Stop with the refunds already....

I think Jason has hit the nail on the head here. You're better off not having these types of people as customers. The whingers and whiners who aren't really prepared to do anything to move forward.

I've heard this referred to as "repel marketing" where you are marketing to attract a certain type of customer i.e action takers who are willing to spend the money and invest in themselves , but you're also trying to repel the ones that aren't prepared to spend much money if at all and don't want to do any work.

So, as Jason said, make it clear in your sales page who this is NOT for and increase your prices. It is a fact that higher ticket items have less refunds than lower ones.

Hey Linus,

^^^ What he Said! ^^^

Sometimes a minimal price increase is enough to weed out just the "dreamers".

In addition, evaluate "where" you're selling.
The object isn't to get in front of "any" audience, but to get in front of the right audience.

For instance, if you're selling primarily via WSO traffic, you may want to think about whether or not the visitor is even at a level to appreciate what you're selling. If what you are selling is not targeted to the audience of a particular advertising media, you'll still sell - but you'll have to live with higher refund rates.

If you are selling through affiliates you potentially have a more difficult problem.

It can be very hard to keep track of all your affiliates' advertising methods and pre-sales messages. Are they over selling (not unheard of). Are they sending junk traffic? When selling through affiliates, you need to monitor their performance too. If a given affiliate is generating a disproportionate number of refunded sales, you may need to consider "firing" said affiliate.

Put this in your sales message right before your order page.

Sure it will kill your conversions but you will get rid of lots of people who expect to do nothing and make money.

Also, if your refund rate is higher than 15%, you should take a hard look at your sales copy as you may be over-promising and under-delivering when it should be the other way around.

And if you're selling in the make money space, expect a higher refund rate anyway especially if your copy is aggressive.

This is why so many good product do mediocre sales while the crappy eBooks and software that won't work in a millions years fly off the shelf.

Unfortunately, it is part of knowing thy customer. You have chosen a route where you actually provide value and a good product which requires effort to implement. Also, unfortunately, that weeds out 90% of the people that will buy your product and actually want it. Of that, some will return once they realize it wasn't the quick fix they were searching for (and ironically will probably never find).

It was mentioned earlier about writing your copy to weed out the dreamers from the action takers and I agree. It may reduce your overall sales a bit but your returns should also reduce because the people you intend to target are buying.

No it's not about my product isn't good.

It is very good. But it's to many shiny object buyers that always buys new stuff. It's just annoying, if they don't want to work, then leave im.

Some people just don't get that Cereal Refunding is not the breakfast of champions!


Patrick

I did this on my latest product and it worked.