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From Marlon Sanders
Top 10 Things That Worked For Me In 2009 and
3 That Didn't
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I just read a blog post by Terry Dean where he
analyzed what did and didn't work for him in 2009.
I thought I'd cover the top 10 things that worked
for me in 2009 and a few that didn't.
1. Ockham's Razor promoted in February of 2009
ended up selling well.
The concept was a bit unusual to my list so it took
some promoting for it to take off.
What's weird is it didn't convert well to a few of
my JV partners lists. I don't understand that.
2. Deadlined offers
As always, offers to my email list with a deadline
work well.
What's unusual is that offers without a deadline have
declined in response. People seem to be more short-term
in their buying focus.
If you were on my Ateam call Thursday, you know how I'm
using the T-20 script to take this to another level.
3. Live chat
We did research on our live chat for customer support
that Tim does. There's an extremely high correlation
between live chats and sales.
I forget that exact number but it was 90% or something
like that. By the same token, offering live chat is a
substantial commitment and expense. Having someone like
Tim who is bright and conversant and excels at customer
support isn't cheap.
What I don't know is how many of the people we chat with
would have gone ahead and bought anyway.
4. SEO traffic
We get a lot of seo traffic from search engines to some
off my sites.
The conversions aren't that great. I believe I need to
find a way to get these visitors on our list WITHOUT
messing up the page and ruining our Google rankings!
I plan on trying a large fly in ad.
5. Webinars
I did several webinars like Overwhelm Cure and Produce
and Promote.
These did OK as far as sales but commensurate to the
effort they take on my part, I'd just as soon write
an ebook or create a product.
I always measure my time invested vs. dollar return.
6. Dashboards
Our Dashboards continue to sell well. I would have liked
to got out a Dashboard here at year end but we've been
working on revamping Ateam for 2010 and updating the
look of our sites.
7. Checkbox upsells
In the past I did checkbox upsells on our order forms
(where you check something off to add it to your order)
for 25% of the main product price.
I've increased this amount and the conversions are still
good.
I do better at this point on checkbox upsells than I do
post order upsells. But our post ordering upsell process
is a little clunky since we use Amember.
I'm planning on changing our back-end software this next
year.
8. Dollar trials
One thing I tried that worked well is $1 three-day trials.
However, we haven't rolled these out because it's a hassle
to try to track affiliate commissions on them with my
current affiliate software.
I may only do these dollar trials via affiliates who
promote a special page via another affiliate software.
I was initially concerned about the refund rate on these
trials. But our Dashboard product line is so content-rich
and vastly under-priced that refunds aren't an issue.
It helps when people love the products.
9. Go To Webinar for Ateam
While I don't know if I'll be doing many more paid webinars,
I DO like them for Ateam calls. I plan on rolling these
out in the Ateam 2010 launch. There will be a commensurate
price alteration for the increased value and service.
10. PPC (early results)
Joel Peterson helped me set up a content network campaign
using Keyword Rockstar. This is bringing in cheap clicks
for our Design Dashboard.
Our conversions aren't where I want them to be for this
traffic source, so I plan to invest some time in tweaking
them.
11. Systems documentation
We invested a lot of time documenting systems based on the
incredible inspiration of my friend Sam Carpenter from the
Work The System book and workthesystem.com
Sam is an amazing, wonderful person and a real inspiration.
12. Staffing
I have a Filipina who is just a wonderful person and has
assisted us a lot in handling details.
Lisa is back and I couldn't be happier. Her talents were
missed very much. Along with that Danny, Sean and Santos
moved on to their next opportunity.
They're all neat, talented people and will go far in life.
My team now is 3 people and I'm content with that, although
I plan to add several more filipinas using the outsourceplan.com
system over the next year.
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Now, a few things that didn't work:
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1. My Warriors WSO
I ran only one WSO on Warriors Forum for a 1/2 price
special on Push Button Letters. This didn't work. And
I think the reason is that even at 1/2 off, it's still a
pretty high price compared to almost all the other WSO's.
This wasn't a big deal. I think I made a sale or two
which was still a positive roi on my whopping $20 ad fee.
WSO's are great. I plan to find some time to focus on a
few good ones.
2. Lack of communication with my resellers
Due to the same issue in #2, I haven't sent many emails to
my affiliates. We had a major problem with the vendor I
send my affiliate emails through. The fault was NOT theres.
It was an employee who didn't follow directions and caused
us a lot of grief!
In fairness, it probably wasn't the employees fault. Sam
Carpenter would say my system was at fault. And he'd probably
be right.
We're in the process of fixing this right now. If you're
a reseller, check your email box. You JUST got the first
promotion of a new breed from us.
3. 1 click upsells with Amember
Doesn't work. Well, there are a few solutions but really,
Amember just isn't very ideal for 1 click upsells.
Automateyourwebite.com or Infusion are much better choices.
The biggest thing for us is you can't do them with a normal
Paypal account and that sucks. You can use Paypal Pro which
is basically your own merchant account.
Merchant accounts are dicey. You have to watch chargebacks
like a hawk. Some people think that if they charge back
vs. refunding because they perceive it as easier, it won't
hurt the merchant. That's not true.
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Marlon Sanders
The King of Step-By-Step Internet Marketing
Marlon is the author of "The Amazing Formula That
Sells Products Like Crazy"
Check out all my products here:
http://www.marlonsanders.com
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