How NOT to sell [from the Warrior Forum]

I was checking out some posts in the Warrior Forum this morning, it’s the first time I’ve been there in years, and I couldn’t believe the comments under a post at the top of the primary Internet Marketing Discussion.

The post went…

“Hi Guys,

I have a small question, based on your experience which is better to get the best conversions.

Exit intent PopUp or the Normal PopUp that appears when you open the website?”

There were a few replies, but the following one pretty much summed everything up that people were saying…

“These days I gravitate toward exit intent popups.

They are less aggressive than hard exit pops.

In the future? Hard exit pops might get penalized by Google, and other authoritative presences that have the ability to mark your website as malicious.

It could be considered malicious JavaScript.

Just my humble two cents.

Another point… I would literally NOT send an email to my subscribers with a hard exit pop. It’s too aggressive lol.

Would you send content with a hard exit pop to your dad? Mom? Wife? Husband? Children? Grand parent?

If not; then don’t send it to your awesome audience.”

I mean this guy literally doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about.

And therein lies the problem with forums.

You have a bunch of people giving advice, and selling products, to a bunch of other people as if they’re an authority on the subject.

The truth is… most of them aren’t selling anything themselves but are happy to give advice to others on how to make sales.

No wonder it takes people so friggin long to succeed online!

Let’s look at the response to the question, which incidentally is a good and reasonable question to be asking.

The first two lines are fair enough, they’re talking about what they’re doing. No complaints there.

But then we get this bombshell…

“In the future? Hard exit pops might get penalized by Google, and other authoritative presences that have the ability to mark your website as malicious.”

WTF?!

Seriously dude, you’re trying to predict what Google are going to do?

Anyhoo, if you want to do that fair enough, the big issue is that you’re telling someone they shouldn’t do something, which works pretty darn well, because “at some point in the future” you may get penalized for it by one company.

Now there’s a lot of problems there:

1) You’re not currently penalised.
2) They may not be relying on SEO traffic (wouldn’t if they followed my advice)
3) If marketers considered what “may” be penalised in the future, we’d all be broke!

Then we get:

“It could be considered malicious JavaScript.”

I literally have no words. If it’s not malicious javascript, it won’t be considered malicious!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been to a website with a pop-up and had a malicious site warning because of it. This information is just flat-out wrong.

They then finish with anonther bombshell of:

“Another point… I would literally NOT send an email to my subscribers with a hard exit pop. It’s too aggressive lol.

Would you send content with a hard exit pop to your dad? Mom? Wife? Husband? Children? Grand parent?

If not; then don’t send it to your awesome audience.”

You wouldn’t eh?

That’s why you’re probably not making any money.

Would I send my family to content with a hard exit pop?

Absofrigginlutely!

Why wouldn’t I if the content is good? They all have brains, if they don’t want to opt-in to the free offer then they won’t.

Everything in this reply shows that the person who wrote it has no idea how to make money online with direct marketing.

Also notice how there’s no evidence that he’s split-test the two options and sold less using exit-pops. That’s because he’s not tested it, he’s simply repeating something he read from someone else that posted.

Here’s my advice:

1) Use exit-pops or exit-intent pops. Why? They work.
2) Assume what you read by people in forums is wrong unless they back it up with evidence of testing.
3) Always test yourself, whatever anybody else says (including me)

Over and out.

Michael