A Little-Known Secret About Product Creation That Might P!$$ You Off...

Of course I agree with you that the product should be great. But I humbly disagree with you that a great system with a crap product equates to bankruptcy.

In the long game view of the industry, a "minimum viable product" should be all that is required to go into business. Find out what your demographic really wants BEFORE you start toiling away to deliver what you THINK they want.

"Build, Measure, Learn" - Stolen straight from The Lean Startup, as is the following quote:

If, however, you dedicate all your resources to creating a product that YOU think your demographic will respond to, and then build a system on top of that, you will likely fail.

Don't forget, the definition of a "crap product" is the customer's, not yours.

To put it in terms my kids would love, test your crap to see if it is, in fact, crap.

This is an interesting statement that I'd also like to address. For those of you unfamiliar with Papa Murphy's Pizza, they prepare a restaurant quality pizza that you pick up, bring home and cook yourself.

To me, it's amazing that this works. If I were given an opportunity to invest I would have declined on the idea that it's only a moderate step above the existing market of frozen pizzas at the grocery. And they just went public. Shows what I know...

At any rate, I know a PM owner and this guy has it made. No ovens, no delivery, a skeleton staff and a tiny strip mall storefront. And his margins are INSANE!

If you compare PM's product to, say, Papa John's, they're not even in the same league. One delivers a piping hot pizza pizza straight to your front door (with garlic butter! I love that garlic butter!), the other gives you dough and toppings to take home and cook yourself, in your own oven.

If you look at it from a straight dollars spent perspective, PM is a better deal. But if you look at it in terms of what you're getting for your money, PJ has it on lock.

(I won't even mention CiCi's Pizza. Talk about a systems model that makes a killing, my goodness!)

The reason this works as a franchise is that the system has been tested and vetted to kingdom come. They have a model in place, hand the owner his marching orders, give him the keys to a marketing plan, they even tell him what loyalty programs to use. They could change the ingredient supplier, start to skimp on toppings, whatever they like to test the ROI, and the system would still hold the business up.

This is another chicken and egg thing. Does the system need to come first or does the product have to come first? Does it matter?

That all depends on what you're selling. You can't pigeon hole every single product in the whole world that is or has been successful and say it was successful first because it had a great system and second because of the product itself, which can be great, good or even average.

I don't believe that an average product can survive long. Look at all the average products in the history of this world that had short runs and eventually went out of business. If the system was bad to begin with, according to your logic, the product would have never sold at all. And we know that isn't true.

I personally had almost no system at all during the 9 years that I was successful online before my business fell apart. But for 9 years, I was successful. I created products, made a sales page, wrote articles, posted them to EZA, got traffic, built a list and made sales.

I was told my business model was crap. But for 9 years I made enough to pay off my credit cards, mortgage and send my daughter to college. I am now debt free even though my business has since tanked.

The reason I did well was because my products were good. I had very few refunds during all that time. I had a loyal customer base.

Now, you might say that my system was good in order to do that well. Well, if the system was that good, why did my business tank? Can't have it both ways. So either it was good and it still made no difference in the long run or it was bad and I was successful for a substantial amount of time in spite of it.

The truth is somewhere in between. You need a good system and a good product to have long term success. Drop the ball in either of those areas and you are in serious trouble.

In short, I do not believe you can sell mediocrity to the masses for a long period of time no matter how great your system is.

And I agree with the poster above. Very deceptive thread title. Wasn't at all what I was expecting to read. But hey, that's part of marketing on forums so no surprises there.

Question, and then I'll answer your question about why my business failed.

How do you know whether or not you have a solid "system" if your product is crap or great?

A great product will probably sell regardless of the system. A crap product will probably have very little chance of doing anything at all.

It is only those middle ground products that are probably made or broken by the system.

My point is, you really have no way of knowing if your system is any good or not. My own business is living proof of that. I was told by many marketers that my marketing method was doomed to failure in spite of the fact that I had serious success with it for years.

Here it is and I'll point out why it failed.

1) Research what people are buying and create a similar product. Don't reinvent the wheel.

2) Write articles

3) Submit them to Ezine Articles in order to drive traffic to my offer/list (failure point)

4) Repeat steps 1 to 3.

Pretty simple system, don't you think? Ultimately, it failed when Google slammed the article directories and my traffic stopped.

The system was flawed because I put all my eggs in one basket (EZA) But that's all hindsight as far as I'm concerned. When a site is as big as EZA was, who could have possibly foreseen them crashing and burning like they have? I certainly never saw it.

So in spite of all my great products that I kept cranking out (over 300 of them) eventually I just stopped because I couldn't generate enough traffic to even determine if the products Iw was creating the last 2 years were any good. I believed that they were because they were based off the same criteria I had been using for the 7 or 8 years previously.

I guess in a way I am agreeing with you. The system broke down so the sales stopped.

But again, how do you know when you have a great system?

What if the first product I put out using this system was so bad that nobody bought it? Or forget it being bad. What if it's something that nobody wanted? I misfired with one product in particular and ironically, the system I used for that product (because I was so sure it would be a hit) was actually one that was proven by the big boys. I pulled out all the stops for this product including press releases, affiliates, you name it.

Nobody bought the product.

Why?

Because nobody wanted to learn a new form of divination. They just weren't interested.

So again, I firmly believe that you need both. You need a product that people want, that isn't crap AND you need a system to get that product in front of people that works.

One is no more important than the other. My own successes and failures are living proof of this.

In fact, I'll go one step further. You drop the ball in one of any 25 areas of running a business and you risk failure. That is why the failure rate in this business is so great.

I screwed up in one area, where I chose to go for my traffic and it collapsed my whole business.

So, nice theory that you have there but I'm not 100% sure that it washes 100%.

Because there are way many more areas than systems where you can totally fubar your business.

That's it precisely. The reason I figured this post would upset a few people is that it challenges what they've been told, that you make a great product, recruit an army of affiliates and the money will flow in.

And maybe it will. But it probably won't for long. Not without a solid foundation.

The very first thing we should all do is to get our brains wrapped around the concept that this a business. And smart business people observe how successful businesses function, and follow their lead.

Unless, that is, they have a few million lying around to carve out an entirely new means of operating.

What the hell do I know, but these are about the biggest obstacles to overcome, IMO. There is a reason that copywriters make damn good $/word. Whereas the freelance content writers keep pushing the $/word decimal point to the left, a top notch copy writer can push that decimal point to the right and maybe add a zero, or two. That is some of what can be involved in split testing - variations of copy.

As far as traffic, well, that needs to be underlined, too, like you did. That's a different game than it was even 3-4 years ago, concerning search engine traffic, which many marketers made a lot of money with - and not always with awesome products.

Without eyes seeing that copy, your sales will always be zero, quality of product not withstanding. You can also sell a complete garbage product for $60 (I know of one in a completely non-MMO or normal niche), providing your sales funnel COPY kicks arse and that sales funnel is getting TRAFFIC.

I agree that solving those two dilemnas is the difference between success and failure. You can solve those two issues with a crappy product and make money, potentially good money. You can't make money with the best 'product' in the niche, though, without getting the copy and traffic figured out.

I think I see what you're pointing out but not sure.

Can you tell me why you're doing that? Surely you have a reason

I bet if I go get your templates, I'll be able to "sniff out" a system somewhere.......... somewhere

I agree with you there. Too much procrastination in this business. I'm just the opposite. I have very little patience which is why my latest business is driving me crazy. It takes a ridiculously long time to create my product. And in bulk, forget it. Otherwise, the product I'm coming out with (hopefully soon) would be done already. But that's the nature of music. It's not like writing an ebook, something I could crank out in a few days. Music is endless. But once everything is in place, this time I will have a system that will work. Of that I have no doubts and finally I'll be making the kind of money I used to make and more now that I'll also have affiliates working for me.

I just have to learn a little patience.

You're absolutely right, people in our industry that continue to fail but they keep trying the same thing over and over again, this is INSANE !

Try thinking outside the box, look at what other successful marketers are doing, those are the best trendsetters. If you continue to do what's not working you're going get the same result. Find a successful model and build upon it.