Feenz
06-07-2009, 05:41 PM
Hi All
I thought I'd post an update for your general interest, for those who are starting out and want to read about other people doing the same, and in order to once more seek any pointers from any of you that have been there and done it.
So.. December last year, I read The 4 Hour Work Week, and was inspired to get on with it.
I spent at least 2 months, messing about with nothing, trying to find the "best idea", and saying to myself things like "this one would be perfect, if it wasn't for x, y, z".
In the end, I realised I was losing so much time and energy by avoiding getting started, so took the plunge and wrote an ebook on a subject I'm very familiar with, but which is EXCEPTIONALLY niche.
A niche within a niche, within a niche, so to speak. (apologies that I'm not going to share URLs or specifics here, due to seeing someone's muse being ripped off on here, as well as some of my own graphics from one of mine).
The ebook took about 3 solid days (spread out over a week) to write, and I tested a sales page while I was writing it, and just launched it, having decided that $47 was the best price point, from the testing (I tested everything from $27 to $67).
I didn't have loads of data, but I knew the ebook was never going to make me million of pounds anyway, and saw it more as an experiment / practice run.
I got my first proper order within 2 days of launching it (which was pretty exciting), and in the first month it sold about 20 copies. Sadly, I spent almost as much on google adwords as I received in sales, so it wasn't great, but at least it wasn't a disaster.
I then backed off the adwords, and since then have been spending very little, and have sold another 20 or so copies. I didn't sell a single copy last month, but sold one 2 days ago. It hasn't changed the world, but it proved to me that it can work.
I then started another muse, which was a PHP website script I wrote for membership sites, which has a wizard installer, and an admin panel.
It took about a week to write it, and has gone on sale with different modules, ranging from a base price of £27, up to about £120 for the full package.
The first one sold within about 2 hours of the adwords going live. As you can imagine I was pretty excited. I then sold another about 2 days later.. then it dried up and I got one more about a month later. Mind you, two of these were for the full package and one was for about $60, so it was better than a kick in the teeth for a totally unoptimised sales page.
About a week ago, I found the time (amongst my other workload) to revamp the sales page a bit, and am going to tweak the adwords settings tomorrow, as I feel this has a decent chance to expand into scripts for all sorts of things to help website owners build parts of their sites more easily.
At the same time, I have started up two other less muse like businesses, which have taken up a lot of my time (to get off the ground). One of them is an automotive parts business which sells exhausts, of our own design, and manufactured in china. While I've been sourcing the products, I have the website in test mode, and it is theoretically making in the region of $200 a day in profit, with very little optimisation, and very little advertising, so I am very excited about this.
The products won't be here for at least another 2 - 3 months, but I am going to structure everything as muse like as possible, by getting the fulfillment automated, etc.
At the same time, I've started another small venture running small events, and have autsourced most of the hard work, although its taking up huge amounts of my time currently, and will do for about another 6 months, after which I think i'll have it fairly automated. This, however, is profitable now, and makes in the region of $1,000 a month.
Again, nothing here to set the world alight, but I'm going for the "lots of small things all add up!" approach.
-
Now.. while the two ventures that look most profitable are more within my confort zone in that they're more "real world", I am convinced that both of them are / will be more successful because of the learning and experience of setting up my other two muses.
In all honesty, I still find it all a bit "black magic", and really hope that one day I'll break out of the stumbling block I have, and work out how to effectively use adwords properly, and write decent sales copy, etc as the idea of setting up a new muse a week (ebook, script download, audio download, etc, etc) and each one making $100 - $200 a month with little or no maintenance sounds like utopia to me.
But I am yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel, in fact, I feel I'm only just inside the tunnel!!
As always, any advice / comments are MORE than welcome. And any comments from anyone who has gone through the same challenges I'm going trough would be great to hear!
Cheers!
I thought I'd post an update for your general interest, for those who are starting out and want to read about other people doing the same, and in order to once more seek any pointers from any of you that have been there and done it.
So.. December last year, I read The 4 Hour Work Week, and was inspired to get on with it.
I spent at least 2 months, messing about with nothing, trying to find the "best idea", and saying to myself things like "this one would be perfect, if it wasn't for x, y, z".
In the end, I realised I was losing so much time and energy by avoiding getting started, so took the plunge and wrote an ebook on a subject I'm very familiar with, but which is EXCEPTIONALLY niche.
A niche within a niche, within a niche, so to speak. (apologies that I'm not going to share URLs or specifics here, due to seeing someone's muse being ripped off on here, as well as some of my own graphics from one of mine).
The ebook took about 3 solid days (spread out over a week) to write, and I tested a sales page while I was writing it, and just launched it, having decided that $47 was the best price point, from the testing (I tested everything from $27 to $67).
I didn't have loads of data, but I knew the ebook was never going to make me million of pounds anyway, and saw it more as an experiment / practice run.
I got my first proper order within 2 days of launching it (which was pretty exciting), and in the first month it sold about 20 copies. Sadly, I spent almost as much on google adwords as I received in sales, so it wasn't great, but at least it wasn't a disaster.
I then backed off the adwords, and since then have been spending very little, and have sold another 20 or so copies. I didn't sell a single copy last month, but sold one 2 days ago. It hasn't changed the world, but it proved to me that it can work.
I then started another muse, which was a PHP website script I wrote for membership sites, which has a wizard installer, and an admin panel.
It took about a week to write it, and has gone on sale with different modules, ranging from a base price of £27, up to about £120 for the full package.
The first one sold within about 2 hours of the adwords going live. As you can imagine I was pretty excited. I then sold another about 2 days later.. then it dried up and I got one more about a month later. Mind you, two of these were for the full package and one was for about $60, so it was better than a kick in the teeth for a totally unoptimised sales page.
About a week ago, I found the time (amongst my other workload) to revamp the sales page a bit, and am going to tweak the adwords settings tomorrow, as I feel this has a decent chance to expand into scripts for all sorts of things to help website owners build parts of their sites more easily.
At the same time, I have started up two other less muse like businesses, which have taken up a lot of my time (to get off the ground). One of them is an automotive parts business which sells exhausts, of our own design, and manufactured in china. While I've been sourcing the products, I have the website in test mode, and it is theoretically making in the region of $200 a day in profit, with very little optimisation, and very little advertising, so I am very excited about this.
The products won't be here for at least another 2 - 3 months, but I am going to structure everything as muse like as possible, by getting the fulfillment automated, etc.
At the same time, I've started another small venture running small events, and have autsourced most of the hard work, although its taking up huge amounts of my time currently, and will do for about another 6 months, after which I think i'll have it fairly automated. This, however, is profitable now, and makes in the region of $1,000 a month.
Again, nothing here to set the world alight, but I'm going for the "lots of small things all add up!" approach.
-
Now.. while the two ventures that look most profitable are more within my confort zone in that they're more "real world", I am convinced that both of them are / will be more successful because of the learning and experience of setting up my other two muses.
In all honesty, I still find it all a bit "black magic", and really hope that one day I'll break out of the stumbling block I have, and work out how to effectively use adwords properly, and write decent sales copy, etc as the idea of setting up a new muse a week (ebook, script download, audio download, etc, etc) and each one making $100 - $200 a month with little or no maintenance sounds like utopia to me.
But I am yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel, in fact, I feel I'm only just inside the tunnel!!
As always, any advice / comments are MORE than welcome. And any comments from anyone who has gone through the same challenges I'm going trough would be great to hear!
Cheers!