Because I learn so much from posts where people share the behind the scenes & lessons learned from their launches – I’m sharing here why I’m doing what I’m doing for the 18 Days to Live Your Truth launch.

1. Why the Long Form Sales Letter?

I’ve tried other ways to communicate what you need to know to buy something – cool websites with sliders and tabs that all the marketers (who, ahem, are not clients or customers of mine) thought were awesome.

But those new-format sites don’t convert as well as the old school long form sales letter.

Maybe people don’t click on the tabs, or there are too many places to stop, or they get confused, or because it seems like less information so the offer looks less compelling or you just don’t get enough information to buy.

I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is that for the exact same program, the long form sales letter (even horrible ugly poorly written ones!) get a greater % of my visitors to make a decision and buy.

When I was writing this sales letter, I came across a wonderful email article about this from Naomi Dunford (of IttyBiz and now making something else). Among other things, she said — “fonts don’t have a morality.”

The thing is, I can write a sales letter that is the truth.

That’s not slimy. That helps you make a powerful decision that is right for you.

And if a red header fonts and red pointy arrows, break-out boxes and tables, a P.S. call to action and check mark bullets … if those things help you make the right decision … then frak, that’s what I’m going to do.

BTW – the sales page video is 20 minutes (my longest ever sales page video!) because it’s a parallel track.

In other words, the video has enough info to make a decision, and the sales page has enough info to make a decision.

I assume that people are either reading people or video people – so each one stands alone.

I also tried to make it possible to buy just from the headers & bolds & tables … which is how I buy. (Ironically, I don’t watch sales videos unless they are demos. Lol!)

2. Why the pricing?

Well … I could give you a bunch of calculations and charts of why I picked these prices.

I did do some calculations, comparing them to how much email/phone consulting costs, what I needed to sell to pay the bills, etc.

Yes, I have historical reasons for my pricing. I’ve found that $97 is a price point that converts well for my people on a new program (and then typically I can raise it to $127 or $147 the next time around, when there is more buzz and testimonials). I also have found that people are willing to pay a lot more money for one-on-one coaching with me.

But the real reason for these prices is that it’s what felt right in my gut.

I didn’t do payment plans on the $97 because I want to help people. If someone can’t afford that price then they would have more success in the program if they first take care of their money emergencies before they join. I do offer payment plans for the coaching upgrades, since those are higher price points.

I didn’t do an early-bird sale because lowering the price felt off, and raising it in a few days felt off. Not a scientific reason, but that’s the truth.

3. Why 18 Days?

I’ve done a bunch of four week and six week programs – and it seems that a bunch of people fall off after week three.

So my theory is … let’s see what happens if the program is just three weeks long!

To make the 18 Days format work and make it more easily digestible, I split the program into six small units instead of a big weekly class.

This also works better since I imagine that June is a hard month for people to plan (with schools getting out and vacations) & I’m moving in June, making it hard for me to schedule streaming video classes.

And … 18 Days sounded good.

4. Why the eCourse?

I picked the eCourse format because it was the best of two worlds.

Classes are great because the inherent deadline makes people more accountable, there’s a community of people doing the class together, and it makes the promotion have a natural deadline.

Information products are great because people can do on their own time and consume it easily from any time zone.

So I combined the best of both worlds by creating an eCourse that’s based on time (with content released on a schedule) and is all pre-recorded, so it’s convenient for everyone in everywhere.

I have no plans to make this into an information product, because it would lose the time aspect and the community aspect.

5. Why this promotion?

Well, this is not going exactly as I had envisioned.

Things are crazy for me right now – I’m finding an apartment and buying a car, G is graduating pre-school and getting set up for Kindergarden, I’m dealing with an underwater/unoccupied rental property, I only have a few hours of childcare each week, I keep getting sick, a few other personal things I’m not discussing here … and I completely underestimated how much all of the above would take from me.

I didn’t plan that the sales page would go up less than two weeks before the class starts. But really, that’s probably better.

Historically, shorter sales periods have worked better for me than longer ones.

In the upcoming week I plan to release more information and resources to help people make a decision, including a video tour of the membership site, some examples of what we’ll be doing in the program, an explanation of the hand analysis extra (included in the upgrades), and whatever else strikes my fancy.

G and I will be in Portland (at WDS) the last weekend of the launch.

So I’ll be closing out the sale in a hotel room with a 6 year old running around.

That will be interesting.

Hope you got something out of my brain dump of what’s behind the scenes at 18 Days to Live Your Truth.

I’ll update you afterwards to let you know how it went!

Related posts:

1. Case Study: The 3 Days to Video Sales Mini-Site
2. Pole Dancing & Poetry: Taking a Sabbatical from Sales & Promotions
3. Why Hand Analysis in 18Days & LYTA

And therein was the problem.

It was February 2010, a late Friday night video skype meeting with my then-consultant, now-COO Ken Moorhead, going over my product lines and website and figuring out how to take this stuff that I do and make it into a real business.

(Yes, turning something into a real business is part of what I do with my clients. But, of course, I can’t do that for myself.)

And as I looked at my website/blog through Ken’s eyes, I started rolling with laughter as I realized some horrible & hilarious truths:

• It was impossible to buy anything from me.
• There were 60+ links off the homepage, including 17 blog posts.
• I never explained what I meant by Live Your Truth.
• There was no picture of me ‘above the fold’ on any page.
• The site was full of clutter, distractions, confusion, and tons of places for people to leave my site.
• No one could look at the site and know what in the world I did there.
• It functioned like a personal blog. Not like a real business.

And that was the bottom line. This site had originally been designed as my personal blog, back in 2006 when my business was on a separate website. But as my personal brand developed, and I dropped my business website/name to put everything under the Elizabeth Potts Weinstein umbrella, I never changed the site.

I only made money in spite of myself.

And now, with my business finally profitable & growing & aligned with me & my tribe & what I’m stepping into … the site needed to be blown up.

And replaced with a real business website.

Yes, a business website that is still me. Still fun and real and full of truth and personality and casualness.

But a website that’s designed to actually make money. Because, dude, this is not a freaking non-profit.

So here’s what I kept in mind with this website redesign:

I have two entry points into my site: the home page and single posts. Everything was designed with those two entry points in mind – making sure that the most important pieces of information & calls to action were prominent regardless of how someone came into the site.

There is one primary call to action: sign up for the EPW Newsletter. Everywhere on the site, this is the #1 thing we want people to do – give me their name & email & permission to send them my weekly raw truth. It’s in the top right side bar of every page. Featured in the slider on the home page. And I drafted the copy to be simple & straightforward & easy to understand.

I make it easy for you to give me money to solve your problems. On the home page, on every page on the site (the sidebar graphics), on the Product/Events page … you can learn about how you can buy stuff that I sell. Imagine that – actually selling on my website! Shocking!

I answer the question: what do you mean by Live Your Truth? Now, this is pretty profound stuff, because when Ken asked me that question back in February I didn’t have an answer. Well, besides “living your truth is like pornography, you know it when you see it.” Um, yeah. Not exactly good marketing copy. So he yanked the answer to that question out of me that night. And now that most important question is answered on every page.

My picture is in the header. I used to hate the idea of my face on my website – seemed weird and egotistical. Then, even when I started branding myself as the business, I still felt weird about putting my picture up in the header, like the website shouldn’t be about me, it should be about you (um, even though it’s my name on the site?). Yeah. I got over that. You need to know who in the heck is EPW. And with the photo montage put together by CouchSurfingOri, now you know me.

Let’s take advantage of what I have going on. I’m not quite sure how this happened, but starting back in November, I get a lot of comments. Sometimes just a dozen, a few times up to 100. That fact is an inherent, powerful testimonial for the cohesiveness and responsiveness of my tribe. So we highlight comments both as per each post (on the homepage, the blog page, individual post pages) as well as using the Recent Comments widget in the sidebar of all pages & posts.

Simplify everything. No clutter. Only a few menu choices. Only 3 blog posts on the home page. No unnecessarily widgets. No unnecessarily plugins. Nothing to bog down the site. Only a few options to click away. No confusion or distractions. Every single thing, every option, every widget, every menu, every plugin, every section has a specific purpose necessarily to the site.

So I ask you, when was the last time you looked at your site though the eyes of an outsider?

Do you make it possible for people to buy from you?

Does everything on your site have a reason?

Can anyone tell what in the world it is that you do?

And … what do you think of my new website? I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you so much for your comments, questions, feedback. Thank you so much for your help in passing this site onto your followers, friends, and subscribers. I am so honored that you chose to give some of your attention to me and this work. You are freaking awesometastic. That is all.

Related posts:

1. Sucking, Simplicity, & Selling: The Truth Behind the Relaunch of EPW
2. The Experience Matters: Behind the Website Redesign
3. Behind 18Days: Why’s of the Long Form Sales Letter, Pricing, 18 Days & Promo

So how do you get attention? You need to seduce me.

(this is also how I develop relationships w/ players in our industry!)

Related posts:

1. The “Tell Me More” Project: How to Make Human Connections in a Digital World
2. The Real Secret to Get 12K Followers on Twitter
3. Don’t Feed the Trolls

Free teleclasses are a great way to build your list, and develop a great relationship with people already on your list.  Why? 

1. You get contact information, including addresses.  There’s always a possibility that email will not work as a cheap marketing tool in the future.  If you have a free teleclass and have your people sign up through your shopping cart, you capture their mailing address as well as their email.  Then, you can send them old-fashioned snail mail — thus diversifying your promotion efforts, and decreasing your reliance on just one form of communication.
2. You can advertise in seminar listings and calendars.  Most of my free teleclasses are listed in online and print class and calendar directories, which are either low cost (under $10) or free — and a great way to pull in new people.
3. Giving away info for free builds goodwill.  By giving away a little bit of your wisdom, your list moves from being just readers to being converts.
4. Others will promote free stuff for you.  Typically, you can get J/V’s and other list owners to promote your free stuff to their lists, without having to give them anything — just as a good value-added service to their list.
5. Free teleclasses are cheap and easy.  No need to rent out space, order food, or send out paper mailings.  Just get a free bridge line and a low cost ($20/mo) autoresponder service and go.
6. They force you to create content.  These people are showing up to hear you talk, so you must put together something to say. 
7. You have a special report at the end.  Just record your call and pay to have it transcribed ($50-$100), spend a few minutes creating headings (or have your VA do that), and you have your Special Report.
8. You get your list used to "buying" from you.  Yes, it’s free, but "buying" a free teleclass is the first step in your leads paying you money.
9. Your list learns more about you.  It’s hard to get to know someone just by reading their writing.  By listening to you speak for an hour, your list gets to know your personality and decide if you are a right match for their needs.
10. You create need in your list for your solutions.  If you have a product or service to promote, you can have a teleclass that helps your list feel the need for the solution that you are offering to them.  Then, at the end of the call, if they have the need, they immediately want to buy your solution.
11. You get feedback from your list.  Teleclasses are a great test.  Whether no one signs up, you get 20% of your list to sign up, no one asks questions, everyone is confused, people thank you for the information, no one buys what you promote … it’s all great feedback for next time.

Related posts:

1. 7+ Reasons to Add Video to Your Website
2. Behind the Launch of Build Your Tribe
3. Will You Live Your Great Work, or Let Your Soul Die?