A few weeks ago, I decided to take on a new venture. I felt a bit stagnant with what I was doing, so I decided that it was time to release a new product. This decision was made after listening to a podcast about product development and realizing that I really didn’t have a product. After kicking myself in the butt for sitting on a bunch of knowledge and not doing anything about it, I decided to stop wasting time, and start taking more action.
I decided to give myself one week to come up with a new product and release it to my subscribers. The product was going to be a free video eCourse about how to get your online business up and running and the name was going to be the 7 Day Bootcamp. After calling up one of my Internet Marketing Buddies on the phone, we dissected the concept I was working on, outlined the product and I was ready to get to work.
There was one important decision that was left to be made – How much to charge for it?
After going back and forth about it, I finally decided that I wasn’t going to charge anything for it. I was extremely hesitant about this at the beginning, but decided that since it was my first major product, I was going to try to deliver tons of value to help build up my reputation, and then launch other paid products in the future.
The Process
So off I went into the land of withdrawal, where no one heard from me because I was busy outlining, recording, editing, working, designing and just doing all the usual things you have to do when you are trying to launch a product. The truth is, I had no idea what to expect. How would people respond? Would I be wasting my time developing a product that no one would use?
Regardless of my hesitations, I continued plugging away at the product and sent out a mailing to my list letting them know about my new Free product and when it was launching. At that point, I still hadn’t completed half of the product and the launch was a few days away. However, I had determined that I needed to just put myself out there.
On day one of the launch, I only had the materials for the first three days completed. In the past, I had some half-done products that were never launched so I decided that regardless of how incomplete the product was, I would launch it on the launch date and work my butt off to deliver the rest of what I promised during the duration of the bootcamp.
Everything was going great until day five. I just didn’t have the content ready. After stressing out about it for a little while and talking it over with my internet marketing buddy again, I decided to just simply send out a message letting my subscribers know that they had one day break and that they would get the rest of the content on the next day.
I was surprised at how well it was received. Some of the members even responded that they needed extra time to digest all of the content they were learning and were glad for that day break.
All in all, it ended well, and I got great reviews. It was definitely worth the stress, and now I have something of high value that I can use to grow my online business even more.
What About The Money?
Ok, lets be real. Yes, I launched the product because I wanted to help people. However, there was something else – I still wanted to MAKE MONEY with the product! That’s one of the main reasons why I do what I do online.
I decided that in order to still make some money while doing this, I would use affiliate links to products that I recommend along the way. For example, if someone wants to set up a website, they need to get hosting, so I included my affiliate link where I recommended a hosting company for them to get started with.
There are some premium WordPress themes that I use for all of my websites. In the training, I let people know that there are free WordPress themes all over the Web, and explain how to find them. I also include a link to the premium themes I use. Of course they are also affiliate links.
I wanted to be sure that for this product, people did not feel as if they were being sold to. It was very important to me for them to feel as if they were receiving nothing but value!
The results were fantastic (in my opinion). As a result of the bootcamp, I doubled my online income within the last month, just based on my affiliate commissions, without doing any kind of hard selling.
Lessons I Learned
- Don’t wait for stuff to be perfect. TAKE ACTION and put stuff out there. This really hit home to me when I saw some guys launched a very successful product using the default WordPress theme. It gave me the kick in the butt I needed and showed me that it is better to get stuff out there and tweak it as you go.
- Give value and you will receive value. Regardless of how “unprepared” I was for the launch, especially when it came to the technical aspects, I wanted to make sure that I never reduced the value of the content I was putting out there. When it’s all said and done, the content is what does the selling for you and it’s what makes the money.
- Contextual advertising is very powerful. Yes, you can put a banner add on your site promoting a particular service/product, but if you can make your advertising so that it fits into the context of what your readers are trying to accomplish, that can make even more money.
What The Future Holds
As I mentioned before, my goal was to get my product out there. I wasn’t too concerned with the design, optimizing the landing page, making sure all of my T’s were crossed and my I’s were dotted. I just wanted to have a good foundation.
Now that I have the product completed, I’m going to work on optimizing the entire process, from the time a visitor lands on my page to when they complete the bootcamp and beyond. I’ll be adding more resources to equip them to accomplish their goals.
One of the things I also want to do is set up a paid, upgraded membership, where they can get more advanced content and benefit from coaching calls and other resources.
Take Home Message for YOU
My message to you is very simple. Learn from the lessons I learned. Don’t wait until everything is perfect to get started. Take action and results will follow. Get it out there, and perfect it as you go. You will learn a lot in the process, and you will achieve success much faster!
“You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.” – Les Brown
