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Well, here's my story about a failure - I haven't completely given up on this quite yet and I'm still pursuing it, but I am about 95% sure it will be a failure in the end.
Here's the background info: after reading TMF , I was motivated to start a business where I would have more control, instead of the affiliate promotion that I had been doing for the past year. I hated the cancelled commissions, low % of sale that I would earn, $500 max commission, and potential for the affiliate program to be canceled at any time if the merchant so desired.
As part of my affiliate work, I frequently worked on SEO in order to get more traffic to my affiliate site. From my little bit of experience with SEO, I came up with an idea for a business in the SEO industry.
I'm not going to say exactly what it is yet - once I feel like I'm done with it and don't care anymore OR if thing turn around and it gains some momentum, I'll post what it is.
I created the service:
I have spent the last 4 months developing the service - I knew nothing about PHP, so I found a couple Wordpress plugins that offered something similar to what I needed and then started learning PHP so that I could modify the plugins to meet my needs.
About 3 months ago, I went to a forum (this is where my target customers hang out - forums) where I planned on selling my service later to get 5 beta testers. The interest was there at first - I even ended up giving out 9 free beta test accounts.
After that, I received absolutely NO feedback at all. I sent out messages to everyone reminding them that I needed feedback. A couple responded that they were too busy too test, some didn't respond at all, and 2 people actually gave me some suggestions.
"Better than nothing", I thought. I'll add the suggestions that they want, writes a sales page, and release the service to the forum.
The launch:
So, I released my service on the same forum to a very UN-encouraging response - asking $50/month. A couple people saying "this is stupid" and some saying "___ already does this". However, 3 people signed up - 1 at a review price of $25 and 2 at the full price of $50. I offered the first month free, so I didn't get any money yet.
1 of those people cancelled within the first month, so that left me with paying 2 subscribers.
Last Saturday I released my new and improved service to a different forum. I have received two more $25 review subscribers so far. - 1 has signed up and the other has only said they want an account but hasn't signed up yet. I'll see if they actually do.
A couple minor victories:
Even though this idea has turned out to be almost a complete failure so far and doesn't look like it will make me more than $1k a month (without a killer new feature or something like that), I can still make out a few positive things:
What next?
Here's where I'm going from here: I'm going to stick with this for another month or two, launch it on 1 more different forum, re-launch it on the first forum, and see where it goes.
My goal right now is to make $750 a month from this - still not much but it will equal the income that I make from my shit job right now.
Even if I reach that $750/month mark, I will still have to start something else, this time keeping in mind scale and magnitude (among other things!). I have NO idea what to do next - I hate not having a good idea that motivates you to succeed!
If you don't get anything else from this post, get this: KEEP IN MIND SCALE/SIZE OF YOUR MARKET AND MAGNITUDE.
Here's the background info: after reading TMF , I was motivated to start a business where I would have more control, instead of the affiliate promotion that I had been doing for the past year. I hated the cancelled commissions, low % of sale that I would earn, $500 max commission, and potential for the affiliate program to be canceled at any time if the merchant so desired.
As part of my affiliate work, I frequently worked on SEO in order to get more traffic to my affiliate site. From my little bit of experience with SEO, I came up with an idea for a business in the SEO industry.
I'm not going to say exactly what it is yet - once I feel like I'm done with it and don't care anymore OR if thing turn around and it gains some momentum, I'll post what it is.
I created the service:
I have spent the last 4 months developing the service - I knew nothing about PHP, so I found a couple Wordpress plugins that offered something similar to what I needed and then started learning PHP so that I could modify the plugins to meet my needs.
About 3 months ago, I went to a forum (this is where my target customers hang out - forums) where I planned on selling my service later to get 5 beta testers. The interest was there at first - I even ended up giving out 9 free beta test accounts.
After that, I received absolutely NO feedback at all. I sent out messages to everyone reminding them that I needed feedback. A couple responded that they were too busy too test, some didn't respond at all, and 2 people actually gave me some suggestions.
"Better than nothing", I thought. I'll add the suggestions that they want, writes a sales page, and release the service to the forum.
The launch:
So, I released my service on the same forum to a very UN-encouraging response - asking $50/month. A couple people saying "this is stupid" and some saying "___ already does this". However, 3 people signed up - 1 at a review price of $25 and 2 at the full price of $50. I offered the first month free, so I didn't get any money yet.
1 of those people cancelled within the first month, so that left me with paying 2 subscribers.
Last Saturday I released my new and improved service to a different forum. I have received two more $25 review subscribers so far. - 1 has signed up and the other has only said they want an account but hasn't signed up yet. I'll see if they actually do.
A couple minor victories:
Even though this idea has turned out to be almost a complete failure so far and doesn't look like it will make me more than $1k a month (without a killer new feature or something like that), I can still make out a few positive things:
- This is my first time working on my OWN business - in the past I had only done affiliate stuff promoting someone else's business.
- I got more than 1 person to pay me! Small victories, huh.
- I have received some experience dealing directly with customers - I had emphasized quick response times to their problems (mainly them requesting a feature that wasn't available yet). Then I tried to implement the requested feature ASAP. That seems to work well and I can carry that on to future work.
- It IS still possible for this to make more money. If the few members that I do have bring in a good amount of traffic to the site, I try offering paid ads to bring in a little more revenue.
- I realized at least one BIG reason why this failed - the market is too small! That and I don't offer a service with magnitude, as MJ calls it in TMF . If I could justify a $500+/month price tag, then I would have a chance. But, the market DEFINITELY doesn't number in the millions. I would estimate it at around 500 people. Could be higher, could be lower, but it's definitely not more than ~3,000ish. This is why I am so sure that this is going to end up being not worth pursuing any more.
What next?
Here's where I'm going from here: I'm going to stick with this for another month or two, launch it on 1 more different forum, re-launch it on the first forum, and see where it goes.
My goal right now is to make $750 a month from this - still not much but it will equal the income that I make from my shit job right now.
Even if I reach that $750/month mark, I will still have to start something else, this time keeping in mind scale and magnitude (among other things!). I have NO idea what to do next - I hate not having a good idea that motivates you to succeed!
If you don't get anything else from this post, get this: KEEP IN MIND SCALE/SIZE OF YOUR MARKET AND MAGNITUDE.
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