First time poster, nearly there

[IanDavid]

Hi Everyone.

I picked up 4HWW about eight months ago when I was in Barnes & Noble and flipped through a few pages because, like most others I'm sure, the title totally appealed to me! It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I bought the book for real and read it cover to cover... which I've since done a few more times!

Creating my muse was pretty easy, because I have a strong interest in private aviation (I've been a licensed pilot since I was 17) and a lot of my career to date has been focused on SEM (until recently, I worked at a certain company whose name starts with Y!) So, I combined my vocation with my profession, and found a small number of high-margin pilot-oriented products from manufacturers on ThomasNet, which I first tested on eBay for interest, and then put my professional experience into action.

The results were almost instantaneous. Within a week of putting up my site and some strategic keyword purchases, I had grossed $9k and had built up an opt-in mailing list of over 800 people. I'm now grossing $30-50k a week (netting $15-25k) and have a mailing list of over 9,000 pilots around the world. I initially spent about five hours a day on the business, but with streamlining and outsourcing run of the mill tasks, and (like Tim says) putting trust in my network to solve decisions that really aren't that urgent, I'm down to about 12-15 hours a week and am putting in place additional plans to halve that number.

And now I'm planning my first mini-retirement! Four weeks in Japan, followed by another four in Australia!

IT CAN BE DONE! This book totally changed my life and I just want to let everyone else know that they can do it too, if they just apply the principles in the book, use the resources that Tim outlines (and find more of their own!), and stay positive!

Having worked in the internet world for some years, I was never one to go on forums or message boards, but I couldn't pass by the opportunity to share my story!

[kamakiri]

Thanks for the story. When will you be in Japan and where were you planning to visit? The rainy season is coming up, so you might want to take that into consideration.

[IanDavid]

I'm targeting August for the Japan leg.

[nghs22]

Inspiring for sure! Thanks

[maxpr]

Great story. Always good to hear about someone who has made it happen!

Would you say that your direct experience in aviation gave you the ideas for specific products or were they products you thought would be good and you just tried out?

I am always curious to know when people jump into things how intimately they intially know the product(s).

Best of luck!

[IanDavid]

Hey guys, thanks for the encouraging comments! As nice as it is to prove people wrong sometimes -- and I had my share of doubters! -- I'll take positive reinforcement any day!

My experience as a private pilot DEFINITELY guided me to products that I at least thought would sell well. I had three main categories of things: items that I had a hard time finding myself to buy online; things that were recurring purchases for pilots and, therefore, would have a consistent market for sales; and, finally, things that have at LEAST a 50% markup over wholesale.

I think if you can apply those criteria to pretty much any marketable category of products, you'll be in great shape.

[tomswiftjr]

Easily the most inspiring muse story I've heard. $60 - 100k / month in net profit eight months after reading the book? Awesome. Your story is especially interesting because I'm a student pilot myself and I have some ideas for products for pilots as well, mostly informational. I've also got some concepts for physical products for markets similar to the pilot market, in terms of the technical nature of the market, plus the willingness of the audience to spend money. I wonder if you could answer a few questions:

1. How many products did you start with? How many are you selling now? Are most of your sales just a few items, or is the distribution pretty even?

2. What's the average price of the items you sell? What about the average order size?

3. How do you compete against the more established pilot supply stores out there?

4. What are you using for your ecommerce platform? How much did it cost you start to finish to get this business up and running?

5. What about fulfillment? Do you do it yourself, use a 3rd party fulfillment center, or do dropshipping?

I hope I'm not abusing your generosity in being willing to post your experience here, but it's always great to understand how people succeeded and learn what you can from them :) Either way, congratulations on your success!

[webgal]

Very cool.

[IanDavid]

1. I started with 5-6 products (can't remember exactly, but it was a handful) that I knew would establish credibility but also provided a decent profit. I'm up to 22 now.

2. Average price is about $100. And that's about the same as the average order size.

3. I think the biggest competition vs. other pilot supply stores is my unclutteredness! We don't sell a boatload of things, the website is very, very simple (but looks high-end), each item has larger photos than I've seen on most other sites, and the homepage and landing pages per category are all very clean.

4. I chose Volusion as my eCommerce platform. It's got a lot of options for startups and is pretty scaleable. I'm still on the Bronze plan even at my size. Total startup costs for everything (ecommerce, advertising, research, etc) was under about $1500.

5. Our manufacturers do dropshipping, but I'm looking into a few additional products (higher-end) that will require a fulfillment house to handle, because the manufacturers don't drop-ship.

I'm happy to answer questions. Just don't be surprised if my answers are a LITTLE less than exact, because I don't want to twig my potential competitors to a few specifics!

[tomswiftjr]

Thanks for the answers to my questions...I find your experience fascinating and inspiring. A couple more if I may :)

1. Did you select products designed specifically for the aviation market, or did you find products that you knew pilots needed, even if they weren't designed for them specifically?

2. Did you launch products in a particular category (flight bags), or a more general genre (pilot safety), or just any pilot products you liked?

3. How many manufacturers did you launch with?

Thanks again!

[IanDavid]

Thanks for the answers to my questions...I find your experience fascinating and inspiring. A couple more if I may :)

1. Did you select products designed specifically for the aviation market, or did you find products that you knew pilots needed, even if they weren't designed for them specifically?

2. Did you launch products in a particular category (flight bags), or a more general genre (pilot safety), or just any pilot products you liked?

3. How many manufacturers did you launch with?

Thanks again!

Hey there...

1. All the products are specific to the aviation market (for now, anyway). Before I take my mini-retirement though, I'm planning to have a few more products that are a mix of pilot "lifestyle" products and some non-aviation specific products that still serve a pilot's needs.

2. I have tended to pick any products that I thought fit into my filter criteria (margin and/or repeatable and/or otherwise difficult to find). So, I haven't been too picky so far. Over time, though, I expect there will be logical categories of products that I sell and will then require chunking for easy navigation on the website.

3. So far, I'm working with three manufacturers.

[tomswiftjr]

Thanks so much for all your help! :)

[IanDavid]

No problem, best of luck with everything you do!