Taken the plunge

[dotdash]

Hi all,

Just joined here - I finished the book about a month or so ago and am ready to get going.

I've been doing affiliate marketing for about a year and a half now but never really seriously thought about making my own products until very recently when reading a book on the law of attraction and applying the techniques an idea for an e-product just 'came to me'.

So this weekend I acted on it, registered a domain for the product sales page and committed a budget to the project! It's a software program as opposed to an ebook so I'm having to get my head around project managing it, describing the requirements, deliverables and other technical details which is a learning curve but once I've done it I can do it again and again and again and... maybe even write and sell an ebook on how to do it from complete novice to finished product selling like hot cakes!

So far I've factored in:


Commissioning a coder from rentacoder
Legal documents - NDA, other protection
Domain hosting and registration for sales site
Creation of secure sales site - I can do this
Copywriting for sales page - outsource this through elance
Joint ventures and affiliate program
PPC and SEO - I have a large and fairly high traffic content site related to the product already and some marketing friends in the same field.
Split testing and tweaking
Post sales support will be handled by virtual assistants - looking at getfriday for this.


I want to sell the product through clickbank, ebay and maybe amazon. I'm thinking of writing a small free report and setting up a blog for some pre-launch buzz - a la Rich Shefren.

I may offer the product at a huge discount on the warrior forum as a WSO (warrior special offer) although it is not related to internet marketing it will be helpful to anyone who doesn't live off their online earnings full time (yet).

Have I missed anything out that needs to be factored in? I'm aiming to budget a total of £1000 GBP for the whole thing.

It's all very exciting and if it flops - the experience and knowledge gained will still be more than worth it!

[Peter Bowen]

I built a software product as a muse. my first one and I learned a lot along the way. Perhaps you can avoid some of the mistakes I made.

In retrospect I would not have chosen to do this - you've got to support a software product for some time and if there are only a few sales you could find yourself in trouble.

Help and support can take time/money. I've had people moaning at me because they can't get my web based application running - and then I'd have to walk them through the whole process only to realize that their internet connection is not working at all. Dumb people buy software too!

Budget more time and money than you think you need for the software - these projects are notoriously difficult to manage and if experts have trouble think how much more difficult it is for newbies like us. (I'm not a newbie to project management but to software development)

Build the marketing while the developer is building the software and set up your website to collect emails - you've alluded to it already.

Budget your development in a couple of phases - first build enough functionality to get it working and to sell it at a low price. If enough sell to make it worthwhile and you incorporate the early user's comments into the second phase. I'm in this stage now.

You're welcome to take a look at what I did at http://www.NoMore247.com

Give me a skype pete_bowen if you would like to discuss this in more detail.

Cheers

Pete

[Vacman]

dotdash & Peter,

I've also taken the plunge and am developing a software product, and I can vouch for Peter. My goodness it is not easy!! :)

That being said I know it will be worth it, I just have to put up with the time and effort it's taking up right now.

As Peter said, it is really difficult in defining exactly what you want and working with a company to help develop the product.

The secret about developing a software product and having it be outsourced is that YOU do all the development, and then they just code it. :)

You have to design an exact blueprint of what you need, and how all the calculations will work, down to the most tiny details.

I don't know the scope of your software program, but I've already written hundreds of pages of documentation. It's like building a house, you have to be the architect who designs the house, and then the coders are like the construction workers who come in with their hammers and nails and just put it together.

I'm going to be sooo happy when it's done :)

And then I'm going on a 2 week sailing trip to celebrate! :)

But hey Peter! (Or anyone else who could answer)

Here's a question that seems to elude me. I want to support my product for my customers, and I don't want to have any hands on customer support personally.

This has probably been talked about already on this board, but I can't seem to conceptualize it.

Question: How do you outsource customer/product support? I don't think that's really what VA's are for.

Thanks!

And good luck dotdash!! You can doooo it!!

[dotdash]

Thanks for the answers folks!

After almost a week on rentacoder I didn't get any bids at all so I sent an email to the admins asking for help with that and they didn't reply :(

So since then I went to elance and have had 5 bids in less than 24 hours nearly all of them wanting to start discussing the finer details over skype/IM, I have more than 6 days to choose a winner so I'll be doing a lot of reading and documenting.

I'm only just realising the size of this task from my point so Pete I'd love to take you up on that offer maybe some time this weekend - I'll add you to my skype. I have to somehow fit all this around a busy city 9-5 IT job so it's going to be tough but it was never going to be easy was it ;)

One of the bids I've had so far (the only one I can see the amount) is for 25% of my budget (£1k GBP) so I have more left over for sales copy and website graphics/banners and other not factored in expenses.

I was feeling a bit down not having any bids from rentacoder for 4 days but I knew there was something I needed to change at my end even if it was posting my project at elance which I prefer now because I can use the same network for programming, sales copy writing, website graphics and more.

I think I'll get busy this weekend on some pre-launch marketing/blogging/opt in sign up stuff.

This is all very exciting and the idea came to me after trying some exercises I found in a law of attraction book so the action and momentum feels good - even if it tanks the knowledge and experience will be golden!

[dotdash]

Hi all,

Just as an update. I have 6 bids now and being asked lots of questions by programmers - looks like I have a busy weekend ahead!

I've also joined Rich Shefren's business growth training program :D

http://www.strategicprofits.com/business_growth_system.html (not an affiliate link)