Posts belonging to Category Product Development

Now I can’t tell you how much I paid for it, but I got it at www.Fiverr.com

I’d not heard Fiverr before but it is quite addictive looking down all the tasks that people are prepared to do for a few dollars.

I thought the job this guy did was great – his concept plus one revision. And really quick and keen to help.

I’ve trialled another two content writers. Both are underway at the moment but the good ones do get a queue of work so you have to be a bit patient. However the lady I selected for a content arrticle was new and I was first in the queue and she turned it around straight away. The initial result? Well her written English was fantastic – those of you who have dabbled with other outsourcing sites will know that the quality can be a bit hit and miss – but she was good. Unfortunately in her enthusiasm she missed the brief a bit but when I gave her feedback, she instantly accepted by comments, apologised and agreed to re-write. I’ll let you know the result when it comes through.

By the way, an update on the e-book project soon!

David

The new e-book project rolls on and we are so nearly there – I’ve raised a couple of concerns and Neil Stafford as ever the brilliant mentor has challenged me to justify whether the amendments are sufficiently important. A really good challenge and in fairness I was probably trying to be too perfectionist in some cases which would of course cause unnecessary delays. On the other hand I’m keen to be proud of what I eventually publish so in some other areas I have requested a bit of a review which iis currently underway.

Meanwhile, in order to get other parts of the sales page set up, I had to go an sign up for a name capture / autoresponder service. That was great – I ‘ve been dying to have a go and had no hesitation in signing up with Aweber. The set up process was so easy and so was the process of setting up the opt-in page. The one on this blog was my first effort and I’ll be changing it soon – but on other sites the form looks really neat.

The thing is, it’s a lot easier to set the thing up than to get somebody to click on it – but as I say ‘one challenge at a time’!

Anyway, the thing is the nice people at Aweber have given me my very own affliate code and hence the enormous banner ad to the left! If by any chance you haven’t already signed up, then go ahead and click it – you’ll either get 30 days risk free trial or a shorter trial period for a few bucks – see what the offer is.

Catch up soon!

Davidl

Oh my goodness – welcome to April – 2010 is just going so very fast!
I’m still working with Neil Stafford of Internet Marketing Review on the e-book project and whilst the end of March has come and gone, it should be ready to go live this month. I’ve been asked to set up my autoresponder account and get Clickbank accounts opened to I guess we should be approaching the finish – or should I say the start line very soon.
Given the original target of building a $100k pa business within 12 months from October 2009, I’m beginning to feel a little bit anxious, but we are where we are and I’m going to press on. Obviously to build such an income is going to take more than one e-book but I’m still working on the basis that it will be the catalyst – I have a lot of faith in Neil Stafford and the New Power Profits Coaching Programme which promised a significant contribution towards my financial targets.
Any regualr visitor to this blog will have seen a number of different theme templates – I’m sorry for any confusion, but this blog is also whereI try out some different ideas. The current Theme is by Eximius and is pretty much what I’ve been looking for. Over the next couple of days I’ll try and customise the header – one small step for mankind – one giant leap for David Lee!

Here’s a really  simple idea for getting a product up and running and is taken from a recent post from my friend Martyn Brown of Internet Marketing Bugle which I thought was really interesting and gave an easy to follow idea to get a product up and running very quickly.
Here’s Martyn’s post:

Enter a niche that you are interested in and that you have checked that other people are interested in.

Do this by going to Clickbank, entering your niche keywords and seeing if any books are selling on this subject.
Take note of the ones that are selling well.

Go to www.master-resale-rights.com this site sells PLR books for you to do what you want with.
Buy a book on that very niche (will cost a few dollars).

Tidy the book up, maybe add some images, add text or remove anything you don’t like.

Once done, read the book into Audacity (free audio program: http://audacity.sourceforge.net ) as best you can or get someone with a good reading voice to read it for you.

Save the audio file as an MP3.

Finally, make a slideshow of the audio. Simply list the main points of the audio (bullet points) on an appropriate backdrop and let it run. The end result is a number of slides with bullet points timed to run synchronised with the audio. You will need to run the audio and note the time the slide should change to the next one. Set the time each slide remains on screen and you’re away.

Add images if you want to in order to give better perceived value to your show.

Use ‘Instant Video Articles’ software ($17) http://nick-james.com/snip/153.htm for this if you haven’t got Camtasia.

Make up a sales page to upload to your website informing readers that you have a book, an audio of the book AND a video of the book on sale, all for just $27.00.

Optimise the site in order to get visitors or use AdWords and watch your new product sell.

Just one sale will get you all your initial outgoings back.

Just be sure that the niche is SELLING WELL before you make a start on your product, and not on some obscure subject like ‘French Snail Racing’ or whatever.

Martyn Brown

Well I decided I just had to have a go and followed his instructions to the letter.

I bought the resale rights to an SEO related e-book and used Martyn’s method to put it into action.

Now obviously it’s going to take a bit of effort to drive traffic to the sales page but it’s a great way to get started.

The resulting Youtube ‘presentation’ is below and you can see the sales page is at www.MoreWebCustomers.Com . Please let me know what you think!

Well we’re really starting to motor now, and the site is expected to be up and ready to take orders by the end of this month – no pressure then Neil!
So far this month we’ve reviewed the draft book and sent back for final amends. We agreed the domain name and the title for the book and also agreed the art work for the sales page.
I’ve also received an advance copy of the audio product which is Neil talking to me about the subject of the book – sorry guys but the subject is still TOP SECRET at this stage. I couldn’t listen to it myself ( something about ones own voice) but my family have listened to it and they all assure me it went really well. Copy for the sales page is currently in progress – we’re definitely getting there!

In early February the first draft of the e-book was finally received. It certainly seems a long time since the subject was agreed upon and the brief written. In some ways preparing for the telephone interview should have happened before the brief for the book was agreed as nothing focuses the mind more than an impending telephone interview!
That preparation was really good as it defined for me the precise angle that I was trying to come from. The problem of course was that the book was written to a brief that predated that direction! Therefore there was a bit of rescoping required, although nothing too extreme!
Personally I found it really hard not to get stuck in and start re-writing the book as no matter how good the ghost writer is, they are never going to use the same ‘language/semantics’ as you are. Anyway at that point in stepped Neil Stafford with his excellent coaching skills to challenge me as to whether the amendments were really necessary. In the event, I tried to be as amendment ‘lite’ as I could be and I await the final draft with some trepedation
Whilst this has been going on we have agreed domain names and book titles and Neil has engaged copywriters to start work on the sales material.

January 2010

E Book Project
Can’t believe I didn’t update the blog after the last one – that was the big day when I was going to record my telephone interview with Neil Stafford.
The call went really well and the preparation certainly paid off. The only think I found difficult was that sometimes my brain was trying to recall what I had prepared earlier at the same time that my mouth was engaged in speaking! Not great but I think I got away with it.
Anyway Neil seemed pleased with the results and has promised me a copy to review – trust me I won’t be listening to it but my daughter and wife have already pre-ordered their copies in advance!
The writing of the e-book has been delayed by the author so we’ll just have to sit tight on that!
Secret Project
In my last post I mentioned a secret project I was working on – well that started in early December and was something called the Rich Life System which is all about Sports Trading ( and is nothing to do with IMR). I’m not going to go into major details here but suffice to say it has been a bit of a distraction and has resulted in a refund being requested. If anyone is thinking about getting involved then please feel free to contact me.

Well I’ve almost been out of work for a month – crikey it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve tried to keep a routine going – try to get up at 6AM and put in some time before breakfast and then work until around 6ish. So many interesting things to look into.
The beginning of the month saw me spending a fair amount of time researching my niche and trying to get myself in a position to be able to record an audio product with Neil Stafford. We’re still waiting for the book to be written – it’s been presented to Neil who has reviewed and requested some revisions. I’ve not seen it yet but I’m very excited to.
For the audio product I had to come up with 15 questions for Neil to ask around my Niche – and provide him with outline answers. After a bit of research that wasn’t too difficult to do and feedback from Neil was positive.
Anyway – today is the BIG day and we’re due to make the recording later today. I regard myself as slightly under ready – but I feel it will be more spontaneous if the words I use come off the top of my head – as opposed to using a script. Fingers crossed!
The rest of the month has been around fighting off sciatica and getting such into a new (and secret) project which is not internet marketing but may just help contribute towards the bills.

Well I said goodbye to the bank at the end of 2009 having been made redundant. I’ll miss the salary and the car a lot, but the rest I’ve cheerfully left behind – obviously I’ve still got the shares so I hope they do really well – in fact the stock has rallied a little since I left so the market has clearly absorbed the shock of my departure!

Meanwhile the e-book project is going well and the first draft is expected shortly. I’ve spent this snowy day immersing myself back into the niche and there’s still plenty to do.

This was my first day on the project ‘full time’ and disappointingly it was quite frustrating – I think I suddenly realised the amount of some stuff I don’t know as well as I wanted to – one of my other projects relies on Wordpress and today I suddenly felt that I know very little about the subject! Still I’ve ordered a book from Amazon and will make sure it’s consumed very quickly.

On Friday I have a meeting with a business coach – I can’t wait to see his reaction to when I start trying to explain internet marketing and my other collection of projects to him!

My closing thought on day one (or should I grandly call it Day Zero) is that I feel dis-organised and ill prepared – well I’ve said it now so time to do something about it coz I can’t go back to the Bank!

Happy New Year!

Just thought it might be useful to mention my experience with outsourcing some writing.

Many times I have listened to people say that you can get other people to write content for you by using websites like e-lance and Guru and they make it all sound terribly easy. Well it all seemed like a bit of a drama to me and I avoided it for years.

Well I have a couple of ‘projects’ underway at the moment and one of them involved writing a report to give away as a download. I was busy writing it myself when I got to one area, and decided that I could do with some help on a particular technical area and that perhaps I should try one of the above websites.

I first had a look at e-lance but something about the sign up process put me off, but Guru was really straightforward. So just as an experiment I posted a project saying that I wanted 1500 words on this particular subject and that I would give more details to interested bidders.
Within minutes I had quotes ranging from $500 to $20 – all bidders have the chance to make a pitch to you and provide additional evidence of their skills. One US bidder made a really good pitch that stood out from the others, he had his own website and had previously worked for Google! He offered to do the work for $35 but couldn’t promise to keep it down to 1500 words! In the end he wrote nearly 2500 words and gave me loads of really useful links for additional background information. A very stress free experience.

With that Guru project successfully completed I then wanted some additional content for my www.horseracingtips-blog.com . I posted that job on Guru and received a bid of $30 to do 6 x 500 word articles on selected UK Horse Racing venues. Now the selected writer on this occasion was not a first language English speaker and I had to ask for a few amendments – but the output will serve my purposes just and when I have time I can always flesh them out a bit.

So my conclusion on outsourcing writers is that Guru is really easy to use and you can get good articles written for a very reasonable price. That said, for anything ‘serious’ I’d want a first language English speaker and I’d expect to pay a sensible price.

Hope that is useful.