When a really good idea is executed in a clearly not-good way, it pays to pause and ponder on what the executor could gain from doing it badly.

For example, I was chatting with Tonya from Fake It Until You Make It [an informative ezine I scavenge for free and affordable business tools to review] and she mentioned a free publicity ecourse that had really good content in a not-really-good delivery format.

Based on the ecourse description, I agreed with her assessment that it was overwhelming, but I signed up for it anyway. When the first lesson arrived, what I saw had me wondering if there was something sinister afoot.

A Great Idea, Executed Poorly

Joan Stewart of The Publicity Hound offers a press release ecourse that is thorough. Like, 89 straight days of lessons kind of thorough.

Does the idea of receiving tips every day for three months alarm you
as much as it did me?

And Dan? And my business coach? Because we all agreed that 89 lessons is unwieldy. Proof was that Tonya has a month’s worth of unread lesson emails piled in a folder, waiting…and accumulating (daily)…and waiting…and accumulating (daily)…and…

Our small but unanimous vote tagged this ecourse as doomed because of its duration, even if the content is both free and good (which it is). Still, I saw on her site that Joan’s “89 Tips” ebook had been repurposed into this collection of free tips. Or maybe vice versa…there’s no way to tell which came first. Good stuff either way, though.

So out of curiosity I signed up for the ecourse. And having received, read, and reviewed my first email lesson, I thought two things:

1. The ecourse content is clearly written and well-focused and I’m looking forward to the next lesson, and
2. The ecourse format is designed to piss me off such that I’ll forsake the freebie and shell out for the ebook. Seriously.

Pissing Me Off, Part 1

Few things get me truly miffed, particularly with online stuff. However, this ecourse raised my blood pressure a notch before I read a single word of content.

The first lesson arrived in my Inbox right away, and I opened it eagerly to find…nothing.

Okay, not nothing, but close enough. Instead of a lesson, there was one line each for a welcome, an ecourse introduction, a note on lesson bonuses, and a hyperlink to the lesson on her site.

So now I’m a little ticked, right? From where I sit, Joan and I started with a fair and typical exchange. I traded direct access to me via my Inbox for her free information that will include at least one sales offer that I may or may not accept. Now I feel like our arrangement is out of balance because in addition to direct marketing to my email address, she can also leverage my hits on her site, while I didn’t gain anything more.

I’m sensitive to the flow of online currency (not just money, but hits, links, readers, subscribers, followers, retweets, etc.), and I recognize that a small imbalance in this area would stand out. So I decided I was making mountains out of a molehills and thought of two benign and beneficial reasons for Joan to send me to her site for the email course content:

1. So she can monitor which lessons get read via her website stats, since the email links weren’t trackable, and
2. She had graphics, a layout, or video that wouldn’t work well (if at all) as an email

So I clicked the link with anticipation…

Pissing Me Off, Part 2

DENIED! Here’s what I found at http://www.publicityhound.com/pressreleasetips/tip1.htm

After I recovered from the shock, I thought two things:

1. Oh hellllll no! and
2. Oh no she di’n't!

If you’ve read other posts at BBB, you know I’m generally professional and reasonably well-spoken. But the unwelcome surprise of finding a wad of Google Adsense where I expected content drained every drop of that. This was a huge issue, and here’s why:

The least of it is that the ads were unavoidable which created an even greater imbalance in our relationship. The Adsense itself was not the problem, it’s where and how it’s positioned. Note that absolutely no content is displayed. Internet Explorer reveals only a bit more under the ads—the lesson’s title.

I felt I had been tricked into looking at it, and I wasn’t at all happy with the prospect of 88 more days of unavoidable Adsense. But mostly I was ticked off because I gave Joan my email address and my first two interactions with her (opening her email and arriving at her site) gave me nothing in return.

Which brings me to the bigger issue: I gave Joan the most valuable thing I can offer an information marketer—my email address. Like I found with Alexandria Brown’s ezine, Joan can leverage access to me for advertising revenue, earning much even if she never sold me a single one of her products. But there’s plenty of opportunity for her to do both.

Because while I ostensibly subscribed to three months of lessons, what I actually signed up for was 89 opportunities for Joan to sell me something. She offers six press release products for me to buy, priced from $27 to $247. She has a $4,000/year mentoring program to coax me into. She has an affiliate program (which I don’t belong to, by the way) that would reward me plenty for successfully selling you on her products, most notably a 20% commission on that pricey mentoring program.

So why in the world was my attention squandered on a heavy-handed Google Adsense technique where an ad clickthrough will likely earn her no more than $1 AND sweep me away to someone else’s press release site? One of two reasons:

1. She understands the value of each online income stream very well, but not how to combine them effectively
2. There is a conspiracy to frustrate me with a long and irritating ecourse, such that I am driven to buy the ebook in self-defense.

Poor Execution…For The Win?

If it’s #1—that Joan is unfamiliar with combining online income streams—then her marketing tactics are just getting in the way of her great content. If that was so, I’d be willing to stay for the content until the bitter end of the 89th lesson while doing my best to ignore the format.

If it’s #2? Well, that’s risky business. Rather than buy the ebook, my frustration could just as easily lead me to write a heated blog post to highlight the faults in the strategies so my friends and I can have something to chew on. Heh.

But who’s to say that it’s not both…or neither? With that in mind, I’m going to both maintain my subscription AND put it out here for us to talk about. Because the content looks to be that good, and the execution looks to be that not-so-good.

And now that I’ve had my say, I don’t believe Joan would intentionally frustrate her customers in an effort to force a buy. Insurance, pharmaceutical, and antivirus companies try to scare us into buying all the time (and it often works), but a strategy that entails frustrating us into buying would be crappy and, like I said earlier, quite risky. Joan’s too smart, too seasoned, and too professional for that. I doubt she would take the chance we would drop Publicity Hound like a hot rock.

Ideas For A Better eCourse

Reading back over that, I’ve been kinda abrupt. I should make it clear that I don’t dislike ecourses, Joan Stewart, or her products. Quite the opposite, actually!

But her ecourse plucked the same nerve as my peeves with lackluster PDFs: great tools wielded ineffectively cost us results, customers, time, and money.

We can plan and build our lists effortfully and spend our time and money carefully, but poor execution will rob us of our Big Win despite all that effort and care.

That said, here are some ways I think we can build better ecourses:

1. Keep it short and give readers time to breathe.
   Five to seven lessons is probably plenty for a daily ecourse? If we have more than ten lessons it’s likely time to consider delivery on alternate days. The more lessons we have, the more time our readers will need to keep up. Like, if we have 50 tips then maybe we should deliver one each week for a year, not daily for almost two months.
2. Put the entire lesson in the email
   Put all of it in the email unless there is a compelling reason for readers to go elsewhere, such as heavy and essential graphics, a fabulous and necessary layout that won’t work as an email, or video.
3. Offer the collection of lessons as an ebook
   I think Joan was right on with this. Having all that good content in one easy-to-read PDF file is reason enough to buy, but ecourse subscribers may feel more compelled to purchase if there’s bonus content the ecourse didn’t have, such as extra lessons, downloadable audio files, or exclusive access to how-to videos.
4. Advertise with subtlety and care
   Text links, not banner ads. Discreet but visible placement of Google Adsense. Suggest a product, don’t insist upon it. There are numerous opportunities to sell something in an ecourse, but just one unwelcome hard sell could turn our eager reader into an unsubscriber.
5. Track everything we can
   It’s critical to know what emails our subscribers open, and which links they clicked on. Any good email service can manage this. I use iContact because it has useful features, a clean and friendly interface, and thorough help files.

Et tu? Got more suggestions on what would make a great ecourse? Have doubts or questions about these? Lemme know down below!

Photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte

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