dsiomtw

So I'm assuming many people here have watched Ryan's 3 videos that led to the launch of his Continuity Blueprint program. I'm in the middle of launching my own continuity-based program so the videos were very timely.

Here's something I thought was interesting though ...

In Video 1 you'll see him outline his entire business plan on the napkin - the SLO that leads to the continuity program, then the small ticket upsell that leads to the big ticket upsell, followup systems and webinars, call centers, the whole shebang.

In Video 2 he goes over some of the numbers involved to make it all more "real".

Awesome videos Ryan. This is great free content. But here's my first reaction ...

Why not just follow the 80/20 rule and keep things simple?

As demonstrated in Video 2, around 80% of the total revenues come from the continuity program. And all the other "stuff" that generates the remaining 20% of revenues comprises at least 80% of the work.

Why not just have a simple SLO that leads to a continuity program and be done with it?

Sure on the surface you'll make 20% less money, but you'll do 80% less work and have 80% less hassle.

You'll still be making plenty of money, and you can re-invest as much of the profits as you want into getting more people into the funnel. Sure another 20% would be nice, but not for 4X the work.

I guess my point is that the last 20% of revenue that comes from the 1st upsell, 2nd upsell, webinars, call centers, etc. isn't really that important in the overall scheme of things when you really look at the numbers. And it's TONS more work and hassle.

So why go through all of that and complicate things? ... am I missing something here?

And yes I know a lot of the product creation, etc. can be outsourced but still it's a TON more work.

If anything, wouldn't you be better off spending that time creating another SLO => Continuity program in another niche? All else being equal, then you'd be making 2X the revenue instead of just an extra 20%.

dsiomtw

No one has any comments?

Do you think Ryan makes the whole system so complicated in order to more easily sell his "system", or am I missing something here?

Andyhenry

Sorry, I haven't seen them but what you described is just basic membership site marketing - and yes, I agree that you can make it much simpler.

This is something that many IMers really overcomplicate - often to the point where they don't do anything about it.

There are some simple things about membership models (sorry - 'continuity programs'):

1 - Don't promise more than you can deliver.
2 - Don't overcomplicate the delivery system (an email account and a web host can be all you need)
3 - Find the demand before you create the membership (same as usual - don't focus on the product until you know where and how to sell it - the classic 80/20 principle)

If you do those things you can make everything much quicker and simpler. Many people think that to run a membership you need to get tons of content created and run forums etc.... but in reality you only need the systems required to fulfill whatever you promised - and that could be one small report, or one short audio - YOU decide.

Andy

jbsmith

I'm actually a big fan of selling something "else" into a market first to guage the demand and interest - then with the feedback you get from the market, you have built-in demand and ideas for content making the membership site that much more effective and easier from a development point of view.

It's easy to completely miss the mark if you jump right into a membership site - the time it takes to get it right can be deadly - so it's better if you operate in the market for a while, then convert to a membership model in my opinion.

Jeff

AndrewCavanagh

Even though it may be only 20% of sales the percentage of profit on these upsells etc may be much higher.

Keep in mind you'll probably pay either significant pay per click, affiliate commissions etc to get those initial sales so the cost is high.

But with upsells and back end sales the cost is minimal so the profit percentage is much higher.

If you're breaking even on the front end (a very powerful marketing strategy) then that 20% of back end sales could even be 100% of profits.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

dsiomtw

Not sure I understand what you're saying Andrew...

Say you have a simple low ticket offer that's $27. It commits them to trying out your monthly membership program which is also $27.

You should be able to get as many customers as you want for $27, which is the initial price they pay you. So you make nothing on the initial sale.

(Even if you're paying $0.75 a click you only need about a 3% conversion rate to breakeven on the front-end and cover all your customer acquisition costs)

All of the monthly rebills are where you make your money...

dv8

What is SLO?

dsiomtw

The way Ryan and others use the term, it means Self-Liquidating Offer. Basically a low ticket front end offer that you don't expect to make much if any profit on. Basically it should just fund your customer acquisition costs.

limoge

I'm not sure about the numbers but assuming only 10 members and they stick around for the three months that I've heard most people stay in a membership, that's only $270 per month or $810 in three months. If you offer higher priced items as upsells, you can make more from just one $997 or higher product, or two $497 products in a month than collecting subscriptions for 3 months.

Scaling up from those numbers, I can imagine that it would make excellent sense to put in the extra work. Even if the subscriptions turned out to pull in more steady income, I think I would still have the other offers available because it would be extra money coming in that I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time/money marketing.

dsiomtw

You're gonna have an extremely low conversion rate on your upsell if you're trying to go from $27 to $497 or $997 (i.e. practically zero). So no you're not going to make anywhere near as much from the upsells as you will from the subscriptions. If you're starting at $27, you'd be lucky to get 1 out of 500 people to buy your $997 upsell.

On top of that, creating a $997 product that provides $997 of value and doesn't get tons of refunds is a lot of work no matter how you slice it. In the time it would take you to create such a product you could create an entirely new SLO=>Continuity program and make way more money ...

dv8

Thanks.

Yeah, I think the problem is people don't stick around for much longer than 3-4 months. Hence the backend items.

cashcorpinc

The upsells are there to make more liquid dollars fast, so you don't have to wait so long to ramp up.

A well crafted upsell process can be as much as 25-30% of the profits in a mature business. Continuity will be a little less than that, if your back end conversions are good.

The "big ticket" product is the bulk of the profits. It's also what you promote in your AR, and on your telesems/webinars/direct mail/phone calls/etc.

In my business, the entire profit of the upsell process goes to pay for the traffic and most of the overhead. That leaves the continuity and the back end sales as pure profit (minus fulfillment, of course).

JohnMcCabe

If you review the first video, you'll see you're forgetting a step. The progression Ryan laid out was:

SLO ------> Continuity
|
V
Small Upsell
|
V
Big Ticket

Price-wise, you'd be looking at ~$27, $67-97, $497-997

The only ones who see the big ticket offer are the ones who have already purchased the smaller upsell.

And once set up, most of the process can be handled by systems and software, i.e. record the webinar once, show it forever.

At another point, in the second video I believe, Ryan poses the question - how many people could you put in the continuity if the entire product funnel was treated as a self-liquidating offer?

Over time, some percentage will buy all three offers:

$27 + $97 + $997 = $1,121 - $27(SLO already assumed) = $1,094

If selling expenses (PPC, affiliate commissions, etc.) are 50%, that leaves roughly $547 to buy customers with.

If the original SLO takes $27 to get a customer, that's 20 customers that you can acquire, just from that one original uber-buyer.

If those 20 stay 3 months on average, that 20 x 3 x $27 = $1,620 revenue on a $27 ad spend. Add the original buyer for 3 months at $27 and you max things out at $1,700 The ROI on this best-case customer is $1700/$27, or 630%.

That leverage is why you mess with the other 20% of the funnel profits.

BruceWayne

Do you have any actual hard proof to back this up, or is it speculation?

cashcorpinc

I get 7% of people who buy a $4.77 initial sale to buy a $1,497 product.

If I got 1 out of 500 $27 buyers to upsell, I'd slit my wrists.

Actually, I suppose I'd just test 'til I got above 7%!

dsiomtw

Well if you watch the videos this is basically the opposite of what Ryan says in his videos. In his videos he shows that the bulk of the profits come from the continuity portion. In fact, he specifically states that the only purpose of the upsells is to make more upfront cash to help put more people in the funnel.

Understood. My previous comments were in regards to someone suggesting a $997 upsell after a $27 initial purchase.

I see where you're going, and you're right. However, could you not put as many people in the funnel without all that other "stuff" which is a ton of extra work no matter how you slice it?

Unless you're shipping a big physical product your primary SLO should fund customer acquisition, leaving the continuity as pure profit. What is to stop you from putting as many people as you want into the funnel? You have plenty of cashflow from the continuity program ...

I think cashcorpinc was right when he said that the upsells are really only there to "make more liquid dollars fast, so you don't have to wait so long to ramp up."

This would only be important to a newbie though who needed to "make more liquid dollars fast".

If that wasn't the case, it still seems like your time and effort would be better spent setting up additional SLO->continuity funnels (in the same or other markets) since, as Ryan illustrates in his videos, about 80% of the revenues from the "system" come from the continuity portion.

Ryan where are you? I'd love your input on this!

Props to you if you do, although I'm guessing there's more to the story ...

Kyle Tully

Remember also that your product/model doesn't exist in a vacuum.

If you're doing up sells and your competitor isn't (and everything else is the same) then you've got ~20% more cash to out market them. If you're both driving traffic using PPC then that might be enough for you to push them out completely.

There is no reason why you can't setup the exact same model without the upsells, it's just a model and not set in stone. However as your business and market matures it's a smart idea to implement upsells into the process.

cashcorpinc

I think the real thing you're having a hard time with is that in very valuable (high $/visitor or $/customer) niches, especially those with a long history of good competition, acquiring a large number of customers for $27 each is TOUGH!

My main niche is Real Estate, and we pay about $40 to sell a $4.77 CD through PPC. If I didn't have an upsell funnel, it would take quite a while to get ramped up.

Here's the breakdown in terms of $/$4.77 CD buyer. If you're looking at using this model, this will be a great eye-opener of where the money really is:

Buy CD: $4.77

$/CD Buyer:
CD: $4.77 (and we actually do spend about that much to fulfill the CD and the sales kit).
Upsell 1: $28.71/CD
Upsell 2 (Hard Copy): $8.83
Upsell 3: ($797): $14.52
Upsells Combined: $52.06/CD Buyer

(And don't forget that the power here is that this money comes in immediately- not over the course of 6 months or more)

"Big Ticket (Box)": $100.41/CD Buyer

Remember, selling this "Big Ticket" is the whole point:

"The "big ticket" product is the bulk of the profits. It's also what you promote in your AR, and on your telesems/webinars/direct mail/phone calls/etc."

Coaching: $51/CD Buyer

Total: $271.49/CD Buyer

30 days total (i.e., not including continuity): $205.24

Continuity: $66.25/CD Buyer (Takes about 6-8 months total to collect)

Total (in 6 weeks): $271.49/CD Buyer

Obviously, this is a pretty mature funnel, so you're point about this not being as simple is totally true. But if you have expert knowledge in a niche, it's really easy to do a teleseminar/webinar/live event and recoprd it to create a Big Ticket Box, and then promote that to your AR people.

If you can get bucketloads of customers in the RE Investing niche for $27 each, I'd happily pay you to do so- I've struggled with it for a long time, and I know a lot of other people in this industry have as well.

It's fairly easy to get a small number of customers for $27 each, but tough if you try to scale up.

In my opinion, that's the point of the upsells- so you can afford to get more people to look at your "Big Ticket"

Hope that makes sense!

dsiomtw

I hear what you're saying, thanks for your detailed post. I guess I don't operate in those "high end" markets so I didn't think of that. There are a million "mass market" consumer niches out there to play with, where you CAN easily get as many customers as you want for $27.

There are also some fundamental differences between a lot of what is being said here and a lot of what Ryan Deiss shared in his video. I'm guessing a lot of the people replying here haven't actually watched his videos. Not that that's good or bad or that anyone is right or wrong, but it's always interesting to get different viewpoints ...

OnlineMasterMind

The 1st upsell is $497... then $2,497... plus I think coaching.

I find it hard to believe that only equates to 20%.

I did watch the videos but don't remember him saying that. Of course, I could have missed that part.

I think the continuity is $97/mo and if the %'s you state are indeed true (or even close) then they must have some great retention...

JohnMcCabe

On a teleseminar, Ryan stated that the average stay in a membership program was 3 months, but most of his were averaging 5-6 months.

Nato Guajardo

I have a question that I hope you guys can help me with. Are you offering the SLO, Continuity, Small Upsell, and the Big Ticket all from the same site?

RGallowitz

Guys, the product is pure genius. If you are thinking about setting up a membership site GET IT NOW. I have successfully launched a pretty big membership site in my sig and used ryans previous membership site training for that. When I heared continuity blueprint came out I immediately got it. It's FREAKING GOOD.

Mike Hill

The whole point of the many small ticket items is to identify buyers in the market. By allowing affiliates to have a greater percentage at that level enables you to convert your existing customers at a much higher rate:

This gives people a chance to see the quality of products you produce and eliminates the question of quality when you offer them a continuity based product.

To me this makes perfect sense because you can specifically target more of the market faster, identify the buyers and get them into your continuity program.

There are other ways you can use the small ticket items as well that Ryan does not show you in the free videos.

Mike Hill

RGallowitz

Absolutely. The publisher model is for those who can't come up with their own stuff. If you have your own stuff then YOU are the publisher. It's the same thing, the focus is just on you then.

Regards,
Reinhardt

Nathan Hangen

I don't have the course and I have watched some of the videos and my impression is this:

Ryan is much more professional and less sleazy than most other launch guys I have seen. Although I find his product out of my budget, I would consider it if I was looking for something like that.

I think the ethics of the launch can say a lot about a person, so far I'm impressed.

amigo85916

I honestly think Ryan has is down to an art. I am a little leary on pulling the trigger though. I'm listening now to the whole deal at The Plan for Your First $1000 - Webinar and will make my decision once I am a bit more educated.

bergie812

Ryan does a great job of explaining the process of a continuity program. He is a good teacher and communicator and lays out the program pretty well. As usual Ryan Deiss gives you alot of value for the money. Heck he even gets his tech guy to run you through amamber set up. I really like the program and have gone through all the videos. I hightly recommend it.
Anybody can shoot holes in any system. Ryan makes it very clear the you will need to test everything out in your own niche.

housefinder

Great comments posted. I am new to this. My question is what is the best way to drive traffice to a membership or continuity type site. Can you do it for free or is ppc better? and why? if ppc how much per month should be spent and if free how much time per week should be spent on free methods?

Thanks in advance

amin-lelieveld

Hi everyone,

Just a little post. Listen if you think his program is a lie than that's your perception. I have made more money with this program than any other program.

I am not saying that his program is the only way to make money online but if you ever had a bad experience always remember that this was your experience and maybe your truth not THE truth .

Listen, if somebody makes millions of dollars on the internet and people buy over and over from him than he can't be a liar.

Good luck members