Aaron Wall on Mixergy
mixergy.com
mixergy.com
Ironically, I've learned more about generic marketing topics. Probably the most consequential single piece of advice was Aaron rewriting two lines of copy on my purchasing page to emphasize what people were getting as opposed to what I was selling.
I've harped on "benefits not features" for years, but what was I talking about next to the freaking buy button? The fact that they'd be "purchasing a single copy", which tells the customer absolutely nothing of value (99.9% of my customers purchase a single copy, literally). Aaron swapped in "Buy now and get instant access via download" (this is something to highlight to customers who are often busy preparing a lesson for tomorrow). My conversion rate went up by about 10%, and two years later that single tweak has been worth thousands.
The copy tweak is what always sticks out in my mind, but I've gotten some very valuable SEO advice, too. My mini-site strategy, for example, was heavily informed by advice from Aaron and the guys, and it has worked out very well for me.
I wish startups were more appreciative about SEO as a channel. I think many, many of the folks here could use it to great effect.
Those must have been some terrible emails! It's kind of surprising that the had that problem since only the new customer's rates went up (and existing customers kept their old rates). Then again with enough traffic... I suppose you'll be visited by all types.
- you are expected to provide phone support to them (even though they are not a paying customer & have no intent of being one!)
- you are wrong to set up any type of conversion funnel for the 1% of people who will convert (but which costs the freetard type as much as 30 seconds of their time as well)
- accuses you of selling their email information (when you have not), curses at you, is shocked when you dish them back any of their own cooking, and then calls you non-professional
- they sign up for your free autoresponder series (which is more valuable than most paid courses on SEO) then takes the time to send you a nasty email rather than clicking the unsubscribe link in the emails
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I didn't have to deal with tons of this stuff when I set up our paid membership site. I mean some...but a fairly small amount. Where the entitled freetard type became enraged was when I set up a conversion funnel and required registering a free account to get our firefox extensions.
And in our support software the contrast between paid customers and freetards is almost unbelievable. As an extreme comparison, the paid person could have an issue like being locked out of their account (which they are paying for) and label it as an issue of low or medium concern and write a polite "please help" type message ... whereas the freetard who is not a paying customer (and will never be one) typically labels their issues as urgent or critical.
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The other thing freetards try to do is try to bully you on social networks and stuff and threaten to destroy your brand if you don't self-implode your business model to support their rude behavior.
Some of our posts about freetard culture...
http://www.seobook.com/are-you-fighting-human-nature-measuri...
http://www.seobook.com/i-stopped-caring-about-links-well-alm...
http://www.seobook.com/professionalism
http://www.seobook.com/why-many-successful-people-become-jer...
and people far smarter than I have noticed the freetard culture phenomena being harmful to business http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12tier.html
"The basic idea of this contract," he writes, "is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising."
and, as a sharp contrast to freetard behavior, this post mentions how private paid communities have mechanisms in place that prevent the above types of abuses amongst customers (namely people who pay are of higher quality, and people won't make absurd demands in front of others)