10 ms·

Patio11 launches his lifecycle emails course

193 points by _pius 14y ago

tocomment 14y ago
That sounds really cool. How does one learn to write a sales letter like that? I found it really compelling.
- patio11 14y ago
  Read a lot of them, learn what works, implement them for clients, test, learn what works, take off anything you'd be embarrassed to put your own name on, try writing one for yourself. There's also a lot of books and products available on copywriting. The only one I've ever liked is, well, everything CopyHackers has ever done.
  - bloggergirl 14y ago
    Thanks, Patrick (and "underdown"). That you're such a strong writer with a keen awareness of what your audience will and won't put up with --- esp re long-form --- is the reason your page is as awesome and non-skeezy as it is. ~joanna
  - thenomad 14y ago
    Thank you. Copywriting resources are always valuable, and I'd not heard of Copyhackers. Subscribed.
- underdown 14y ago
  I heartily recommend Joanne Weibe's ebook here: http://copyhackers.com/product/handbook-how-to-write-a-long-form-sales-letter-page/ http://copyhackers.com/product/handbook-how-to-write-a-long-... $48 is a little hefty but its also frequently on sale on some of the appsumo/mightydeals type sites.
- smoyer 14y ago
  I originally became fascinated with long-form sales letters by reading "Mail-Order Success Secrets" by Tyler G. Hicks who made his fortune with those long classified ads you could find in any newspaper and with long-form snail-mail. You can find his works here: http://www.iwsmoney.com/mailorder.htm http://www.iwsmoney.com/mailorder.htm
ryanio 14y ago
This guy needs a few lessons on effective public speaking and presentation, this introduction video of him makes me cringe.. I couldn't watch more than just a few minutes of it. Oh, and a web designer couldn't hurt either, who's going to read those walls of text?
- patio11 14y ago
  who's going to read those walls of text? The buyers, mostly. If you don't run marketing at a B2B SaaS company it is a wall of text. If that's you, I'll save you time: don't read it or, if you do read it, read it only for academic interest on doing copywriting. If, on the other hand, one is in charge of increasing the sales of a B2B SaaS company, this page is basically designed to be total brain crack. It presents an idea which is either new or which one is vaguely aware of, presents concrete suggestions for implementation, has a case study which the target customer will find incredibly compelling, teaches one thing they can literally execute on by the end of today, and then drumroll says that if you found the page to be valuable then there are five hours of very dense, action-packed video and guides where that came from, for a very reasonable price by the standards of B2B SaaS companies.
  - jpadvo 14y ago
    I can attest to the brain-crackness. We're a bootstrapped startup that is starting to have a compelling product, and starting to think more about how to market it. We're definitely aware of the idea of lifecycle marketing and have been thinking about implementing it. If purchasing this course lets us get a lifecycle marketing system going that is 10% more effective two weeks earlier than if we had to learn the lessons ourselves, it would pay for itself. Of course, if we had to smash our brains against it and try to pick out a cohesive strategy from across the internet it's very likely to take us a long time - months or years - to learn all the things in the course. If you're in the target market for this product, and you know patio11 enough to trust him, the sales pitch boils down to "You give me several hundred dollars, and I'll give you thousands of dollars." Haha, but even with that rational analysis done, the idea of spending that much on something pains my bootstrapping mind tremendously.
patio11 14y ago
I'm happy to answer questions, as always, but would prefer talking about the business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable selling on HN.) I'll probably blog about it in more detail later, too.
- dave1619 14y ago
  I've been following your blog, podcasts, comments here, etc and learn a lot from you. I've gotta say you hit a big need with the email course, and though I wish the price was $99 I know you're delivering based on value and the course is probably worth more than the $300 price to me. So, I'll probably get it. I think a sample video from the course (ie., 5 minutes would help a lot) to help people take the leap. Or a 2 minute intro video to the course. There's something about video (especially when the author's face comes and he starts talking) that adds more legitimacy and seriousness to the offer.
  - patio11 14y ago
    That's the opposite of what I expect but, since it is entirely possible that video + text does outperform text, there's A/B tests running to that effect.
    - dave1619 14y ago
      Just bought the course and I'm downloading some of the videos because I watch most of my videos on the go (ie., in the car or on my ipad). First impressions (ie., first 60 seconds on the course), it really seems like something created for a person sitting at a computer to watch it all. I wish there was a downloadable zip file I could download all the videos at once. I'm trying to download the videos now and I'm running into all sorts of errors and such (I think it's only letting me download one video at a time). Actually I'm getting error messages right now for all the pages. Is your site down? Update: Ok, it looks like it's back up and running. When I download videos and try to right-click to save mp4 file, it downloads an html file and not the video. I need to go into the video to watch it and then option-return the url to start downloading. Very strange. This happens to the opt-in videos in lesson 2. optins-teardowns video doesn't seem to be downloading at all. Also, your video sizes are really large. Example, 235mb for an 8:10 minute video (1024x768 resolution). You should be able to get the file size down to 100mb or so. For comparison, Kevin Rose's interview of Dennis Crowley in 720p is about the same size, 237mb, but the interview is about 20 minutes. Your copywriting video is 686mb for 19:53 length... compared with Kevin Rose's Dennis Crowley video of 235mb for 19:20 length. That makes your video 3x the size of Kevin Rose's video (which is great 720p quality). Honestly, this is a really sucky first experience. This is going to take my all morning to download these videos because the file sizes are 2-3x what they should be and because the links aren't all working. And then after I download the videos, since they're so large I'm going to have a hard time fitting them in my iPhone and iPad. Please investigate getting your file sizes down. I think you can shrink the file sizes of your mp4 video to 1/3 the current size but keep the same resolution/quality. Update: Your optins-teardowns.mp4 file is absent. I can't download it. Please fix cause I don't want to watch the lessons out of order.
philk 14y ago
That is a really nice sales letter and I've bookmarked it to read through repeatedly when I need to write one. It nails the long form sales format and manages to do so without sounding sleazy[1]. I particularly like the Do not buy this course section which qualifies potential customers. [1] To be fair depending upon the target demographic the sleaziness can be increased without causing problems. If you were building a product for hard core sales guys Your Customers Can Still Afford Branded Groceries: Learn How To Capture This Wasted Revenue Today! might do brilliantly.
atldev 14y ago
Patrick has earned trust in the community by giving away so much valuable information. My first thought was that it's about time you sold some of this info. The reason is great: "I got tired of saying no." Good stuff, and thanks for all the free advice along the way.
r00k 14y ago
Hi Patrick, I'd like to preface this comment by saying that I'm a huge fan of your work. You've personally helped me a ton. That said, I must ask what made you choose video as the medium for this content. Frankly, you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality. Even beyond congeniality, why is five hours of video at 150wpm superior to a medium-length ebook I can read at 800wpm? Thanks!
- philk 14y ago
  I prefer reading too but most people will pay more for a video than they will for an ebook regardless of the value contained within because they've been trained repeatedly that books are cheap.
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago
    Patrick and Ramit Sethi discuss this very thing in the last Kalzumeus podcast. Book pricing isn't as hopelessly broken as music pricing, but that is faint praise indeed. It's sad. Writing a good book is a great deal of work, reading a good book provides a great deal of value, but the psychology of the book market recognizes neither of these facts. People vaguely imagine that producing books costs approximately the time required to type them, and expect to buy books for the cost of buying, inking, and shipping the paper - if the paper is absent they expect the price to be negligable. Whereas the one good thing to be said about modern college tuitions is that they provide a nice big anchor for the cost of a "course". Practically anything looks like a bargain next to the list price of an hour of TA instruction at Harvard. [1] [1] That's a fun math problem: Assuming five courses at Harvard, five hours per week of lecture and recitation per course, a fourteen-week semester and $38k tuition and fees, I come up with about $55 per hour per student. Of course, Harvard does not bill by the hour, but that's a whole 'nother essay.
- unreal37 14y ago
  re: "you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality" LOL, that's a back-handed compliment there. I think he's aiming to get better at his video production and presentation skills, and believes video delivers more perceived value than just text. Text is not a course, it's an ebook. Courses are worth more than ebooks every day of the week. Perceived value > actual value when it comes to sales... Who's going to pay $2,000 (site license) for an ebook? BTW, I love video and audio players that allow you to speed up play - 1.5x, 1.75x or 2.0x . Coursera has that, love it.
peterjancelis 14y ago
Patrick, I'd be interested in how you decided on your pricing. With all the pre-selling and your friendship with Amy Hoy I was honestly expecting prices to be about 10-12 times as high, or 5-6 times based on the full price starting next week. What makes you think you will sell 10 times as much at $249 than at $2490?
- patio11 14y ago
  It actually might be underpriced, to be totally honest, but not that underpriced I don't think. To justify prices in the > $2k region I think I would need to add some sort of interactive component (webinar or what have you), and I have no time on the schedule for that in the next couple of months, so I went with something which was totally self-guided for my first try. I might revisit that eventually, if there's lots of demand for it and if it makes sense for the business.
  - graeme 14y ago
    I agree. I wasn't expecting it to be within my price range (though I'm glad that it is). Buying is a trivial decision at $300. We sell a $350 product, with high margins. A single sale and this course pays for itself. (2-3, if you include my time spent watching and implementing it) edit: turns out I didn't even notice the price. It's actually $250. I was prepared to pay anything up to $400 without thinking about it or discussing reimbursement with my company.
    - unreal37 14y ago
      But if that price was $2,500 I am sure there'd be a discussion with finance and budgets become involved. In person 5 hour courses don't cost that never mind web videos. Quite frankly, he wouldn't sell many at $2,500 - not sure if it's a 90% drop in sales but it could be.
      - graeme 14y ago
        Mmm, you might be right on the corporate price point. I was only considering the personal one, didn't notice the 2K price tag on the other.
dchuk 14y ago
Looks like your site is throwing an error right now Patrick: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546067/Screenshots/cpc58_yeew2b.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546067/Screenshots/cpc58_yeew2b.png (I realize that message shows nothing but it's all I could come up with to help out right now)
tisme 14y ago
Selling shovels during a goldrush is a great way to make money! Patrick is sure to rake it in with this one, and with the 'money back guarantee' you really can't go wrong. HN is the perfect target demographic for this product.
- patio11 14y ago
  I think there's a nuance to "selling shovels during a goldrush" suggesting that shovel-sellers exploit the naive 49ers, the majority of whom will end up with no gold. That really isn't the point of the exercise. Most of my consulting clients, and the people I build this for, are not in a gold-rush. They run profitable businesses selling software to other businesses. This is a business input for them which they have a clear path to profiting from. It is about as speculative an investment as a pizzeria buying basket of tomatoes. If there is anyone hypothetically thinking of buying this basket of tomatoes because they want to aspirationally run a pizzeria one day, please don't. I don't want your money. Go read my blog. Found a pizzeria. Find customers for it. When you need this you'll know, and it will be a screamingly obvious mutual win.
  - tisme 14y ago
    For someone who isn't comfortable selling on HN you're doing a stellar job of it! Telling people that you don't want their money is a great strategy.
    - philk 14y ago
      It seems to me he's doomed either way. If he comes on here and says I built this and you all need to buy it right now, well then he's obviously just a salesman. If he comes on here and says I built this, don't buy it if you don't meet these criteria, I'm not even going to try to sell it because I don't want to turn HN into a sales venue, well then, he's a obviously just a particularly crafty salesman. So while I see what you're saying I'm not sure how you expect patio11 to discuss this on HN without appearing like a salesman to at least a few people.
      - 14y ago
MikeKusold 14y ago
Was this inspired through talks with Ramit? I am seeing a similar model appear. He uses free emails to sell courses, and you use free blog posts to sell emails.
bmccormack 14y ago
"Switching customers to annual billing radically decreases churn, one of the key risks to SaaS businesses long-term." Where I can I read more about annual billing decreasing churn? I've read your blog post (or email?) about switching to annual billing to free up revenue to acquire new customers, but I don't remember reading about how it decreases churn as well.
- patio11 14y ago
  Dharmesh Shah has talked about it extensively -- basically, of people on monthly billing, at any given time approximately 100% are at risk of churn. Of people on annual billing, < 10% are at risk of churn at any given time. They also have less opportunities to hit involuntary churn like, e.g., getting a CC declined or expired.
  - dshah 14y ago
    Indeed, that's true. One additional point: Customers that commit to annual billing generally tend to churn less often overall -- because they've made a more "considered" purchase and committed more time to the purchasing decision.
loumf 14y ago
Raise prices (well, wait 2 days, so I can get my purchase through) -- I just sent a note to my boss that this is a no-brainer for the $999. And, we already do email campaigns like this, and probably do 80% of what you are going to suggest (at least), and we only have 3 people that would directly benefit from knowing this -- but, we think it would be a nice perk to employees to see the course. Quote from co-worker: "It would be worth it even if we learn one new, non-generic thing to try" Of course, we sell software that goes for $x0,000+, so anything that moves the needle with leads ROFLstomps $999. (I have been waiting to write a response to patio11 like this for a while)
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > I have been waiting to write a response to patio11 like this for a while I believe it's also the first time someone other than patio11 has used the word "ROFLstomp" on HN ;)
- Cass 14y ago
  Yeah, my first response to seeing the price was "WTF? Raise your prices!" as well. I was expecting a number somewhere in the four figures. I mean, I was only checking on the price out of curiosity because I'm a broke student who doesn't even sell software, but if a broke student's first response to your offering is "Hey, that's actually only a little bit too expensive for hours worth of instructive entertainment!" to the point where I was tempted to buy for like two seconds, you can be sure that you could extract a whole lot more money than that from people who'll get actual business value out of it.
- patio11 14y ago
  I just want to mention that I really appreciate both this advice and your other comment below, and am starring it for future reference.
  - Sukotto 14y ago
    How does one save comments on HN? Do you access via some sort of overlay app with better functionality than the vanilla site or do you just bookmark stuff to your browser (or pinboard or whatever)
whileonebegin 14y ago
This is a 10 mile long sales page, down to the P.S. at the bottom. The copy itself, sounds genuine. However, the look of the page itself is a turn-off. Why did you decide to use this format as opposed to a simple, cut & dry page with a big "buy now" button?
- swombat 14y ago
  Long form sales letters are proven, statistically, in many contexts, to convert more. It's really that simple. He could do a short and snappy page, but then he'd probably lose thousands of dollars a day. Or he can make people like you feel like it's a bit spammy, and make thousands of extra bucks a day. I know which one I'd choose.
- regularfry 14y ago
  This is patio11. He's almost certainly A/B testing the length of the page to figure out whether a short page or a long one works better.
graeme 14y ago
How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address? Your checkout process was very simple, makes my company's process look cumbersome. Also, I noticed you don't use paypal. Could you elaborate on that choice? My guess is that you know your demographic is used to using credit cards, and it eliminates a step, but I'd like to confirm
- patio11 14y ago
  How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address? Stripe. Could you elaborate on that choice? Stripe! (No, seriously: I have the capability of running things through Paypal but a) that code is from BCC and written when I was young and stupid, and I was afraid of breaking something if I just copy/paste ported it over, b) this keeps my accountant happy, and c) there was a non-zero "risk" of this selling five figures in a day with $1,000 charges in the mix, which would mean Paypal and I would have to have a chat, and that was a complication I just didn't need right now.)
kareemm 14y ago
@patio11 - Typo: "The course is on sale for until October 5th"
smoyer 14y ago
Wow ... now here's a testimonial! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 EDIT - Linked to the other HN topic. Just click through for the story
spitfire 14y ago
I seem to be A/B tested out of the sample video. Anyone have a link?
- patio11 14y ago
  Append ?video=yes to the URL. It will shortcircuit A/Bingo. (n.b. This behavior ships off by default in A/Bingo for a variety of reasons -- think very hard before enabling it.)
amix 14y ago
Sorry for not being an ass kisser, but I think this is way too overpriced and I would not like to see HN turn into a marketplace. Imagine if every HN contributor started selling their knowledge this way - - it would be a bad community where everything was behind paid walls. And yes, I do know that Patrick has contributed a lot to HN, but so has thousands of others, and I am sure he has learnt a ton here as well. There's no need to monetize this or to encourage monetization of this kind of knowledge.
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  I am glad that Redhat and Canonical exist; there certainly is a place for value-added "deep dives". I am glad that this is available for purchase instead of being locked away in his head.
- HyprMusic 14y ago
  Look at his comment: "but would prefer talking about the business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable selling on HN.)". The site also goes in to a lot of detail about the method used on WPEngine, unlike most of these product sites which only drip feed you enough information to convince you to buy their product. He even commended an article[1] which attempts to de-construct his method and share it. I personally believe that he is genuinely offering to share his help (for a fee - which is reasonable), rather than trying to extract money out of HN user's. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080
- loumf 14y ago
  On the HN I read, there is a nearly constant stream of ShowHN posts with paid services and promotions of Y-Combinator startups who stand to gain from the exposure. It has always been part of HN culture to promote our projects -- particularly accepted if you are a major contributor and didn't just register to post. For someone who stands to make a lot of money from acting on the information here, I am happy to pay for it. Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it -- I already do a lot of email dripping -- free, to me, would mean that it's basic, and that I wouldn't benefit from it.
larrys 14y ago
patio11 what you have written is great and I have the highest respect for what you do (and things that you have said). But - separate from any conflict or cynicism that others have raised as far as HN becoming a marketplace, there was to much to read (and in fact I didn't read it, I skimmed it) so I wouldn't feel comfortable paying the amount you are asking which was located at the bottom. I feel you should have started at the top with: "If This Doesn't Create Value For Your Business, I Don't Want Your Money" (pricing options) Want to know more? Read below. Just my thoughts. By the way I have no doubt that you have thought long and hard about putting that price at the bottom of the letter and could point to backup for that strategy (perhaps in something you've written before or generally accepted knowledge). But my reaction is my reaction so I just thought I'd throw it out there.
31reasons 14y ago
If you guys want to learn direct mail marketing, print and read all these letters from Gary Halbert from the 80s. It still applies now very much so. http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-letter/ http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-lette... There is a limit how much you can learn by reading and watching million dollar videos. Its all about doing and testing for your business.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
propercoil 14y ago
So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN. Here is a lesson in conversion: make your video auto play next time. Other than that i really hate where HN is going upping this thread
- follower 14y ago
  > So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN. Note that patio11 didn't link to anything--this was submitted by http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_pius http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_pius
laurentoget 14y ago
When did Hacker News turn into an MLM platform? This page looks like a late night TV Amway infomercial, complete with third rate camera acting. Or rather looked before their webserver bit the dust.
grey-area 14y ago
This line from the article had a particular resonance for me given the slow drip feed of articles from Patio11 on HN gradually establishing credibility ↬ Drip marketing means sending a timed sequence of emails to educate, persuade, and only then sell.
scoot 14y ago
So for those curious, but not curious enough to sign up for WPengine's "course", here's the first email: "I just wanted to say hello and thank you for your interest in WP Engine. I saw that you filled out our speed test form, and wanted to let you know that there is a real person over here, and that I'm interested to hear how you feel about us so far. Do you have any questions or concerns? Can I help you make a decision either way? Thanks! Trafton Esler Lead Developer Champion" There are so many things wrong with this email I don't know where to start. My only hope is that they inserted this email into the sequence /after/ Patio11's involvement; otherwise it's a warning sign (along with the awful video on the sales page) that his course is not all it's hyped-up up to be. Good luck anyway, there's a sucker born every minute.
- lukevdp 14y ago
  What's wrong with the email? If you don't know where to start, just pick the thing that's most wrong.
- graeme 14y ago
  That email got me to reply, and moved our business to WP engine faster. Trafton gave me some info that helped convince our tech guy. And then I stole that email in our campaign (with some modifications), to great results. I even got lots of "Wow, you guys are real humans and not robots" replies. I'm interested to hear what you say is wrong with the email, because you haven't yet. edit: The lead developer champion bit wasn't in the email they sent me.
- ericabiz 14y ago
  Hello! I'm Erica, and I consulted for WP Engine at the same time as Patrick. I worked side by side with Patrick during the week he was at WP Engine--Jason (their CEO) hired me to jump-start their entire marketing department for 3 months, vs. Patrick's specific "email drip feed" task. I'm intimately familiar with the details of the open rates and conversion rates from WP Engine's email series; in fact, I was the one who helped sequence them and proofread/edit some of them after Patrick left. I can tell you with 100% authority that you are dead wrong. That email converts extremely well. In fact, it used to go directly to Trafton's inbox and he had fun showing me all the responses people sent to him every day. If you want the spoiler details, it converts well because people love to know there's a real human behind all this nonsense that we call "the Internet." (And it also converts well because Trafton is a machine who seems to never sleep and responds to everyone's questions quickly...another key ingredient. Everyone was always asking Jason how they could "hire a Trafton.") It speaks well for the people Jason hires, as well as the effectiveness of the email itself. There you have it, from the horse's mouth.
JesseAldridge 14y ago
Didn't like the video. From http://ycombinator.com/video.html http://ycombinator.com/video.html: "Please do not recite a script written beforehand. Just talk spontaneously as you would to a friend. People delivering memorized speeches (or worse still, text read off the screen) usually come off as stupid. Unless you're a good enough actor to fake spontaneity, you lose more in the stilted delivery than you gain from a more polished message."
- trhtrsh 14y ago
  Um, people who aren't gifted speakers come off as stupid when they talk spontaneously about a topic.
  - pestaa 14y ago
    So if one comes off as stupid either way on the video, why not just write it down?
- nandemo 14y ago
  That advice is specifically for people applying to Y Combinator. Not very relevant to marketing videos in general.
noahc 14y ago
Patrick, Congrats! You've shipped something of value to the world.
inthe90s 14y ago
Selling Bingo Cards is serious business. You make millions. A bingo card salesmen who offered advice would not have to charge money. He would be so wealthy. "email marketing has been poorly used by slimeballs before" But never as effectively as we use it! :) "Make Money Online slime pit" Indeed you might not find this offer by searching Google. You'll find it linked to from HN. There's more than one way to navigate to the slime pit. It's always amusing how people, using the internet, sell advice on how to make money using the internet. The best way to make money using the internet is to sell advice on how to make money using the internet. No, this is definitely not multi-level marketing. Huge difference. Those guys are slime. We're different. Oh, I'm sure you are.
ky3 14y ago
God, I'm so envious reading all these comments -- patio11 struck a gold mine of the golden mean! You know you've priced okay when (1) people bitch it's too high and (2) people bitch it's too low. You know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch it's too ugly (walls of text!) and (2) people say it's not. You also know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch the video's terrible (WTF? he didn't comb his hair!) and (2) others don't give a flip. Now back to the price: it's not like big pharma has some kind of insta-power pill that chomps down all that consumer surplus. For a one-man show he did great.

193 points by _pius 14y ago

tocomment 14y ago

That sounds really cool. How does one learn to write a sales letter like that? I found it really compelling.

patio11 14y ago
Read a lot of them, learn what works, implement them for clients, test, learn what works, take off anything you'd be embarrassed to put your own name on, try writing one for yourself. There's also a lot of books and products available on copywriting. The only one I've ever liked is, well, everything CopyHackers has ever done.
- bloggergirl 14y ago
  Thanks, Patrick (and "underdown"). That you're such a strong writer with a keen awareness of what your audience will and won't put up with --- esp re long-form --- is the reason your page is as awesome and non-skeezy as it is. ~joanna
- thenomad 14y ago
  Thank you. Copywriting resources are always valuable, and I'd not heard of Copyhackers. Subscribed.
underdown 14y ago
I heartily recommend Joanne Weibe's ebook here: http://copyhackers.com/product/handbook-how-to-write-a-long-form-sales-letter-page/ http://copyhackers.com/product/handbook-how-to-write-a-long-... $48 is a little hefty but its also frequently on sale on some of the appsumo/mightydeals type sites.
smoyer 14y ago
I originally became fascinated with long-form sales letters by reading "Mail-Order Success Secrets" by Tyler G. Hicks who made his fortune with those long classified ads you could find in any newspaper and with long-form snail-mail. You can find his works here: http://www.iwsmoney.com/mailorder.htm http://www.iwsmoney.com/mailorder.htm

ryanio 14y ago

This guy needs a few lessons on effective public speaking and presentation, this introduction video of him makes me cringe.. I couldn't watch more than just a few minutes of it. Oh, and a web designer couldn't hurt either, who's going to read those walls of text?

patio11 14y ago
who's going to read those walls of text? The buyers, mostly. If you don't run marketing at a B2B SaaS company it is a wall of text. If that's you, I'll save you time: don't read it or, if you do read it, read it only for academic interest on doing copywriting. If, on the other hand, one is in charge of increasing the sales of a B2B SaaS company, this page is basically designed to be total brain crack. It presents an idea which is either new or which one is vaguely aware of, presents concrete suggestions for implementation, has a case study which the target customer will find incredibly compelling, teaches one thing they can literally execute on by the end of today, and then drumroll says that if you found the page to be valuable then there are five hours of very dense, action-packed video and guides where that came from, for a very reasonable price by the standards of B2B SaaS companies.
- jpadvo 14y ago
  I can attest to the brain-crackness. We're a bootstrapped startup that is starting to have a compelling product, and starting to think more about how to market it. We're definitely aware of the idea of lifecycle marketing and have been thinking about implementing it. If purchasing this course lets us get a lifecycle marketing system going that is 10% more effective two weeks earlier than if we had to learn the lessons ourselves, it would pay for itself. Of course, if we had to smash our brains against it and try to pick out a cohesive strategy from across the internet it's very likely to take us a long time - months or years - to learn all the things in the course. If you're in the target market for this product, and you know patio11 enough to trust him, the sales pitch boils down to "You give me several hundred dollars, and I'll give you thousands of dollars." Haha, but even with that rational analysis done, the idea of spending that much on something pains my bootstrapping mind tremendously.

patio11 14y ago

I'm happy to answer questions, as always, but would prefer talking about the business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable selling on HN.) I'll probably blog about it in more detail later, too.

dave1619 14y ago
I've been following your blog, podcasts, comments here, etc and learn a lot from you. I've gotta say you hit a big need with the email course, and though I wish the price was $99 I know you're delivering based on value and the course is probably worth more than the $300 price to me. So, I'll probably get it. I think a sample video from the course (ie., 5 minutes would help a lot) to help people take the leap. Or a 2 minute intro video to the course. There's something about video (especially when the author's face comes and he starts talking) that adds more legitimacy and seriousness to the offer.
- patio11 14y ago
  That's the opposite of what I expect but, since it is entirely possible that video + text does outperform text, there's A/B tests running to that effect.
  - dave1619 14y ago
    Just bought the course and I'm downloading some of the videos because I watch most of my videos on the go (ie., in the car or on my ipad). First impressions (ie., first 60 seconds on the course), it really seems like something created for a person sitting at a computer to watch it all. I wish there was a downloadable zip file I could download all the videos at once. I'm trying to download the videos now and I'm running into all sorts of errors and such (I think it's only letting me download one video at a time). Actually I'm getting error messages right now for all the pages. Is your site down? Update: Ok, it looks like it's back up and running. When I download videos and try to right-click to save mp4 file, it downloads an html file and not the video. I need to go into the video to watch it and then option-return the url to start downloading. Very strange. This happens to the opt-in videos in lesson 2. optins-teardowns video doesn't seem to be downloading at all. Also, your video sizes are really large. Example, 235mb for an 8:10 minute video (1024x768 resolution). You should be able to get the file size down to 100mb or so. For comparison, Kevin Rose's interview of Dennis Crowley in 720p is about the same size, 237mb, but the interview is about 20 minutes. Your copywriting video is 686mb for 19:53 length... compared with Kevin Rose's Dennis Crowley video of 235mb for 19:20 length. That makes your video 3x the size of Kevin Rose's video (which is great 720p quality). Honestly, this is a really sucky first experience. This is going to take my all morning to download these videos because the file sizes are 2-3x what they should be and because the links aren't all working. And then after I download the videos, since they're so large I'm going to have a hard time fitting them in my iPhone and iPad. Please investigate getting your file sizes down. I think you can shrink the file sizes of your mp4 video to 1/3 the current size but keep the same resolution/quality. Update: Your optins-teardowns.mp4 file is absent. I can't download it. Please fix cause I don't want to watch the lessons out of order.

philk 14y ago

That is a really nice sales letter and I've bookmarked it to read through repeatedly when I need to write one. It nails the long form sales format and manages to do so without sounding sleazy[1]. I particularly like the Do not buy this course section which qualifies potential customers. [1] To be fair depending upon the target demographic the sleaziness can be increased without causing problems. If you were building a product for hard core sales guys Your Customers Can Still Afford Branded Groceries: Learn How To Capture This Wasted Revenue Today! might do brilliantly.

atldev 14y ago

Patrick has earned trust in the community by giving away so much valuable information. My first thought was that it's about time you sold some of this info. The reason is great: "I got tired of saying no." Good stuff, and thanks for all the free advice along the way.

r00k 14y ago

Hi Patrick, I'd like to preface this comment by saying that I'm a huge fan of your work. You've personally helped me a ton. That said, I must ask what made you choose video as the medium for this content. Frankly, you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality. Even beyond congeniality, why is five hours of video at 150wpm superior to a medium-length ebook I can read at 800wpm? Thanks!

philk 14y ago
I prefer reading too but most people will pay more for a video than they will for an ebook regardless of the value contained within because they've been trained repeatedly that books are cheap.
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Patrick and Ramit Sethi discuss this very thing in the last Kalzumeus podcast. Book pricing isn't as hopelessly broken as music pricing, but that is faint praise indeed. It's sad. Writing a good book is a great deal of work, reading a good book provides a great deal of value, but the psychology of the book market recognizes neither of these facts. People vaguely imagine that producing books costs approximately the time required to type them, and expect to buy books for the cost of buying, inking, and shipping the paper - if the paper is absent they expect the price to be negligable. Whereas the one good thing to be said about modern college tuitions is that they provide a nice big anchor for the cost of a "course". Practically anything looks like a bargain next to the list price of an hour of TA instruction at Harvard. [1] [1] That's a fun math problem: Assuming five courses at Harvard, five hours per week of lecture and recitation per course, a fourteen-week semester and $38k tuition and fees, I come up with about $55 per hour per student. Of course, Harvard does not bill by the hour, but that's a whole 'nother essay.
unreal37 14y ago
re: "you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality" LOL, that's a back-handed compliment there. I think he's aiming to get better at his video production and presentation skills, and believes video delivers more perceived value than just text. Text is not a course, it's an ebook. Courses are worth more than ebooks every day of the week. Perceived value > actual value when it comes to sales... Who's going to pay $2,000 (site license) for an ebook? BTW, I love video and audio players that allow you to speed up play - 1.5x, 1.75x or 2.0x . Coursera has that, love it.

peterjancelis 14y ago

Patrick, I'd be interested in how you decided on your pricing. With all the pre-selling and your friendship with Amy Hoy I was honestly expecting prices to be about 10-12 times as high, or 5-6 times based on the full price starting next week. What makes you think you will sell 10 times as much at $249 than at $2490?

patio11 14y ago
It actually might be underpriced, to be totally honest, but not that underpriced I don't think. To justify prices in the > $2k region I think I would need to add some sort of interactive component (webinar or what have you), and I have no time on the schedule for that in the next couple of months, so I went with something which was totally self-guided for my first try. I might revisit that eventually, if there's lots of demand for it and if it makes sense for the business.
- graeme 14y ago
  I agree. I wasn't expecting it to be within my price range (though I'm glad that it is). Buying is a trivial decision at $300. We sell a $350 product, with high margins. A single sale and this course pays for itself. (2-3, if you include my time spent watching and implementing it) edit: turns out I didn't even notice the price. It's actually $250. I was prepared to pay anything up to $400 without thinking about it or discussing reimbursement with my company.
  - unreal37 14y ago
    But if that price was $2,500 I am sure there'd be a discussion with finance and budgets become involved. In person 5 hour courses don't cost that never mind web videos. Quite frankly, he wouldn't sell many at $2,500 - not sure if it's a 90% drop in sales but it could be.
    - graeme 14y ago
      Mmm, you might be right on the corporate price point. I was only considering the personal one, didn't notice the 2K price tag on the other.

dchuk 14y ago

Looks like your site is throwing an error right now Patrick: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546067/Screenshots/cpc58_yeew2b.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546067/Screenshots/cpc58_yeew2b.png (I realize that message shows nothing but it's all I could come up with to help out right now)

tisme 14y ago

Selling shovels during a goldrush is a great way to make money! Patrick is sure to rake it in with this one, and with the 'money back guarantee' you really can't go wrong. HN is the perfect target demographic for this product.

patio11 14y ago
I think there's a nuance to "selling shovels during a goldrush" suggesting that shovel-sellers exploit the naive 49ers, the majority of whom will end up with no gold. That really isn't the point of the exercise. Most of my consulting clients, and the people I build this for, are not in a gold-rush. They run profitable businesses selling software to other businesses. This is a business input for them which they have a clear path to profiting from. It is about as speculative an investment as a pizzeria buying basket of tomatoes. If there is anyone hypothetically thinking of buying this basket of tomatoes because they want to aspirationally run a pizzeria one day, please don't. I don't want your money. Go read my blog. Found a pizzeria. Find customers for it. When you need this you'll know, and it will be a screamingly obvious mutual win.
- tisme 14y ago
  For someone who isn't comfortable selling on HN you're doing a stellar job of it! Telling people that you don't want their money is a great strategy.
  - philk 14y ago
    It seems to me he's doomed either way. If he comes on here and says I built this and you all need to buy it right now, well then he's obviously just a salesman. If he comes on here and says I built this, don't buy it if you don't meet these criteria, I'm not even going to try to sell it because I don't want to turn HN into a sales venue, well then, he's a obviously just a particularly crafty salesman. So while I see what you're saying I'm not sure how you expect patio11 to discuss this on HN without appearing like a salesman to at least a few people.
    - 14y ago

MikeKusold 14y ago

Was this inspired through talks with Ramit? I am seeing a similar model appear. He uses free emails to sell courses, and you use free blog posts to sell emails.

bmccormack 14y ago

"Switching customers to annual billing radically decreases churn, one of the key risks to SaaS businesses long-term." Where I can I read more about annual billing decreasing churn? I've read your blog post (or email?) about switching to annual billing to free up revenue to acquire new customers, but I don't remember reading about how it decreases churn as well.

patio11 14y ago
Dharmesh Shah has talked about it extensively -- basically, of people on monthly billing, at any given time approximately 100% are at risk of churn. Of people on annual billing, < 10% are at risk of churn at any given time. They also have less opportunities to hit involuntary churn like, e.g., getting a CC declined or expired.
- dshah 14y ago
  Indeed, that's true. One additional point: Customers that commit to annual billing generally tend to churn less often overall -- because they've made a more "considered" purchase and committed more time to the purchasing decision.

loumf 14y ago

Raise prices (well, wait 2 days, so I can get my purchase through) -- I just sent a note to my boss that this is a no-brainer for the $999. And, we already do email campaigns like this, and probably do 80% of what you are going to suggest (at least), and we only have 3 people that would directly benefit from knowing this -- but, we think it would be a nice perk to employees to see the course. Quote from co-worker: "It would be worth it even if we learn one new, non-generic thing to try" Of course, we sell software that goes for $x0,000+, so anything that moves the needle with leads ROFLstomps $999. (I have been waiting to write a response to patio11 like this for a while)

w1ntermute 14y ago
> I have been waiting to write a response to patio11 like this for a while I believe it's also the first time someone other than patio11 has used the word "ROFLstomp" on HN ;)
Cass 14y ago
Yeah, my first response to seeing the price was "WTF? Raise your prices!" as well. I was expecting a number somewhere in the four figures. I mean, I was only checking on the price out of curiosity because I'm a broke student who doesn't even sell software, but if a broke student's first response to your offering is "Hey, that's actually only a little bit too expensive for hours worth of instructive entertainment!" to the point where I was tempted to buy for like two seconds, you can be sure that you could extract a whole lot more money than that from people who'll get actual business value out of it.
patio11 14y ago
I just want to mention that I really appreciate both this advice and your other comment below, and am starring it for future reference.
- Sukotto 14y ago
  How does one save comments on HN? Do you access via some sort of overlay app with better functionality than the vanilla site or do you just bookmark stuff to your browser (or pinboard or whatever)

whileonebegin 14y ago

This is a 10 mile long sales page, down to the P.S. at the bottom. The copy itself, sounds genuine. However, the look of the page itself is a turn-off. Why did you decide to use this format as opposed to a simple, cut & dry page with a big "buy now" button?

swombat 14y ago
Long form sales letters are proven, statistically, in many contexts, to convert more. It's really that simple. He could do a short and snappy page, but then he'd probably lose thousands of dollars a day. Or he can make people like you feel like it's a bit spammy, and make thousands of extra bucks a day. I know which one I'd choose.
regularfry 14y ago
This is patio11. He's almost certainly A/B testing the length of the page to figure out whether a short page or a long one works better.

graeme 14y ago

How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address? Your checkout process was very simple, makes my company's process look cumbersome. Also, I noticed you don't use paypal. Could you elaborate on that choice? My guess is that you know your demographic is used to using credit cards, and it eliminates a step, but I'd like to confirm

patio11 14y ago
How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address? Stripe. Could you elaborate on that choice? Stripe! (No, seriously: I have the capability of running things through Paypal but a) that code is from BCC and written when I was young and stupid, and I was afraid of breaking something if I just copy/paste ported it over, b) this keeps my accountant happy, and c) there was a non-zero "risk" of this selling five figures in a day with $1,000 charges in the mix, which would mean Paypal and I would have to have a chat, and that was a complication I just didn't need right now.)

kareemm 14y ago

@patio11 - Typo: "The course is on sale for until October 5th"

smoyer 14y ago

Wow ... now here's a testimonial! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 EDIT - Linked to the other HN topic. Just click through for the story

spitfire 14y ago

I seem to be A/B tested out of the sample video. Anyone have a link?

patio11 14y ago
Append ?video=yes to the URL. It will shortcircuit A/Bingo. (n.b. This behavior ships off by default in A/Bingo for a variety of reasons -- think very hard before enabling it.)

amix 14y ago

Sorry for not being an ass kisser, but I think this is way too overpriced and I would not like to see HN turn into a marketplace. Imagine if every HN contributor started selling their knowledge this way - - it would be a bad community where everything was behind paid walls. And yes, I do know that Patrick has contributed a lot to HN, but so has thousands of others, and I am sure he has learnt a ton here as well. There's no need to monetize this or to encourage monetization of this kind of knowledge.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
I am glad that Redhat and Canonical exist; there certainly is a place for value-added "deep dives". I am glad that this is available for purchase instead of being locked away in his head.
HyprMusic 14y ago
Look at his comment: "but would prefer talking about the business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable selling on HN.)". The site also goes in to a lot of detail about the method used on WPEngine, unlike most of these product sites which only drip feed you enough information to convince you to buy their product. He even commended an article[1] which attempts to de-construct his method and share it. I personally believe that he is genuinely offering to share his help (for a fee - which is reasonable), rather than trying to extract money out of HN user's. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080
loumf 14y ago
On the HN I read, there is a nearly constant stream of ShowHN posts with paid services and promotions of Y-Combinator startups who stand to gain from the exposure. It has always been part of HN culture to promote our projects -- particularly accepted if you are a major contributor and didn't just register to post. For someone who stands to make a lot of money from acting on the information here, I am happy to pay for it. Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it -- I already do a lot of email dripping -- free, to me, would mean that it's basic, and that I wouldn't benefit from it.

larrys 14y ago

patio11 what you have written is great and I have the highest respect for what you do (and things that you have said). But - separate from any conflict or cynicism that others have raised as far as HN becoming a marketplace, there was to much to read (and in fact I didn't read it, I skimmed it) so I wouldn't feel comfortable paying the amount you are asking which was located at the bottom. I feel you should have started at the top with: "If This Doesn't Create Value For Your Business, I Don't Want Your Money" (pricing options) Want to know more? Read below. Just my thoughts. By the way I have no doubt that you have thought long and hard about putting that price at the bottom of the letter and could point to backup for that strategy (perhaps in something you've written before or generally accepted knowledge). But my reaction is my reaction so I just thought I'd throw it out there.

31reasons 14y ago

If you guys want to learn direct mail marketing, print and read all these letters from Gary Halbert from the 80s. It still applies now very much so. http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-letter/ http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-lette... There is a limit how much you can learn by reading and watching million dollar videos. Its all about doing and testing for your business.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

propercoil 14y ago

So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN. Here is a lesson in conversion: make your video auto play next time. Other than that i really hate where HN is going upping this thread

follower 14y ago
> So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN. Note that patio11 didn't link to anything--this was submitted by http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_pius http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_pius

laurentoget 14y ago

When did Hacker News turn into an MLM platform? This page looks like a late night TV Amway infomercial, complete with third rate camera acting. Or rather looked before their webserver bit the dust.

grey-area 14y ago

This line from the article had a particular resonance for me given the slow drip feed of articles from Patio11 on HN gradually establishing credibility ↬ Drip marketing means sending a timed sequence of emails to educate, persuade, and only then sell.

scoot 14y ago

So for those curious, but not curious enough to sign up for WPengine's "course", here's the first email: "I just wanted to say hello and thank you for your interest in WP Engine. I saw that you filled out our speed test form, and wanted to let you know that there is a real person over here, and that I'm interested to hear how you feel about us so far. Do you have any questions or concerns? Can I help you make a decision either way? Thanks! Trafton Esler Lead Developer Champion" There are so many things wrong with this email I don't know where to start. My only hope is that they inserted this email into the sequence /after/ Patio11's involvement; otherwise it's a warning sign (along with the awful video on the sales page) that his course is not all it's hyped-up up to be. Good luck anyway, there's a sucker born every minute.

lukevdp 14y ago
What's wrong with the email? If you don't know where to start, just pick the thing that's most wrong.
graeme 14y ago
That email got me to reply, and moved our business to WP engine faster. Trafton gave me some info that helped convince our tech guy. And then I stole that email in our campaign (with some modifications), to great results. I even got lots of "Wow, you guys are real humans and not robots" replies. I'm interested to hear what you say is wrong with the email, because you haven't yet. edit: The lead developer champion bit wasn't in the email they sent me.
ericabiz 14y ago
Hello! I'm Erica, and I consulted for WP Engine at the same time as Patrick. I worked side by side with Patrick during the week he was at WP Engine--Jason (their CEO) hired me to jump-start their entire marketing department for 3 months, vs. Patrick's specific "email drip feed" task. I'm intimately familiar with the details of the open rates and conversion rates from WP Engine's email series; in fact, I was the one who helped sequence them and proofread/edit some of them after Patrick left. I can tell you with 100% authority that you are dead wrong. That email converts extremely well. In fact, it used to go directly to Trafton's inbox and he had fun showing me all the responses people sent to him every day. If you want the spoiler details, it converts well because people love to know there's a real human behind all this nonsense that we call "the Internet." (And it also converts well because Trafton is a machine who seems to never sleep and responds to everyone's questions quickly...another key ingredient. Everyone was always asking Jason how they could "hire a Trafton.") It speaks well for the people Jason hires, as well as the effectiveness of the email itself. There you have it, from the horse's mouth.

JesseAldridge 14y ago

Didn't like the video. From http://ycombinator.com/video.html http://ycombinator.com/video.html: "Please do not recite a script written beforehand. Just talk spontaneously as you would to a friend. People delivering memorized speeches (or worse still, text read off the screen) usually come off as stupid. Unless you're a good enough actor to fake spontaneity, you lose more in the stilted delivery than you gain from a more polished message."

trhtrsh 14y ago
Um, people who aren't gifted speakers come off as stupid when they talk spontaneously about a topic.
- pestaa 14y ago
  So if one comes off as stupid either way on the video, why not just write it down?
nandemo 14y ago
That advice is specifically for people applying to Y Combinator. Not very relevant to marketing videos in general.

noahc 14y ago

Patrick, Congrats! You've shipped something of value to the world.

inthe90s 14y ago

Selling Bingo Cards is serious business. You make millions. A bingo card salesmen who offered advice would not have to charge money. He would be so wealthy. "email marketing has been poorly used by slimeballs before" But never as effectively as we use it! :) "Make Money Online slime pit" Indeed you might not find this offer by searching Google. You'll find it linked to from HN. There's more than one way to navigate to the slime pit. It's always amusing how people, using the internet, sell advice on how to make money using the internet. The best way to make money using the internet is to sell advice on how to make money using the internet. No, this is definitely not multi-level marketing. Huge difference. Those guys are slime. We're different. Oh, I'm sure you are.

ky3 14y ago

God, I'm so envious reading all these comments -- patio11 struck a gold mine of the golden mean! You know you've priced okay when (1) people bitch it's too high and (2) people bitch it's too low. You know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch it's too ugly (walls of text!) and (2) people say it's not. You also know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch the video's terrible (WTF? he didn't comb his hair!) and (2) others don't give a flip. Now back to the price: it's not like big pharma has some kind of insta-power pill that chomps down all that consumer surplus. For a one-man show he did great.