Are You Afraid To Launch Your Stuff?

I can't speak for others but personally for me the reason I don't always launch new stuff is becuase I become lazy and comfortable with the passive income that keeps me comfortably afloat...

However, whenever I experience a need to raise a substantial amount of money fast (unexpected emergencies, major medical bills, etc.) I get off of my but and put together a new product.

i c that all the time where people are just "not ready" for no reason. while there are lots to learn, why not learn and earn at at the same time? get your project launched and keep learning, at the same time experiment with your site on what you learn.

work started is work half done!

I think once they get something near done they realise that it is not worth selling or not good enough in their mind. I know I have done this many times. I normally just give it away instead putting up for sale because of that.

Maybe they just keep thinking of things they would like to add to the product and never finish. I think some of this comes from not having an outline of what they want in the product.

Also, they may not feel like they are truely an expert even though they wrote the thing. You can write some stuff just from research but are you truely an expert? You need to feel real confident that what you are selling is going to be of value to the customer so you can really market it.

Putting a product together and putting websites together to sale them is not easy if you make things hard and complicated. It is all a matter of how you go about things.

Sometimes I think it is better to put out a bare bones site then work on improving it as you go. But I know some people try to get everything set up and working with a funnel and list before starting to try to sale it. So that is a good reason it can be a lot of work to get a full system up and running to sale a product.

Eric, you know you and I are on the same page (John Zeus from FNC here) about this one. It kills me to see so many smart folks - many of them here on this forum - who wring their hands and overthink for months and months. When all along, they had one really good idea that was valuable and could have been making them money all along.

If I could wave a magic wand for fellow IM'ers, it would be to give their confidence a boost just long enough to see a project through to completion. That really is what separates a lot of successful marketers from all the rest. Nothing more than that.

John

Oddly enough, (and not a direct answer to your question), I finally decided to get off my duff today and create a launch page for a product I've been working on.

My reasons for not launching prior to this were essentially fear of failure and fear of success. My reason for actually doing something today is that I realized you only live once, and if you don't take action today, WHEN WILL YOU??

And I feel so much better.

I have absolutely no problem creating products and launching them. In fact I put my product up a little while ago, (after some feedback from you Eric). My problem is not lack of enthusiasm or drive or getting in front of a video camera, it's lack of knowledge on how to drive traffic to my product. Eric you did say you were still willing to help me......


Sell Your Photos Online

Yep, I've had that problem.

I've overcome the fear now, and the product is almost ready to launch. I'm just going to wait until after my holiday.

As the above poster though, I still have a real fear of getting in front of a video camera. That kinda bugs me, but it's true.

Fear of failure.

Full stop.

I can't release a product without feeling on some level that this is going to go out there and everyone is going to hate it. It will not sell more than three or four copies. Everyone who buys it will demand a refund. Then they will leave a bad review and nobody else will buy it.

Then, for the rest of my life, whenever I release a product - people will immediately respond with links to this product and all its bad reviews. I will be written up in trade magazines as the biggest loser ever to enter the IM field, and this product I am releasing will be the laughing stock of the entire industry. It will be shown in seminars as an example of how not to make a product.

There will be a Wikipedia entry on it filled with minute description of just how appallingly bad it is, and how stupid I was to release it. There will even be an entry on me, limited to a few lines of stub that say "Author of the worst piece of crap product ever made, and an abject failure by all measures."

Later, my children will pretend they don't know me and change their names so nobody knows we're related.

And after all that goes through my head, I release the product anyway.

More heart-wrenching than people not taking action
is that the ones who need to be commenting here
won't because they are afraid of pointing themselves
out instead of getting help from their peers.

I think about what Eric has brought up a lot so that I
can find new ways to help my subscribers.

There are a few answers rolling around in my head...

1.) To some the whole "IM Industry" is like a weird form
of entertainment for where the guru's are like soap opera
stars and launches like new episodes in the series.

These people aren't serious yet, they are doing just enough
to lie to themselves that they are really trying. They will
eventually wake up though and start getting serious.

2.) Some people have just never been told they are done learning.

Society teaches us that we need to "graduate" before we can
move on to applying what we have learned. But it's bad business
for a guru to say "you're done, you have everything you need, you
don't need to buy any more products."

3.) We are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are mountain climbers
not settlers. When we climb a mountain we don't think "Ok great now
let me stay here." Instead entrepreneurs think "Oh look another mountain
to climb right over there."

What the newbies need to do is...

Get rid of their mental garbage piles that are limiting them like fear
of ridicule, striving for perfection, and fear of feailure.

Then they need to give themselves a diploma so they can move
on from learning and start doing.

Finally they need to find a good support group whether it be a
paid access forum or mastermind and make a plan of continuing
education that coincides with their current direction to stay
abreast of changing tactics/technologies.

Whew, that was a mouthful... I been wanting to get that off
my chest for awhile now!

I like to remind people I coach or mentor that you must never forget that newbies are always coming along. It's like a river flowing. The same current carries you ahead of them. So you just find one thing that really helped you when you were back where they are now, and you make it simple to understand. Put it out there for them to benefit from. There's your info product. And it'll sell forever (if you market it), because the flow of new blood never ends. Then, you move farther down that river and you put out another product helping people take the next step. Or, you come out with another product that targets another thing that helped you back at the first level. As you progress in your own development, the number of possible products you can put out increases and expands out like branches on a tree.

Remember: you already know at least one really important thing that someone newer than you does not yet know. Be the one to show them. They get helped and you make money. What could be better? Just do it. It doesn't have to be perfect or mind blowing. It just has to really, genuinely help someone newer than you.

John

Trippy.

Why do I think people don't launch their products and promote
their products? Two reasons...

Very, very little confidence in what they created which in turn
leads to not wanting to promote what they created.

It's a double whammy situation when you look at it. People who
DON'T actively promote, market and sell are NOT confident in
what they have to offer to promote, market, sell.

It's impossible.

You can have the greatest invention since the light bulb, but
if YOU don't market it because you don't feel it's "good enough",
it's game over.

Why do they not actively promote to make money?

For me it was definitely a fear of success type of deal. A "What
will happen if I DO succeed" kinda deal. Again, comes back to
not feeling deserving of the success one WILL achieve with a
good promotional campagin.

Why do people not implement?

It feels good to dream and imagine the possiblities of success
than it is to actually go through the PROCESS of getting success.

It feels soooo much better to mind f**k yourself into thinking
you ARE a success by associating yourself with knowledge that
COULD make you rich instead of doing what WILL make you rich.

Strangely, I know people who get's a thrill out of "possibilities",
but hates doing the work to get there.

Strange huh?

Fear of ridicule is a big one. I remember having written a few things, getting them reviewed, and was shocked to find my writing style was disjointed and confusing. To me it made sense. Maybe my mind works backwards, don't know.

It sure slows down the enthusiasm when you are a perfectionist to start with, then find out your stuff is not up to par. You don't want to sell it to anyone for fear of giving them junk for their money.

You have brought up a good point Eric. You're in Naples? Going to Rome and on up to Volterra next week for some rest and relaxation.

One thing that can be done is to combine product development with affiliate marketing. I've developed a number of great little products in several niches that realistically I could never build a major product launch around. Nonetheless they are great products. I'm talking about ebooks in the 30-80 page range.

I developed them specifically to use as bonuses in affiliate marketing campaigns. For example, when competing affiliate marketers in the IM niche get in on a product launch, most use some kind of PLR ebooks as bonuses.

When I throw up a pre-sell page I promote the fact that the bonuses I offer are all unique and cannot be obtained elsewhere. I often give potential buyers a choice of any 2-3 bonuses I list. I have made more money from affiliate sales of products using my bonuses to entice sales than I would have ever made trying to launch them on their own.

There is so much junk being given away as bonus material, that if you come along with some really great mini-products of your own--you can pull many more affiliate sales than many of the much bigger marketers out there.

I guess what I am saying is that product creation doesn't necessarily have to lead to product launching. There are a lot of ways to leverage products you develop into income without launching them.

Here are just a few examples of how you might do this.

1. Use your products as bonuses for affiliate sales.

2. Use them as opt-in bonuses to your list.

3. Use them on occasion as free downloads to your list to build a good relationship with your subscribers. If you do this on occasion your open rates on your emails will increase as subscribers never know when they will get some goodies.

4. Put an ad for one of your best products at the end of your product (ebook). Contact high profile bloggers in your niche and offer to let them offer your ebook as a free download to their visitors. This could get you a lot of downloads and each one puts your ad in front of a prospective buyer.

5. You can also approach ezine publishers in your niche and offer the publisher to offer your product as a free download--again with and ad or two for your bigger products at the end.

6. You can watch product launch forums (if you're in the IM niche) and contact product vendors with an upcoming launch to use your product as a bonus with their upcoming product--again, have an ad at the end for more of your products.

7. Find successful vendors or bloggers with substantial lists in your niche and offer to let them offer your product to their list subscribers. This gives them good content to offer their subscribers--thus helping them with relationship building, and--it gets your product and the ads at the end to large numbers of potential buyers.

8. You can search article directories for authors with larger number of articles published in your niche. They likely have good sized lists. Offer to let them offer your product to their list as a free download. Again, have ads for some of your bigger products at the end of the product you offer them.

I once convinced one of EZA most prolific authors to do this and it resulted in a sizable number of sales within 48 hours.

What I am really talking about is leveraging the assets of those bigger than you to your advantage. Those assets are generally either traffic or lists. You can leverage your small mini-product with the help and cooperation of the big guys to your advantage.

Just some thoughts--my head is empty now --Mike

You shouldn't be afraid. Just get the general areas covered and have a good solid game plan and hit the ground going, adjustments can be make along the way.

LOL - - Heysal from FNC here. (Hi John).

Ya know -- I started in IM just about the time I figured out how to post in a forum - it was this one.

I make products...good ones. I write my own copy. I can put up some backlinks, write and submit articles, yadda, yadda.........but when it comes to technology I couldn't be any denser if my head was made of wood. I just tried to read a thread by Michael Hiles about a launch and had no idea what the hell he was talking about - it was all about some sort of software or program of some sort from what I could tell. So much for that huh?

So as far as why aren't people launching their products..........sometimes it's just don't know enough yet. Hell, if I had to figure out everything from scratch I'd be sitting in a corner drooling with a bunch of neat products sitting on "my documents".

I think that's where a lot of people are right now. They know a lot about one thing, a little about a few things, and nothing about something that is loaded to the hilt with "have to know if you are going to do anything".

All I have to say about that one is the most important skill in this game is the one that most people seem to overlook. Networking. You have to be able to network to get those products out. I'd have had no bat's chance in hell of ever getting a website online without being able to do JVs.

With all the excuses that can come up.......I never hear anyone say that "I just don't know how to network." Which is kind of sad because I think that is a major problem for most people, and exactly what this forum is FOR, yet they don't seem to "get it".

I've hit crisis points on all of my projects that I'd never have gotten past if it weren't for networking. I would assume that what puts the stop on a lot of people is not fear or lack of confidence. It is the idea that they have to be able to figure everything out themselves and hitting crisis points that they are not able to overcome because they aren't networked properly to get past them.

People are their own worst critics...

i am sure this thread/discussion is helping a lot of readers do a self-discovery ..

as somebody rightly said, "you can find 100 excuses for not doing something when you only need 1 to do it"

I think it takes a lot of creativity and focus to launch a product. I've launched a couple, and really its relatively simple, but you have to get creative and work hard because products don't launch themselves. Learning about things is much easier than actually doing them. I could read about running marathons all day and know everything to the T, but running one is a different game.

I used to be apprehensive about launching, because I am a bit of a perfectionist and I put so much effort into my products/sites that I view poor conversions/feedback very personally.

But I get more and more confident now that I am providing quality products and services, so I really look forward to the buzz of each launch. got a new site in the works and I cannot wait to get that one out there!

Eric, first off... Thanks for bringing up this thread.

As for the two lines in quote here, I am at the same line. And, here's why I think people answered that way:

Let's assume I'm interested in selling ebooks/videos on dog training because there's a big market for it. However, I've never even touched my friend's dog, let alone having one in my Home and training it. I might be a good marketer and I can talk to people in a language they, as pet owners/friends, will understand best. But I haven't the slightest clue about dog training. I could write a good ebook by referring to a hundred articles in the public domain. But what about my sales letter? I need to tell the people why they should buy from me... and with a product like dog training material, they would want to take/buy advice from someone who's been there done that. What about producing videos? I need to produce original videos.

You might, at this point, suggest a JV; but good JV deals don't usually happen for the new guys. How do you suggest we launch a product with only so much knowledge and material (minus experience) at hand?

I'd really love to hear your thoughts, as your answer to this question might as well hold the key to riches for me. I'm earnestly waiting for your reply on this one.

Thanks,
SooRAJ

P.S.: In fact, I think I've learned so much about IM in the last 3 years (yes, you read it right... not 1 year, but 3 years) that I could as well teach IM to people. But, do I have real world experience?! NO. And that's what's holding me back from entering the IM niche. :p

People can't be afraid of doing it. Otherwise, they'll never have the experience to go a step further.

Do it once. Next one will be better. And the experience acquired is priceless.

I hear ya Eric. I have ran into this issue my self. BUT on the flip side, we have people who put out incomplete bullsh*t or stuff that is just crap because of this "getter done" mindset.

To many times have I seen people recommend the "just put it out there and fix it as you go along" way of doing things in IM. But you know what that to me is also a mistake. You end up putting out an incomplete product or stuff thats junk and end up damaging your reputation.

For example there are people who sell products and then don't begin creating the products actual content till after they sell the dam thing. I understand that this may not always be a bad idea in it self but I think marketers who do this should state that they will be doing the course live, etc. (like Eben Pagen)

Many times the vendor will promote the product in the sales letter as if it's all done and ready to go and then that turns out to not be the case...

Now for those who may have good products but they are not pretty or polished...thats just fine and can work to your advantage with a little positioning.


You can do what Bill Myers does, and tell people upfront that your product is not professionally done, it's abit in the ruff but that your goal is to give them the content they want and not win a presentation award.

The point I'm trying to make in my rambling is that...Yes taking action is good. Getting over your fear of releasing a product is GOOD. Perfection is BAD...

But for crying out loud, have some standards when you create and release a product. Ask your self how would you feel if you bought and paid xx amount of dollars for this? Put your self in your customers shoes and answer honestly.

There's my 2 pence...

P.S. Quick tip for those who set to HIGH standards for themselves. Work in stages get a first or second draft done and then have 3 people you trust evaluate your product (the main thing is choosing the right people). Get feedback from them. After you get good feedback from all 3 people, go ahead and launch even if you still want it perfect.

Your want or need is to get it perfect and thats fine and you can do that over time. But your primary and first goal should be to help your customer and deliver the result your promising. When you do that in a clear, concise and complete way then move to the "getter done" mindset and put that shi*t i out there and HELP people...(assuming thats your REAL goal)

Thanks pal!

Personally I'll go with the fear of failure / self-confidence thing. I've got two products out there and it took a while to get them out because they're was always that quesion in my mind "Will it be good enough ..." which leads to "... will have to do tons of customer support and give refunds .."

Before you know it the negative spiral has put you off.

It is very much - feel the fear and do it anyway. So far ... no refunds so it was a whole lot of worry over nothing.

And that's how you gain confidence. Doing the things that make you feel uncomforable.

Have I 'cracked it yet'? Nope ... I'll have that same fear again in the future - I just have to have the right self-talk to kick it out and get over it.

P.S. Not too long ago I fought someone .. I had to fight someone much better than me. Was s***ing it and thought I was going to get banged out. So just to finish the fight and lose on points would've been a good result for me! Turns out I stopped him.

Fear is a funny thing that keeps you awake, highlights danges -- but don't let it hold you back.

Hey All,

In all my years working with "permanent newbies" I've discovered that the issue isn't fear of failure, or fear of success ...

I haven't come up with the best way to explain it yet, but I hope this makes sense ...

Most of us have dreams as children. Some want to be rock stars, some what to be famous athletes, whatever it is ... those dreams don't last much past childhood in most cases.

Becoming a millionaire online is the grown-up version of wanting to be a rockstar, or famous athlete, but it's more realistically achievable for just about everyone on the planet than what most of us dream of when we're young.

If you're a "guru" in your space, you have some level of fame (you're famous), you have more money (you're rich), and you have a lot more freedom (you're always on vacation in exotic locations).

I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job of explaining this, but as long as you haven't "launched" yet, the dream is still alive ... it's still possible, and you can still do it.

By the time you're an adult, you've realized you're not going to be a rockstar, athlete, or actor ... but, you could still be rich, famous, and live the good life.

Not launching isn't about fear, it's about protecting the dream ...

Like I said, I haven't figured out how to explain this properly, but I hope this makes at least a little sense ...

-G

I think people hold back due to a fear of making mistakes. They want to learn the "perfect" way to do things, so they spend time learning everything they can about a subject before they take any real action on it. Once they actually launch the project, they have to deal with the very real possibility of failure, but any plan can look good as long as it's just an idea in your head.

The truth is that learning without any empirical evidence (even in the form of failure that shows you how NOT to do something) is a very limited kind of learning. If you really want to learn something, you have to do it.

My approach was always to just go ahead and take a leap in and try everything that I was interested in and even some things that I wasn't because of advice and things that I had learned.

I think experience is the best teacher. You can read all day, but actually doing something, failing, tweaking, seeing improvement, tweaking again is a much better teacher than just reading.

You also learn a lot when you do instead of just read. You acquire skills that'll be useful throughout your marketing career. Why be afraid to take the leap? Just do it and learn from it. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't work out and you've learned something valuable in the process.

Thank you for this awesome post... I've needed to get my ass in gear and launch already!

That creeping feeling always comes back like... oh no, I gotta do this, no wait, it's already been done, etc.

But this post was just what I needed. Thanks again,

Dean