Can a popup on your sales page hurt?

If it's a pretty narrow niche within the health market the freebie may be too good.

Through my testing, having a popup appear on the actual sales page can be distracting and cost you sales. (if you have a heat map installed, you can see how visitors are reacting on the page)

You have a couple different options to incorporate list building into the launch.

1) Use an exit script to give away the freebie versus a popup. Some of these have very high conversion rates and with aggressive follow-up right away lead to sales.

2) Have a straight up squeeze page placed in front of the sales page with a benefits driven headline that matches what you're selling. Something like "Discover How To..." The squeeze page doesn't have to offer anything downloadable for free, just place it as a 'bridge' page so it's squeeze page ---> sales page this can easily be done by using your sales page URL as your autoresponder "thank you" page link. Then follow up aggressively. Doing it this way also helps to prequalify the traffic.

3) Have the person enter their email address before seeing the price, use your checkout URL as your autoresponder "thank you" page link. Then follow-up aggressively. (You can even use automation rules within your autoresponder to separate the actual buyers from those who haven't purchased yet by moving them to different lists).

Best of luck with the launch!

Yes, definitely.

Some people who use this technique are copying others and using it in the belief that "it must work, otherwise you wouldn't see so many others doing it". Internet marketing can be like this quite often: things become self-perpetuating because people see others using them and imagine that somewhere, "someone must have tested it and proven a benefit". And even when that's so, it doesn't necessarily make it right for them. Meanwhile, there are also people who do split-test it and promptly abandon it when the results are in.

The only way you can know whether it's right for your business is to test it in your business.

And good luck!

I would leave a pop-up off the sales page yes. Otherwise you are basically saying the sales page isn't strong enough.

The answer would never be the same actually. It all depends on the content and quality of your sales page. Results will always vary. It's best to always test and tweak to get the max results. As for me, having a pop up has always served me well.

Test it. Every site is different. Something that works for my traffic might not work for yours and vice versa.

The best thing you can do is rely on data to give you answers. I've been shocked at how wrong I have been about things I assumed to be true or advice I implemented thinking it made sense.

Really you should use one web page for one purpose. If its a sales page then use it just for selling. If you add another distraction you run the risk of people taking no action at all. If you want to have a pop up then instead use one that only comes into play if someone leaves your sales page without buying.

I would not do that, unless they read the whole sales script. It might cost you to lose their interest in the offer.
Let them read it and then at the end you can put optin,
If your script is good enough, they will join you.