Survey Responses & TLPR Update
Thanks to those of you who generously took the time to fill out the survey that I sent out earlier this week. The responses have been incredibly insightful. If you haven’t filled it out, please do (click here). Here’s what I’ve learned from the 70 responses thus far.
1. My articles have gotten longer over time and I recently began to feel a growing suspicion that they were getting to be too long, hence the question on the survey. To my surprise, 75% of subscribers prefer the current format of weekly, long-form articles, with 10% specifically requesting that I add executive summaries, which I’m going to do from here on out. However, 18% of subscribers wanted shorter articles, so I’m going to start to scatter those in. Not every topic deserves 3,000 words, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t cover it.
2. In general, it looks like the topics are on-point. Every respondent said that the topics are generally timely and relevant. That is hugely encouraging because picking what I’m going to write about is half the battle. However, a few folks asked that I cover more things like how certain products fit with certain sales strategies and others asked that I solicit more ideas for topics. I’m going to try to tackle more sales strategies and if you ever have topical suggestions, please just email them to me directly: [email protected]. As long as I can get reasonably good independent data and feel like there’s a story to be told, I’ll drop it in the queue.
3. Several folks asked for the podcast to return. I honestly didn’t realize how many people enjoyed that and I’m going to try to get it going again. The primary challenge is finding guests who are willing to do it. What might be really fun is to do a series with TLPR subscribers, so here’s my ask: if you want me to bring back the podcast and you’re willing to be a guest, then shoot me a note and we’ll put a recording on the calendar.
4. I also had several people ask for some sort of webinar content as a supplement. From here on out, I’ll be adding a quarterly call where TLPR subscribers can hop on for a lively Q&A and group discussion. Think of it as a mega study group with folks that are in all corners of our industry. It should make for a very fun conversation. The first call will be on Wednesday, 8/3 from 3:30-4:30 Eastern. Please mark it off on your calendar if you’d like to join. At 3PM on the day of the call, I’ll post an article to the website with the login information and password.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the responses have been overwhelmingly encouraging. They’ve given me new resolve to continue publishing The Life Product Review and to make some meaningful improvements to the offering. There have been times over the past couple of years where I got very close to hanging up my cleats and focusing on the other projects I have going on. What’s kept me going is my love for writing – and the enthusiasm of subscribers like you for the service.
As it currently stands, the subscriber base of The Life Product Review is just big enough to justify the significant time, energy and effort that goes into creating unique, high-quality, original content on a regular basis. Over the years, I have done exactly zero – and I mean zero – marketing or promotion for the site. Any new subscribers come from word of mouth. My business is built on referrals, just like yours.
The Ask
If you find value in The Life Product Review, then please tell your friends about it. Even a modest increase in the subscriber base would give me latitude to hire an analyst, which is something I’ve been toying with for a while, and add more services to the site.
To that end, I’ve also added a referral field to the $995 annual and $99 monthly membership pages. If you make a referral and that person signs up for the site, I will send you a $100 Amazon gift card. At the end of the year, if there have been more than 100 successful referrals, I’ll randomly draw the names of 3 subscribers who made more than 2 referrals for an all-expense paid trip to North Carolina to play golf at a top-10 NC golf course.
