The YouTube team has just done a phenomenal job scaling to demand and building a simple, no-frills-attached platform.
What does YouTube fail on that we need an alternative for? Fast download speeds, speedy uploads, many ads that YOU CAN JUST SKIP (!!), it seems like they have nailed the perfect spec and product. Plus, I don't think many could even dream of competing with the technical demands that YouTube probably sees every minute on their servers.
TL;DR: One article converted because they were talking about and pitching their service throughout the whole piece (4 calls to action), while the other was about their experience of hiring family members with no real discussion or pitches about their business (0 calls to action).
Take a look at how many articles on the frontpage today today don't follow those principles.
For instance the current #1 post - "Living in a van" - has one mention of Priceonomics in the article, no explanation of the service, and no call to action within the story content.
Not saying that this isn't obvious, just saying that despite it being obvious people don't necessarily employ those strategies and are tossing out a huge number of potential new users as a result.
This guy needs a few lessons on effective public speaking and presentation, this introduction video of him makes me cringe.. I couldn't watch more than just a few minutes of it. Oh, and a web designer couldn't hurt either, who's going to read those walls of text?
If you don't run marketing at a B2B SaaS company it is a wall of text. If that's you, I'll save you time: don't read it or, if you do read it, read it only for academic interest on doing copywriting.
If, on the other hand, one is in charge of increasing the sales of a B2B SaaS company, this page is basically designed to be total brain crack.
It presents an idea which is either new or which one is vaguely aware of, presents concrete suggestions for implementation, has a case study which the target customer will find incredibly compelling, teaches one thing they can literally execute on by the end of today, and then drumroll says that if you found the page to be valuable then there are five hours of very dense, action-packed video and guides where that came from, for a very reasonable price by the standards of B2B SaaS companies.
I can attest to the brain-crackness. We're a bootstrapped startup that is starting to have a compelling product, and starting to think more about how to market it. We're definitely aware of the idea of lifecycle marketing and have been thinking about implementing it.
If purchasing this course lets us get a lifecycle marketing system going that is 10% more effective two weeks earlier than if we had to learn the lessons ourselves, it would pay for itself. Of course, if we had to smash our brains against it and try to pick out a cohesive strategy from across the internet it's very likely to take us a long time - months or years - to learn all the things in the course.
If you're in the target market for this product, and you know patio11 enough to trust him, the sales pitch boils down to "You give me several hundred dollars, and I'll give you thousands of dollars."
Haha, but even with that rational analysis done, the idea of spending that much on something pains my bootstrapping mind tremendously.
I think a decent way to think of it is in terms of customer LTV. "If I get N customers out of this, I break even." For a lot of B2B SaaS products, N is something like 1 or 2. For that reason alone, I think the price is a bit low.
Long form sales copy is all about bullet points, headings, subheadings - essentially presenting a ton of copy in an easily digestible format - specifically avoiding looking like a wall of text!
Walls of text convert like crazy. You aren't targeting the Big Business Corporate Dickhead Department. You're targeting someone sitting in their underwear at their computer. The wall of text serves to draw them in, confuse them, set them straight, give them an ah-ha moment, then say "there's more of this delicious feeling of mastery for only a few hundred dollars..."
Basically, zinga of marketing. Also see: 30 minute infomercials. "This towel will changeyourlife!"
I am most definitely not your target customer for this (not yet, anyway - one day, maybe, who knows?)
Still, it's quite clear how well you demonstrate value - that last paragraph is exactly one sentence long and yet has five concise, concrete pointers on what exactly makes long copy good. As such, I suspect buyers will be extremely happy with the content of the actual course :)
For now I'll continue to enjoy the rest of your excellent free content. Thanks and good luck!
Does the long sales copy letter (on the web) have a place when you're selling a SASS app? Say an appointment reminder system? I've been convinced it works for info products -- but haven't seen good examples for applications.
(or is the long for content done only in emails and not on the site itself)
This is true. The video is poor quality - washed out. And despite wearing a bulky headset with an enormous microphone, there are weird feedback(?) "booms" every few seconds.
I personally couldn't get past the gimmick with the $100 bill. It was really tacky and is such a cliched TV informercial ploy for attention.
The red tracksuit doesn't help convey a sense of authority either. He didn't properly comb his hair (though this is an understandable issue for many people, get some hair gel). And there are distracting reflections on his glasses - an easy solution for this is contacts. The background of the room, all Japanese-y, is distracting as well.
Summary: if you're going to be a salesman on video, you need to look the part. Patrick most definitely does not look the part.
I agree. I know Patrick is known around HN for giving out good info but watching some of his videos was oddly distracting to me because something in the back of my mind reminds how awkward they are. Even just start by losing the nerdy headset I think it will help viewers focus more on the content rather than the awkwardness in the video.
Yeah, well that's not at all relevant to the customers - they need clean, simple videos where the focus is Patrick and the content he's providing. Anything other than that is a distraction.
At first I thought you were being sarcastic... Patrick delivered one of the most amazing talks of all time at Business of Software (ie. the "Old Spice" presentation):
I didn't think it was as bad as you're describing ... and it's very hard to perform on video presentations that don't include an audience (you feed off an audience's energy and get immediate feedback ... and in my case I get a real shot of adrenaline too).
It would be neat to bypass the facebook group method and just have a website that you can request people's phone numbers (just a simple submit form). Then the numbers aren't publicly available for everyone to snoop.
The reason people make the group or event is because when you invite everyone they get a notification and a lot more people see it rather than a status update (that maybe <10% of your friends see). So maybe creating an event or group then linking to givemeyournumbers.com/john_smith
I'm a college student with a bit too much time this summer. Thought of this site on a plane ride a few months ago and finally decided to put it together, let me know what you think! Should be great coding music.
Does "gimme the next one cap'n" just advance to the next song, or is there some Pandora-type 'I hate this song, never play it' thing going on? Presumably the former but thought I'd ask.
Also, the insertion of extra text into my copy of "gimme the next one cap'n" was annoying, though I see its utility.
All of the music comes from two json objects, one is 'fast' and the other is 'faster'. Clicking "the last one was sweet" goes back a song, and "gimme the next one cap'n" goes forward a song, from whatever list you're currently playing (fast or faster).
My favorite is definitely Trance Around the World http://trancearoundtheworld.com -- I actually themed the music on this site to kind of fit in a similar flow, I always feel like a productivity robot when listening to TATW
I listen to the "Coding Soundtrack" playlist on Spotify by James Dennis and there's also a programming music room on turntable that I can't remember the name of.
This looks great, but unfortunately it doesn't actually play for me. Soundcloud works fine for me (Chromium on Ubuntu), any reason why it wouldn't play?
As a student about to enter the work force, I'm personally having an internal struggle with which lifestyle to choose to pursue. There is the go-big-or-go-home obsessive startup world work mentality, versus another side of the online world which I feel Hacker News glosses over without much recognition: building lifestyle passive income businesses online. There are countless amounts of people easily making 6 digits online, so it can't be an argument that people need to work this hard to earn a living. It's rather silly how easy it is to make money online with a simple product.
So if money isn't the problem, then why do people work their asses off until they break down or burn out? Is it just a social norm that people have to keep getting bigger, growing, hiring more, and raising more money?
Just my opinion, but you should basically do what you like. I like developing software, so working for ~40 hours a week is OK for me. But I also try not to spend too many hours (per year) working for clients so I have time for my own stuff and also for hobbies (cooking, photography, sports, ...).
I also know that I am less productive when I am tired or overworked, so this is another reasons why I try to limit my time in front of the computer. For example, when it's possible, I simply take breaks when I am tired (http://davidtanzer.net/node/114 - though this is often not possible when working for a client on-site).
I could make more money by doing the same work I do now for more hours - but that would just be a brute force solution. What I currently try is doing work that has better hourly rates. I'll also try to build some passive income - that's what you mentioned.
As a student about to enter the work force, I'm personally having an internal struggle with which lifestyle to choose to pursue.
IMHO, as someone looking back from 34yo, I would say, try EVERYTHING. Keep your costs low, and take as many big risks as you can. Keep trying different things until you find one you love, then find a way to get paid for that.
So if money isn't the problem, then why do people work their asses off until they break down or burn out?
Some people are really passionate about what they are working on, they don't care about the money. Others are unfortunately just driven by greed. If I had to recommend one over the other, I'd definitely go with passion; just be careful not to burn out.
Also, the passive income thing is always a good idea to keep in mind; put a little bit of work into it, but do it early and don't make it your main focus, otherwise it's not very passive, is it?
Honestly, if I knew how to run a passive-income business, I'd be doing it.
Think: our field is one of the few where the average worker owns his own means-of-production. Practical impact: the 40-60 hours you don't have to spend getting an income each week, if you have a passive income, can be spent on building awesome open-source projects you release for free to undercut those who like living in cubicles.
