Mastermind Gold with John Thornhill

I had a pretty awesome experience the other night. You see I managed to get myself on a very special Mastermind call with John Thornhill. I was really excited by this but also a little nervous at the same time. I regularly visit John’s blog and have learned a lot from him and his products since I first ventured online, so to be on a call with him and have to opportunity to ask him whatever I wanted was pretty cool.

Armed with my questions I was ready to pick his brain and hopefully get some great insights into what is really needed for someone to not only build an online business, but also to excel at it, and really lay the foundations for something sustainable and worthwhile.

I was fortunate enough to have the foresight to set up a free program called Audacity on my computer so I was able to record the call. Believe me I was very glad I did this because my mind was blown by some of the stuff John was sharing with the lucky few of us who were present.

Naturally I’m going to share with you guys what I learned and hopefully it’ll help you all in your quest to build a successful online business. Let me tell you I got enough information from that one 60 minute call for a month of content for the blog so today I’m just going to share a little taste of what was discussed.

One of the area’s I wanted to grill John on was to do with launching a digital product. More specifically when launching a WSO on the Warrior Forum. I wanted to know which of these approaches would he favour:

a) launch a Free product – give away upfront value and convert some prospects into buyers on the backend with a great value OTO.

b) price the front-end product very low, say $5 and offer 100% commissions in order to attract affiliates, again with upsells/downsells on the backend.

Johns response to this unwavering – go with Option B, offer a low price front-end offer and give 100% commissions to affiliates. The benefit of this over Option A is that the quality of the lead who then moves on to see your OTO and Backend products will be of a far higher quality than if you just gave away a Freebie upfront.

Also by paying their $5 for the front-end product your customers are now in a “buying frame of mind” and will be far more qualified and likely to purchase any additional products which you offer them.

Before this Mastermind I was always of the opinion that it was better to give away value up front but as John went on to explain this may not always be the best policy. By giving away a Free Product you could be attracting the wrong kind of prospect to your list. Sure you’ll see a lot of sign-ups but how responsive will they be to your emails and will they support you by purchasing one of your products?

The vast majority of those who enter this kind of a funnel will not go on and make the transition from “prospect” to”customer” simply because they are Freebie Seekers. Now there is a trade off going on here…

By giving away a free front-end product like in Option 1 you will build a big list…and fast – but what will the quality of this list be like?? The likelihood is that it is full of Freebie Seekers using a fake email address just to gain access to the download.

By running with Option B you will automatically weed out these guys and although the list you build will be small in comparison – it will be Powerful & Responsive because it is full of Buyers! Continue to supply these customers will fantastic content and great value and there is a good chance that they will turn into repeat customers and fans of your work.

The other advantage is that you will be able to attract affiliates to promote your product for you. Now keep in mind that affiliates get excited about one thing – EPCs… And with $5 front-end you are unlikely to generate the minimum $1 EPC to get them on board.

That’s where the Upsell/Downsell come into play.

After their initial purchase you should present your customer with the option to upgrade via an Upsell. They are already after making the leap of faith and purchasing your first product so the chances of them going for the OTO are good. The Upsell needs to be something that will compliment the front-end product but not replace it.

If you construct your sales funnel correctly and provide great value Upsells/Downsells you will generate the extra revenue which will increase your EPCs and help you attract affiliates to promote. Don’t be afraid of offering 100% Commissions, sure you won’t get rich doing this but you will be adding customers to your list i.e. a Buyers List!

An important point to mention here is  that if your aim is to attract affiliates to promote your product you need to spend some on creating a professional Affiliates Page for them. It’s not good enough just to provide them with their affiliate link, you need to give them all the resources which they will need in order to promote your offer as effectively as possible.

So create an Affiliate Page where can get all the tools that they need, such as:

• product images
• email swipes
• banners

This isn’t complicated stuff but it is an area where a lot of people let themselves down. Sometimes we are in such a rush to get into launch mode that we neglect some little tasks near the end like creating a good Affiliates Page.

Sales Funnel Construction
When putting together your Upsells it’s important to hit the right price points to maximize your conversions. Say for example you are selling a front-end product for $10 it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a $97 Upsell. Can you see it’s just too much of a jump in price?

The general rule John advised here when setting up your sales funnel is not to increase your product by more that 3 times in price through each price point. So the funnel for your $10 WSO may look something like this :

$10 Front-End —> $27 Upsell —> $47 Upsell —> Recurring Billing i.e. Membership Site

Now that is a very stripped back example, there are no downsells included but I just wanted to illustrate how you might put together a funnel for your $10 product that would really increase your chances of attracting affiliates.

Although they will not make huge money on the front-end the higher EPCs generated by the backend products will help you get a lot more of them on board. And did you notice the last part of our funnel? That’s right, it’s Recurring Billing.

John explained to me that affiliates just LOVE Memberships sites because it allows them to make recurring commissions long after they promoted the product. This could be a deal breaker because although you may not be generating a Big EPC the fact they you offer Recurring Commissions will make you a very attractive proposition for affiliates.

I know some of you may be thinking “how can I make a membership site? what do I have to offer?” Well, you may be surprised  by what you could put together. Programs like Optimize Press and Wishlist Member make it super easy to create professional looking membership sites that will keep your customers entertained month-after-month.

And there is no need to put yourself under pressure trying to construct a monster $97 per month site – price it low and make it a “no-brainer” for your customers to sign-up. Anything below the 10 dollar mark will have a high retention rate and won’t require too much of your time to maintain. If you went after a higher price point for your membership then you’ll have to work day and night creating content for your members so that they won’t cancel their subscriptions.

With Clickbank the lowest monthly price you can have is $7.95. At this price your customers will likely just drop in and out of the site and not be too bothered about the cost. If however you go for  $27 or $47 then you will need to be at the top of your game and deliver awesome content each month or you will quickly lose your subscribers.

So I think I’ll wrap it up there for today guys…and I hope you’ve enjoyed this entry. This is just a taster of some of the stuff that I learned from John’s Mastermind call and I’ll be sure to share some more nuggets with you over the coming weeks. If you have any thoughts/questions on the above I’d love to here them, you know I always reply to every comment so get involved and let me know what you think.

All the Best,

Noel.

P.S. I received a few emails this week asking for more info about Omar Martin’s Speedy Profit Creator which I mentioned last week. I’ve actually updated my system with the new ebook I created using SPC so if you sign up to my newsletter (over there on the right) you will see first-hand what can be achieved with the system. Cheers.

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