Lessons Learned Creating My First Product

For the new year, I decided to take more control of my life and succeed in Internet Marketing. For a couple of years, I have been an Ebay affiliate, but I took the leap to create my own product.

I had no idea what was involved, but, jumped in using this forum to search for best practices. So, to give back, here are some lessons learned.

1. Start with your Passion
For my first product (you can see it in my signature) I went with something I know very well and feel passionate about. This way, I can speak with some authority and make the entire process go smoothly.

2. Writing the Book
I created an extensive 5 page outline of what I wanted and took more than 100 photos. I then handed everything over to a writer from Elance for $500. I chose the writer based on his bid and 3 samples of work. His price was in the lower range, but not the lowest. LESSON LEARNED: Next time, I will write it myself or go with a much more experienced writer with verifiable references. I spent at least 40 hours editing and rewriting many parts. So, I'll do it myself or spend at least double for quality.

3. Web Design and Programming
Again, I went with Elance. But this time, I thought I was spending good money on a quality design company. I spent $350 for a company based in India to do the design and programming. They chose Wordpress as the CMS and created a custom template. I have some HTML knowledge and saw that everything was a house of cards built on nested tables. I spent $75 at oDesk to hire a CSS/HTML guru to clean it up. LESSON LEARNED: hire a quality designer first here at WF (which can be much cheaper). Then, get a site programmer to put together the HTML.

4. Keyword Testing
For the past 4 weeks, I have been keyword testing via AdWords with a budget of $20/day. The first week, I wasted money because I didn't have any tracking in place. Then, my split testing was too complicated. I tried to test too many things at once and was left with little actionable data. LESSON LEARNED: Keep testing simple with just one thing at a time. And, don't test until you have your real launch page ready. I've wasted a lot of time and money testing page elements that were evenutally tossed. Testing is ongoing.

5. Sales Page
I wrote my own and asked for Warrior feedback, which wasn't positive. LESSON LEARNED: For a first timer, either copy someone else's flow and bullet point concepts, or hire a Warrior. I hired a Warrior for the rewrite and it reads much better.

6. Video
I believe that video is very important on the sales page. So, I shot my own video and edited it in iMovie. It looked like crap. So I hired someone via oDesk and went with the cheapest that looked ok. The result was worse. LESSON LEARNED: A good video editor can take your video from a home movie to a slick Hollywood production. I went from free to $3/hr to $12/hr to finally get my video looking good.

7. Launch
I thought all I needed to do was create a launch promotion and announce it here on WF. Then, affiliates would send me a boatload of traffic. Oh how naive I am. LESSON LEARNED: Not quite sure yet. I hope to figure it out this week.

8. Affiliate Page
I copied some of the ideas I found via affiliate pages that have high gravity at CB. I paid a Warrior to create my banners and am very satisfied with that. I'm generally satisifed with my affiliate page. LESSON LEARNED: Start on this earlier as there are many tools that affiliates need. I feel like I also need to start getting ready to refresh everything soon.

9. Time Wasted
In addition to the above, I realize I wasted time on the following:

• Overthinking trying to protect my download page
• Evaluating vendors (when you have a list of 20, develop a quick filter)
• Getting distracted by other MMO threads here on WF
• Not having a daily to do list everyday, when I did do this, I was very productive
• Going to my day job (I should have called in sick on some days to get my work done)

Thanks for reading. My next goal, as soon as I make my first sale, buy myself a Warrior membership.