Bootstrapper Notes

Building Flycatchers

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had narrowed down the ideas for my next two infoproducts.  I have decided to shift gears a bit....

I know without a doubt what one of them will be, and it will be a big product.  Lots of Camtasia videos, etc.

However, before I commit to the second idea I am going to do some additional research.  I actually have expanded out to three ideas.  What I am going to do is get a general domain name and then run three different "flycatchers", on each of the 3 topics.  "Flycatchers" are just a simple web page that tells people a bit about the product, and then asks if they have any questions about the subject.

If they send a question in a will give them a copy of the finished ebook when it is complete.

This does two things - it helps to find topics that are in high demand.  It also gives you a running start on the information that people are looking for, so that an infoproduct can be created to fullfill that need.

The goal for this week is to have 3 "flycatchers" setup and have Adwords sending them traffic.  I will be starting on the remaining "big" product sometime by mid-March.

Drowning in ideas!

I have been researching many ideas for my next two products.  I have narrowed it down to two.  The biggest problem is finding (making) time to work on them!

I find myself looking at stats, looking at subscriber lists, looking at stats, etc. everynight instead of working.

Time to buckle down and get busy - I want to launch of the products by the end of March.  The other idea will take some time, but it should be worth it.

Just a quick post to try and motivate myself - thanks for listening! :)

Clickbank Downtime

What happens when Clickbank has problems?  I pull my hair out!!!

I noticed sometime on Sunday that my sales had plummeted from 7 to 10 a day to 1 or 2 per day.  I checked all the normal things, and nothing turned up.  So last night I cruise over to Clickbank Success Forum and find out what was happening.

It seems that Clickbank was trying to fend off a DOS attack on their servers, and was filtering IP addresses that were suspect.  Heck even last night I could not get my sales links to work from my home computer - evidently my IP range was being "filtered".

What this means is that many, many, many customers could not make a purchase, and my sales plummetted.

Today everything seems to be back to normal, so they must have relaxed their filters, and the attack is over.  Basically I lost money for 3 days - which sucks!

I think I will need to think about a backup payment processor if this happens again.  I could even have the sales pages with the new payment links sitting on the server and switch them over quickly if need be.  Something to put on the "to-do" list.

Slowest day of the month

Today has been the slowest day for sales all month.  I can only hope that every is so love struck (or in panic) over Valentines day - that they are simply not buying ebooks today.

I did send out my first newsletter for product #1 today.  I sent it out to my customer list and those that signed up for the free tips.  About 2,200 were emailed.  I have made $4.65 so far today with Adsense on that channel.  I have some related affiliate products on the blog that have been getting clicks as well, but no sales yet.

I will be sending this "informational" newsletter twice a month, and then one solo email pushing a product or site hard where I will make commissions as an affiliate.

All in all, it cost me nothing and still put four bucks in my pocket so far.... hard to say no to money! :)  I think the clicks will trickle in over the next several days.  Not everyone is like us, some people go days without checking their email.  Amazing isn't it?

Expanding the income stream

I have been working lately on automating a continuous income stream as a backend to my two infoproducts.  It is really the final touch I will make on these two products before I start further expansion with more products.

As I have mentioned before I am using Aweber for both autoresponder free tips, and to keep in touch with my customers.  The autoresponder series has worked out well for increasing conversions and selling related products.  The problem is that I feel you can only use the autoresponder for so long.

So I will be adding another content source.  Aweber has a really cool tool that reads an RSS feed and converts it into a broadcast email.  You can set it up to automatically send the email everytime a certain amount of posts are made.  I plan to load up a bunch of free articles relating to my topic in my new Wordpress blogs hosted on these domains.  I will load them to be published two at a time once a week.  Then Aweber will read the RSS feed and send the email. 

Since the feed will only be excerpts it should entice the subscriber to click thru to the blog.  When they get to the blog they will be presented the rest of the article, plus some strategically placed Adsense ads and links to related affiliate products.

I figure I can load up 6 months worth of articles in an hour or two - that way I only have to touch the newsletter a few times a year.

The other benefit might be some "free" search engine traffic, but it is simply a bonus.  I also will probably send out a pure sales message thru Aweber once a month to the list pushing some affiliate product.

To be able to expand my infoproduct empire, I need this type of automation.  I also need to stay in touch with these subscribers to really capitalize on the backend sales.

Three Lessons

Three interesting lessons learned:

Test Your Sales Page

I had heard that adding an image of human to your page can increase your conversion rate.  So on my two infoproduct sites I added pictures of people that appear to be the author.  Both books use pen names - one is even female.  The conversion rate has been up about 40% since I added the images 5 days ago.  It might be a coincidence, but I doubt it.

Lower Price Does Not Always Sell More

I dropped the price on one of my products from $24.95 to $19.95 thinking the conversion rate would improve.  Much to my surprise the conversion rate plummetted to almost zero.  I left it for 4 days, and then raised the price.  The first day back with the higher price and conversions are already back to normal.  Maybe I should try an even higher price :)

The Power of a List

I have about 1700 people on one of my lists.  They have requested free tips which I send out about every other day for 10 days.  So today I sent out an email pushing a related ebook as an affiliate.  I have already made $13.95 (one sale) and only 100 have been opened.  I know it is not much, but it is $13 bucks I would not have made otherwise.

$100/Day Challenge - January 2006 Totals

Movin on up....

For January 2006:

Click Costs/Refunds: $2747.27
Sales: $3,880.73

Total Profit: $1,133.46
ROI: 41.25%

Total Profit/Day: $36.56

I met the goal I set for myself back at the end of December.  My goal for February is to average $50/day or simply add about $14.00/day to what I did in January.