How I Turned a Grouchy Subscriber into $6,696 (Part 1)

One 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, my business partner John and I were experimenting with “white labeling,” i.e. working with another digital course author to repackage his product, add some extra bonuses, and resell it to our audience under our own brand.

The particular course we were reselling was about learning JavaScript.

And the course itself was *excellent*.

In fact, the course was so good that it was one of the top sellers on the Udemy online learning site—something like 75,000 people had enrolled.

This made me nervous.

Real nervous.

Here’s why:

On the Udemy site, this course was listed at $175.

Our price point for the course was $99 with a discount of $20, plus we include bonuses that are easily worth another couple hundred.

So far, so good.

However, Udemy periodically discounts their version of the course.

And they cut the price way, WAAAAY down.

All the way down to $10, in fact.

I was worried about a bunch of people connecting the dots that the courses were the same—then coming after us with pitchforks for charging $99 for a course that was “only $10.”

(Don’t get me started on what a loser entitlement mentality this is. This course was so good, it would be a fantastic investment even at $1000—anyone with half a work ethic could take what they learned and earn 100X more as a result.)

So that’s why my stomach twisted when I saw the tweet from @DrunkOldBastard.

In my mind I could already see the angry mob starting to form…

Later that day, John and I hopped on a strategy call to discuss the launch—and of course we started talking about this tweet.

That’s when John made an offhanded remark that gave me an idea about how we could turn the tables on @DrunkOldBastard and his ilk—

And it just seemed like so much fun that we both agreed we just HAD to give it a try.

(to be continued)

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