|
Read Time: 3.5 Minutes
Hey ,
Are you an expert with a large audience...
But still struggling to monetize your expertise with info products or communities?
If so, I get it...
First, because it can be really hard.
Secondly, you like to overcomplicate it...
OR
Third, you aren't applying a logical, step-by-step plan.
Now, putting aside the hard excuse (because everything in life worth having will be challenging)...
Let's attack the other two. I'll demonstrate them by an example from my client base.
I worked with two men's self-dev/dating brands...
Who had entirely different approaches.
One worked out swimmingly; the other hasn't really made it off the ground.
The first - who smashed it with our help, btw - had a very clear ascension ladder.
The other wanted to implement the most complicated, intricate value ladder all at once.
The First Succeeded Wildly Because
He Began With Killer Content
He was pushing mad daily volume, testing and tweaking, hitting all the hot topics, and putting his unique spin on them.
He did this exclusively for the better part of a year, with no real product to speak of.
You don't have to wait to monetize, but he did.
BUT...
He was *always* collecting emails from the beginning, with a very simple free e-book, solving common mistakes in his niche.
That means he had a "hungry crowd" to feed products to when he started soft-launching.
Smart.
We ended up creating ONE core product (a paid low-ticket e-book), but not as cheap as $19 or whatever.
His first product was a flagship book at $97 giving away monster value and solving ONE pressing problem for his audience.
Then on the back end, there was a full course diving deeper.
Perfect.
We implemented a soft-launch with early bird, limited-time pricing, that fed in (via email sequence we crafted) to his mid-ticket course.
Gangbusters.
His results within a week of launch are in the images below.
There Are Specific Reasons This Worked So Well
Again, we dialed:
- a super hungry audience,
- specific messaging they used to describe their issues,
- spoke directly to them - with our own twist,
- laid out products logically, and
- emotionally story-sold the solutions
Client was pretty stoked; we worked together for years.
On the other hand, there was the one who wanted to complicate things.
It is really difficult for agencies like mine to get results this type of client - especially when they're "convinced" they have all the answers.
They wanted their main e-book to be the loss-leader...
And build out the entire backend based on the customer needs.
Not a terribly strategy, but VERY hard to:
- build,
- test,
- validate,
- tweak,
- improve, and
- scale,
... all of the value ladder solutions at once right away.
It makes MUCH more sense to focus on the logical ascension.
Side note - banging out product after product is damn-near impossible, especially for a new brand.
Do you recognize how much effort it takes to get ONE new offer up and running successfully?
Testing. Soft-launching. Reconfiguring. Relaunching. Attracting leads. Scaling...
Again, all this broke the rule of listening to your market, providing what they need, and tweaking based on their feedback. |
