Because I learn so much from posts where people share the behind the scenes & lessons learned from their launches – I’m sharing here why I’m doing what I’m doing for the 18 Days to Live Your Truth launch.

1. Why the Long Form Sales Letter?

I’ve tried other ways to communicate what you need to know to buy something – cool websites with sliders and tabs that all the marketers (who, ahem, are not clients or customers of mine) thought were awesome.

But those new-format sites don’t convert as well as the old school long form sales letter.

Maybe people don’t click on the tabs, or there are too many places to stop, or they get confused, or because it seems like less information so the offer looks less compelling or you just don’t get enough information to buy.

I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is that for the exact same program, the long form sales letter (even horrible ugly poorly written ones!) get a greater % of my visitors to make a decision and buy.

When I was writing this sales letter, I came across a wonderful email article about this from Naomi Dunford (of IttyBiz and now making something else). Among other things, she said — “fonts don’t have a morality.”

The thing is, I can write a sales letter that is the truth.

That’s not slimy. That helps you make a powerful decision that is right for you.

And if a red header fonts and red pointy arrows, break-out boxes and tables, a P.S. call to action and check mark bullets … if those things help you make the right decision … then frak, that’s what I’m going to do.

BTW – the sales page video is 20 minutes (my longest ever sales page video!) because it’s a parallel track.

In other words, the video has enough info to make a decision, and the sales page has enough info to make a decision.

I assume that people are either reading people or video people – so each one stands alone.

I also tried to make it possible to buy just from the headers & bolds & tables … which is how I buy. (Ironically, I don’t watch sales videos unless they are demos. Lol!)

2. Why the pricing?

Well … I could give you a bunch of calculations and charts of why I picked these prices.

I did do some calculations, comparing them to how much email/phone consulting costs, what I needed to sell to pay the bills, etc.

Yes, I have historical reasons for my pricing. I’ve found that $97 is a price point that converts well for my people on a new program (and then typically I can raise it to $127 or $147 the next time around, when there is more buzz and testimonials). I also have found that people are willing to pay a lot more money for one-on-one coaching with me.

But the real reason for these prices is that it’s what felt right in my gut.

I didn’t do payment plans on the $97 because I want to help people. If someone can’t afford that price then they would have more success in the program if they first take care of their money emergencies before they join. I do offer payment plans for the coaching upgrades, since those are higher price points.

I didn’t do an early-bird sale because lowering the price felt off, and raising it in a few days felt off. Not a scientific reason, but that’s the truth.

3. Why 18 Days?

I’ve done a bunch of four week and six week programs – and it seems that a bunch of people fall off after week three.

So my theory is … let’s see what happens if the program is just three weeks long!

To make the 18 Days format work and make it more easily digestible, I split the program into six small units instead of a big weekly class.

This also works better since I imagine that June is a hard month for people to plan (with schools getting out and vacations) & I’m moving in June, making it hard for me to schedule streaming video classes.

And … 18 Days sounded good.

4. Why the eCourse?

I picked the eCourse format because it was the best of two worlds.

Classes are great because the inherent deadline makes people more accountable, there’s a community of people doing the class together, and it makes the promotion have a natural deadline.

Information products are great because people can do on their own time and consume it easily from any time zone.

So I combined the best of both worlds by creating an eCourse that’s based on time (with content released on a schedule) and is all pre-recorded, so it’s convenient for everyone in everywhere.

I have no plans to make this into an information product, because it would lose the time aspect and the community aspect.

5. Why this promotion?

Well, this is not going exactly as I had envisioned.

Things are crazy for me right now – I’m finding an apartment and buying a car, G is graduating pre-school and getting set up for Kindergarden, I’m dealing with an underwater/unoccupied rental property, I only have a few hours of childcare each week, I keep getting sick, a few other personal things I’m not discussing here … and I completely underestimated how much all of the above would take from me.

I didn’t plan that the sales page would go up less than two weeks before the class starts. But really, that’s probably better.

Historically, shorter sales periods have worked better for me than longer ones.

In the upcoming week I plan to release more information and resources to help people make a decision, including a video tour of the membership site, some examples of what we’ll be doing in the program, an explanation of the hand analysis extra (included in the upgrades), and whatever else strikes my fancy.

G and I will be in Portland (at WDS) the last weekend of the launch.

So I’ll be closing out the sale in a hotel room with a 6 year old running around.

That will be interesting.

Hope you got something out of my brain dump of what’s behind the scenes at 18 Days to Live Your Truth.

I’ll update you afterwards to let you know how it went!

I know I do. Boxes & boxes of them.

Are we doing a terrible disservice by selling information products to our customers?

Are information products a failure?

What do you think? Do we need info products to effectively leverage our businesses? Do they have their place? Or are we doing a disservice to our people?