1. They’re usually much harder to sell than one-off offers
2. So if you don’t have super airtight email and/or lead gen game and a strong relationship with your list you are better off selling subscriptions on the back end vs the front end
3. They tend to attract the best, the smartest, and the most ambitious customers on your list – the ones you can take absolute pleasure in working your arse off to serve and support
4. And you’ll need those particular customers for your sanity if you’re sales copy/bullets and/or premiums are good, because your subscription offer will also attract a lot of the flakiest and sometimes semi-illiterate people on your list with zero self control over their dopamine addictions
5. I suggest trying hard to REPEL the above in your marketing from subscribing and blocking at first slight so they become some other business’ problem instead of yours
6. Unless, of course, you just want to take their money knowing you cannot help them, I guess
7. Subscription offers work more smoothly if you put what I call an “intermediate” sales page between the sales page and the order form that re-lists the most important things you want people to know to further curate
8. I not only have such a page for Email Players, but we have one for Low Stress Trading, too, and they work exactly as intended
9. Yes, they might “cost” you some sales
10. No, that’s not a bad thing, as it can save you a lot of time & frustration
11. If anything, it creates a smaller, but more engaged and eager-to-refer customer/client base in my experience
12. It’s not about squeezing every last nickel out of your market – if it is, you won’t last long or will find yourself hating your own business as many subscription-based marketers I know and/or know of do
13. You’ll still get customers that ignore the intermediate page, then turn around and ask questions that were answered on the sales page, the intermediate page, and the order form (again, see #4 above)
14. This is because a lot of people are functionally illiterate these days due to so-called AI, TikTok, and the social media dopamine-adrenaline engagement machine
15. But you will still get far fewer of the customers you don’t want if you use the intermediate page in my experience
16. The subscription bubble (everyone thinks they have a “Netflix model” these days) that started forming in 2021’ish has been hissing air, but it’s still got a ways to go, probably
17. Until then you might be better off focusing on selling bulk vs subscriptions
18. Will not explain what that means, you either know or you don’t
19. Subscription offers are not first about “content” but about Experience
20. That means fapGPT & other so-called AI tools that churn out content (if a content-based subscription offer, of course) will not be nearly as useful as the terminally online Sam Altman fan club thinks
21. Hardly anyone really cancels subscriptions (unless super expensive) because of money
22. They are lying to themselves and you when they say that, which is a good reason to ban them forever (why do business with liars?)
23. If it really is because of money (it’s not) they’d cancel ALL their entertainment (they don’t) subscriptions and daily sugar coffees (they don’t), and apply for public assistance (they don’t)
24. The real reason likely (not always) has more to do with lack of stimulation (i.e., you bored them, or didn’t enrage them, entertain them, excite them, adequately educate them, etc)…
25. The above is not “bad”, btw, it’s simply life, not everyone is going to be your ideal customer and you are not going to be everyone’s ideal business/person/service – which is why you must always build your list and mail it
26. “Buyers are liars” ain’t just a trope, so just keep building and mailing and serving whether times are good, bad, or stagnant
27. Dan Kennedy’s “Loyalty fatigue” phenomenon is another reason people don’t stick around
28. You may think it makes zero sense if you are solving someone’s problems, and they just sent you a ten page testimonial… but it goes back to Hitchcock’s commentary about logic vs effect
29. It’s ultimately YOUR fault for losing their interest or not curating them out earlier in the first place
30. If you focus first on service & Experience, you will inevitably replace those who leave your subscription with someone better, smarter, more eager to use your product
31. Take Gary Halbert’s advice about selling the foxes and ignoring the dogs – it’s one of the single most important things you can do if you sell subscription offers
32. Yes, there are still plenty of foxes left in most niches, as not everyone is a drooling-on-the-carpet TikTok brain’d, fapGPT-prompting zombie
33. However, the dogs are gaining in population, though, and probably 10 years from now any non-entertainment or necessity-related subscription offer will probably not be worth your time unless there’s a radical shift in the culture and/or social media is outright banned
34. One reason business is changing fast is because people are changing (not for the better) fast – which MIGHT reverse itself – out of self preservation – during a major economic collapse though, which I believe is not only inevitable but imminent
35. Either way, I suggest learning how to trade options using Low Stress Trading today, so you won’t give a shyt tomorrow no matter what happens – and maybe even profit from it all
36. That is what not only me, but many Email Players using Low Stress Trading are doing, who see the same writing on the wall I do
37. This is why I am in the trading business, not the subscription business (i.e.., not a book & newsletter publisher who trades, but a trader who publishes books & newsletters)
38. This includes our own software and Low Stress Trading companies that each have trading accounts of their own – and the profits from that trading will, if things continue on pace, dwarf the sales of the actual product sales in the not-too-distant future
39. There is no going back to 1999, 2009, or even 2019 in info marketing – that game is long over, and the people who will suffer most are probably the younger people (under 30)
40. None of this means you shouldn’t sell a subscription offer – you should if it’s the best way to serve your customers & clients, but if it’s not then why bother? Selling subscriptions just because your favorite goo-roo told you to is stupid on a stick anyway
41. Take all this as an “option” for thinking differently, and not as marketing gospel as there are always exceptions, and there is always nuance to these things
Finally, just to be clear about something:
Ain’t none of the above 41 parts are theory.
It’s straight from 16+ years of publishing various subscription offers (since 2009) – including my first one (the Crackerjack Selling Club, lasted one month before I realized I hated it), my old Crypto Marketing Secrets newsletter which lasted 30 issues before I switched to my Email Players print newsletter (going strong for over 14 years now), plus owning multiple subscription-based SaaS offers – including BerserkerMail, Learnistic, and most recently our Low Stress Trading subscription coaching/software hybrid business that itself has multiple subscription offers stacked on top of it.
So yes, I have a wee bit of real world experience with this.
The times they are a’changing.
Thus, my paid Email Players newsletter.
It can help you keep sales, and customers, and engagement no matter what kind of offer you sell assuming you have (1) an email list and (2) an offer people want.
More here:
Ben Settle
