular JavaScript course that was available on Udemy for $175. The wrinkle is that Udemy frequently discounts the course to $10, which made our discount price of $79 look like a ripoff, even […]
Continue readingOne morning a while back I woke up to this: And let me tell ya, it felt a lot like getting kicked in the gut. To understand why, I need to fill in some backstory. This all happened at the tail end of a product launch I was running for Simple Programmer. For this launch, […]
Continue readingYou know how you’re always reading case studies where they changed one word of their call-to-action buttons and suddenly sales went up 27%? The takeaway always seems to be how you need to “test everything, because you never know…” I’m convinced these case studies do way more harm than good, because it’s literally impossible to […]
Continue readingIn my early days as a newspaper reporter, I had the “5 W’s” drilled into me. You know: Who? What? When? Where? Why? (Some people add on “How?” for good measure.) Every time I hit a marketing challenge and I’m not sure where to start, I go back to the 5 W’s—especially the first one. […]
Continue readingI’m not anti-discount. In fact, limited-time discounts are my go-to option when I want to crank up the pressure on waffling would-be buyers. Sometimes though you just can’t use discounts. Maybe you have fixed costs to cover. Maybe you have a high-end product or service, and discounting would trash your “brand.” Maybe what you’re selling […]
Continue readingHere’s a slippery slope: Josh – do you ever give “one-off” discounts to customers if they as for them? Or just tell them that the full price is the price, but to look out for discounts that pop up from time to time? My philosophy on one-off discounts is: Hand up, not a hand out. […]
Continue readingYesterday I described how I used to be in the “discounts will destroy your business” camp. I hated discounts—firmly believed they’d cheapen your “brand” and train customers to NEVER buy and forcing you to run constant fire sales. I’ve come around on this. At Simple Programmer, we make heavy use of discounts in our sales […]
Continue readingDiscounting—yea or nay? On one hand, you have a crowd of business owners who happily point to the spike in sales they see every time they offer a discount. Then there’s the vocal minority to whom discounting spells nothing less than THE UTTER AND COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR BUSINESS!!! Subscriber Benjamin is trying to sort […]
Continue readingI know this software developer who’s been trying all kinds of things to sell monthly subscriptions to a membership site. The site teaches other developers how to do complex calculations in an obscure programming language that’s uniquely suited to these sorts of intense computational tasks. Not a lot of competition out there for him, so […]
Continue readingI’ll be the first to admit it— The way I run the email list for Simple Programmer is WAY more complex than most businesses need. Multiple email courses, behavior-based automated triggers, segmentation… Most people would do much better to take a simple approach. Just how simple? That’s what subscriber Javier is pondering: If you have […]
Continue readingCouple weeks back I shared how I landed a $4,000 advertising deal for Simple Programmer with a single email. And I mentioned that the email worked because I included an offer, a deadline, and a little dash of scarcity: The email said that another potential sponsor was wanting to buy the same space in our […]
Continue readingYou can pretty much bet on SOMETHING going haywire anytime you launch a new product. With the launch of the new JavaScript course at Simple Programmer, I was extra careful to cross all my I’s and dot all my T’s. What bit me in the butt this time was: Refunds. The refund rate on this […]
Continue readingThis one hit a raw nerve for me. Subscriber Sara writes: I just have to ask, because I’m sure you get a LOT more subscriber/customer responses than I do: I can’t be the only person who get’s annoyed with “testimonials” and “I’ve been featured here, here, here, here, and here” -type homepages and welcome emails […]
Continue readingI just wrapped up a product launch at Simple Programmer. This project had a couple of unique twists to it. For one thing, I was NOT the one writing most of the copy. Instead I was “copy chiefing” a software developer and (relatively) new copywriter named Dan. Then there was the topic of the course […]
Continue readingWant a FAST, effective way to ruin your day? If you have shopping cart software, dig around in there until you find the comments people enter when they request a refund. Commence reading. Alternatively: Go to your customer support inbox and search for “refund.” Heh, you’re welcome. Refund requests are the WORST. They feel like […]
Continue readingI need to clarify something: This list and my blog are *not* my main business—more like a hobby, a labor of love. I write these emails because I enjoy sharing what I’m learning in my “day job” at Simple Programmer, and because I enjoy interacting with fellow entrepreneurs like YOU. Because of that, there are […]
Continue readingTrue or false: A good product will sell itself. Get people to “sample” of your product and they’ll buy in droves—and you won’t have to say a word. Michael is a marketing consultant who’s wondering about this idea of sampling: I’ve recently decided to take a shot at creating an online program (more like an […]
Continue readingWord to the wise: Whenever a marketing “expert” starts talking about their solution *before* they understand your specific situation—your business, your customers, your previous marketing efforts… Hang onto your wallet. Cuz “one size fits all” is a myth. I talk a lot here about tactics like list-building giveaways and email courses. They’re excellent tools that […]
Continue readingEver buy a book—only to stick it on the shelf and forget all about it? C’mon, get those hands up… Recently I read an analysis by Barnes & Noble showing that 60% of the ebooks people buy are never even *opened*. Not read, OPENED. 60%! Now here’s the scary thing… You know that lead magnet […]
Continue readingRecently I decided to get rid of a whole pile of old books that had been sitting in my attic for several years, unused. Since the books were all on the same esoteric topic—Gregg shorthand if you’re curious—I took the lazy way out: I threw the books together in a pile and took a photo […]
Continue readingAs a new marketer, one of the questions I used to agonize over was: How often can I send a “hard pitch” to my email list for a given product? Entrepreneurs seem to go through several phases of growth on this. At first, when you’re new to marketing, the idea of pitching at all is […]
Continue readingBack when I was still writing and selling ebooks for programmers, I had this mental hangup that cost me a LOT of money: I was convinced that NO ONE would pay $50 or more for a book or course in my niche. Why? Because the software I was teaching developers to use cost $50. And […]
Continue readingWendy is an author who writes and publishes indie fiction on Amazon. Her husband Josh, a loyal reader, is giving her a hand with marketing. Over the last year they’ve built up a healthy email list—and now Josh finds himself at a crossroads. Because selling Kindle books for $2.99 isn’t the path to a sustainable […]
Continue readingThe other day I was on a call with my business partner John, scheming about the upcoming launch of his second book. As an aside I asked him how much revenue he was earning from his first book, “Soft Skills: A Software Developer’s Life Manual.” I won’t disclose the details here, since that revenue is […]
Continue readingComes a question from a fellow Josh: Love your emails and I occasionally listen to the Entreprogrammers podcast. I’m actually in a mastermind group with Wes Bos too 🙂 I’ve been working on my wife’s marketing, she writes and indie publishes fiction books on Amazon (http://wendyowensbooks.com). I’ve been using drip for the past two months […]
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