You need this first


Stumbled on this post yesterday on X.

Can't say I disagree. But it's also not the whole truth.

Next month in the GM+ Community we're doing a self-liquidating offer (SLO) month. Basically setting up the kind of offer the guy above is talking about (you can learn more about it here)

With an SLO, you create an offer that enables you to pay $1 for ads and, in return, you get at least $1 back.

The result is the ability to scale. The only limit is your skill in setting it up and your bravery when setting the ad budget.

You're able to scale more effectively as you pay to reach ore people, but you don't lose any money as they pay you back almost immediately.

But if you really wanna make the most of an SLO's profitability, you need something else first.

That something is a decent back-end high-ticket offer.

Here's why - using my own SLO numbers on the $1 Product Challenge.

I'm currently paying £21.50 (about $28) to attract a customer.

However, the average order value I'm getting is around $76.

On the surface, that's great, right?

I'm making ~$45 profit per sale.

Imagine I need to hit $4500 / month in income, I'd have to sell 100 units and hope that the AOV maintains (it's always a little flexible).

It's still not all that hard of a job as 100 sales through something like ads is not insurmountable by any means. I just increase the ad spend and hope the metrics stay stable.

But it is a hamster wheel.

... If the ads stop working, that income dries up.
... If the AoV drops, that income dries up.
... If something happens to my ad account, that income dries up.

Seeing leads come in and seeing you're getting paid for it is great.

But, this should not form the base of your income. It's too volatile and the margins are too fine.

A small change in the industry or platform can crater your AoV leaving you losing money and scrambling to fix it.

If you're relying on the ~$40 buffer I have, it's a dangerous game to play.

This is where the back-end stuff comes in.

The SLO should be viewed as a way of attracting high-intent and high-value leads.

When the goal is to attract high-intent leads, even being at breakeven is fine.

Then your job is to sell your higher ticket services to those leads. You know they have a problem, you know they'll pay to fix it. You simply offer more help at a higher fee to solve it faster.

Let's go back to the 100 leads you got before from the SLO.

Imagine you get a pathetically low conversion rate of 1% (most people I work with get higher than this) to your high ticket offer.

Out of those 100 people you attracted you've then made...

  1. $4500 profit on the front-end SLO
  2. $2000 on back-end upsells

You've added almost 50% to the revenue from that back-end offer.

But the best bit is that $2000 is 100% profit because you've covered your acquisition costs on the front end.

The betterest bit is that you still have 99 high-value customers left who might convert in a week, month, or 6 months down the line.

Long story short, a lot of people think an SLO is the secret to untold riches.

It can be, but you need to have something on the back end to multiply the revenue and enable you to get off the hamster wheel of living and dying by the ad platforms.

If you have a decent back-end offer and you're struggling for leads, I'd recommend getting an SLO set up ASAP.

And, if you want help to do so, join GM+ now so you can be in the Nov cohort for setting up an SLO in your biz.

Check out the full deets here.

Pete "back end" Boyle

Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Villains Ltd, Unit 16535, 13 Freeland Park, Wareham Road, Poole, Dorset BH16 6FA
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Growth Models

I've spent ~10 years helping digital brands grow. I share what I know and what I'm experimenting with in this newsletter.

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