If you are reading on a smartphone, use landscape / hold phone sideways.
OK, I am now guilty of jumping on the Black Friday / Cyber Monday bandwagon. I did it without really thinking about it - seems like everyone does it, so why not us?
My buddy (and www.CoffeeInTheClouds.us alumni) Jon Stark pointed out via his blog that doing a Black Friday SUPER DISCOUNT can do as much harm as it can do good. Probably more harm than good.
Jon says: predictably offering discounts trains customers to do a bunch of things that you probably don’t want them to do, like:
* Focus on cost instead of value
* Delay their decision to make a purchase
But the thing I like the least about predictable discounts is that it gives off a whiff of “the stench of desperation.”
Oh man, the stench of desperation. Jon's words hit me, hard.
Jon says: If you are confident of the value you provide to your ideal buyers and you aren’t desperate to make a sale, why would you drop the price? I’m not saying there are never good reasons to offer a discount - there are - but for a business like NYDLA.org it needs to be done strategically and in an unpredictable way.
OK, so here is some Black Friday / Cyber Monday deodorant:
We put a countdown timer on our Black Friday page: NYDLA.org/black-friday
It is truly a THANK YOU to our global community, for HELPING US us to grow. Even our FREE members help us - they propel ALL OF US forward. [We love the millions of eyeballs each month - as do our sponsors]. But come midnight on Cyber Monday, our 50% OFF PAID MEMBERSHIP deal does indeed turn into a Pumpkin.
One thing that WE DO all year long, is reward our paid members for telling their friends. If someone becomes a paid member from a referral, we give one month FREE to both ($25 and $25). And, if someone has the knack for promoting us AT SCALE - I usually say something like: "So, you wanna do this full-time or what?" 
So, on this Sunday before Cyber Monday, I am both proud - and also somewhat embarrassed. I am both happy and also a little sad.
I am glad that we did the Black Friday / Cyber Monday dance with everyone on planet earth. But, I am so feeling that we might have gotten some of the "stench of desperation" on us. We want our community to trust our prices, 365 days a year. We want our community to focus on THE TOTAL VALUE that our paid membership delivers. We constantly say that we are not trying to be GROUPON, and that we are not trying to be like Costco or Amazon Prime.
The word stench made me Google the word deodorant. But a subclass of deodorants, called antiperspirants, prevents sweating itself, typically by blocking sweat glands. And, other types of deodorant allows sweating but prevents bacterial action on sweat since human sweat has only noticeable smell when it is decomposed by bacteria.
And there it is. It is not the sweat - it's the bacteria. The sweating is fine - it is the nasty bacteria that causes the stench!
OK, land the plane Tommy.........
Black Friday / Cyber Monday does not cause the stench of desperation (if there is one...) just as sweat has no odor unless there is nasty bacterial activity that decomposes sweat on the skin.
There can be no "stench of desperation" if customers clients, members are happy, satisfied, and feel the value of the relationship. Members telling their friends. That is everything. Speaking of friends - as Chandler Muriel Bing, the fictional character from the NBC sitcom Friends would say:
www.TomTalks.us with Matthew Perry
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