Just Do It!

[Dan]

Hey everyone!

I read the book about 18 months ago, posted and read this board tons, and came up with many muse ideas, and even posted that I've decided to 'just do it' on here before...but never got them going! I even put a lot of work into some of them only to talk myself out of success in various ways. After a few words from a friend last week, I decided to do the bit that's always scared me most...the actual "selling" part...deciding if the orders come in, I'll go do it and make the product!

The product is a course for learning basic natural horsemanship - which is like you see used in the file "The Horse Whisperer". It's something I trained in several years ago, and even instructed in. I'm not going to post the link to the site on here, but will happily pm it to anyone. The reason for this is that this forum isn't very securely locked off, and as horses can bring out a lot of emotional issues for people, I don't want anyone to stumble across the site mentioned here and think I'm trying to make an easy buck of it...a reliable passive income would be nice, but that's a by product of putting a product together that I feel passionately about, and that I know can help a lot of people.

So...in the manner of the excellent post here http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=3261 by network memetics, i'm going to keep a progress log, and hopefully it will inspire someone else to not sit on their butt for 18 months like I did, but to just do it sooner!

If you want the site link, send me a PM...it's far from finished - the biggest challenge for me in "just doing it" was getting something online without nitpicking so much until I was happy with the copy!

Cheers guys,

Dan

[Dan]

Decide to "Just Do It" - set three goals for afternoon:

1) Write sales letter
2) Setup Mailchimp mailing list
3) Launch AdWords campaign

Waste couple of hours procrastinating on sales letter...decide not to worry about perfection, just get it online! End up doing points 2 and 3 late at night due to time wasting earlier...but it's done, I've got past the bit that's scared me before.

Date: Oct 26th, 2009
Status: Setting Up Test Sales Page and Ads
Hours Spent: 4
Spend: $15 - domain name
Profit / Loss: $-15.00
$ Per Hour: $0.00

[Dan]

Day 2 - I only set up the domain name I'd bought the previous day and tweaked the mailchimp settings - 30 mins time spent.

Day 3 - Travelling today, so able to check my e-mail on the train - first order!!!!!!!! It's a very exciting feeling :D

Just logged on now I'm home, and found second order, plus 3 other e-mail newsletter signups.

Pitching product at $22 for e-book, $30 for e-book plus hard copy - sold one of each, so $52 in sales - cost of production for hard copy will be about the $8 initially, so $44 nett.

AdSense spend $16 (two days)

Date: Oct 27-28th, 2009
Status: Letting it run...
Hours Spent: 4.5
Spend to date: $31
Sales: $44
Profit / Loss: $13.00
$ Per Hour: $6.50

[officer_dibble]

Excellent progress, Dan. Getting your first sale so quickly is very encouraging.

[Zach.Ho]

seem like you start well

[Dan]

Day 4

Just a quick update, no further action, but trickling in still. The page is under-optimised, and not as convincing as it could be...so my target is £50 profit in seven days...so about $80.

If I get this I'll produce the course, as by improving the copy and converting those on the e-mail list I should be able to double that, which will be over $20 a day on autopilot, plus a growing e-mail list, which I could potentially market follow up or related products to.

The result of all this is a nice bit of extra cash, but also the confidence to approach a bigger muse, which I think is a key element for me.

New spend: AdSense - $7.59

Date: Oct 29th, 2009
Status: Letting it run...
Hours Spent: 4.5
Spend to date: $38.59
Sales: $66
Profit / Loss: $27.41
$ Per Hour: $6.10 (just noticed I must have made a mistake on this in my last post!)