289: When Someone Says You're Selling Too Much

Send us Fan Mail A customer bought a VIP pass for one of our HobbyScool summits and then emailed to tell me she was heartbroken by how much selling happens at our checkout. Upsell, upsell, upsell before completing an order, is how she put it. She did not expect that from a craft site. This episode is what I do with a message like that. I go through what a free event actually costs to produce, why the order bump and the upsell at checkout are the thing paying for the free part, and where I think the line really is between selling and being obnoxious. In this episode: - The email I got from a paying customer and what she said - What it costs to put on a free event, line by line - What Amazon and your local craft store do between the buy button and the receipt - The three questions I use to decide if selling has crossed a line - What happens to your revenue when you cut your marketing over one complaint - The three signals that mean a complaint is real feedback and not just noise One person's opinion is one person's opinion. It is not the data about your business. We run a live event every month inside the Creator's MBA Boardroom, and it is free to join. https://www.skool.com/creators-mba-boardroom Chapter markers (one per line): 00:00 The email that set this off 01:00 "Upsell, upsell, upsell before completing an order" 02:00 HobbyScool is a business, not a hobby about hobbies 03:00 What it takes to run a free event 04:00 Software, team, ads, and everyone who gets paid 05:00 The people who buy pay for the free part 06:00 Count the upsells in an Amazon cart 07:00 Craft stores, quilt shows, and conferences 08:00 Where I think the line actually is 10:00 Is the free thing good on its own 11:00 Why the volume of selling is not a character flaw 12:00 The two rude messages you will fixate on 14:00 The mistake that costs people revenue 15:00 Volume, who is saying it, and the numbers 16:00 Read it once, then go back to selling