
Patio11 launches his lifecycle emails course - _pius
https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails
======
loumf
Raise prices (well, wait 2 days, so I can get my purchase through) -- I just
sent a note to my boss that this is a no-brainer for the $999. And, we already
do email campaigns like this, and probably do 80% of what you are going to
suggest (at least), and we only have 3 people that would directly benefit from
knowing this -- but, we think it would be a nice perk to employees to see the
course.

Quote from co-worker: "It would be worth it even if we learn one new, non-
generic thing to try" Of course, we sell software that goes for $x0,000+, so
anything that moves the needle with leads ROFLstomps $999.

(I have been waiting to write a response to patio11 like this for a while)

~~~
patio11
I just want to mention that I really appreciate both this advice and your
other comment below, and am starring it for future reference.

~~~
Sukotto
How does one save comments on HN? Do you access via some sort of overlay app
with better functionality than the vanilla site or do you just bookmark stuff
to your browser (or pinboard or whatever)

~~~
patio11
I think some people like Delicious but I actually use notebooks for this sort
of thing.

------
amix
Sorry for not being an ass kisser, but I think this is way too overpriced and
I would not like to see HN turn into a marketplace. Imagine if every HN
contributor started selling their knowledge this way - - it would be a bad
community where everything was behind paid walls. And yes, I do know that
Patrick has contributed a lot to HN, but so has thousands of others, and I am
sure he has learnt a ton here as well. There's no need to monetize this or to
encourage monetization of this kind of knowledge.

~~~
loumf
On the HN I read, there is a nearly constant stream of ShowHN posts with paid
services and promotions of Y-Combinator startups who stand to gain from the
exposure. It has always been part of HN culture to promote our projects --
particularly accepted if you are a major contributor and didn't just register
to post.

For someone who stands to make a lot of money from acting on the information
here, I am happy to pay for it.

Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it -- I already
do a lot of email dripping -- free, to me, would mean that it's basic, and
that I wouldn't benefit from it.

~~~
brianfryer
> Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it

Excellent point! I feel the same way about most free Internet-busines videos.
Plus, I'm much more inclined to listen to, and take action on, advice from
trustworthy sources. By contributing so much to HN, Patrick has built up a
tremendous amount of trust.

------
patio11
I'm happy to answer questions, as always, but would prefer talking about the
business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable
selling on HN.) I'll probably blog about it in more detail later, too.

~~~
dave1619
I've been following your blog, podcasts, comments here, etc and learn a lot
from you. I've gotta say you hit a big need with the email course, and though
I wish the price was $99 I know you're delivering based on value and the
course is probably worth more than the $300 price to me. So, I'll probably get
it. I think a sample video from the course (ie., 5 minutes would help a lot)
to help people take the leap. Or a 2 minute intro video to the course. There's
something about video (especially when the author's face comes and he starts
talking) that adds more legitimacy and seriousness to the offer.

~~~
patio11
That's the opposite of what I expect but, since it is entirely possible that
video + text does outperform text, there's A/B tests running to that effect.

~~~
dave1619
Just bought the course and I'm downloading some of the videos because I watch
most of my videos on the go (ie., in the car or on my ipad).

First impressions (ie., first 60 seconds on the course), it really seems like
something created for a person sitting at a computer to watch it all. I wish
there was a downloadable zip file I could download all the videos at once. I'm
trying to download the videos now and I'm running into all sorts of errors and
such (I think it's only letting me download one video at a time). Actually I'm
getting error messages right now for all the pages. Is your site down?

Update: Ok, it looks like it's back up and running. When I download videos and
try to right-click to save mp4 file, it downloads an html file and not the
video. I need to go into the video to watch it and then option-return the url
to start downloading. Very strange. This happens to the opt-in videos in
lesson 2. optins-teardowns video doesn't seem to be downloading at all.

Also, your video sizes are really large. Example, 235mb for an 8:10 minute
video (1024x768 resolution). You should be able to get the file size down to
100mb or so. For comparison, Kevin Rose's interview of Dennis Crowley in 720p
is about the same size, 237mb, but the interview is about 20 minutes.

Your copywriting video is 686mb for 19:53 length... compared with Kevin Rose's
Dennis Crowley video of 235mb for 19:20 length. That makes your video 3x the
size of Kevin Rose's video (which is great 720p quality).

Honestly, this is a really sucky first experience. This is going to take my
all morning to download these videos because the file sizes are 2-3x what they
should be and because the links aren't all working.

And then after I download the videos, since they're so large I'm going to have
a hard time fitting them in my iPhone and iPad. Please investigate getting
your file sizes down. I think you can shrink the file sizes of your mp4 video
to 1/3 the current size but keep the same resolution/quality.

Update: Your optins-teardowns.mp4 file is absent. I can't download it. Please
fix cause I don't want to watch the lessons out of order.

~~~
patio11
I'm looking into why it can't find that file. In the meanwhile, I'll send you
a direct link.

~~~
dave1619
Actually, it just got fixed a minute ago. I was able to download it.

------
r00k
Hi Patrick,

I'd like to preface this comment by saying that I'm a huge fan of your work.
You've personally helped me a ton.

That said, I must ask what made you choose video as the medium for this
content. Frankly, you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality.

Even beyond congeniality, why is five hours of video at 150wpm superior to a
medium-length ebook I can read at 800wpm?

Thanks!

~~~
philk
I prefer reading too but most people will pay more for a video than they will
for an ebook regardless of the value contained within because they've been
trained repeatedly that books are cheap.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Patrick and Ramit Sethi discuss this very thing in the last Kalzumeus podcast.

Book pricing isn't as hopelessly broken as music pricing, but that is faint
praise indeed. It's sad. Writing a good book is a great deal of work, reading
a good book provides a great deal of value, but the psychology of the book
market recognizes neither of these facts. People vaguely imagine that
producing books costs approximately the time required to type them, and expect
to buy books for the cost of buying, inking, and shipping the paper - if the
paper is absent they expect the price to be negligable.

Whereas the one good thing to be said about modern college tuitions is that
they provide a nice big anchor for the cost of a "course". Practically
anything looks like a bargain next to the list price of an hour of TA
instruction at Harvard. [1]

[1] That's a fun math problem: Assuming five courses at Harvard, five hours
per week of lecture and recitation per course, a fourteen-week semester and
$38k tuition and fees, I come up with about $55 per hour per student. Of
course, Harvard does not bill by the hour, but that's a whole 'nother essay.

------
ryanio
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?

~~~
patio11
_who's going to read those walls of text?_

The buyers, mostly.

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.

~~~
underdown
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!

~~~
graeme
He did something right. I read it start to finish without pause.

I am in the target demographic, we've just started implementing lifecycle
emails at my company.

~~~
underdown
I'm not agreeing with the op. Just looking cross eyed at the wall of text
statement.

~~~
graeme
But, are you in charge of a lifecycle email campaign? For whatever reason, it
didn't feel like a wall of text to me.

But if the topic wasn't of intense interest, maybe it would have.

------
tisme
Selling shovels during a goldrush is a great way to make money! Patrick is
sure to rake it in with this one, and with the 'money back guarantee' you
really can't go wrong. HN is the perfect target demographic for this product.

~~~
patio11
I think there's a nuance to "selling shovels during a goldrush" suggesting
that shovel-sellers exploit the naive 49ers, the majority of whom will end up
with no gold. That really isn't the point of the exercise.

Most of my consulting clients, and the people I build this for, are not in a
gold-rush. They run profitable businesses selling software to other
businesses. This is a business input for them which they have a clear path to
profiting from. It is about as speculative an investment as a pizzeria buying
basket of tomatoes.

If there is anyone hypothetically thinking of buying this basket of tomatoes
because they want to aspirationally run a pizzeria one day, please don't. I
don't want your money. Go read my blog. Found a pizzeria. Find customers for
it. When you need this you'll know, and it will be a screamingly obvious
mutual win.

~~~
tisme
For someone who isn't comfortable selling on HN you're doing a stellar job of
it! Telling people that you don't want their money is a great strategy.

~~~
philk
It seems to me he's doomed either way.

If he comes on here and says _I built this and you all need to buy it right
now_ , well then he's obviously just a salesman.

If he comes on here and says _I built this, don't buy it if you don't meet
these criteria, I'm not even going to try to sell it because I don't want to
turn HN into a sales venue_ , well then, he's a obviously just a particularly
crafty salesman.

So while I see what you're saying I'm not sure how you expect patio11 to
discuss this on HN without appearing like a salesman to at least a few people.

~~~
tisme
You make it out as if appearing like a salesman is a bad thing. Why not be
proud of what you're good at? This product _is_ all about sales, it's aimed
squarely at the HN demographic and the page does a fantastic job of proving
that Patrick is good at sales (as if anybody needed convincing).

And if that did not convince you that this product rocks there is a glowing
testimonial from a satisfied customer on the homepage right now.

~~~
larrys
I think there is a huge difference between a top commenter on HN trying to
sell something and a non-top commenter doing the same after achieving a
nominal karma rate. (I'm thinking specifically about what appears to be the
recent spate of attempts by an company that rhymes with "muffer" to blog about
all types of things in order to draw attention to their products.)

Anyone who spends considerable time on HN should be allowed to sell whatever
they want that relates to their expertise within reason.

Perhaps the jealousy surrounding people who view "selling" and "business guys"
as bad comes from people who don't have the makeup to take rejection that
comes with selling. Lest anyone think there is no value to a "business guy"
that it's all about technology.

------
JesseAldridge
Didn't like the video. From <http://ycombinator.com/video.html>:

"Please do not recite a script written beforehand. Just talk spontaneously as
you would to a friend. People delivering memorized speeches (or worse still,
text read off the screen) usually come off as stupid. Unless you're a good
enough actor to fake spontaneity, you lose more in the stilted delivery than
you gain from a more polished message."

~~~
trhtrsh
Um, people who aren't gifted speakers come off as stupid when they talk
spontaneously about a topic.

~~~
pestaa
So if one comes off as stupid either way on the video, why not just write it
down?

------
philk
That is a _really_ nice sales letter and I've bookmarked it to read through
repeatedly when I need to write one. It nails the long form sales format and
manages to do so without sounding sleazy[1].

I particularly like the _Do not buy this course_ section which qualifies
potential customers.

[1] To be fair depending upon the target demographic the sleaziness can be
increased without causing problems. If you were building a product for hard
core sales guys _Your Customers Can Still Afford Branded Groceries: Learn How
To Capture This Wasted Revenue Today!_ might do brilliantly.

------
peterjancelis
Patrick, I'd be interested in how you decided on your pricing. With all the
pre-selling and your friendship with Amy Hoy I was honestly expecting prices
to be about 10-12 times as high, or 5-6 times based on the full price starting
next week. What makes you think you will sell 10 times as much at $249 than at
$2490?

~~~
patio11
It actually might be underpriced, to be totally honest, but not _that_
underpriced I don't think.

To justify prices in the > $2k region I think I would need to add some sort of
interactive component (webinar or what have you), and I have no time on the
schedule for that in the next couple of months, so I went with something which
was totally self-guided for my first try. I might revisit that eventually, if
there's lots of demand for it and if it makes sense for the business.

~~~
graeme
I agree. I wasn't expecting it to be within my price range (though I'm glad
that it is).

Buying is a trivial decision at $300. We sell a $350 product, with high
margins. A _single_ sale and this course pays for itself. (2-3, if you include
my time spent watching and implementing it)

 __edit: __turns out I didn't even notice the price. It's actually $250. I was
prepared to pay anything up to $400 without thinking about it or discussing
reimbursement with my company.

~~~
unreal37
But if that price was $2,500 I am sure there'd be a discussion with finance
and budgets become involved. In person 5 hour courses don't cost that never
mind web videos. Quite frankly, he wouldn't sell many at $2,500 - not sure if
it's a 90% drop in sales but it could be.

~~~
graeme
Mmm, you might be right on the corporate price point. I was only considering
the personal one, didn't notice the 2K price tag on the other.

------
atldev
Patrick has earned trust in the community by giving away so much valuable
information. My first thought was that it's about time you sold some of this
info. The reason is great: "I got tired of saying no." Good stuff, and thanks
for all the free advice along the way.

------
whileonebegin
This is a 10 mile long sales page, down to the P.S. at the bottom. The copy
itself, sounds genuine. However, the look of the page itself is a turn-off.
Why did you decide to use this format as opposed to a simple, cut & dry page
with a big "buy now" button?

~~~
swombat
Long form sales letters are proven, statistically, in many contexts, to
convert more. It's really that simple. He could do a short and snappy page,
but then he'd probably lose thousands of dollars a day. Or he can make people
like you feel like it's a bit spammy, and make thousands of extra bucks a day.
I know which one I'd choose.

------
grey-area
This line from the article had a particular resonance for me given the slow
drip feed of articles from Patio11 on HN gradually establishing credibility ↬

 _Drip marketing means sending a timed sequence of emails to educate,
persuade, and only then sell._

------
propercoil
So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN.

Here is a lesson in conversion: make your video auto play next time.

Other than that i really hate where HN is going upping this thread

~~~
follower
> So basically you linked to your squeeze page at HN.

Note that patio11 _didn't_ link to anything--this was submitted by
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_pius>

------
laurentoget
When did Hacker News turn into an MLM platform?

This page looks like a late night TV Amway infomercial, complete with third
rate camera acting. Or rather looked before their webserver bit the dust.

------
larrys
patio11 what you have written is great and I have the highest respect for what
you do (and things that you have said).

But - separate from any conflict or cynicism that others have raised as far as
HN becoming a marketplace, there was to much to read (and in fact I didn't
read it, I skimmed it) so I wouldn't feel comfortable paying the amount you
are asking which was located _at the bottom_.

I feel you should have started at the top with:

"If This Doesn't Create Value For Your Business, I Don't Want Your Money"

(pricing options)

Want to know more? Read below.

Just my thoughts. By the way I have no doubt that you have thought long and
hard about putting that price at the bottom of the letter and could point to
backup for that strategy (perhaps in something you've written before or
generally accepted knowledge). But my reaction is my reaction so I just
thought I'd throw it out there.

------
graeme
How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address?
Your checkout process was very simple, makes my company's process look
cumbersome.

Also, I noticed you don't use paypal. Could you elaborate on that choice? My
guess is that you know your demographic is used to using credit cards, and it
eliminates a step, but I'd like to confirm

~~~
patio11
_How do you do credit card processing without asking for a billing address?_

Stripe.

 _Could you elaborate on that choice?_

Stripe! (No, seriously: I have the capability of running things through Paypal
but a) that code is from BCC and written when I was young and stupid, and I
was afraid of breaking something if I just copy/paste ported it over, b) this
keeps my accountant happy, and c) there was a non-zero "risk" of this selling
five figures in a day with $1,000 charges in the mix, which would mean Paypal
and I would have to have a chat, and that was a complication I just didn't
need right now.)

------
scoot
So for those curious, but not curious enough to sign up for WPengine's
"course", here's the first email:

"I just wanted to say hello and thank you for your interest in WP Engine. I
saw that you filled out our speed test form, and wanted to let you know that
there is a real person over here, and that I'm interested to hear how you feel
about us so far.

Do you have any questions or concerns? Can I help you make a decision either
way?

Thanks!

Trafton Esler Lead Developer Champion"

There are so many things wrong with this email I don't know where to start. My
only hope is that they inserted this email into the sequence /after/ Patio11's
involvement; otherwise it's a warning sign (along with the awful video on the
sales page) that his course is not all it's hyped-up up to be.

Good luck anyway, there's a sucker born every minute.

~~~
ericabiz
Hello! I'm Erica, and I consulted for WP Engine at the same time as Patrick. I
worked side by side with Patrick during the week he was at WP Engine--Jason
(their CEO) hired me to jump-start their entire marketing department for 3
months, vs. Patrick's specific "email drip feed" task.

I'm intimately familiar with the details of the open rates and conversion
rates from WP Engine's email series; in fact, I was the one who helped
sequence them and proofread/edit some of them after Patrick left.

I can tell you with 100% authority that you are dead wrong. That email
converts extremely well. In fact, it used to go directly to Trafton's inbox
and he had fun showing me all the responses people sent to him every day.

If you want the spoiler details, it converts well because people love to know
there's a real human behind all this nonsense that we call "the Internet."
(And it also converts well because Trafton is a machine who seems to never
sleep and responds to everyone's questions quickly...another key ingredient.
Everyone was always asking Jason how they could "hire a Trafton.") It speaks
well for the people Jason hires, as well as the effectiveness of the email
itself. There you have it, from the horse's mouth.

------
ky3
God, I'm so envious reading all these comments -- patio11 struck a gold mine
of the golden mean!

You know you've priced okay when (1) people bitch it's too high and (2) people
bitch it's too low.

You know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch it's too ugly (walls of text!)
and (2) people say it's not.

You also know you've MVP'ed when (1) people bitch the video's terrible (WTF?
he didn't comb his hair!) and (2) others don't give a flip.

Now back to the price: it's not like big pharma has some kind of insta-power
pill that chomps down all that consumer surplus. For a one-man show he did
great.

------
smoyer
Wow ... now here's a testimonial!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4587080>

 _EDIT_ \- Linked to the other HN topic. Just click through for the story

------
31reasons
If you guys want to learn direct mail marketing, print and read all these
letters from Gary Halbert from the 80s. It still applies now very much so.
[http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-
lette...](http://www.trafficplusconversion.com/1345/gary-halbert-letter/)
There is a limit how much you can learn by reading and watching million dollar
videos. Its all about doing and testing for your business.

------
bmccormack
"Switching customers to annual billing radically decreases churn, one of the
key risks to SaaS businesses long-term."

Where I can I read more about annual billing decreasing churn? I've read your
blog post (or email?) about switching to annual billing to free up revenue to
acquire new customers, but I don't remember reading about how it decreases
churn as well.

~~~
patio11
Dharmesh Shah has talked about it extensively -- basically, of people on
monthly billing, at any given time approximately 100% are at risk of churn. Of
people on annual billing, < 10% are at risk of churn at any given time. They
also have less opportunities to hit involuntary churn like, e.g., getting a CC
declined or expired.

~~~
dshah
Indeed, that's true.

One additional point: Customers that commit to annual billing generally tend
to churn less often overall -- because they've made a more "considered"
purchase and committed more time to the purchasing decision.

------
dchuk
Looks like your site is throwing an error right now Patrick:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546067/Screenshots/cpc58_yeew2b.png> (I realize that
message shows nothing but it's all I could come up with to help out right now)

------
tocomment
That sounds really cool. How does one learn to write a sales letter like that?
I found it really compelling.

~~~
patio11
Read a lot of them, learn what works, implement them for clients, test, learn
what works, take off anything you'd be embarrassed to put your own name on,
try writing one for yourself.

There's also a _lot_ of books and products available on copywriting. The only
one I've ever liked is, well, everything CopyHackers has ever done.

~~~
thenomad
Thank you. Copywriting resources are always valuable, and I'd not heard of
Copyhackers. Subscribed.

------
spitfire
I seem to be A/B tested out of the sample video. Anyone have a link?

~~~
patio11
Append ?video=yes to the URL. It will shortcircuit A/Bingo. (n.b. This
behavior ships off by default in A/Bingo for a variety of reasons -- think
very hard before enabling it.)

------
MikeKusold
Was this inspired through talks with Ramit? I am seeing a similar model
appear. He uses free emails to sell courses, and you use free blog posts to
sell emails.

------
kareemm
@patio11 - Typo: "The course is on sale for until October 5th"

------
noahc
Patrick,

Congrats! You've shipped something of value to the world.

