Referring back to those recurring pop-ups, but just this once

LOL - it'll keep on recurring, too, until one of two things happens:-

(i) People learn to test for themselves in a way which takes into account all the "lost returners" to the site who were alienated by the pop-up, or ...

(ii) The FTC actually starts enforcing the existing rules about exit pop-ups.

The whole subject is basically an "urban myth of internet marketing", propagated by (a) people selling them, and (b) people genuinely gullible enough to imagine that just because they produce some "extra" sales they're necessarily of net long-term benefit.

Very few people really test, adequately and properly and reliably, over a statistically significant number of visitors. And it isn't all that easy to do.

The mistake that many people make is to monitor only the proportion of people taking up the discounted offer after an exit pop-up. The superficial but very short-sighted thinking is "These people were all leaving the site, but ended up buying instead, so it's all extra money". (I know it sounds supremely naive, but there really are many people who believe that.)

The reality, of course, is very different indeed.

You need to think about what proportion of your visitors were buying at their first visit to the site and what proportion were buying at a later visit, the point being that those exit pop-ups do prevent some people from returning, and it's all too easy to measure the "extra" sales they produce and completely lose sight of the facts (and they really are "facts", for all that the people promoting these things would prefer vendors to overlook them) that (a) some of those discounted sales were to people who would otherwise have returned and paid the full price, and (b) some other customers are also lost, because the pop-ups pissed them off.

I have only three clients (in three different niches) who have really split-tested this carefully, thoughtfully and significantly. All three have abandoned them.

And then in the case of Clickbank and similar products, there's also the affiliate reaction to think about, too. My feeling is that the majority of affiliates who won't be put off promoting such a sales page are part of the 90% of affiliates who collectively make 10% of the vendor's affiliate-referred sales, whereas the smaller number who won't touch it are among the 10% of affiliates who can collectively make 90% of the vendor's affiliate-referred sales. This is another hugely significant point overlooked by many.

And then, of course, as our resident lawyer Warrior, Brian Kindsvater, was warning us all so eloquently not so long ago, there are all the legal issues to consider as well (though they seem never to be enforced at the moment, and I suspect most people are even unaware of them).

Yes thats crazy... one is enough and never just lower the price, change the offer as well as the price