How I Made $100,000 in One Launch

I was recently on a walk with a friend, who reminded me of an article I wrote last year about how I sold out one of my writing workshops in 6 hours from one email. (You can read it here)

She actually quoted me back to me, bless her heart: “I sold out my event in 6 hours with one email – and all I had to do was send a newsletter every week for 4 years.”

Well, consider this round two. Because last year, I had a $100,000 launch… and there’s a backstory here, too.

The Marketing Sound Bite

Last fall, I launched a writing skills group for online business owners. My goal was to sign up 100 people for the yearlong Write Club, in 3 months.

I did it in two.

Headline: Stella Orange pulls off a $100,000 online launch!

How the Marketing Sound Bite Sausage Is Made

As I wrote in the article about how I sold out my event in 6 hours from 1 email, the key to understanding how I pulled this off is context.

I have now been sending content to my list for 6 years, every week.

I have now been teaching classes online for the past 5 years. (My first class, a 4-week course called Charm School for Sales Pages, had 3 people in it. Two of them were friends who did the course for free, so my one paying customer would have people to talk to. I tell you this because you can start small, too).

How did I do it?

It started with a painful February 2014, where it felt like one fail after another.

I didn’t fill an event, and had to pay the hotel a bunch of money for empty hotel rooms (lesson: negotiate your contract).

I did a launch of a 3-month program that had sold well in the past, that only 2 people bought. They got great value and loads of attention from me, but I was really down on myself, because my programs have always sold well… and I worried that my success was just a fluke, and it was all going to come crumbling down, and I would have to go back to normal life and get a job.

The thought depressed me so much, I got angry.

What the hell?! Why is this happening to me? What if it’s over? What if I have to go get a job again?

Then I did a reframe: okay, so it was my February of Failure.

What if failure is actually fuel?

What if the way most people thought about failure – as a mistake, a flub, a mess up – was actually the wrong way to look at it?

What if I was being called to something EVEN BETTER… that I wouldn’t have even SEEN had things gone the way I wanted them to?

Out of my February of Failure came the question my first business mentor asked me in my first year of business: What ways of working with clients would be fun for you?

Here is where I quote Picasso:

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”

What if some things in my business needed to die, before the really good shit could get born?

I’ve been training for situations like this my entire life. Maybe you have, too. Where you tell yourself a better story about your life, and have the huevos and the chutzpah to actually believe it.

So, that’s what I did. I raged. I screamed. I got so pissed that things weren’t working out the way I wanted them to, and then I went back to my den, licked my wounds, and waited.

This makes it sound pretty.

It wasn’t.

My ego wants me to believe that I DESERVE things. I am ENTITLED to success. Based on past performance, I SHOULD have a steady stream of projects that I knock out of the park.

But on my better days, I realize that I am here for the adventure, not the sure thing.

And how boring would it be to ALWAYS knock it out of the park?

You’d never have any occasion to rise, to become more than you are now.

Anyway, back to our story.

After the February of Failure, I got hungry. If playing it safe and doing what I’d always done wasn’t a sure thing, I thought, then I might as well start experimenting.

One of the biggest things I learned from my launch-gone-south last winter was that there were a lot of people online who wanted to buy from me, but most of my programs are targeted towards more advanced business owners so they cost more.

The other feedback I kept getting was that I packed a lot of content into 9 weeks. My clients loved it – and they also felt bad, like they couldn’t possibly complete all the projects I was teaching them in 90 days.

Hmm.

The cool thing about failure, if you do it right, is that it causes you to listen.

So I listened. I listened to the marketplace. And I listened to my clients and fanbase.

What I heard was: we want a lower price point way to work with you, improve our writing skills, and get notes and feedback in real time. And we want you to slow down the pace.

When I got the insight, I changed my plan for the year.

Instead of teaching a 5 week class on writing your website last fall, I decided to offer Write Club – a lower price point, community-based writing skills development group.

I was reading Verne Harnish’s Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do To Increase The Value of Your Growing Firm at the time, and he had a phrase that just jumped off the page at me: “first class for less.”

I just loved that idea. So I made it a guiding idea for the new offer, too. The deal rolled out at $97 a month for the first 100 people, and some people got an even better deal — $83 a month, because they had come to an event with me.

But unlike other people’s membership programs, I would be present. I would make regular appearances on the group’s facebook page, and I would get to know the people who showed up for the monthly Q&A calls.

Here’s the thing I’ve been telling my clients and colleagues lately about my $100,000 launch last fall – it happened because I sensed the timing was right, and I took a risk.

My earlier failure caused me to get my head out of my bum and actually listen what people wanted from me.

Also, my commitment to my audience and fanbase (read: sending content and taking care of my list for 5 years, come hell or high water) created a context in which the time was ripe.

Here’s what I want you to know – there is no formula I (or anyone else) can teach you to get these results.

Especially if you are newer and do not have a list.

But for those of you who have been in business awhile and are looking at how to effectively communicate with many people at the same time – or take the next step and put an offer in front of them–my message is this: learn to listen for your own opportunity.

It may not look the same as mine.

But once you understand how the online marketing game is played, you must let your own instincts, insights and creativity be your guides. That’s where the juiciest opportunities lay. And it’s way more fun and profitable.

Mighty thanks to Tracey O.’s Flickr photostream for the money.