Copywriting

The 5-part 30×500 Taste Test

The Product Revolution is Coming!

Hey there, sexy.

As you probably know, I’ve got a launch on right now for the 4th round of my 30×500 Launch Class — aka, the coolest, most bullshit-free, most hilarious, most systematic way ever to start & launch your first product.

You also probably know that I’m not just into all this *waves hand at entrepreneurship stuff* for the money. I’m on a mission.

So, when I think about how I should market 30×500, I ask myself:

How can I market and reach my ideal audience, while also furthering my mission in general? How can I market in such a way that even just my marketing will help smart, creative people learn how to create products? How can I use my marketing alone to help folks break free from being used to create wealth for the people with money — bosses, clients — and use those crazy skills to create wealth for themselves?

The answer is obvious:

Give some of the awesomeness away. Give it to the world — for free.

Which, I’m gonna be honest with you, is fucking scary. On several levels.

But I didn’t go through everything I’ve gone through to create my business, and my life, just to shy away from doing something good just because it’s scary. If I lived every day just to maximize every penny, I would be a miserable, miserable girl. Luckily, in my experience, doing what I love (helping people!) with a mindset of “I can afford to give” makes everything better.

Now, there’s so much of 30×500 that I can’t give away. 30×500 is an intense project.

I spend a huge amount of time each class helping you, my student, personally with your product concepts — and the pitches you’ll use to sell ‘em. (And occasionally dispensing a corrective kick in the pants.)

That level of personal attention simply doesn’t scale beyond the folks actually in my class.

But what I can do is give away a few lessons. In the hopes that you’ll find them useful even without the structure of a regularly scheduled class, group chats, and lively mailing list.

So here they are! Free stuff abounds.

Your Tasting Menu: 5 lessons, 1 video

First, start with what the Austrians call “a greeting from the kitchen” — a little pre-appetizer appetizer. Then the appetizers. Followed by the first main course, second main course, and dessert.

Taste away:

Setting the Stage: the first 3 lessons from 30×500 (a manifesto, if you will)
Worldviews Rule, Niches Drool: why marketing is sooo much more than niches, and a workbook that’ll help you bake that understanding into every aspect of your future product (words, colors, design, features)
Pain Killers: an intense workbook to help you identify rich opportunities to “mine the pain” — to figure out where your customer hurts, and how to help him
Stacking the Bricks: can ruthless pragmatism rev you up? this video will prove it to you — the premise is that 8 years ago, 37signals had no products, & now they have millions in revenue (a month!). This video’s about the path they took, and how you can apply that to your path.

Yummm.

One Last Word: Before You Dive In…

Don’t just right-click this stuff and let it rot in your Downloads folder.

Oh yeah. I know you do that. I do that too. Get all excited for the smorgasbord of delicious content. So excited you gorge on it like a hyperactive hummingbird, jumping around from PDF to PDF without ever settling down long enough to absorb & use it.

That’s a huge part of why, when you take 30×500, the lessons are metered — they come out on a schedule, and there are deadlines for homework, and regular group discussions.

But seriously. Don’t waste this stuff.

Download it, and take the time to carefully read it. Ideally more than once. Print the workbooks out. Actually do them. Actually watch the video, in its entirety.

These lessons will help you kick total ass, if you’ll just give yourself the time.

Finally: The Goodies!

Download away, friend! I’ve broken the goodies up into the sections (appetizers, first main course, second main course, and dessert) I joked about above.

Enjoy.

Appetizers: Get Psyched, Get Your Head Screwed On Right

First, the first three lessons from 30×500. They’re all about the mistakes & missteps & suffering that we all suffer on the rocky path to profitable-product-owner-hood.

You know, that whole cycle: you wake up energized, eureka! You’ve found your great idea. It has such promise. You know that this time, it’ll work. You’ll make money. You’ll achieve your financial goals. You’ll be able to build the life you want.

But it never works out.

Why not?

Read these lessons — and you’ll slap yourself in the forehead and wonder why you didn’t think of it before:

It’s kinda obvious in retrospect, isn’t it?

Worldviews: Everybody’s Got One & You Need to Know Em

I hate niches. When you get into business, you can’t swing a cat without being told you have to find a niche.

What the hell’s up with that?

Obviously you know what a niche is: a group of people defined by slots and numbers, like middle-aged housewives, young men with disposable income and technical skills between the age of 18 and 35, white Republicans with an income of $70,000 to $100,000, new mothers, cat fanciers, Rails developers, web designers. Blah blah blah.

And there’s the problem. Those people may share a demographic, but they don’t think the same. They don’t value the same things. They don’t look at the world the same way. They don’t buy the same way.

Niches-ism doesn’t respect the way people actually buy.

On the other hand, Worldviews — and the 3 Laws of Customer Physics — do. Learn to spot Worldviews, and you’ll save yourself so much heartache, like when you try to sell to people whose worldview will prevent them from buying. (So sad!)

And your understanding of Worldviews will also answer that age old question: Does design matter? (The answer is: it depends on what worldviews your potential customers have.)

In short: this lesson is vital. Don’t miss it. Download it now:

Lesson 21 & 22

(This taste test lesson also includes a lot of background on the other stuff you’ll learn in 30×500. As you’ll see, the lessons build on each other.)

Pain Killers: Everybody Hurts… So Make & Sell a Soother

You know that REM song, “Everybody Hurts”?

It’s not that different from that Buddhist saying, “Life is suffering.” Which is, if you ask me, is a sentiment with an unfairly bad rap.

To be human is to hurt. That’s just kinda the way it is.

And one of the best ways to make a profit while helping people is to kill their pain. Either take away the pain, or transform it into enjoyment and even joy.

But… other than just trying to spot a “problem” to solve, how the heck do you know which pains exist? Which pains to tackle? Which pains you can fix most awesomely? Which would be profitable?

That’s what this next lesson is about.

When you take 30×500, there are a bunch of lessons between the beginning 3 I already sent you, and this bad boy.

First off, you learn how to pick an Audience to investigate. Then how to find them, and learn from them. Figure out if they’re your ideal customers — or not. How hard it will be to sell. What they need.

You collect all kinds of crazy raw data.

Then you do THIS lesson, lesson 13. (And lesson 12, which is similar, but about money.)

This lesson guides you through, step-by-step, sifting thru that data and squeezing insight out of it. And what do you get at the end? Delicious juice?

No! An infinite number of potential product concepts. As many as you could ever want.

Lesson 13: Pain Killers

This is part of the awesome process that is 30×500: pick, gather, apply rules, apply a system, apply effort, and BAM!! Results.

Dessert: From Lowly Peon to Rich & Famous

You know 37signals? Of course you do. You know how many products they had when they started out 8 years ago?

Zero.

You know how they got from zero, to millions of dollars of revenue a month? The same way you will get from zero to the income you want.

They did it by Stacking the Bricks. So did just about everybody else you see who’s successful. In this video, I dissect the product career paths of 37signals and 4 other smaller companies (including moi). And turn it into a lesson you can use.

Watch Stacking the Bricks

Other Things You Learn in 30×500

I’m not joking when I call this set of lessons a tasting menu. They are only a taste. There is SO much more.

Take 30×500, and you’ll learn:

how not to fail (based on my outline of 14 failure patterns!)
how to start with an audience
how to find your audience’s watering holes so you can:
understand & analyze them
market to them
how to do guerilla market research — for free
what to look for:
how can you ensure you don’t fail before you even start?
how do you pick an audience that you can easily sell to?
who will be good customers?
and how to mine that raw data for product concepts — as many as you like
and then how to turn those product concepts into persuasive pitches you can use to market your product before you make it
how to pick the best product concept for your needs (AND theirs)
how to flesh out a tiny product concept with great detail
how to break down that concept into a tiny, shippable atom
how to plan to build that atom with the time & resources you ACTUALLY have (you know: on the side, after your day job!)
how to combat & conquer featuritis
how to speak your customer’s language
how to price for value… and conquer pricing fear
how to write your sales letter
how to launch

This is meaty stuff. It’s theory and it’s practice. It’s actionable. It’s in-depth. It’s ways to think about biz that you can use forever, and in many different kinds of projects.

(Alumnus @adambrault recently told me he used 30×500 concepts to organize his first conference! And LOTS of alumni have used the 30×500 principles to improve their freelance or consulting businesses. Yeah! It’s good stuff.)

That’s what you’ll learn in 30×500. And you won’t be alone.

What Else You Get: A Recipe for Kicking Ass

Okay. Take all that stuff above. Think about it. Think about what you want. Do you want to create financial freedom for yourself? Do you want to be able to say “no” to a day job, or client work — possibly even forever? Do you believe that creating value, & selling directly with the folks who benefit from that value, is the way to do that?

Awesome. We’re totally on the same page.

Now ask yourself, What if I could have…

Step-by-step help implementing this system?
Personal advice from someone who’s been there, & done it, over and over? (hint: me! and I don’t pull punches!)
The support of a lively community of nearly 300 people who’ve taken the class before me… and another 64 taking it with you?
Access to all those goodies… fooooreeeeverrr?

Oh yeah. I haven’t really mentioned that last part, have I?

30×500: You can check in, but you can never leave! Just kidding.

You get access to the alumni group – forever. The lessons – forever. Free updates to those lessons (and new lessons!) – forever. The custom courseware – forever.

Plus, if you ask nicely, I’ll answer your biz questions even after class is over Just ask @edavis10 how often we’ve talked about his products since he took the first class nearly 3 years ago.

You really can’t beat this package for structure, sense, and support — certainly not at the price of half a class at a serious university.

APPLICATIONS OPEN: Friday the 13th, 3pm Eastern

That’s TODAY! So set your alarms now!

This time around, we’re doing things a lil differently. You have to apply. Here’s why:

In short: I’m selfish. I want more awesome success stories, and that means helping ensure everybody in 30×500 is ready to be there and make the most of it. Thus the application process.

Want to apply? Awesome! Here are the questions so you can prepare in advance. This isn’t a pop quiz, this is real life

Want to know more? This page has ALL the details — dates, prices, how it works, how 30×500 got built to start with.

Oh, and, how about some numbers from my business? I wrote a lil retrospective from 3 years of bootstrapping** — and include a huge list of 30×500 alumni kicking ass. Cuz it ain’t just about me.

Not Sure?

Remember: if you aren’t sure if the class is for you, drop me an email. I’ll do my best to help you decide. And yes, I tell people “No.”

That’s the reason I offer a 100% money-back guarantee: I want you to succeed.

And, thanks

Thanks for sticking with me for all these words. I hope you enjoy the sample lessons. Use them in good health!

I’ll see you in class.

Copywriting / Marketing — 3 Comments
21
Sep 11

Writing the Charm Sales Letter: Backwards Time Lapse Video

I recently spend several days working on a sales page for our new SaaS, Charm, which we’ll be launching this week after over a year of development.

Aaand for your edification, I recorded a backwards time lapse of its development.

It’s 3 minutes long.

Tough Decisions: What Tack to Take?

Charm is a real killer of a support tool… and totally different from the other tools you’ve used. It’s a category buster, like my first SaaS product.

When you do something so different, the challenge becomes: How to talk about it so people will buy?

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s hard to sell something based on 3 or 4 different angles at once. So I’m not going to make that mistake again.

Once we’ve got folks using Charm, they love it. But it works on so many different vectors that it’s hard to pick the one angle to work with.

So I struggled for hours to write this sales letter.

How I Got My Angle

I’m a big believer in the power of funnels: gather a whole bunch of ideas, data, and stories, and then see what common themes you get when you distill them down.

So, to fill the wide mouth of my process funnel, I:

filled many pages writing notes about life before Charm, life after Charm
reviewed what I have sent to our beta customers or prospective beta customers
wrote down everything I’ve told people in person when talking about Charm
wrote a “personal letter” from me, about how & why we designed Charm

Then, to distill, I:

reviewed all that information for common themes
picked what seemed like the most powerful common theme (pain — see below)
started from the headline that promised the opposite of the pain (went thru a lot of iterations)
created an outline of subheadlines based on that single premise, the opposite of the pain: loving talking to your customers again
filled in each subhead with sketchy notes
rewrote & transformed sketchy notes into a narrative

I chose to focus on the pain of doing support, rather than the business intelligence and what we call “360-degree support life cycle” — because everybody feels the pain, but few people are actively looking for biz intelligence.

My plan is to get people in the door on pain, and then sell them on joy & smarts. Once folks start using Charm, they’ll learn how powerful it is to get biz intelligence from what they’re already doing (without any extra work).

I Can Teach You to Write Sales Letters

For this whole process, I used a process I came up with for my 30×500 Product Launch Class. In 30×500, you’ll learn how to use the power of funnels from start to finish: to come up with viable product concepts which will sell from day 1, to turn them into a list of features, to turn those features into an actionable plan, to price, market, and write copy to make it sell. And it’s systems, systems all the way down.

If you’re itching to create & sell your own products, but not sure where to start, you should definitely check it out.

Drop your name & email in the box below to qualify for my pre-launch discount of $250:

Funmail Guarantee: Obv there’s no obligation whatsoever. You can unsubscribe at any time. And I promise to send you nothing but free goodies and samples and discounts and awesome stuff like that!

5-Second Slayage / Copywriting / Slaying Unicorns — 1 Comment
31
Jul 10

Trying to sell Nourishing Gruel?

Yum! I'm getting hungry just looking at it.

Enjoy this time-honored recipe, beloved of new business people:

Take 1 awesome, adjective-rich person. Drop into a bowl of potential customers.
Fold in a generous dollop of desperation
Toss in any other ingredients you have on hand.
Puree until bland and consistent.

Serves 4, but don’t expect ‘em to get excited about it.

On paper, Nourishing Gruel has the broadest appeal of any food: it provides perfectly adequate sustenance. It has no flavors or textures that could offend any palate. It is perfectly un-objectionable.

Which, naturally, is the reason Nourishing Gruel’s got top billing on the menu at your favorite restaurant. Thank you sir, may I have another? Right?

Whaddaya mean, you don’t like flavorless slop of indeterminate texture?

Nourishing Gruel in Action: Nervous Fashion Designer Edition

I ripped the following lines from would-be fashion designers hoping to charm their way into the Garmz marketplace. All four are about dresses, all four desperate to get their fashions manufactured and their dreams fulfilled.

But that’s where the similarity stops.

Can you tell the Nourishing Gruel from the real dish?

Exihibit A: For every stylish girl from 20′s to 30′s who wants to look sophisticated and classy.

Exhibit B: A fresh girly look with a modern edge to it.

Don’t think, just pick with your gut: Which one is the real dish?

Exhibit C: A dress made perfect for summer by airy canvas and light blue gradient lines.

Exhibit D: Perfect dress for various occasions.

Everybody Tastes

Maybe you can’t tell a USP from your own left butt-cheek… but you should be able to tell that Exhibit B and C are very, very different creatures from Exhibit A and D.

They feel different. Not necessarily better. But stronger, more real.

Broad Appeal… or Too Boring to Live?

Nourishing Gruel is mush. You can’t do much with mush. It doesn’t give you anything solid to either grab onto, or push away. It just leaves your fingers all goopy and gross.

Real dishes, on the other hand, have flavors and identifiable ingredients… a texture, and taste, that you’ll either love or hate. Real dishes are packed with meaty nouns and limber adjectives, all the better to sink your teeth into.

Real dishes are detailed enough for you to form an opinion.

Change the Recipe

If you’re afraid your product will appeal to nobody, then, well, it’s only natural to try to broaden its appeal as much as possible to ensure you get somebody. Sadly, this results in Nourishing Gruel.

You think you’re widening the net, but in fact, you’re just enlarging the holes.

You wouldn’t buy it, so don’t try to sell it.

Stick your neck out and offer your customers something real.

Have you been battling the Gruel?

What techniques do you use to avoid it?

Have you seen any great Gruel examples lately? (Or counter-examples?)