I’ve just had an experience of how much cheap copywriters can really cost you.
My original sales page at http://www.AutomaticNicheProfits.com (not showing now) used to average about 2% conversion rate… that’s about double the average conversion rate and does really well for a $49.97 recurring membership. For those of you who have just started internet marketing… a 1% conversion rate means that for every 100 unique visitors you will get one sale.
But I want to constantly improve so I wasn’t happy with that 2%… I wanted to see it double.
So I saw a special offer on a forum for sales page rewrites for $500. His copy was convincing and it was backed up with a 100% refund guarantee if the conversion rate dropped or $300 refund if he didn’t improve the conversion rate by at least 1%. Yippee I thought and gladly handed over the cash… thinking to myself I couldn’t possibly lose.
WRONG!
When I finally tested the sales page (the current one that you can see at http://www.AutomaticNicheProfits.com) I discovered that my conversion rate went down to less than 1%. I gave it 2 months just to be sure. I wrote to the writer requesting a refund, stating that I was going back to the original sales letter. He said his guarantee did not mention that he couldn’t offer additional revisions. So no doubt I am stuck with the sales page for at least another month, before/if I get a refund.
But that’s not the half of it… I just calculated that because I used that sales page revision, I actually lost over $1500 in recurring income due to a lower conversion rate. OUCH that hurt a lot… that’s definately worth a lot more than $500.
But I blame myself… because what I should have done was an A|B split test with the new sales page and done the test correctly instead of going ‘cold turkey’ like I did… that way I would have minimized my losses by 50%.
So don’t make my mistakes.
1) Cheap copywriters can do a lot more damage than good… and can cost you a LOT MORE than just their low fees.
2) Always use A|B split tests instead of just doing things ‘the lazy way’.
On a side note, I just looked at the conversion rates for my $1 trial for ANP and I see that the best performer (via multi variant tracking) is 6.62% that means that even if 50% of them cancel the trial before the 7 days I will still have a conversion rate of 3.31% which is much better than 2%. And from my figures I am getting a lot less than 50% conversion rate ;-).
My advice? Test test and test again.
All the best for your online success.
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
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Hey Paul,
Great post. At least you are testing and know for
sure where your conversions are. Most people that
I talk to do little or no testing.
I’m getting better but I still have a long way
to go.
Jeff Dedrick
What split testing software do you use?
Jeff, testing and tracking is one of the best things you can do to constantly improve your business.
Jeff I use Easy Multi Tracking
http://www.PaulKleinmeulman.com/EMT
All the best,
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
Good post Paul. Cheap copywriter do dirt cheap work to get more clients and experience. Which means they are focused on their own business not on yours…and this is the problem. A good copywriter should really care about you (the client) and the product the sales letter he is about to write is supposed to sell. They won’t take time to understand your project and as you said you’re loosing money.
Paul, Thanks for the reminder that we should not play with our business
All the best
JP
Thanks Paul. Very insightful. Your reasoning for geting a pro copyrighter sounded very sound: but you still got taken to the cleaners. Hopefully you just saved us all big bucks by sharing your story.