We've discussed this in brief amounts before but, how much longer do you think these diet trials really have before their processing gets shut down completely? I've noticed that diet in particular is terrible with companies running their offer into the ground, starting a new LLC, adding an upsell, burning it out, rinse, repeat.
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Usually these types of companies "churn and burn" their merchant accounts. See Jesse Willms, iworks, etc.
I think Jesse Willms is "rehabilitated" now though and runs offers with decent customer service and no forced upsells. Iworks on the other hand is fucked since there's been a criminal indictment.
Nothing specific about the lead gen comes to mind, it's still fairly new that I don't know of any helpful reads out there on the subject.
As far as books in general, how much time you got?
A lot have been mentioned on WF in the past, here's a few that come to mind. Some of them I think are a bit "no duh", but still have some good insight for people in IM.
(a partial list)
Cashvertising, E-Myth, Millionaire Fastlane , Zero to One, Why We Buy, Good to Great, Cashflow Quadrant, Outliers, Black Swan, Landing Page Optimization (Ash),4 Hour WW, Built to Sell, the Psychology of Influence and Persuasion, Rework, Art of the Deal
Mont. I have been studying the RESTORE ONLINE SHOPPER'S CONFIDENCE ACT.
The Act requires negative option continuity billing to be disclosed to the consumer in a clear and conspicuous manner.
What is an example of an offer that discloses negative option continuity billing in a clear and conspicuous manner, and is still profitable?
Is such a situation a contradiction?
The Act requires negative option continuity billing to be disclosed to the consumer in a clear and conspicuous manner.
What is an example of an offer that discloses negative option continuity billing in a clear and conspicuous manner, and is still profitable?
Is such a situation a contradiction?
Now that I put my overseas manager in India in charge of his own hiring/firing, I don't deal with that side anymore, its on his shoulders. I think that's better, since he's on the ground, vs me trying to judge a candidate from across the globe.
In the case of physical products, I think the first thing a biz owner should delegate/outsource is logistics, like production and fulfillment/shipping. I think the last thing a biz owner should ever give up control on is long-term strategy, especially to non-equity employees.
Do you recommend anything when it comes to stocks, mutual funds, ETS, investing advise regarding putting money in them.
Not a lot longer, but then again I've been saying that for a year now. Most are running out of "signers", and Visa/MC are cracking down on the loopholes that allowed the same owners to control a bunch of MIDs through hired signers.
Netflix is a good example, but there are plenty of others. My pages always have the T&C on the same page(above the fold) where customers enter their CC info, and a checkbox they have to tic saying "Yes, I've read these terms and agree to.." language. There are plenty of others around, it's just the diet (and skin) ones tend to have a lot that don't properly disclose, or bury terms somewhere they know 90% of their visitors will never see.
Compliance isn't that difficult, people just don't like to do it because it hurts conversion, especially when they are getting pressure from the affiliates sending them traffic who want it as loose as possible.
Mont: Do you think affiliates are starting to get it through their thick skulls that offers that hide terms and do shady shit are going be gone for good and are already extremely unstable?
I can hope, but I doubt it, too many of them are short-term thinkers. Until State AGs, or the celebs who's images they rip off, start dragging them into court for their shenanigans on a more regular basis, I think that "churn and burn"mindset is going to stick around, and they will still send traffic to the "higher converting" (in the short-term) shadier offers. Then they wonder why they end up getting burned on a non-payment, or the offer suddenly gets capped/disappears/stops converting/etc.
When you do business with those kind of guys, that's pretty much the assumption of the risk you are taking. I can't count the number of times I've lost traffic to another offer that was allegedly "higher converting" than mine, only to have the same affiliates come crawling back because they got screwed on the other offer when it mysteriously shut down and never paid.
I move in and out of a lot of stock holdings, based on what I see in the markets at a particular time. I think if you aren't actively managing and researching, it's best to drop those same monies into a low-cost index fund and leave it alone.
On my personal investing, I take a pretty active role, and trade pretty regularly. Currently, I like a leveraged volatility play like UVXY going into next week, I'm bearish on gold right now, and I'm watching CHK closely for a good entry point on a drop. All that could/will change by sometime next week though
I move in and out of a lot of stock holdings, based on what I see in the markets at a particular time. I think if you aren't actively managing and researching, it's best to drop those same monies into a low-cost index fund and leave it alone.
On my personal investing, I take a pretty active role, and trade pretty regularly. Currently, I like a leveraged volatility play like UVXY going into next week, I'm bearish on gold right now, and I'm watching CHK closely for a good entry point on a drop. All that could/will change by sometime next week though
Good point, I have monies in small cap funds with vanguard, thanks for your input, appreciate it.
I'm kind of naturally wired that way, I like to stay busy, but I jump around a lot between different "busy" projects too much, the focus isn't always there even if the work ethic is.
I just stack-and-spend, I don't even balance my checkbook on a very regular basis. My personal expenses are pretty boring, so I don't have much need to manage my finances too carefully. I stay out of debt, and pay my bills on time, and make sure the majority of what I make automatically gets saved or invested.
how does an average of three stars on amazon affect your product selling? have you noticed it drop considerably?
I don't sell a lot of product on Amazon, we list there for added credibility, and get some volume on products we promote internally on free trial model from customers who don't want to deal with trials.
Some of my wholesale customers love to dump product on Amazon, so I spend a lot of time trying to support full retail pricing on our own listings, which causes us to lose some biz to our own wholesalers there. Now that Amazon tracks star - ratings by sku rather than seller, there isn't much we can do about it if one of our wholesalers got a lower-star rating on the our same product sku.
Hey mont, drop some predictions for 2020 (specific to IM and online business) based on interesting trends / changes you see developing today.
1. SEO will change to completely personalized results, no 2 people will get the same results for the same query, it will factor in where they are, what big data knows about the searcher, geo location, etc. I think SEO will be less of a one-size-fits-all for searchers, it's already started to head that way.
2.Rise of alternative payment solutions will continue, though I think crypo-currency wont be a major one. We'll never be a cashless society, but I think Merchants will have a lot of new ways customers pay for things, which will change the rebill landscape. Merchant will not have to accept Visa/MC to compete anymore.
3. As bandwidth capacity increases across all devices, Ads will be less about static images and texts, and much more video-based, and probably interactive. Right now, about the only interaction you can do with a 250x250 ad is to click it, in the future I think ads will work more like an app, collecting data, fine-tuning their message to the reader, setting up its own retargeting funnels, etc
This is dead on the money (and personally, I can't wait for it to happen).
Take This Lollipop (ESET and possibly other virus scanners blocks the site for some strange reason but its worth a look if anyone hasn't seen it before)
Make 'Take This Lollipop' about a brand, mix in a bit more interactivity and you have a fully immersive advertising experience.
Sorry mont I don't have any questions for you, excellent AMA though. Thanks for taking the time to do it.