Here’s a few things I wish someone would have told me sooner about the direct response business….
1. If you don’t have an offer converting on cold traffic yet, that should be your only focus. You only need ONE. Stop messing around with other backend offers until you have an offer that converts on cold traffic
2. In a lot of niches, focusing on buyers is way smarter than doing lead gen. The value of a buyer (even a f+s one) is 10-20x what a lead is.
3. It shouldn’t be your goal to make money on the front-end. Your goal is to acquire as many GOOD customers as possible at breakeven, and then you make all your money selling them other products on the backend.
4. You are in the customer acquisition business. That’s what this business is all about. And where your focus should be.
5. Email is still king in terms of backend revenue
6. Mail your list daily (if not more)
7. You can grow to about $1 million or so in sales being a one man show. Anything above that, and you need to build a team/infrastructure to keep growing
8. Money above all else is why affiliates will continue to mail for you. Make sure you’re making them more money than your competitors
9. When starting out, put all your focus on one traffic source and master it. Do not try to run 3 different traffic sources at once if you’re new. Pick one, and get really damn good at it. All the people that crush in this industry are really dialed-in on one traffic source (they later expand to more, but focus on one until you master it)
10. Most marketers leave boatloads of money on the table with their upsells. Make sure you dial these in.
11. You are not your customer. What you want in a product, is probably not what they want. Always keep this in mind.
12. At some point you will have to make a decision if you want to be a “lean and mean” company, or you want to have 30 employees in an office. Both ways work. And both ways have pros/cons, but you have to make that decision at some point.
13. The offer is what matters the most. If your offer is not HIGHLY appealing, no amount of copy jiu-jitsu is going to fix that. Everything starts with a unique, highly appealing offer that is easy to say “yes” to.
14. Businesses that are sellable, and businesses that are good cash flow businesses, are two different things. Most direct response companies are not set up to sell. If your goal is to sell, you need to build the company to be sold from the beginning.
So there ya go…
14 things I wish someone would have told me years ago about this business.
Would have saved me a lot of frustration…
And made me a lot more money if I had learned these lessons sooner.
But luckily for you, I’m sharing them all with you now.
So hopefully you take them to heart.
And while we’re on the topic…
I’m curious to hear from you…
What’s ONE thing you wish someone would have told you a lot sooner about this business?
Feel free to hit reply and let me know.
– Justin
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