Not too long ago, I went on a list cleaning campaign.

My open rate was dropping below where I wanted it to be, even though traffic and sales were climbing. Since low open rates drive me crazy in a way that can’t possibly be healthy, it was time to cut inactive subscribers off of the list.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to do it the hard way.

(The easy way, incidentally, is to send 3 emails saying “Do you still want to be on my list?” to people who haven’t opened your emails in forever. Then you nuke everyone who doesn’t a) open these emails and b) click the “yes” link inside. Easy peasy.)

The hard way is to send those emails, then slowly – and by hand – manually delete everyone who didn’t click “yes”. While looking at each inactive subscriber and wondering what their story was.

Given that I ultimately deleted 16,286 names, that’s a lot of wondering.

However, I learned a few things in the process – which was the point.

I’ll share them with you now.

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As promised, here’s part 2.

(You can read part 1 here.)

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Far too many ittybiz owners never get around to creating their first product because they think the process is going to be too hard. (And if they get through that first product, it’s such an ordeal that they avoid ever attempting another one.)

This is tragic, considering how much money you can make from a product – not only from the initial launch (or release), but also from the passive sales that can pad your revenue for years.

Products don’t have to be hard to make. If you’re feeling inspired by an idea – and you keep your scope small – creating products can be surprisingly easy. (I explain how in Product In A Weekend, but don’t buy it now. My summer sale is in a week or so.)

Products can be easy to make, if YOU don’t make the process hard.

When you’re making products, your biggest obstacles are the ones you put in your own way.

These are the things you look back at and say, “Damn, I wish I’d approached that differently.” They seem obvious, but only in hindsight.

After creating over 30 products in the last 10 years, I’ve had a lot of opportunity for hindsight.

I invite you to learn from my mistakes – and from how I’ve corrected them.

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When you run a launch, stakes feel remarkably high.

You want your launch to do well. You want to make a whack of money. You want to impress your list.

(And maybe also impress the people in your life who have their doubts about whether you’re going to go anywhere with your business. Perhaps. Maybe.)

You want your launch to succeed, and you don’t want to screw anything up.

But there are a lot of moving pieces to a launch. And you will screw some of them up, especially at the beginning.

As you run more and more of them, you’ll screw up less and less.

But you can also screw up less by avoiding rookie mistakes.

I’ve taken the liberty of explaining 13 of them here, so your next launch can make more money.

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A sales cycle is the length of time it takes a consumer to go from awareness (of a product or service or seller) to purchase.

A sales cycle is measured in two ways. We can measure a sales cycle individually (it took me three months to buy a coat). And we can measure a sales cycle as an average (it takes the average person four years to buy a hot tub).

Measuring sales cycles is always an inexact science because for most businesses, it’s hard to put the date of awareness on a calendar. But it’s good to have a basic idea of how sales cycles work – both on the individual level and on the average level – so you can manage expectations in your business.

So today, I’m going to teach you a little bit about sales cycles, give you 5 real-life examples from my coaching practice this week, and give you a few things to watch out for moving forward.

I will also show you pictures of kittens, because visual aids assist in information retention. We’ll start with this one.

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