We've recently made a major shift in our business that's left a lot of people a little confused or, at the very least, a little bit curious.
In the past three weeks, we have put the Evergreen Profits Letter on hold and we stopped selling all of our info-products. You'll probably notice that there is no longer a “Products” page on this site anymore. We've basically closed down our “info-business” in the marketing education space. We still love selling info. We just don't intend to do it anymore in the world of “make money online”, “internet marketing”, or whatever else you want to call it…
So here's the deal and the message that we wrote to all of our existing customers when we decided to make this transition:
Why we are no longer selling marketing education or The Evergreen Profits Letter
This was a tough decision that we debated about back and forth. We had calls with several of our mentors to get their take on things. We made pro and con lists. Trust me when I say that this decision was not made lightly. We’re not saying that there will never be any more Evergreen Profits Letters. We’re just saying that we’re taking a bit of a hiatus on publishing them and plan to circle back around and publish more in the future. However, at the moment, they are something that we’re pulling from our near-term roadmap.
First, I’ll explain the reasons why we made this decision and then I’ll explain where we’re taking things instead. But, I’d like to start by telling you that we still believe the newsletter business model is the absolute best model we’ve ever come across for selling information. Customers stick around for a long time, people take action because they aren’t overwhelmed with “too much” each month, there’s recurring revenue, and the content is presented in a way that people actually enjoy consuming it. It’s an amazing business model and we still would encourage anyone who enjoys selling information to at least experiment with this path. We'll actually be posting free content in the future with step-by-step processes on how to create your own in the near future.
Here are the reasons that we’ve made the personal decision to take a break from it:
- The 80/20 Rule – At least 80% of our income comes from actually doing the things that we teach in the letter. It’s actually more like 90% of our income. Writing and maintaining the letter takes up around 80% to 90% of our time but generates less than 20% of our income. We don’t need the money that the letter provides but we can really use the time that goes into it to focus on the things that generate 80% of our income. What we focus on is where we see the biggest results. We need to shift our focus back to the things that built our business in the first place. Things like promoting products as affiliates, one-on-one consulting with our high-paying clients, investing and advising, and joint venture products.
- A Bigger Megaphone – We're focused on building a platform (our megaphone). A platform like Tim Ferriss and Oprah, where mentioning a product or an idea has massive reach. Every month, we write these letters. We pour our hearts and souls into every single issue every single month. It pains us to know that only a small handful of people will ever be able to consume that content. Our goal and our mission is to help as many people as possible to build and systematize their business. We’re not fulfilling that goal if we put the best of the best training behind pay walls. If we continue to create content at the same level as what we publish in the letter every month but, instead, make that content available for free, our reach (our megaphone / platform) will scale wildly. Instead of a few hundred people learning our systems each month and making great progress, a few thousand people each month will have the opportunity and, over time, hopefully tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands. Our mission is to get what we teach in front of the widest audience possible. Selling a premium newsletter does not fit into our roadmap to do that right now.
- Content is Abundantly Available – It’s become increasingly difficult to compete with the abundance of free information that’s available on the internet. Sure, we curate and bring together things to eliminate searching. We also teach things that I’ve never seen anyone else teach. However, the problem lies in conveying that message in a way that gets people excited to subscribe to the letter. Everyone who sells information about marketing and entrepreneurship are claiming to be different. Just telling people that we teach stuff that no one else does just won’t close the sale most of the time. People are skeptical and selling information has just become very difficult. In the business world, it’s hard to compete with free… Even when our ideas are different from what others teach.
- Stop Playing In The Middle – Most online marketers who sell education tend to price themselves in the $50 – $1,000 range. It’s where the most clutter is. It’s where most of the “shiny object chasers” live. It’s the toughest market and price range to compete in. These people value purchasing products more than they value actually taking action and making the moves in their business. Obviously, not everyone that buys in this price range is a poor quality customer but it’s definitely where the poor quality customers hangout. You’d be surprised by how many tickets we get from people wanting to cancel because they bought a different product and have decided to move on to a different money-making method. It’s ridiculous how many people treat their businesses like a hobby vs. actually attempting to scale it into something that can sustain a livable income for them. We’ll provide free content for them instead and the serious people can pay for us to work hand-in-hand with them.
Combining all of those factors, it just doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s been an amazing 13-month run with the letter and we’ve impacted a ton of people. The letters are out there now. Our customers have them to refer back to forever and they're in a small group of people that even had that opportunity. It’s been a fun journey. Luckily, the real journey is just beginning. We’ve still got big things in store that will benefit everyone.
From this point on, we’ve made the decision to no longer sell information. We don’t want what we teach to disappear into the clutter of all of the other information products that are available. Instead, all of our future articles will be made available for free on this blog. We may ask for an email address from time to time to receive it but we won’t be charging money for content anymore.
Every single month, we spend about a week creating the educational pieces that go into the EGP letter. The game plan moving forward is to continue to use that same time and to continue to create the same caliber of education every month but, instead, make that education available for free on the blog, the podcast, our YouTube channel, and the private Facebook community. We don’t intend to slow down at all with the education. We just intend to reach WAY more people by giving it all away.
We will no longer operate in “the middle”, the place where $50 – $1,000 products lie. Courses like The Fletcher Method teach similar philosophies and do it in a way that’s so much better than we ever could. Instead, we plan to operate at the extremes. We intend to make our educational content available for free and those that want a little extra hand-holding or tailored strategies can pay us to consult with them. Everything we do will either be free or offered at a price that’s relative to the value we provide.
Here’s what 2018 looks like for Evergreen Profits:
- Double down on the amount of free content that we provide – We’ll still continue to produce the level of content that we produced in the EGP Letter. However, anyone will be able to access it via the blog, the podcast, YouTube videos, guest posts on other websites, Facebook communities, etc. We’re going to attempt to exponentially grow the reach of the content that we provide.
- Make personalized coaching available again – With the letter, we’ve always had to teach things in a broad manner. We’ve had to paint a picture to make sure what we teach was applicable to the broadest audience possible. It actually lowers the impact that we can provide for people. By offering personal coaching and consulting, we can drill down directly on the businesses that need our help and tailor a strategy just for them. We’ll attract people with the free content and allow them to hire us if they need any elements personalized to them.
- Continue to scale what’s working – For us, what’s working is promoting other products as affiliates. We take the strategies that we teach and consult on and apply them to other people’s businesses on an affiliate basis. Most of what we’ve taught throughout the 13 letters has been things that we’ve discovered while promoting products as affiliates. We get to operate in as many niches as we want, our income potential is unlimited, and it’s easy to cut ties with any products that give us headaches and that we don’t want to promote anymore. It’s the business model that’s continually worked the best for us.
- Live events – We’ve been toying with the idea of putting on a few live events per year. They are finally on our roadmap, with the first planned for February or March of 2018. We’ll be partnering with people like Aaron Fletcher, of the Fletcher Method, to put on amazing, immersive events, where people leave with solutions to their most pressing business struggles.
- Network, Network, Network – When we looked back at our business over the past 10 years, we realized that it’s been more of a business of “who you know” vs. “what you know”. We’ve networked with amazing people, built strong bonds and partnerships, and learned tons of groundbreaking new ideas. Our network has been the foundation from which our business has been built. Expanding our network will create opportunities to invest in other people’s companies, consult with amazing businesses, learn new ideas that we can elaborate on and teach, find amazing products to promote and grow our platform.
- Invest – We’ve learned a lot about cryptocurrencies, stock options, real estate, and various other vehicles to grow our wealth, all as a result of our network and podcast. We’ll be putting a ton of our energy into growing these investments as well so that we don’t only make more money in 2018 but we actually keep more money in 2018. And we intend to take our readers along for the journey as well.
And that’s it. That’s essentially our game plan from this point forward. Anyone that was subscribed to the EGP letter has had all billing stopped. Everyone will continue to receive the same great education without the monthly cost. All we’d ask in return is that you help us spread the word when you enjoy the content… And, if you like a tool that we promote, maybe use our affiliate link to grab it.
If you were a customer of our and you’re wondering where to go from here or what we’d recommend that you do next, there are really three options that we recommend:
- If you want to dive deeper with us and get a personalized action plan for your business, fill out a quick application here. We’d love to explore the possibility of working directly with you to scale your business to new heights.
- If you want a more “self-paced” educational experience, we cannot recommend The Fletcher Method enough. Joe and I personally learn from Aaron and we’re members of his community. He shares the same philosophies on business and marketing as we do and his training is the next logical step from what people have been learning from us.
- You can wait for us to release new content for free. We’ll be releasing weekly blog posts, podcasts, and videos for free and emailing you about them each month. So keep an eye on your email.
It’s a new era that’s going to bring a lot of success to a lot of people. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the ride with us so far and will continue to join us in the future.
