It reminded me a bit of a post my friend Michel Fortin made a while back about the same topic. (You can read that one here… )

Because I push my own coaching students so hard to set up continuity income streams, I’ve been able to do a TON of split and multivariate testing on different ways to present forced continuity offers.

Forced continuity, when used correctly can make a massive difference to your bottom line.

But when done poorly or when it is “hidden continuity” (which is illegal), the damage to your relationship with your list and long term negative impact on your business can be devastating.

Without naming names, there have been several high profile marketers that have absolutely destroyed their relationships with their lists (and thus the responsiveness and profitability of their lists) over the past 12 months by screwing up the way they present their forced continuity offers.

The unfortunate part is many of them made a boatload of money on the frontend, and from the small percentage that did stick month to month in the continuity. This did 2 very dangerous things.

First, it boosted their egos and made them think the “hidden continuity” tactic was a good idea (after all, look how much money they made…) But what they failed to see is the long term impact and real money cost that the loss of trust with their list and customers created.

Second, (and perhaps the biggest damage) is the dozens of other “me too” marketers who watched these so-called successful promotions and are going out and trying to do the same thing (but in most cases are doing it even WORSE that the first example.)

So often, marketers who are not plugged into a good mentor or coach to bounce ideas, tactics and strategies off of, try and copy what they see successful marketers doing. The problem is they are only seeing what is happening on the surface (tactics), they don’t see the real underlying strategies behind what makes successful marketers successful.

Without a good coach, even if they are trying to copy a sound and ethical system (such as TRANSPARENT forced continuity), odds are they will still mess it up and miss some major steps or principles.

But when they are trying to copy BAD or unethical systems (like HIDDEN continuity), not only does it hurt them, it hurts the entire market as a whole.

It hurts ALL marketers, because trust is not just eroded for the bone-head that screws up his offer, the customers who get burned wind up losing trust with ALL marketers using tactics that (on the surface) look similar.

So even if you are doing everything right with your continuity offer, your sales and conversions can be hurt by the negative experiences your prospects have had with OTHER marketers.

I have no problems with aggressive marketing. In fact it’s essential to test as many different tactics and strategies as you can to see what your particular market responds to best. But it is also essential to keep a long-term view, and avoid anything that can damage your trust with your customers or prospects.

With so many other marketers pushing the ethical envelope it has never been more important than it is right now to be plugged into a mentor or coach who has been down the road before you, and can see the long-term picture for any strategy or tactic you are thinking about testing.

My friend Matt Bacak (one of the “good guys”) is currently running an offer with forced continuity attached to it, and he is doing something that is absolutely KEY when presenting an offer like this…

As you can see in the screen shot above, Matt has very clear language right at the point of checkout explaining exactly what you are getting, how much you will be charged and WHEN you will be charged.

He is making it 100% clear, what is going on. And he even takes it one step further…

When you sign up, you immediately get an email that again reminds you about the monthly billing and better yet has clear, easy to follow instructions on how to cancel the subscription without getting billed.

Also, just to cover his bases further, when you get the first issue of his newsletter, he includes a great big yellow sticky note that tells you again about the monthly billing and includes instructions on how to cancel.

So if you are going to test and use forced continuity, make sure you are not only clear and transparent in the sales process, but remind buyers at every single step in the process and of course make it easy to cancel.

And just a side note for anybody wanting to test forced continuity in your own business…

From my testing, the more you actually SELL the continuity offer itself (in addition to the offer that has the continuity attached) the higher your conversion rates will be. You need to sell it as hard, if not harder than the main offer, and you should be 100% transparent with the continuity aspect.

Now I will admit that in many cases the by making make the monthly billing aspect of the offer more obvious you may see a drop in conversion rates (this is why so many try to hide it), if you continue the test long term what you will find is that you have a MUCH higher retention rate.

Because of that higher retention rate, you actually wind up making SIGNIFICANTLY more money long term with transparent forced continuity than you ever will with hidden continuity.

When selling traditional, non-continuity products online your profitability is based primarily on traffic and conversion.

But you need to shift your focus when selling continuity based offers because your profitability will be based on: traffic, conversion AND retention. I’ll gladly take a lower front end conversion rate if my backend retention increases, because I’ll make more money long term.

Happy testing!

Eric

If you haven’t watched it yet you really should!

Click Here to Watch the Video…

But the thing I got the most questions about took me a bit by surprise…

After yesterdays video I got a ton of emails back from people asking me if I used a greenscreen and put the “nice office” background behind me.

Here is part of one of the emails I got:

“Dude! Great video! Now that is how to make them an offer they can’t refuse. One question about the video though. Is that your real office and bookcases behind you or did you photoshop that in? If it is real, that has got to be a nice place to work. If its fake, where can I get that background? - Jacob”

Well to answer everyone’s question… Yes. That really is my office. No greenscreen magic at work.

In fact here is a short tour video of my office to prove it’s real. And I even put to rest a rumor that after hanging out with Armand Morin in his office and seeing his 32″ monitor, I went out and bought a 47″ monitor.

I have no idea how these rumors get started… I mean, who would do something like that? Do you really think I’d go to that extreme just to be able to say that “mine is bigger than Armand’s”?

Besides, a 47″ monitor would almost take up my entire desk!

See the truth for yourself…

==> http://www.ConversionDoctor.com/lucky4/video.htm

Also, as you’ll see in the video I’m looking for 4 people who can give me very specific and special video testimonials.

If you qualify as one of the 4 I’ll actually fly to your home or office, spend the entire day with you working on your business or even helping you record your own high converting product and then at the end of the day all you need to do is let me record a testimonial of your thoughts about the absolute transformation in your business we will create together.

But there are only 4 spots for this, and an email with a link to the video went out to my entire list, so these spots will be gone FAST!

Visit the URL below to watch the entire video right now!

==> http://www.ConversionDoctor.com/lucky4/video.htm

Sylvie has come out with Part 2 of her controversial (yet often hilarious) “Internet Marketing Sins” report.

And just like the first one, she is pulling absolutely no punches. (In fact she is actually THROWING punches.)

While there is a ton of great stuff in part 2, my hands down favorite part is where she goes on a Jeff Foxworthy style rant that had me actually laughing out loud in parts.

But rather than saying “If you do this… you might be a redneck” , Sylvie’s theme is “If you do this… You might be a lazy ass marketer!”

A couple of my favorites are…

“If your minisite looks like your 12 year old nephew designed it… You Might Be a Lazy Ass Marketer!“

“If you send out a message to your list without testing it first, and they see: Dear %firstname_fix You Might Be a Lazy Ass Marketer!“

” If you are selling a product with resale rights, and you don’t even bother changing [your name here] to your own damn name… You Might Be a Lazy Ass Marketer!“

” If your eBook is written in 18 point Arial, with triple spacing, 2 inch margins, 30% is lines for “Notes” and you brag about your 200 page report… You Might Be a Lazy Ass Marketer!“

… And she has plenty more!

In addition to “Lazy Ass Marketers”, Sylvie also blasts:

• “Me Too” Marketers
• Piggy Back Marketers
• Cult Leaders
• Cult Followers
• Guru Bashers
• And more…

So drop what you’re doing, go download the report, read it and then take some action in your marketing based on what she says.

This is good stuff. Grab your copy right now!

However, the real danger lies when your visitors ARE actually buying and subscribing. When you have what you believe to be a “good” conversion rate, and you are making a little bit of money from your site (or even a lot of money from your site), you have the natural tendency to change your focus away from maximizing conversion rates.

If you know you have a conversion problem, then you are motivated to do what it takes to fix the problem. But if you’re making sales and getting optins, you just may begin to take conversion for granted.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. A few years ago I had a niche site selling an ebook on how to relieve arthritis pain naturally. And of course (as “The Conversion Doctor”) when I first began driving traffic to the site, I ran dozens of test rounds and pushed the conversion rate on the salesletter to over 6.5%.

But, as I began working on other sites and other niches I never got around to going back and running additional test rounds on that site. After all, a 6.5% conversion rate is great. Right?

So over time the conversion rate naturally began to slip and sales started to fall-off. Since I had dozens of other sites to focus on, and since the arthritis site was still making decent money I was just too fat, dumb and happy to worry about the drop in conversion.

In fact, I didn’t worry about conversion on that site until one day when I was looking at my monthly sales trends for my niche sites I noticed that the sales on the arthritis site had fallen to below $500 per month. (At its peak this site was making me over $6,000 each month!)

When I began to dig deeper I discovered that two new competitors had popped up selling nearly identical products, and one of them was aggressively focused on conversion. It was obvious to me at just a glance that they were doing everything right, and testing continually.

To make matters worse, all of my top affiliates had jumped ship and began promoting the higher converting offer.

You see, in most markets 80% to 90% of all affiliate sales are generated by a small handful of super-affiliates. And these super-affiliates, live and die by their conversion and visitor value numbers.

Think your affiliates are loyal to you? Think again! If your competition has a better converting offer or one that produces a higher value per visitor, your best affiliates will jump ship in a heartbeat and begin promoting them. And that’s exactly what happened to me.

Of course I did go back into the market and test and tweak my way back up to a decent conversion rate. But by then it was too late, the biggest affiliates never came back and sales never rebounded to where they were before.

I eventually sold the site for far less money than I would have got if I had only continued testing regularly. Neglecting the conversion rate on that site probably cost me over $100,000.

What I want you to take away from this story is this…

Even if your sales and conversion rates are good now, if you want to survive (and thrive) online, then you MUST begin (or continue) focusing conversion rate improvement and need to do it right now.

There is a quote that I just love from the movie “Tommy Boy” with the late Chris Farley.

In a scene where “Tommy Boy’s” father (played by Brian Dennehy) is negotiating with his bankers to give him a loan to expand his business, he says something very profound…

“In business you’re either growin’ or you’re dyin’… There ain’t no third direction!”

The smartest and most successful business owners in any market understand this important principle.

And, this wisdom applies doubly online. If you are not continually testing and optimizing the persuasive power of your website, you are losing ground.

Barriers to entry for completion are ridiculously low, and in most online markets few players are focused at all on conversion rate optimization. This gives any business that makes a long term commitment to conversion rate improvement a devastating advantage over their completion.

I’ve seen the same thing play out in market after market and niche after niche. Once a competitor with an obsessive focus on testing and conversion enters the market, it’s “game over” for anyone else who doesn’t quickly begin to improve their own conversion rates.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

You don’t have to wait for a better converting competitor to come into your market and eat your lunch. Begin immediately changing your focus from simply driving more traffic, to maximizing your website’s persuasive power to convert your existing traffic.

Only by developing a long term commitment to continually improving your websites conversion rates, can you ensure that your business is growin’ and not dyin’. Because there really “ain’t no third direction!”

Unfortunately very few online businesses are focused on improving conversion rates. Most online businesses operate under the “more traffic is the solution to all my problems” philosophy.

The problem is, as more and more competitors flood into every profitable online market, getting more traffic (or even maintaining the traffic levels you already have) becomes increasingly difficult.

While nearly every online marketer or website owner has heard of, and is focused on Search Engine Optimization, only a handful (the most savvy and profitable) have made Conversion Rate Optimization an equal priority.

Just a quick glance at Google’s search results shows the wide discrepancy between the number of sites and pages focused on SEO vs. CRO.

“search engine optimization” has 33,900,000 results.
“conversion rate optimization” has only 12,500 results.

Of course there are many reasons for this wide discrepancy, but the fact that your competition is probably not (yet) focused on Conversion Rate Optimization gives you a big competitive advantage.

(After all, the fact you read my blog proves that you are at least AWARE of your need to maximize conversion rates!)

So how do you begin to harness the power of conversion rate optimization on your website?

The conversion rate optimization process simply consists of focusing on 4 main areas.

First, is the persuasive element of your website. Online persuasion encompasses everything from your copywriting to sales psychology and even the way present your main calls to action (CTA).

The words you use on your website and the emotions you stir in your visitors hearts and minds play a massive role in determining your website’s conversion rate. The right words, used with the right audience, at the right time, in the right way can make you rich!

The second area in the CRO process is focusing on usability. Website usability is simply the study of how user friendly your website is and how easily visitors can navigate/use your website.

It never ceases to amaze me how often I see internet marketers placing stumbling blocks right in the middle of their persuasive pathways. Navigational distractions, broken links, slow loading pages, complex forms and dozens of other usability issues cost many online businesses millions of dollars each day.

Just a few simple tweaks, simplifications and corrections to website usability issues can often double or triple a websites conversion rates.

Third you need to focus on building trust with your visitors. The trust factor is overlooked by many online businesses, but it is absolutely critical if you want to optimize your conversion rates. Regardless of how persuasive or user friendly your website is, if your visitors do not trust you, they will NOT buy from you.

And even though buying and selling online has never been safer or more secure than it is today, (and buying online is infinitely safer than ordering over the phone) it is harder than ever to get website visitors to trust you.

In fact in many of my recent tests, improvements to “trust” related factors are producing some of the largest gains in online conversion rates I’ve seen in quite some time.

And last but not least in the conversion rate optimization process is testing and tracking. This is where the rubber really meets the road when working to maximize conversion rates.

Rather than rely on guesswork, theory or a “trick” you just read about in some forum, through split testing and multivariate testing you can actually let your visitors vote with their credit cards for what works best on your site.

I look at online testing as a big video game. I’m always trying to be my old “high score”. But the best part is… when I get a new high score I MAKE MORE MONEY!

Now that’s my kind of game!

So there you have it. The 4 key areas of conversion rate optimization. How many of the 4 are YOU currently focused on?

By simply making the commitment to improve these 4 areas of your website and your online marketing, you will put yourself so far ahead of you current (and future) competition that you’ll have an almost unfair advantage.

Happy testing!

The reason why is because I basically took the Summer off. Other than a couple webinars and speaking engagements I have been focused on enjoying time with my family and getting a few things squared away in my personal life for the past few months.

My family and I actually took an extended vacation for a big part of the Summer (almost a 4 Hour Work Week style “mini-retirement”) and traveled around the western United States.

We hit Mt. Rushmore, Great Falls Montana (where I was stationed in the USAF for 4 years and my first 2 kids were born), Glacier National Park, Portland Oregon, Northern California, Reno, Salt Lake City Utah, and several other spots. We even stopped for lunch in Spokane and paid a surprise visit to my good buddy Ray Edwards.

It was a nice, relaxed trip where we just kicked back and stayed as many days in each place as we wanted, saw all the sites and simply enjoyed spending time together as a family. The kids and I went horseback riding, cave exploring, hiking, beachcombing, sightseeing and even rode an alpine slide down the side of a mountain.

The most liberating part was, I don’t think I turned my computer on more than 2 or 3 times the entire trip. It was hard at first (I went into some serious withdrawal), but other than posting a few updates about our trip on Twitter via my iPhone, I basically unplugged and allowed myself to reboot mentally and physically.

Of course taking the Summer off and “unplugging” has made it very hard for a few clients and friends to get a hold of me. So if you have tried to contact or communicate with me over the past couple months and did not get a reply I’m very sorry about that. Rest assured it was nothing personal.

But the good news is that I’m back, refreshed, recharged and ready to dive head first back into doing what I do best and that is helping YOU make more money online.

I’ve got some very exciting things coming up over the next few weeks and I’ll be sharing some of the biggest conversion breakthroughs and cutting edge, response boosting tips, tricks and strategies I’ve ever shared.

So stay tuned…

While she is NOT going to be making any friends with a few “top marketers” (and she may actually lose a few clients because of this), the things she has said in this shocking expose have needed to be said for a while.

And it is not just the marketers she is going after… She unloads on customers “sins” as well.

BUT… I’m going to warn you, she doesn’t pull any punches AND she uses some VERY strong language. And if you are guilty of any of these “sins” (as either a marketer OR a customer) you ARE going to be offended, insulted, cussed at and called names.

For example here is just a short excerpt of what to expect…

Example 1 - Sylvie beating up dumb marketers…

First, there’s Bullsh!t Scarcity. These are scarcity tactics specifically for digital products and they are done in such a way that your customers know full well that it is bullsh!t. Even if MOST of your customers are fooled by it, there is always a certain percentage of people who know full well that you are bullsh!tting them and if you are so deluded that you think they will keep it to themselves, and no one will tell anyone what a bullsh!tter you are, then you don’t deserve to wear the Internet Marketer badge of honor!

Secondly, there’s Real Scarcity Real Scarcity is when you actually keep your word and only sell a specific digital product for a very limited time, and you never sell it again… EVER.

In other words, you’re not a liar, you’re just an idiot. I’ll get into why you’re an idiot for doing this shortly.

Example 2 - Sylvie exposing consumer stupidity…

Also reported by MarketingCharts.com: Respondents cited various non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button:

• “The email was not of interest to me” (41%).
• “I receive too much email from the sender” (25%).
• “I receive too much email from all senders” (20%).

Excuse me? If you believe any of these things are good reasons to click the “report spam” button, then you’re either an idiot or an a$$hole. Take your pick. That last one really pisses me off. 20% of people click the “report spam” button, which punishes one marketer, because a whole bunch of actual spammers are sending too much spam? Aarrgghh! OK, enough about this. Makes me too mad.

(Profanity edited out by me. She doesn’t use the “!” or “$” symbols I used…)

You’ve got to get this, read it and apply it in your own business. (And its free.)

http://www.ConversionDoctor.com/rec/im-sins.html

You can watch it here:

http://www.UltimateConversionBooster.com/webinar.htm

But I need a favor…

In a couple of days I’m going to be taking the recording down because I’m turning it into a physical product on DVD. (Yep, the content was THAT good!)

Of course I need testimonials to help me sell the product. So I’d like to ask you a favor…

Can you watch the video (while it’s still free) and send me your feedback or a testimonial? (Just post a comment on this blog post.)

http://www.UltimateConversionBooster.com/webinar.htm

Thanks

Eric Graham,
“The Conversion Doctor”

PS – If I wind up using your testimonial I’ll even send you a free copy of the DVD when it is produced!

http://www.UltimateConversionBooster.com/webinar.htm

But if you were not able to attend, no problem… I made sure to record the entire thing for you.

So even if you missed it you can view the entire webinar video at the link below.

http://www.UltimateConversionBooster.com/webinar.htm

But because I’m turning the webinar into a paid product (yes… the content was THAT good) I’m not sure how long I’m going to leave the free recordings on my server.

So you’d better go watch the recording while you can!

Happy testing!

Eric Graham,
“The Conversion Doctor”

PS – That replay link again is:
http://www.UltimateConversionBooster.com/webinar.htm