Rocky Ullah: The Power of Pricing and Direct-Response Copy | The Creator CEO Podcast

Millions of social media subscribers. 

200 million organic YouTube views. 

10 million views on TikTok. 

7+ figures over 5 brands.

‍Rocky Ullah: a bonafide Creator CEO. 

He’s the founder of Vidtrafficpro.com, Speak Spanish Faster and, above all else, an absolute goldmine of knowledge for established creators looking to scale their business.

We sat down with Rock to learn about how he pivoted from dabbling on the side to running a booming brand, as well as what he’s most excited about in his own business and the creator industry at large.

6 ways Rocky has generated over 7 figures on SamCart

Leverage the Agora Model: Rocky’s formula for perfect product pricing

Hailing from a direct response marketing background, consulting for companies like Agora Financial, Rocky’s professional experience put him in the same room as some of the world’s best copywriters.

He’s leveraged the Agora model – a philosophy that generates as many customers on the front end as possible by using low-ticket items – to get people in the door. For his main focus, Speak Spanish Faster, that perfect price is $67 – a price he landed on after tons of testing.

“The most important thing is the quality of the customer I can get on the front end,” Rocky says. “If my front end price is a little more expensive, I’ll get fewer but higher quality customers.”

Rocky goes on to say he had even tested a $47 price point and noticed more of his customers refunding. “I was shocked because it was just a $20 change. I came from doing basketball training for kids, where low-ticket meant  $10 or $7, but the problem when you do a super low-ticket strategy, in my opinion, while collecting free leads, is that you're not building a list of high quality people that are going to engage with your emails,” he says.

Beyond price, the biggest point of entry is the sales letter. Rocky’s is a hybrid of useful content and a sales pitch, and it’s typically anywhere between 5,000 - 7,000 words. It’s the first place prospective customers go.

The sales letter: Old hat, or a must-have to scale?

“Look at companies like Agora Financial – companies bringing in hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars every year – and all of their sales material and content is long-form,” Rocky says. “Even webinars and things like that are, at the end of the day, long-form copy.”

Rocky’s someone who has been known to give away great content on YouTube and in his other professional ventures, and he turned the traditional sales letter on its head from a “slimy, aggressive pitch” to something invaluable to his prospects.

“I offer real information and real tips – stuff that makes people come back even just to the letter itself to revisit those tips. The sales pitch isn’t super hard until we actually get down to the part where I’m selling something.”

Revamping his sales letter has allowed Rocky to focus his acquisition strategy on high-quality leads at a low volume.

Acquire high-quality leads and convert them into high-paying customers

Rocky explains that he creates a lead form asking for contact info before his prospects can start purchasing. 

“The reason I do this isn't necessarily to collect leads, but it allows me to retarget people for free through my email list,” Rocky says. “There's no engagement other than as soon as they enter that, their name and their email, they go straight to my order form. It doesn't take them out of the process or anything, but now they're on my list.”

He’s able to then retarget them just hours later this way to curb cart abandonment and convert prospects into customers.

As part of this process, Rocky doesn’t offer any “freebies” or giveaway items. He was, at first – until Stripe’s policy changed. But once he was no longer able to offer a free trial, he doubled his stick rate and increased conversions on his order bump.

He’s focused on growing his paying customer base and nurturing the high-quality leads he’s acquired that have read his sales letter and had intentions of purchasing rather than wasting time, energy, and money chasing down people who were only seeking a freebie in the first place.

With this method in mind, he’s able to focus on those customers – existing and prospective – who are more likely to help him actively expand his revenue.

Stop neglecting expansion revenue

Although Rocky’s base price for his Speak Spanish Faster offering is $67, the average customer spends about $95 overall. “I have an order bump on the front end, so when they buy, I give them the opportunity to buy a $9.95 monthly membership. We have a good number of people in that, which is great, because it gives us a base of revenue every single month.” 

If you work that math out, Rock made a quarter of his income this year alone from that order bump. “It's simply me doing screencap videos once a week breaking a live video of somebody speaking Spanish.”

He also has an upsell for $97 that converts between 15-30% depending on its traffic source.

“I know when I'm running Facebook ads, as long as I'm getting customers for around $95, I'm happy with that because then I have future products that I can sell to them.”

Rocky also uses the powers of exclusivity and scarcity with his products, so his customers always have something to buy – but only for some time.

“You can't really buy all my products at once. It's that main offer, then you're on my email list,” he says. “I have four main products I sell but, every time I sell them, the urgency and scarcity is already ingrained into it because I use messaging like ‘This is your only time to get it this year.’ 

Rocky uses the calendar to determine which products he’ll sell and when.

“So, for example: January. I always love to start January with my highest-ticket product because everybody's like, ‘New year, new me. I want to learn Spanish this year.’ So I have a six-week workshop. This workshop is more hands-on, so I tell them this is the only time we do this every year.”

He repeats this cycle with new leads and gives himself a buffer to ensure he can participate in these workshops but promotes his other front-end products in the meantime.

Shift your priority from CAC to LTV

If you noticed earlier, Rocky mentioned his average customer converts at about $95. He also mentioned he’s super happy if his acquisition cost is also… $95. That puts him at an even $0 in profit – so why is Rocky hellbent on Facebook ads?

“I don't care, because I'm building a good list and I have higher ticket back-end products that convert pretty well. This also helps for scaling Facebook ads: Obviously, not all of my ads do well. I might have an ad set that's getting 50 conversions, but another one that's getting 100. For the purpose of scaling, I'm still going to leave the one that's getting a hundred.”

Nail cadence and content: How often to email your list and what to say to them

We hear this question from our 7-, 8-, and even 9-figure creators constantly: How often should I email my list? And what should I be saying?

No one has the formula perfect, but we love hearing from Creator CEOs on how they’re attacking their email list and using it to drive sales and retain customers.

This is Rocky’s formula, step-by-step:

1. Opt-in: When you opt in and, let's say, you don't buy, you'll get three follow-up emails from me within the first two days. I'll hit you up three hours after if you don't buy with cart abandonment messaging. Then there’s another email 19 hours later and 24 hours later. If you don’t buy, you go into a bucket of customers who get an email every other month about my four-day promotions and flash sales.
2. On the list: Once you’re a customer, you’ll get emails every other month or when I’m warming you up for a promotion Let's say the promo is Thursday to Sunday – so Thursday, I'll send one email. Friday, one email. Saturday, one email. On the last day, I always do two emails.
3. Always-on customers: I always send one or two just really good emails; no links, no pitch – I’ll explain the big idea for a product, why they might want that product, who it’s for – I really just lay out everything for them.

Rocky’s email strategy has come a long way from his days of selling basketball training, where the goal was simple: grow your list, grow your list, grow your list. He was emailing customers multiple times a day, nearly every day in a week, and it stretched him thin.

Now, his lift is relatively light, and each of his emails is purely intentional.

Build a team that supports your dream

Despite processing millions of dollars and generating millions of impressions across his organic and paid marketing channels, Rocky holds his business close to the chest. His team is lean, and there are a number of tasks he could delegate out that he prefers to continue doing himself.

He’s worked with his social media marketer, Marko, for over ten years. More recently, he hired his sister to run customer support again after helping him years ago during the basketball training era.

We asked Rocky about the tasks he has and will eventually want to outsource, and which tasks he prefers to keep doing himself. While every business is different, this is what’s working for this Creator CEO:

“I liked doing everything myself in the beginning, because that's the type of person I am. Even my wife asked ‘Why are you doing support? It’s tedious.’ If you find something tedious that you can give away, then you should. But at the same time, doing support, reading every question customers had, acknowledging every complaint they had – it really helped me fully understand my audience, which I think really helps me now with marketing,” Rocky says.

Working with Marko has also helped Rocky shift his focus to expanding his paid advertising engine, knowing his organic social media presence is in good hands.

“Social media is not as easy if you don't have someone like Marko that really knows what he's doing,” Rocky says. “He knows it better than I do. He’s one of the few people that I think knows it better than I do. But it's easier to delegate when you know what you're doing yourself. People want to delegate copywriting, for example, but how can you delegate that if you don't know what good copy is?”

With that question in mind, we asked Rocky the tasks he’ll never give up.

“I would never give up emails,” he says. “Or advertising, specifically writing the ads, scripting, and even filming and editing the ads, because a videographer's not in my head. As good as they may be, they don't really see the vision that I see.”

And for good reason – we continued to ask Rocky exactly why his ads are so effective and why he’s converting and profiting from them at such a high rate.

Be flexible to change – but don’t fix things that aren’t broken

In our 2023 Creator Profits Report, we found that the highest-converting social media channel by far was Facebook – and creators who are running ads on Facebook are pulling in thousands if not millions of dollars each month. 

Rocky’s no stranger to running ads, but he’s a fan of the mantra If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

“I've set up new ad sets every now and then, but I feel like when you have a good product and good offer, like all you need is like one ad. That’s it. Once it works, it's like, ‘Why would I ever go away from it?’”

But it’s not always a bad idea to refresh your audience or your ad creative, and Rocky’s learned this lesson a time or two.

“Sure, I'm going to test new hooks for ads and usually a hook might be based on the way I film the ad but, sometimes, when something's working, I don't like touching it. Sometimes, I miss out on opportunities to get better results.”

But he’s not always allergic to new ad delivery. Rocky recounted a time when he changed things up and it paid off – big time.

“For example, I had been running the same ads on Facebook forever. I'm not going to say they were dying, but I was consistently getting an $80 to $100 conversion,” Rocky says. 

“I recently got a Facebook ad rep, and he said I should try a new ad. I was like ‘Don't make me do it. I don't want to do it!’ Then I was thinking of some of the things that work well on TikTok. That's one good thing about doing a lot of organic: You start to understand what works. People always like my skits that I do in Spanish. So I was like, all right, that's a good hook. Let me do a skit. The first day I did it, like my sales boomed and – no BS – I was getting $25 cost per conversion.”

Now, Rocky takes ads more seriously and embraces changing things up, but he still uses his main pitch in each ad because he knows it works and knows it will convert. Instead, he plays with format and delivery.

Ads weren’t all that Rocky’s changed his tune on – TikTok and YouTube have taken a backseat to email and Facebook for his organic marketing engine.

“My most profitable [channel] by far would be email because, once they're on my list, I'm not paying for them anymore. Second, by far, is Facebook. Email and Facebook are my top two, which has changed for me because I was always on YouTube.”

In our 2023 Creator Profits Report, YouTube barely scratched the surface as a useful acquisition channel – in fact, only one or two niches even saw it break the top three.

“I think with this whole new algorithm of short videos, which TikTok mastered, now everybody wants to do it with Reels and YouTube shorts – it's just making it very difficult to get customers to your website,” Rocky says. “That's what the platforms have mastered: Keeping you on their platform. It's really difficult to bounce people to your website. Plus, you really only ever see the popular videos. Now, long videos aren't getting as many views. It's just all shorts and, in a minute, you can't really give good content and tell somebody to go to your website,” Rocky says.

What’s the one thing Creator CEOs get wrong?

As a Creator CEO for many years, Rocky’s been in the business long enough to make the mistakes, correct them, then notice them in others.

One of the biggest things he sees other Creator CEOs get wrong is lacking focus.

“People jump around too much, and I only know this because I was jumping around too much before when I was just a hobbyist. You’re getting all kinds of advice of ‘Oh, you should do a webinar. You should do this funnel, you should do that funnel. You should do this product, that product, this ticket, that ticket, high price, low price – you’re never sticking to something and really making it work.”

Rocky’s advice to anyone who wants to level up from a hobbyist and become a Creator CEO, or to Creator CEOs who want to make even more on their bottom line?

‍Simplify everything.

Create one really good product. Create a really good sales pitch. Test different sales methods and find what resonates with your customers. Pick one source of traffic and master it.

This has been Rocky’s approach with each of his businesses, and it’s helped him scale his brand as a whole. Now, he’s looking forward to settling into those businesses and sticking with what works.

Lifelong learning and balancing work/life: Rocky’s next moves

We asked Rocky what’s next for him, his brand, and his businesses, and he responded in true Creator CEO fashion:

“I have my Spanish business pretty much set. I’ll always be trying to bring in more people at a cheaper price, so I'm always going to stay on top of Facebook ads. I'm always going to study smart people and look at their ads, because you would assume it's working if they're spending money on it. I’ll always sharpen my knife on copywriting.”

He goes on to say that he doesn’t just learn from great people, but great organizations, too. Reading copy that’s in market helps him perfect his sales pitches, his emails, and his own ad copy.

“The way that Agora does their copywriting, you might read it and be like ‘How does anybody buy this?’ But if you look at how much money they're making, you'll be shocked,” he says.

Rocky has no plans of slowing down anytime soon, and learning is a skill any good Creator CEO credits as a lifelong habit.

Another habit all Creator CEOs share? Their love for work-life balance. In fact, at the time of this interview, Rocky was gearing up for his trip to Sicily with his wife, a luxury he can afford to take (both financially and operationally) because he’s built his business to keep running even when he’s offline.

What is he looking forward to the most? “A cannoli,” Rocky says.

Every day, Creator CEOs like Rocky Ullah build and scale their businesses on SamCart. In fact, over 5,000 of our 75,000+ creators will crack or surpass 8-figures this year alone.

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