Business path - help appreciated (7)
Hey fellow marketers,
For the last 2 years I was making about $6k per month doing SSCPM (Spy, swipe, copy, paste and modify) with adult traffic and CPA offers.
I did modify a lot to increase conversions and at a certain point I really thought I was doing something great, something outstanding... I was THE man!
Around September 2014 I came to the conclusion I'm nothing more but a "lucky loser".
Lucky because I made that money without doing any REAL work.
And a loser because I couldn't get it going any longer and noticed that what I was doing was nothing really special.
Anyway, I took some great coaching over the past 2 year and the fist coaching was mainly about "marketing in it's purest form" , story telling , pre assumptions, desires, benefits, the million dollar question, quality leads vs quantity leads, and MUCH more.
The second one had to do with e-mail. How to capture, (not the simple squeeze/opt-in forms), what to send, how to send... But than "the next level stuff".
And currently I'm doing a 1-on-1 mastermind on a daily basis for a year. (3 month on it's way)
The above price of coachings/mastermind in total is about: $30k
I could say the money is well spend because of the money I made for the last 2 year and I really wanted to grow my business. But on the other hand, I'm somewhat stuck on how to proceed.
Adult dating offers on adult traffic is not what it used to be. Conversion rates dropped like a bom. And I can write the most interesting stories, people just aren't interested anymore.
And the main problem for me is... I don't know shit about women and didn't had much success with them myself either. So it basically comes down to study/reading a lot and write down my own stories/conclusions based on the first coaching teachings about assumptions (subconcious), desires etc.
But each and everytime I think I have written the perfect piece, the crowd doesn't respond to it as I hoped.
I guess porn/tube visitors are just tired of the same sort of content... They click my banner, see a page with some text a photo and a link and they just knnow enough.
So what can I do... A) Think of other ways to get them in my funnel , B) go into another niche altogether. C) keep trying the current approach, D) something else...
The great advantage of Adult traffic is that there's a LOT and that it's pretty cheap.
I even tried to explain to people that those adult dating sites are fake, but that leads to even less responses/CTR. It seems that people just want to be scammed.
To all more experienced people out here: "What would you do in my situation?"
Thanks,
Dennis
Wow, you have spent $30,000 on coaching?
To answer your question, I think you probably know more than you think, and I am pretty sure that you can apply and adapt some of your skills and experiences in other vertical categories which are probably less competitive.
Put that coaching knowledge and your experience to good use.
Get out of adult and explore other verticals.
Adult 'casual' dating isn't the best vertical/offer combo for exploiting all your marketing skills fully - no offense to the people who do adult, but we all know it's not.
Running stuff like supplements, male enlargement, PUA, etc. within the adult industry would, IMO, better leverage your skills but again you may want to explore other pastures first. Especially if you've got storytelling skill and know how to mail.
Good luck, let us know what you decide to do!
Originally Posted by cmdeal
When other people seek for advice I always know what I should do.
But when I need to plan and work for myself I overthink the whole thing and don't get anywhere.
Something like: "Hmm if I try this and it fails I have lost x or xx weeks but I still need to have an income to pay the mortgage etc."
Or "Hmm, this is fun and all, but this doesn't give me the return I want too"
Or "I don't know shit about this topic. I can study it for several weeks and actually deliver good content to people, but I 've tried so many things and failed".
The 3 coachings/mastermind were from 1 company that were VERY profitable in the adult dating and mainstream dating industry a while ago.
Their thinking is "next level" and my mindset changed a lot lately.
I started IM in 2006 with PayPal scams, eBay stuff and eventually signing up to the Warrior Forum.
The only thing I learned the first few years was "copy something that works".
The downside of this is you don't actually learn anything. And when something doesn't work anymore you have NO idea why and what to do to solve it.
It's like having a boss who tells you what to do, but when he's sick or anything the whole company is shutdown.
The reason I'm somewhat addicted to the adult market is because I've made my first good money in this niche.
So I know that the people on these tube site are easy to convert. (Well, until 6 months ago for me).
I have no problems with starting in another niche with other traffic sources, but I have honestly NO idea where to start.
What I do want: (within 2 years or so)... Earn enough money to not worry about it anymore, build an asset (like an e-mail list) and do it with passion and dedication.
Originally Posted by zeno
It's just that I don't know where to start.
I don't want to start with a simple tutorial saying do this and do that.
I need a vertical, a traffic source and a proven method.
And I don't mind paying money to people who get me up 2 speed fast.
I'm self employed so I can dedicate as much time as I want to business building.
This was a PM Dennis sent me and since there is a lot to answer here, I asked him to post it because my answers will be valuable to everyone here. I’ll answer everything in more than one post because there are several subjects I want to address.
Let’s start with “initial selection of market.” I am a huge fan of list building, fostering a relationship via entertainment and story, while pitching as much as I possibly can to the list for years. However, for this model to work, you have to select a market that is responsive to it, and the adult market is not for a variety of reasons. That does not mean there is not money to be made there (a lot of very smart people on here make a lot of money with adult), but list building with follow up email is a tough road to hoe.
When you select an ideal market to go into for long term list building, you want it to:
1. Be full of buyers who are “irrationally passionate”
2. Have a “self development or hobby” bent that leads to long term purchasing behavior
3. Have commonality of experience
As an example of a market that fits this profile, look at the bodybuilding market. Bodybuilders will sell their liver to put on half an ounce of muscle (and golfers will sell their heart and liver to shave half a stroke off their game), buy every supplement on the planet, and every new workout they can get their hands on. They live for the gym, and choose to spend their money getting better at body building.
They also have a commonality of experience and speak a “niche language.” You’ll hear terms like “drop sets” and “volume loading” and “muscle confusion” and all kinds of vocabulary specific to them. The jokes are the same, the enemies are the same, the hopes, fears, failures, and frustrations are the same. In fact, there’s even a cartoon series called “Musclehedz” by a guy named John Gleneicki that absolutely nails the body building market. It’s hilarious because he hits all the inside jokes (my favorite one is, “Happy Cheat Day, Big Ern”), and any body builder can tell he understands the market inside and out.
http://www.musclehedz.com/totw.html
This “commonality of experience” coupled with irrationally passionate buying behavior is why you can write a “one to many” sales letter or pitch to them, they can read it and feel like you understand them, and they’ll buy. They feel like you’re “one of them” and therefore will listen to you, read your stories, and buy. Moreover, they’ll be in the gym until they keel over after their last rep on leg day, so they’ll buy from you for a very long time.
Now, compare a market like that to the adult market and you’ll start to understand why it’s so difficult to make list building and selling via story work to that market.
First off, they’re going to free tube sites, so the ratio of freeloaders to buyers in the adult market is enormous (the dumbest thing porn sites ever did was make it all free). Secondly, they are going there for monkey-spanking purposes or to gawk at pixels moving on a page, not for anything related to self development or paid hobby in any way, shape or form (fetish sites can be an exception to this because they are a compulsion). Thirdly, they have no commonality of experience.
Males who go to porn sites are a mishmash of the bum on the street logging in at a library computer, to a corporate CEO taking a “mid-day break” to recently married men to recently divorced men, and on and on and on. They have no commonality of experience other than that they went to a porn site to watch and whack and not get caught. So, writing “one to many” marketing pieces and stories to this audience is exceptionally difficult. There’s no inside language to speak, and no common fears, failures, and frustrations to reference.
Again, that’s not to say money can’t be made with adult. Clearly it is, but most sales (and at some point a sale must take place) are impulse sales, catching the viewer at that brief time where they feel like buying (and often rebilling them with disclosure in tiny print).
As you guys know, I am a huge fan of list building and fostering a long term relationship with your list and customers. That IS the only true asset in your business and can pay off for decades if handled correctly. But the lynchpin to that working is initial selection of market, and the adult market does not lend itself to that for the reasons described above. So, if your skill is story telling and email marketing (and that’s my skill set), go find a good market to apply your skills to…there are hundreds of them, and any one of them can make you a fortune.
More to come!
Originally Posted by dennis
You mentioned in your post that conversions in the adult market had dropped off quite a bit, and that seems to be the consensus among various posts. While there are several reasons for this, one of the big ones is very important for any marketer with a list to understand and avoid…it’s not unique to the adult market.
When I was a kid, I loved getting the old Sharper Image catalog because it was full of so many cool things—the vibrating chair, ionic breeze air purifiers, and all kinds of other cool, cutting edge gadgets. Later on, when I got into direct response marketing, I heard something Richard Thalheimer, the owner of the Sharper Image say that stuck with me.
What he said (in a talk about direct marketing) was this: to sustain your business you always have to answer the question in the minds of your customers, “what’s new?” He said that every edition of the Sharper Image catalog featured 30% new products, because if it didn’t (and they tested this), conversions dropped like a rock the next time they mailed. Consumers loved to get the Sharper Image because there was always a new and exciting gadget, and they looked forward to it. If there was nothing (or not enough) new, they tuned out. The ultimate marketing sin is being boring, and that’s what’s happening in the adult market.
If you look at the adult marketplace and ask Thalheimer’s question, “what’s new?” you’re going to come up with a very short answer. If you go look at the STM adult Spy tool, you’ll see the same old offers over and over:
Extreme/weird/fetish pay sites
Penis Enlargement Pills
Hard On Pills
Web Cams
Hookup/Cheating Sites
Get Laid Advice (DiCarlo Offers)
…and that’s about it. Moreover, with the advent of spy tools, lazy marketers are stealing the banners and landing page and running them with minor variations (if any) so the market sees the same thing over and over and over. There’s nothing new. And because of the aggregation of adult sites in ad networks, it is easy for hundreds of affiliates to advertise en masse, the same stuff over and over to a marketplace already saturated by it.
There was a time when the adult marketplace DID answer the “what’s new” question—way back in 2001-2, my current webmaster did SEO for porn, optimized for the term “mpeg” and made a lot of money because that was the new, downloadable video format and everyone wanted it. But it didn’t stay new long, and in the last few years, the question has not been answered.
Contrast this with the gaming market that does an excellent job of answering “what’s new.” When I was a kid, I played Telengard on the Commodore 64 as well as Zork 1, 2, and 3, and later the Bard’s Tale before I lost interest in gaming. But there are plenty of old guys like me who started out doing the same thing and never stopped. Now they play adventure games on their tablets and mobile phones, and eagerly await the next release of Grand Theft Auto (first released in 1997!). They want new games to play after they solve the old ones, and new games are constantly released. That market answers the question, “what’s new?”
This is something very important to keep in mind when marketing to your list. I know many, many internet marketers who build big lists, only to start whining about how unresponsive their lists were months later. The lists became unresponsive because the owners bored the list, and never gave them anything new. I have customers on my list acquired in 2004, still active because I make it a point to send them something new every single day-- my commentary. Yesterday, for example, I commented on why Tom Brady was wise not to hand over his cell phone to the NFL-the contents would have been on TMZ in an hour- and that’s timely commentary on a new event.
So, whatever market you decide to go into, always, always, always make sure you answer the question, “what’s new?”
And what happened to Richard Thalheimer and the Sharper Image? He sold it out to a big dumb company for a huge payday, and it took them 18 months to ruin what he built over 30 years. They forgot all about “what’s new?”
Very inspiring John, thank you!
I have put a lot of time in creating new angles/frames/stories and the idea was to give the visitors something new.
Something they havn't read before. And in the end "something that they think will work for them" , and so they give it a try.
However, the problem was that when people visited my site they could instantly see it was about dating and so they lost interest. Most of them didn't even read what I had to say.
I believe dating itself is evergreen.
So the way to present my information should first of all be NEW.
Not just a new design, but a whole new concept.
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