by: AskPAt 314 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 304 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
Sweet. Now let’s get to today's question from Bradley.
Bradley: Hey Pat. It's Bradley from SenseYourEnergy.com. I had a question about email lists. I'm setting up one after having one and it fizzled out, and I canceled, and then I'm bringing it back again using some of the tools you recommended. I was wondering specifically about opt-in incentives. Now I know you give away a free ebook about how to make and sell ebooks. Obviously you put a lot of time and effort into that, and it’s really good. But, I was wondering what kind of thing should I do for that, as an incentive, and how much effort do you recommend putting into it. Not saying that I don't want to put in much effort, but, I don’t know, I got a lot of other stuff to do. How much of my effort should I be focusing on that specific thing.
Thanks. I love the show.
Pat Flynn: Hey Bradley, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today, and thank you so much for all the kind words about Ebooks The Smart Way as well. I remember writing that in 2009. That's such a long time ago. And it is still working today as a fantastic lead magnet, or lead generation incentive for people to subscribe to my list. And it, you know, the content has still held up; it is evergreen and people are still writing ebooks. It was definitely a great decision for me to add that as an incentive, and when I finally got around to putting an email list into my brand, and collecting email addresses on my blog at SmartPassiveIncome.com, I had that ready on day one. And, the thing is it did take me about a month and a half to create. And the content, you know, that actually wasn't the most time consuming part of it. It was the design of it. And I have a little three-column format that I found in another book that I really got inspiration from, so I used that and added some nice stock images in there inside the content to really enhance it, and you know, pull out quotes and that sort of thing. I spent a good month and a half on that.
And people have commented and said that “Pat, this is something I would have paid for,” and that's an amazing compliment, and thank you for those who have shared that with me. But I'm happy to give it away for free, you can find it at EbooksTheSmartWay.com, so you can know what we're talking about. But, if I were to go back in time, and do it all over again, I would have done something much simpler.
So Bradley, no, you don't need to spend a month and a half on your incentive. Really what you need to do is give your audience something that provides immediate value and quick results. And the thing about Ebooks The Smart Way, it’s a great book, but it’s 30 pages, and that's 30 pages people have to read before they get that value, and even then they have to put those things into action. Yes, the content is good enough to be seen as good enough when people read through it, but it takes a while for people to take action on it.
Now, there are people who I know who have taken action on it, I mean, tens of thousands of people. One of them being Kimanzi Constable who took the knowledge that he found in my ebook Ebooks The Smart Way and started a whole new career path writing books, and he gives credit to Ebooks The Smart Way, which was awesome. Thank you, Kimanzi, if you're listening to this.
But, if I were to go back in time, you don't need to create something like that. What can be completely valuable is not directly correlated to the amount of time you need to spend into it, and the length that is has to be. My recommendation is, Bradley, in your space or everybody else out there listening, a great lead magnet for you, sort of a site-wide lead magnet, and we'll talk about content magnet in just a second. But for your whole site if people land on your homepage, what can they download? Something that gives them a quick win.
Quick wins are huge. They are addicting. If you can give a quick win to your audience, especially after, immediately after they subscribe with that little download that you have, whatever that download might be. Whether it’s just a list of the top five tools that people use in your industry. Those things work really, really well, and I want to give credit to Clay Collins, co-founder of Lead Pages, who came on the show on SmartPassiveIncome.com, on my podcast, episode number 78. And he came on and talked about this whole idea of sharing just, in a one or two page pdf, with some nice images of these tools and stuff, but you don't have to get super fancy.
But people love tools. We all love tools. That's why some of my most popular posts are “The Top 21 Tools That I'm Going to Use This Year” or “5 Tools That I'm Going to Use Every Single Day in 2015.” I remember those posts because those get so many comments, and people share them. People love tools because they love to think that when they use those tools, they will just be like that person who talked about them. And in many cases those tools will help you get there. Obviously there's a lot more to that then just the tool itself. But, those tools can definitely help you. That's why people in the photography industry, for example, they're all over the different lenses and things because, you can instantly become a professional photographer if you had the right lens sometimes.
So, whatever your niche is, maybe try to find five tools that people would use and benefit from and just quickly talk about each of those. And that is your incentive. Not the tools, but the list of the tools that people can use. Maybe it’s a worksheet or a cheat sheet. Maybe it’s access to some exclusive video that's going to help them achieve something in the first five minutes after they watch it. Those things, when people get that reward from doing whatever it is you're telling them to do, immediately they're going to be fans for a very very long time.
I remember a post I read over at IWillTeachYoutToBeRich.com from Ramit Sethi back in 2008. I believe it was 2008. But, this was even before I had SmartPassiveIncome.com. I was reading his site every once in a while whenever I had a lunch break or, you know, those breaks at work when I was supposed to be working but I was on the internet anyway. I read a lot of personal finance sites, and his was one of them. But I didn't subscribe. I wasn't like a hardcore reader of his, until I came across this post that was about how you can call your cable company, and just read the script off of this blog post that he wrote, and save 20 to 25 percent on your cable bill. And so I was like “wow that's interesting.” It was like, “Save 20% on your cable bill in under 15 mins by reading this script.” Something like that. And so I did that, and it worked! Like the cable bill slashed my monthly fee, and it was incredible!
And I was like “Okay, Ramit, IWillTeachYoutToBeRich.com is my new favorite site.” And I've been a loyal subscriber ever since. And he and I have since become friends and have met at conferences and stuff. He’s super cool. And it wouldn't have started unless he gave me that really quick win that was amazing. That was just a small little component of his overall bigger message and its brand. So how can you deliver a quick win for your brand. And that's, Bradley, by far the best thing you can do for your site-wide content.
Now, I mean, on a related note, one other suggestion that Clay mentioned in episode 78 is this idea of upgraded content. And he's been back on the show again for a second time to talk again even further about this. But, upgraded content, meaning maybe you write a blog post about something specific. Maybe it's about fly fishing. You talk about fishing, here's a post about fly fishing specifically. And at the end of the post you have a checklist that is a gear guide of the things you need to go and have a successful fly fishing trip. And in order to get access to this worksheet or checklist for fly fishing, again, specifically just for this post, you have to leave your email address. And that works like crazy. And this is something that when the new redesign of the Smart Passive Income blog is something I’m going to be doing much much more of.
And so, what you can do is, and you don't have to do this in every post, but in a post here or there, do this: create something extra, and it can be anything from a worksheet or maybe you're doing something really huge in these posts that you're talking about, something grand, and then you just do a quick start guide that people can download. Or maybe it’s a helpful toolkit, or something related to it. Or maybe it is the top tools that you can use related to that thing. It was actually a podcast episode that I did, episode 115 with Jessica, my assistant, who helped me crush my inbox and get rid of almost 10 000 unread emails, and now I'm on top of it now thanks to her help. In that podcast episode, episode 115 of SPI, I give away a two or three page PDF file that is simply a list of my top five favorite email tools to help you crush your inbox. And that is one of the highest converting podcasts episodes that I've had, and simply because there's that unique content upgrade for that specific post.
How is that delivered? Well there's a lot of different ways to do that. Whether through a thank you page for specific lists on something like AWeber. Or if you combine AWeber with something like Lead Pages, Lead Pages has its own asset delivery system if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/LeadPages, you can check it out there. I'm also an advisor for the company and I highly recommend it for everyone out there. Maybe not if you're just starting, but if you're good on your email and want to enhance the conversions, check out Lead Pages. And yeah, so Bradley I hope that answers your question. I can't give you something specific like “this is what you should do” in terms of the exact title of your giveaway, whatever is. And again, it doesn't have to be an ebook. It should not be long. People don't have that much time. But it should definitely be surrounding or involving a quick win for your audience. What's something quick that you can do for somebody that's going to help them be like, “Wow, Bradley's awesome! I have this now because of him, I'm going to stick around and get more. I'm going to open the rest of his emails. I’m going to be an ambassador for his site. I'm going to talk about it with my friends.” That's what you want to happen.
So Bradley, thank you so much for the question, I really appreciate it, and an AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way. As a result of having your question featured here on the show, thank you for that again, those of you who have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.
And as always, I'd like to end with a quote, and this is from Jeff Bezos. He says: “If you're competitor focused, you have to wait until there's a competitor doing something. Being customer focused allows you to be more pioneering.” Amen. He didn't say amen, I said amen. Anyway, thank you guys, Friday. And as always on Friday I'm going to ask you to please head on over to iTunes and leave a quick review and rating for AskPat. If you enjoy the show at all, gotten any sort of value from this, please head on over to iTunes and leave a review for AskPat. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and there's just a few more days left to vote for the Smart Passive Income Podcast. If you go to PodcastAwards.com, under the business category, it would mean the world to me if you voted for the Smart Passive Income Podcast as Best Top Business Podcast, and we'll see what the results are a month from now. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Love you guys. And I'll see you next week. Bye.
