The ultimate guarantee - has anyone tried donations

Matt,

$10 is already a low price. If you can't sell your product for that, price is NOT the problem. I suggest you first change your sales copy or get some convincing testimonials.

And the idea you suggested is not a type of guarantee.

Good luck,
Marcia Yudkin

That's a good point Marcia has made ^.

Have you considered giving it away to build a subscriber list?

Hi there,

I think it was Ted Nicholas who said, "If you can't give it away, you'll never be able to sell it".

All the best,

Sasha.

Hi Matt,

Many of the gazillions of inter web users expect everything to be free. So I wouldn't hold out too much hope for avalanches of "donations"

So, do as Marcia suggested.

And...this might seem a bit of a stretch but sometimes (providing everything else is bang in place - great copy, excellent product, high targeted traffic etc) - things don't sell as well as they should because the price is too low.

Also you mentioned your price point is $10.00 - it's always best not to make it a round number.



Steve

I know several software creators who use this model but have no
way of knowing how they do. At least Wikipedia is based on
the donation model and they have survived.

Your best answer will come by giving it a try and indicate that
you ALREADY sold it for $10 rather than just saying "free". Also
don't indicate the donation in the marketing material but in
the product itself. So only AFTER they downloaded they would
learn about the donation opportunity--at least that's my take.

-Ray Edwards

Have you thought about raising the price?

Hopefully you aren't asking $10, but 9.95
or something similar which converts better
because it simply LOOKS cheaper.

If I had something that wasn't selling at
that low range, I'd increase the price to $17
and see how the 'greater value' perception
did for sales.

I like your idea about
'try it before you buy it'

Maybe you could sell it for a $1 trial
and the other $X after a few days?

Just my thought.

Shareware is a familiar software selling model based on "pay after you have used it", or in your words, a donation model.

I don't know of any real business that actually used it successfully although it worked okay for "hobby" income.

One way around it might be what is commonly referred to as repackaging. The product is bought as a digital product, and payment brings in a repackaged version including CD, manual, bonuses, etc.

Marvin

This is not always true. In my own test between 60 days vs 365 days guarantee, 60 days beat the latter.

I suggest that you reposition your product so your prospects will see more value to what you're selling.

Personally,

I think it sounds to me like you have a few choices:

Polish up your copy and try to sell it for the $9.95

Expand it, either add more to it, or can you take the existing product and make video training? Can you turn those videos into audio? Can you turn it into a thick course that you actually can have physically mailed? Can you turn this into a monthly membership product?

If you can do the above, that adds perceived value to the product, also should polish up the copy to reflect that.

If you do that, you could easily start charging $17-$27+ for the *same* product.

Good luck

I only sell cheap products to find new clients who need much more than the cheap product. It's a strategy I have used for a couple of years.

If you will offer something bigger, like "writing services" for high rates somewhere on you site, or "video marketing services"...whatever...then sell your cheap product and wait for those emails to come in about needing this or that.

It's made me a lot of money doing things that way.

I remember reading an article, probably around 10 years ago, by
internet marketer Mike Enlow.

Those who've been around a while have probably heard of Mike.

Anyways, Mike mentioned an experiment in which he literally tried
GIVING AWAY $100 bills... yet no one would take one.

And over the last 13 years I've been online, I've sold a hell of
a lot more products at $39 and higher than I've ever been able to sell at $19 or lower.

Perception is reality... if it's too low, the perception (often) is that it's crap.

Now, of course you have Kindle, Itunes, apps, and other low priced items... but
they have built-in believability and credibility. Amazon and Apple can offer .99 cent
apps and people will believe in the value.

for most people, anything for $10 bucks and the perception is that its low quality.

I'd personally add more value and improve the sales copy, so you can then
increase desire.

Often times, you can melt away price resistance simply by increasing
the desire for your product. this takes some good copy.

I've learned that by intensifying desire in the copy, and by
proving, overwhelmingly, that your product does indeed help,
that will help to lower price resistance.

In other words... increase desire and you can increase price.

If you can't sell a $10 product, you haven't created any desire...
so I'd increase the price (as long as the product truly is worth more)
and then increase desire with better copy.

in other words... think of this entire sales process as a scale.

the more benefits you pile on one side of the scale, the higher
price you can pile on the other side of the scale, to balance it
out.

You can use amazing copy to intensify the desire of your market...
so you can raise prices.

I don't know many people who've gotten wealthy by lowering prices,
unless the volume and leverage was there.

Matt,

I'm not going to comment on donations vs. selling .... That is a topic for another day.

The one thing I will remind you is.... most "payment methods" like PayPal will require proof you are a legal entity able to accept donations.... You'll have to file the legal papers and pay the fees before you can collect a penny....

Take Care,

Rich Beck BCIP, MCSD, MCIS

Forgot to subscribe to this thread and just came back to it on a whim and this is some of the best advice I've got from this forum so thank you everyone who responded.

One week on and downloads have gone through the roof but as of yet no donations but I'm not quite ready to give up. I would like to try asking for a donation in the product rather than the copy and exchanging for an e-mail for longer term profits.

I have always wanted to experiment with pricing but had never thought of going up. I will definitely test that as well to see what comes out on top.

Thank you all again

Marcia is so right here.

With a $10 product a guarantee is really not much of an issue
(just a money back guarantee would be enough).

Also it's not necessarily true that bigger guarantees mean more
sales.

It's far more important to think through what's important to your
prospects and gear your offer and your copy around that.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh