CPA is cool, but fastlane THIS!

So, I was checking out the latest greatest CPA Loves Your Mom course by a guy named Mike. No, not our big boss here, he might eslap me. lol You guys in the biz know the drill, there's only been 14 kachillion emails about it.

Anyway, I actually watched a few of the videos. I say actually, because I rarely pay attention or buy any of that shit anymore. (Note to newbs, it's head down after you pick up the premises if you ever wanna make some real coin.)

But he re coined an old concept as value trojans, which is adding a minute subscription based service as an upsell/cross. The theory, which I thought would make a great little discussion here, is anything under 5 bucks per month people don't notice. Specifically, $4.95.

THAT intrigues me. Let's talk about it.

Would you notice $4.95 on your monthly credit card statement? You might, but if it's something you MAY use sometime, would you let it go? Maybe cancel after 8 months of never utilizing?

So many different things to say here, but it was cool to see this concept regurgitated and presented to me in a numbers format. Think about it, $4.95 per month, at 1 million users, and a high retention duration, is pretty damn cool.

Now on to the good stuff. This can something as simple as one gigantic autoresponder system that sends people classified info on their needs of choice every month. Super cheap, saves them time by not digging for the info. Could be industry experts helping them and making them FEEL better about their issue/need/service/etc.. Though the info is readily available for internet savvy folks.

Membership sites are a no brainer on this. Proprietary info type deals could be a straight win. And when you really think about this, is 1 million people really that many?

This is a great topic of discussion.

Yes, I do notice, but I know many many people that don't. Or, they notice but the ratio effort/reward to call and cancel the subscription is not worth their time, so they let it keep on running.

1 Million is a huge number, unless you are talking about a mega-niche, I'd think. But hey, 20,000 is still a good number to target, just to get started.

I've noticed the trend of the free internet is going down, and now many services will start asking for subscription rates, so more and more users are getting used to the idea of a small monthly fee to get a service.

Here ya go:

'Newsday' Pay Wall Debuts Today -- With Most Stories Behind It

-Russ H.

Another Idea is to charge a low monthly fee but insist on a 1 year term.
Here is an example Financial TV News Monitoring, Stock Reports, Investment Information and Analysis from Ockham Research They charge $1 a month but you pay for the whole year upfront.

I would think 1 millon paid subscribers would be very large. Does anyone know of a newsletter that has such numbers?
I would think it would need to be more service related where you could easily show the value for the money.

Thrillist has 1.5 million subscribers and generates $5million....

mixergy dot com/thrillist-ben-lerer/

My disgust is when a "business person" executes this idea with the aim of a braindead customer in mind. Latent fraud IMO is still fraud and it will catch up with you. Law of attraction dictate like attracts like so if you want to attract individuals who glaze over their financials and accept a certain level of slack and uncertainty in life what does that say about you. Not slamming the OP, but in general one should want positive, productive, ambitious individuals as friends, customers, guest, aquatints ect.ect...I rather prosper from 100,000 customers who love using my product/service than 1 million who forgot they purchased it or have no interest. This principle is what keeps Apple stores packed on Sunday afternoons.

Same with real estate the most prosperous wholesaler I know is the one who initially converted all of his buyers into students...for free...look up Kenny Rushing.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty good business model. Secondly, when you start dealing with the masses, you'll soon find that most of them are "brain dead" anyhow. I know, sad.

In fact, most "get rich quick" programs offer 30 day money back guarantees knowing that 99% of people won't use the information, and if they don't use it, they won't apply for the refund.

The challenge in this exercise is getting 1M users ... that would require a product that is better than average and has virality. An "ehh" product won't attract 1M.

You are missing the point.

You don't fuck people over. Ever.

The average retention for small recurring rev models is 3 months. If you provide $30-$50 worth of value per month that someone MAY WANT TO USE, psychologically it makes sense to KEEP IT for $4.95 per/mo.

"Hey, this is a DEAL"!

Point being, this is just an avenue to circumvent some of the issues with high attention, short retention continuity. Low attention, long retention FTW!

Porn sites utilize this model all the time now. They get people to sign up for a $19.99/mo membership, and the user goes and cancels before the end of the first month -- But most porn sites will pretend like they never got the cancellation the end user sent in... Until the end user has gotten 3 months worth of charges, and finally calls the 800# on his statement to cancel, and he feels so embarrassed talking to a real person that he doesn't even ask them to remove the excess charges. Can you imagine? "Well Sir, it says here you subscribed to our site: Gangland -- Where little white women are raped by big black gang members, is that correct?" hahahaha

Kinda genius, kinda slimey all in one.

- Hakrjak

Hmmmm..... and you know this, how may I ask? j/k

Still new here so I'd thought I make a quick comment on that. No harm intended, lol.

I read this when you first posted it and haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

When I first read it I thought about it all wrong: "I dont know of anything that I know enough about to get one million people to sign up for" but that is a limiting belief that this forum is slowly helping me to get rid of.

For example: In a few niches (some are actaully very large niches), I know a lot of information. Not to the point of being some guru that has an answer to everything, but to the point where I know a hell of a lot more than most people. I would expect that most people on this forum know a good bit of information about a certain thing.

Obviously this has to information that people are willing to pay for.

The number 1mil also through me off. "I could never get a million people to sign up". After thinking about it for a bit I am now looking at this way:

$4.95 x 5000 people is still $24,750 per month x 12 is $297,000 a year. Compared to the relatively average salary I make now this is HUGE!

Now I don't know much about internet marketing, but from reading this forum and the warrior forum, I don't think 5000 people is an extreme number. I would appreciate feedback from those of you who know how hard it is to reach 5000 people.

Anyone have any ideas on how to put a plan like this into operation? Perhaps its time for me to start learning some internet marketing!!

I'm curious to know what resistance people have to pay anything? and how much value does it take for someone to take the time to sign up for a $4.95 a month svc.

Isn't the data in iphone apps? Tremendously difficult to charge even a penny for an app.

I think it's a good avenue to try especially some niche vertical with specific information.

Getting to them is not the hard part, it's getting to the 'right' ones and everything that happens after you've reached them that takes some work.

Figure you need to reach 250k - 500k with a conversion rate of 1%-2% to get your 5,000 subscribers. Obviously with attrition, this would be an ongoing process to replenish your base.

If the model is NOT meant to fly under their credit card statement radar, $4.95/mo wouldn't be your sole item to generate revenue with, hopefully you'd have a well thought out backend/up-sell to figure into equation.

All that provided Visa/MC likes your deal and doesn't drop the hammer on your merchant account with the new crackdown, thanks to all the Acacia berry CPAs