The $100 Startup

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New FutureChris Guillebeau–2012

Introduction.

• It’s a micro business revolution— a way of earning a good living crafting a life of independence freedom is what we are all looking for, and value is the way to achieve. .
• Often, the combination of freedom and value comes about when someone takes action on something he or she loves to do anyway: hobby, skill, or passion that the person ends up transforming into a business model.
• You can open a PayPal account in five minutes and receive funds from buyers in more than 180 countries.
• As you build a community of loyal customers, you’ll know well in advance what to make them and how likely you are to be successful without investing a lot of money.

Part one: Unexpected Entrepreneurs.

Chapter 1 Renaissance

• Empowering others is our greatest marketing effort.
• Micro businesses typically run by only one person, have been around since the beginning of commerce.
• All around the world, ordinary people are opting out of traditional employment and making their own way. Instead of fighting the system, they are creating their own form of work.
• “You explain what you do to your grandmother, and would you be willing to?
• Types of business models:
  • Business model one is old school: an inventor gets an idea and persuades the bank to lend them money for a growing operation.
  • Business model to is the investment driven startup, which is typically focused on venture capital, buyouts, advertising and market share.
• Three lessons of micro entrepreneurial:
  • Lesson one: convergence. This represents the intersection between something you especially like to do or act good at doing and what other people are also interested in.
  • Lesson two: skill transformation. Many projects are started by people with related skills, not necessarily the skills most used in the project.
    • Contrary to conventional wisdom, success in entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily related to being the best at any particular activity.
  • Lesson three: the magic formula. Passion or skill + usefulness = success.
• If you have a group of interested people but nothing to sell, you don’t have a business. If you have something to sell but no one will buy it, you don’t have a business.
• An offer is a combination of a product or service plus the messaging that makes a case to potential buyers.
  • What you’ll need:
    • Product or service, what you sell.
    • People willing to pay for it, your customers.
    • A way to get paid, how it you’ll exchange a product or service for money.
• Key points:
  • Micro businesses aren’t new, they’ve been around since the beginning of commerce. What’s changed, however is the ability to test, launch and scale your project quickly and on the cheap.
  • To start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for, and the way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional.
  • If you’re good at one thing, you probably good at others too. Many projects begin through a process of skill transformation, in which you apply your knowledge to related topics.
  • Most important: merger passion and skills with something that is useful to other people.

Chapter 2: Give them the Fish.

• The easy way is to find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them.
• Many businesses are modeled on the idea that customers and should come back to the kitchen and make their own dinner. Instead of giving people what they really want, the business owners have the idea that it’s better to involve customers behind the scenes… Because that’s what they think customers want.
• Where do ideas come from?
  • Business ideas can come from anywhere, when you go to the store, pay attention to the way they display the signage. When you see an ad, ask yourself: what is the important message the company is trying to communicate?
  • Ask three questions for every idea:
    • How would I get paid with this idea?
    • How much would I get paid from this idea?
    • Is there way I could get paid more than once?
• Value: something desirable and of worth, created through exchanger effort.
• Value means helping people.
• When you get stuck, ask yourself:
  • How can I give more value?
  • How can I help my customers more?
  • Freedom and value have a direct relationship: you can pursue freedom for yourself while providing value for others.
• Many business owners talk about their work in terms of the features it offers, but it’s much more powerful to talk about the benefits customers receive. A feature is descriptive, a benefit is emotional.

Strategies to aid in your own quest for freedom:

• Strategy one: dig deeper to uncover hidden needs.
• Strategy two: make your customer a hero.
• Strategy three: sell what people buy.
  • In deciding what to sell, the best approach is to sell what people buy:: in other words, think more about what people really want then about what you think they need.
• Six steps to getting started right now.
  • Decide on your product or service.
  • Set up a website, or even a very basic one from WordPress.
  • Develop and offer (to see an offer is distinct from a product or service).
  • Ensure you have a way to get paid, get a free PayPal account to start.
  • And that’s your offer to the world.
  • When such one through five, then repeat.
• Additional ideas:
  • Can you contact your customer list with a special offer or incentive?
  • Can you introduce a new product or service to complement your existing portfolio ?
  • If you are a coach or consultant, can you offer a special deal for clients who prepay?
  • Is there a way you can attract subscribers, clients or customers?
• What people really want, we want more of some things and less of others.
  • The more column: love, money, acceptance, and free time.
  • The less column: stress, conflict, hassle, uncertainty
• key points:
  • Value means helping people. Our unexpected entrepreneurs discovered that when they focus on providing value above all else, their businesses were successful.
  • Give people what they really want, not just what you think they should have. Give them the fish!
  • The more you can market a core benefit instead of a list of features, the easier it will be to profit from your idea. Core benefits usually relate to emotional needs more than physical needs.
  • Most people want more of some things (money, love, attention) and less of other things (stress, anxiety, debt). Always focus on what you can add or take away to improve someone’s life, and then prepare to get paid.

Chapter 3: follow your passion… Maybe

• Instant consultant business:
  • don’t wait for someone else to accredit or endorse you for business. There is no consulting school or degree. You can start a new business as a consultant in about one day, if not sooner.
  • **Pick something specific as opposed to something general. Don’t be a business consultant or life coach—get specific about what you can really do for someone.
  • No one values a $15 and hour consultant, so do not underprice your service. Since you probably won’t have 40 hours of billable work every week, charge at least $100 an hour or comparable fixed rates for the benefit you provide.

Opening for business:

• I will help clients—–. After hiring me they will receive (core benefit + secondary benefit).
  • I will charge $XXX per hour or flat rate of—–per service. This rate is fair to the client and to me.
• Basic website should contain these elements:
  • The core benefit that I provide for clients and what qualifies me to provide it. Remember that qualifications may have nothing to do with education or certifications.
  • At least two stories of how others have been helped by the service. If you don’t have paying clients yet, do the work for free with someone you know.
  • Pricing details: always be upfront about fees, never make the potential clients write or call to find out how much something costs.
  • How to hire me immediately. This should be very easy.
  • I will find clients through (word-of-mouth, Google, blogging, standing on the street corner, etc.)
  • I will have my first client on or before (short deadline).
• You can create, customize and download your own instant consulting business template at 100startup.com.
• Building a business around the passion can be a great fit for many people, but not everyone.
•  remember the all-important lesson of convergence. Must focus continually on how your project and help other people, and why they’ll care about what you are offering in the first place.
• The missing piece is that you usually don’t get paid for your hobby itself, you get paid for helping other people pursue the hobby or for something indirectly related to it.
• He get waiting for his project to be perfect, and then he just kept waiting. “I finally just had to give up on perfection and get the thing out the door”.
• You may just not want to combine your hobby with your work. The hobby or passion serves as an important stress reliever from your day job or other commitments, are you sure you want to assume full-time responsibility for your hobby? Some people find that it’s better to keep their passion separate from their work.

Reality check checklist

• Questions for you:
  • Instead of just during your free time, would you enjoy pursuing your hobby at least 20 hours a week?
  • Do you enjoy teaching others to practice the same hobby?
  • Do you like the inns and outs, all the details, of your hobby?
  • If you had to do a fair amount of administrative work related to your hobby, would you still enjoy it?
• Questions for the marketplace:
  • Have other people asked you for your help?
  • Are enough other people willing to pay to gain or otherwise benefit from your expertise?
  • Are there other businesses serving this market, usually good thing, but not the same way you would?
• (Passion + skill) + (problem + marketplace) = opportunity.
  • (Chart to explain opportunity)
  • Passion: international travel.
  • Skill: books high value award tickets.
  • Problem: lack of industry transparency, perceived difficulty.
  • Opportunity: guidebooks award tickets for clients who lack the time and knowledge.
• Despite the differences, the core goal for each of these approaches is finding the right kind of product or service for the right group of people.
• Key points.
  • As in the examples of Gary and Benny, good businesses provide solutions to problems, what do I do with all these extra frequent flyer miles, how to easily learn a new language?
  • Many follow your passion businesses are built on something indirectly related, not the passionate hobby itself. When considering an opportunity ask “where is the business model?”
  • Not every passion or hobby is worth building into a business, and not everyone will want to have a business is based on passion or hobby.
  • You can establish a specialized consulting business and one day the more specific the better.

Chapter 4: The Rise of the Roaming Entrepreneur.

• A brief primer for location independence.
  • It’s usually easier to operate a business while roaming the world than it is to start one. Be sure to spend plenty of time getting set up before you hit the road.
  • With the US are a Canadian passport, you can stay of for 90 days in many different countries around the world. And some of them, you can do a visa run across the border after the time is up then return for another extended stay.
  • You can learn about the visa is required for different countries by visiting visa HQ.com.
  • As much as possible, keep your work in the cloud by using online services such as Google docs and drop box. This way, you can access it from anywhere and don’t have to worry as much as keeping your data with you.
  • Change your password frequently, and don’t use the name of your cat as the password.
  • Stay for free with helpful hosts through couchsurfing.org or low cost individual landlords at www.Airbnb.com.
  • You can start from anywhere, but as a general recommendation, Latin America and South East Asia are to the easiest inhospitable regions to begin your nomadic adventures.
  • Some places are more tech friendly than others. To be aware of what to expect before visiting a new country study up by reading the forums at www.meetplango.com.
• You don’t need to be an author or even think of yourself as a writer to take advantage of this changing world. Digital publishing tends to fit into at least a few categories: one-off products, fixed. Courses, and reoccurring subscriptions.
• As students finish the for a five week course, many of them to other friends, who sign up for the next session.
• To get started, he spent months carefully documenting every tip and trick he could find about Evernote, compiling everything with detailed screenshots and tutorials into one big PDF file.
• Solid content isn’t everything; you also have to sell something that people are willing to spend money on.
• For every hundred $20,000 e-book, many other cell two copies before fizzling out.
• Partly as a result of the allure of working from anywhere, many aspiring entrepreneurs focus much more on the anywhere part than they do the work part.
• Key points:
  • Roaming entrepreneurs are everywhere these days. Many of them quietly building significant businesses while living in paradise.
  • Just not every passion leads to good business model, a lot of people pursue the nomadic lifestyle for the wrong reasons. The best question to answer is: what do you want to do?
  • There are many roads to location independence.

Chapter 5: The New Demographics

• The target market had nothing to do with the demographics in traditional sense, the group simply consisted of people from all backgrounds want to live unconventional, remarkable lives.  In other words, I didn’t have to segment or label them according to a relevant categories.
• Traditional demographics: age, location, sex/gender, race, ethnic, income.
• New demographics: interests, passions, skills, beliefs, values.
• By focusing on enthusiasts, they immediately set themselves apart in the crowded market.
• Consider fixing a problem by changing two things: what you offer, and who you offer it to.

Strategy one: latch on to a popular hobby, passion, or craze.

• An industry or movement with lots of lovers and haters, always present a good business opportunity
• another sign of good business opportunity: when lots of people are interested in something but have a hard time implementing it in their daily lives.

Strategy two: sell what people buy (and asked them if you are not sure).

• Most of us like to buy, but we don’t like to be sold.
• Old-school marketing is based on persuasion, new marketing is based on invitation.
• It helps to be specific, asking people if they like something isn’t very helpful. Since you’re trying to build a business, not a hobby, a better method is to ask if there are willing to pay for what you’re selling. This separates merely liking something from actually paying for it.
  • Questions like these are good starting points:
    • What is your biggest problem with___?
    • What is the number one question you have about___?
    • What can I do to help you with___?
• “Here are a few projects on thinking about working on during the next three months, but I could be totally wrong. Let me know what you think of each idea.
  • Idea one.
  • I did too.
  • Idea three.
• The ranking scale usually consists of answers such as “I love it”, you should do it, sounds interesting, would need to hear more, and it’s not for me.
• The information is valuable, but also remember that the majority opinion is in everything. Among other concerns, you’ll need your own motivations for building the project over time.
• Yes, you want to focus on meeting people’s needs and going above and beyond them whenever you can, but any single customer does not always know what’s best for your whole business.
• Make sure you’re capturing all the ideas and writing them down, since he might want them later, second, find a way to evaluate the home heating ideas. Create a possibilities list helps you retain ideas for when you have more time to implement them.

	Impact	Effort	Profitability	Vision	Sum
Idea 1	3	4	3	5	15
Idea 2	2	5	5	2	14
Idea 3	5	5	3	4	17

• Impact: overall, how much of an impact will this project make on your business and customers?
• Effort: how much time and work will it take to create the project? In this case a low score indicates more effort, so choose a one for project requires a ton of work in a five for project that almost no work.
• Profitability: relative to the other ideas how much money will the project bringing?
• Vision: how close the fit is his project with your overall mission and vision?
  • Ideas: publishing guide, empire building kit, community building webinar, shopping cart project, small live workshops.
• Key points:
  • Who are your people? You don’t necessarily have to think of them in categories such as age, race, and gender. The study can think of them in terms of shared beliefs and values.
  • You can often follow a fad, craze, or trend by establishing yourself as an authority and simplifying something about the process for others hoping to benefit from it.
  • You service to understand customers and prospects. The more specific the better. Ask: what is the number one thing I can do for you?
  • Use decision making matrix to evaluate multiple ideas against one another. You don’t have to choose only one idea, but the exercise can help you decide what to pursue next.

Part two: taking it to the streets.

Chapter 6: The One page Business plan.

• “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately generate into hard work”— Peter Drucker.
• There is nothing wrong with planning, but you can spend a lifetime making a plan that never turns into action. In the battle between planning and action, action wins.
• A marketable I did as a have to be a big, groundbreaking idea, it just has to provide a solution to a problem or be useful enough that other people are willing to pay for it. Don’t think innovation, think usefulness.

Seven steps to instant market testing.

1. You need to care about the problem you’re going to solve, and there has to be a sizable number of other people who also care. Always remember the lesson of convergence: the way your idea intersects with what other people value.
2. Make sure the market is big enough. Test the size by checking the number of relevant Google keywords: the same key words you would use if you are trying to find your product. Think about keywords that people use to find a solution to a problem. If you weren’t looking for your own product online but didn’t know it existed, what keywords would you search for? Pay attention to the top and right sides of the result pages, where the ads are displayed.
3. Focus on eliminating delay in admitted pain. The product needs to solve a problem that causes pain that the market knows it has. It’s easier to sell to someone who knows they have a problem and are convinced they need a solution than it is to persuade someone that they have a problem that needs solving.
4. Almost everything that is being sold is either a deep pain or a deep desire. For example, people buy luxury items for respect and status, by deeper level they want to be loved. Having something that removes pain may be more effective than realizing a desire. You need to show people how they can help remove or reduce pain.
5. Always think in terms of solutions. Make sure your solution is different and better. Is the market frustrated with the current solution? Being different isn’t enough, differentiation makes you better is what’s required. There is no point in introducing something of the market is already satisfied with the solution. Your solution must be different or better, it’s significant, not size that matters.
6. Ask others about the idea to make sure people you ask a potential target market. Others may provide insignificant data and therefore biased and on uniformed. Therefore, create a persona: the one person who would benefit the most from your idea. Examine your whole network, community, friends, and social networks and ask yourself if any of these people match your persona. Take idea to his person discuss with him or her in detail. This will get you much more relevant data than talking to just anyone.
7. They now line for what you are doing and show it to a subgroup of your community. Ask them to test it for free in return for feedback and confidentiality. The bonus a subgroup feels involved and will act as evangelists. Giving builds trust and value and also gives you an opportunity to offer the whole solution. Is a block to build authority and expertise on subject? Leave comments on blogs where your target market hangs out.
8. By investing it sweat activity instead of money in your project, you’ll avoid going into debt and minimize the impact of failure if it doesn’t work out.
9. Be honest with yourself, I realized it was really that my fear was holding me back, the technical stuff was just an excuse.
10. Once the first cell came in, I knew I’d succeed, it may not have been completely rational but that single cell motivated me to take business much more seriously.
11. Make sure there is sufficient demand for your product or service before spending your whole life working on it.
12. Build relationships and pitch their new products in a low key common sense manner.

The one page business plan. Answer each question with one or two short sentences.

• Overview.
  • What will you sell?
  • Who will buy?
  • How will your business idea help people?
• Ka-Ching
  • What will you charge?
  • How we get paid?
  • How else will you make money from this project?
• Hustling.
  • How will customers learn about your business?
  • How can you encourage referrals?
• Success
  • The project will be successful when it achieves these metrics:
    • number of customers,
    • annual net income,
    • Other metric.
• Obstacle/challenges/open questions
  • Specific concern or question number one.
  • Proposed solution to concern number one
• Deadline: I will launch this product into the world no later than___.

The 140 character mission statement

• we provide (product or service) for (customers).
• We help (customers) do/achieve/other verb (primary benefit).
  • Focusing like this helps you avoid corporate speak and drill down to the real purpose of the business as it relates to your customers.
  • For example if you have a dog walking service, the feature is I walk dogs. The benefit is I help busy owners feel at ease about their dogs when they are not able to be with them.
• Key points:
  • Plan as you go to respond to the changing needs of your customers a launcher business as soon as possible, with a bias towards action.
  • Nick’s first print setup provided more motivation than the $50 he received. As soon as possible, find a way to get your first sale.
  • Follow the seven steps to instant market testing, to gauge initial response.
  • Use the one page business plan to outline your business ideas quickly.
  • To avoid complicating things, explain a business with 140 character mission statement.

Chapter 7: An Offer You Can’t Refuse

• A compelling offer is like a slice of orange at mile 18 in the marathon.
• Remember, person to sell what people want to buy—give them the fish.

Give them an offer they can’t refuse.

1. Understand that what we want and what we say we want are not always the same thing.
   1. Despite what they say, most travelers don’t want the extra legroom enough to pay for it, instead they value the low-price flights above any other concerns.
   1. Airlines have figured this out, so they give people what they want— not what they say they want.
2. Most of us like to buy, but we don’t usually like to be sold.
   1. An offer you can’t refuse May apply subtle pressure, but nobody likes a hard sell.

Offer construction project magic formula: the right audience, the right promise, the right time equals offer you can’t refuse.

• Basics.
  • What are you selling?
  • How much does it cost?
  • Who will take immediate action on this offer?
• Benefits:
  • The primary benefit is?
  • An important secondary benefit is?
• Objections:
  • What are the three objections to this offer?
  • How will you counter these objections?
• Timeliness:
  • Why should someone buy this now?
  • What can I add to make this offer even more compelling?
• Provide a nudge.
  • The offer was essentially four months of yoga for the price of 45 days, or 62% off the normal price. September was close enough to January that by the time the new year rolled around, many of the members were committed enough to transfer to a monthly plan.
• Priceline’s compelling offer: save 40% or more on name brands hotels.
  • Third parties compelling offer: when exactly which hotel you’ll get with Priceline… And send even more when you know exactly how much to bid.
• She starts ever initial conversation by saying: I have a fantastic, strange job.
• I have discussed the price of him before he came out and was in no position to negotiate, so I gave him the cash and thanked him. (This is in reference to him paying $50 for a locksmith even though the service was brief. He secretly wanted people to take longer so he felt like he was getting more value and more effort to the $50 exchange.)

Compelling offer toolkit: FAQ, guarantee, and over delivery.

• As he continue to work on your offer, three tools will assist you in making it more compelling: the FAQ page will provide answers to common questions, and incredible guarantee and giving her customers more than they would expect.

FAQ, what I want you to know:

• The FAQ is to provide reassurance to potential buyers and overcome objections.
• Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the main objections your buyers will have when considering your offer carefully respond to them in advance.
• Wondering what the objections to your offer will be? They fall into two categories: Gen. and specific.
  • The specific objections relate to an individual product or service, so it’s hard to predict what they might be without knowing at a particular offer. General objections come up with almost any purchase, so that’s where will look at.
• Common objections, usually refer to their basic human desires, needs, concerns and fears:
  • How do I know this really works?
  • I don’t know if this is a good investment and/or I’m not sure I have the money to spare.
  • Not sure I can trust you with my money.
  • What do other people think about this offer?
  • I wonder if I can find this information/get this product or service without paying.
  • I worry about shame my information online, or other privacy concerns.
• The core concern for each of these objectives relates to trust in authority. You must create consumer confidence in order to overcome these objections. As you craft the offer, think about the objections and flip them around in your favor you want to send messages like these:
  • This really works because…
  • This is a great investment because…
  • You can trust us with your money because…
  • Other people think this is great, and here’s what they say…
  • Yet the pay to get this product or service parenthesis alternatively, the free versions aren’t as good, it takes a lot of work to get it on your own.
  • The information privacy are a hunter percent secure because…
• The point is not to be defensive, but rather to be proactive in responding to concerns.
• Describing your offer:
  • This thing is so awesome Prentice primary benefit).
  • Seriously, it’s really awesome. Secondary benefit.
  • By the way, you don’t need to worry about anything. Respond to concerns.
  • See, it’s really awesome. What are you waiting for? Take action.

The incredible guarantee, a.k.a. don’t be afraid.

• A word of advice: don’t make it guarantee complicated, confusing or boring the liar customer’s overthink it, keep it simple and easy.
• When I developed my travel hacking cartel, I promise that members who applied the program strategies would earn at least 100,000 frequent flyer miles a year, enough for four plane tickets.
• A week guarantee, or one is unclear, can work against the credibility instead of helping.

Over delivering, AKA wow look at all this extra stuff I didn’t expect.

• The easiest and most critical way to enforce their decision is by giving them quick access to what they paid for. But to go further you want to over deliver: give them more than they expected. You can do this by upgrading the purchase unexpectedly by sending a handwritten thank you card in the mail.
• Key Po As much as possible, connect your offer to the direct benefit customers will receive.
• What people want and what people say they want are not always the same thing, your job is to figure out the difference.
• When developing an offer, think carefully about the objections and then respond to them in advance.
• Provide a nudge to customers by getting them to make a decision. The difference seen a good offer and a great offer is urgency, why should people act now?
• Offer assurance and acknowledgment immediately after someone buys something or hires you. Then find a small but meaningful way to go above and beyond expectation.

Chapter 8: Launch

• The prelaunch campaign is a success when people eagerly await the film, complaining about how long it takes to arrive, until the day finally, it’s ready to be screened to the public.
• Launches are built primarily through a series of regular communications with prospects and existing customers.
• The offer would be available only for 72 hours, no packages would ever be sold again for the limited period of time.
• The worst thing you could do for launch is open your movie without letting anyone know. Much better thing to do is to tell a story. Story the story unfolds like this…
  • An early look at the future.
    • Hey, I’m working on something interesting. It’s going to be big deal when it’s finished, but for now I’m saying you know it’s coming down the line.
  • Why this project will matter.
    • This is why this project will be a game changer, here’s how people will benefit, and here is why you should care.
  • The plan for the big debut.
    • When will it be, how will it work, will there be some kind of bonus for early buyers, most important, what do people need to know at this time?
  • Whoa, we’re almost ready.
    • This communication happens right before the launch, sometimes as late as the day before.
    • But coming down to the wire and the really sad about this, any last-minute reminders or launch details are included here in the goal is to convert anticipation into actual decision.
  • OMG, here it is!
    • It’s finally here, everyone has been waiting, and now we’re ready to go.
• If you have no closing, you won’t see the uptake at the end of the launch.
  • The clock is ticking.
    • Right before the offer goes off the market, or before you remove the bonuses, before the price goes up, here is where you make one final push. The message is, it’s almost over. Here’s your last chance before you lose out.
  • I’d like to thank my mother for believing me.
• If your offer ended at a set time and you had a big response, you’ll invariably be contacted with requests for exceptions after it’s over. It’s tempting to make more money, but if you said it would end at a set time, you need to stick your decision.
• If you admit to a flaw, weakness, or limitation in your product, the so probably help and self harm you. That is because when we are evaluating a purchase decision, we like to consider both the strengths and weaknesses.
  • If a product developer personally tells us it’s not perfect—and here’s why—we tend to trust him or her more.
• All the messages you send, you’ll want to be mindful of several qualities. The first and most important, the need to tell a good story.
• Related ability, which may or not be a real word, refers to the need to ensure that the people who hear about the launch can relate to it.
• You don’t want to hammer people too hard, it’s better to build a relationship over time.

39 step product launch checklist.

The big picture:

1. Ensure that your product or service has a clear value proposition. What your customers receive when exchanging money for your offer?
2. Decide on bonuses, incentives or rewards for early buyers. How will they be rewarded for taking action?
3. Have you made the launch funds somehow? What to think about non-buyers as well as buyers. If people don’t want to buy, they would still enjoy hearing or reading about the launch.
4. If you launches online, have you recorded a video or audio message to complement the written copy?
5. Heavy bill anticipation to launch? Our prospects excited?
6. Have you built urgency-not the false con but the real reason for timeliness into the launch?
7. Publish the time and day of the launch in advance, if it’s online, some people will be camped out on the site and hour before hitting the refresh button every few minutes.
8. Proofread all the sales material multiple times… And get someone else review them as well.
9. Check all the web links in your shopping cart or payment processor, then double checked them from a different computer with a different browser.

The next steps:

1. If this is an online product, is it properly set up in your shopping cart or with PayPal?
2. Test every step in order of the process repeatedly. Whenever you change any valid, price, order components, text test it again.
3. Have you registered all the domains associated with the product? Domains are cheap, you might as well get the.com.net.org and any other similar name if available.
4.  Are all files uploaded in the right place?
5. Review the order page carefully for errors for easy improvements. Printed out and chat with several friends for review including a couple of people who don’t know anything about your business.
6. Freedom point communications out loud. You probably notice a mistake or poorly phrased sentence you missed or reading in your head.
7. Have you or your designer created any custom graphics for the offer, including any needed ads for affiliates or partners.

Money matters

1. Say clear monetary goal for the launch. How many sales do you want to see, and how much net income?
2. Advise the merchant account or bank of incoming funds.
3. Create a backup plan for incoming funds if necessary.
4. Can you add another payment option for anyone who is trouble placing an order?
5. For a high price product, can you offer a payment plan?

The night before

• Clear as much emails possible in addition to any online test gifted do seek a focus on the big day tomorrow.
• Right a strong launch message to your list of readers, customers and/or affiliates.
• Prepare blog post and any needed social media posts if practicable.
• Set two alarm clocks to ensure that you are wide awake and available at least one hour before the scheduled launch.

The Big morning.

• Schedule your lunchtime to see your audience, not you. All things being equal, it’s usually best to launch early in the morning, East Coast time.
• Soft launch at least 10 minutes early to make sure everything is working. It’s better for you to find the problem and have a customers find them.
• Write the first 3 to 5 buyers and say thank you and ask “did everything go okay in the ordering process.
• Headlines as possible, send a quick personal note to every buyer in addition to the automatic thank you that goes out.

Promotion, can be done on the day of the launch or before.

• Most important, ask for help spreading the word. Many readers’ prospects and acquaintances will help by telling their friends and followers, but you have to ask them.
• By two affiliates with a reminder about the new offering.
• Write to journalists or media contracts, if appropriate.
• Post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and then the other social networks you already participate in.

Follow-up, do this in advance

• Write a general thank you message that all buyers will receive when purchasing.
• If appropriate, write the first message for your email follow-up series that buyers will receive.
• Outline additional content for future communications and plan to schedule it after recover from the launch.

Going above and beyond.

• How can your over deliver and surprise your customers with this product? Can include additional deliverables are some kind of unadvertised benefit?
• Is there anything special you can do to thank your customer?

The second to last step

• Don’t forget to celebrate. It’s a big day that you worked up to for a long time. Go out to your favorite restaurant, have a glass of wine, by something you’ve had on for a while or otherwise do something as a personal reward. You’ve earned it.

The last step.

• Start thinking about the next launch. What can you build on from this one? What did you learn that can help you create something even better the next time?
• After the launch, you may be tested to take a break, and you probably should do something to celebrate or rest. But make it a short break, because what happens next is important. If captured additional attention and trust in the form of new customers.
• Always ask, how can I help people more?
• Key points:
  • A good launch is like a Hollywood movie: you first hear about fun events, and you hear more about it before the debut, then you watch as crowds of people anxiously wait for the opening.
  • A good launch blend strategy with tactics. Strategy refers to why question such a story, offer and long-term plan. Tactics refer to how questions such as timing price and specific pitch.
  • A series of regular communications with prospects before the launch will help you re-create the Hollywood experience with an audience of any size.
  • Tell a good story and be sure to consider the question of timeliness: why should people care about your offering now?
  • Isa 39 step launch product checklist as a model. Not every step may apply to you, we may want to add steps of your own.