Been working since March with little to show. What next?

[raddevon]

I signed up for a course in March and have been putting the lessons into practice since then. It's a methodology for developing a business. It divides the process into essentially these steps:

1. Select an audience
2. Find watering holes
3. Discover audience's pains
4. Write fixes for pain on a blog
5. Build an email list through fix posts
6. Develop product around fixing pain
7. Sell product through list

I've been stuck at step 5 for months now. I've been writing posts and mining watering holes for pain, but I have very little to show for it. Worst of all, I haven't gotten any feedback that would indicate how I can do better. Here's what I do have:

• 3 subscribers to my list
• 283 total page views
• 1 retweet

Not much for 8 months of work (in my spare time). I'm not sure what to do from here. I hear stories about people who ran their side project for 2 years with no traction before they exploded, but I also read that successful entrepreneurship is about knowing when to quit something that isn't working. I'm not sure if this project is circling the drain or if this is the "darkest before the dawn" phase of the project.

I've thought of two ways I might proceed:

1. Keep doing what I'm doing, trying smaller changes to see what works (maybe hiring a writer so I can get more content out and maybe hiring someone to help me promote my work — I know I'm very weak at that particular skill)
2. Ditch this project altogether and try something different. Maybe this methodology doesn't work well for me? In this case, I had thought about putting together a couple of landing pages and buying traffic to test viability of some other ideas.

I'd love to hear people's ideas on how best to move forward. Have you ever been stuck here? How did you proceed and what was the outcome?

 

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[sparechange]

If you are trying to build an audience organically. Are you?? That is bad bad bad bad, bad. Paid traffic is very important. How do I find your blog? Is the niche even something worth pursuing? Is the product even good? Is it to expensive? Is the ad for selling the product pushing me to buy or does it make me want/need to buy? Some things to think of

 

[raddevon]

Thanks for your help! This gives me a lot to think about. I know you're mostly asking rhetorical questions, but I do want to address a couple of them and follow up.

If you are trying to build an audience organically. Are you?? That is bad bad bad bad, bad. Paid traffic is very important.

I am trying to build an audience organically. Are there any resources you'd recommend on how to build an audience via paid traffic? I know I could place some ads on Adsense, but I don't know how to do this effectively.

Is the product even good?

The sad part is that there is no product yet. I haven't even gotten that far into the system. The methodology I'm following says that you start building the list and understanding the pains before you start developing the product. Since I haven't had success building the list, I haven't developed a product.

Thanks again!

 

[raddevon]

Is the product even good?

One more thing I wanted to say about this: what I don't know is whether the content I'm writing on my blog is good. Since I'm getting no feedback, I don't know how I can figure this out.

 

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[MoreVolume]

What are you selling?

 

[sparechange]

I am an amateur in marketing although the typical Facebook pages have given me a small amount of traffic, for $7 I attracted around 7k views over a week. My ad picture was a silly meme that was being floated around. Your problem is you have barely any eyes on your blog/page whatever, if you had a Ferrari being sold for $1 and people aren't seeing the blog/page people won't buy it! Organic traffic is a waste of time, you'll need to throw some pocket change at proving your idea/niche is worth pursuing, I'd suggest to build a small Facebook page and throw a few bucks for ads ( just some sparechange) and see if people like your stuff. Most important thing is getting things out in the public eye ( think of the Ferrari thing ) then if people aren't responding well you act asses an adjust, or just throw everything in the garbage and move on. You can also reach out to local newspaper and try to get your content published there.

 

[raddevon]

What are you selling?

Nothing to sell at this point. I'm working on building an audience first. Then, I'll focus on what pains them and what I can build to alleviate it.

 

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[Scot]

Nothing to sell at this point. I'm working on building an audience first. Then, I'll focus on what pains them and what I can build to alleviate it.

Why can’t you find a premade audience first, join them, then find their pain point?

In my current niche, I knew what audience I wanted to go after, a group of people with a certain illness. So I found support groups on Facebook. I know the audience well so I knew what questions to ask. I put up a survey and posted it, had over 100 responses within an hour.

Now I have my product, my pain point, and thousands of potential customers conveniently grouped into Facebook groups.

Are there any groups or forums where your niche already congregates?

 

[MoreVolume]

Nothing to sell at this point. I'm working on building an audience first. Then, I'll focus on what pains them and what I can build to alleviate it.

I don't see how that makes any sense. I say that respectively
If you have nothing of value to bring, then people have no reason to be part of your audience.

 

[raddevon]

Why can’t you find a premade audience first, join them, then find their pain point?

This is what the watering holes represent. I'm already doing this. Now, I just need to get permission to market to them so that, once I have something to sell, I can tell them about it. For this, I'm trying to get them on an email list with the content I'm writing, and that's where I'm falling down.

I don't see how that makes any sense. I say that respectively
If you have nothing of value to bring, then people have no reason to be part of your audience.

I do have something of value to bring in the form of my blog; I'm just not selling a product yet. I'm already writing blog posts to try to fix pains I'm discovering. The idea is that I can leverage this content to get them on my email list which I can then use to sell a product.

I could stop what I'm doing and build a product now, but I still wouldn't have anyone to sell it to. I'd just have a sunk cost (in either time or money) in the development of a product and an uphill battle to market it. I want to make sure I have someone to sell to first before I invest in building a product. For now, I'm giving content away on the blog to see if I can build the audience. If the audience isn't there for the free stuff, no sense in trying to sell them anything.

Maybe this methodology is wrong-headed though. Does that make any more sense, or do you still feel I'm taking the wrong approach?

 

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[million$$$smile]

The sad part is that there is no product yet.

To me, this just seems backwards.

If you find your product first, you then will know what audience to market it to.

Right now the world is your audience, but you haven't the product.

Find the product and you will learn to find your audience.

 

[raddevon]

If you find your product first, you then will know what audience to market it to.

Just want to clarify, I'm planning to build a product — probably an information product or maybe a piece of software. What you're saying makes perfect sense if I'm sourcing a product to sell but not if I'm trying to develop a product. If I'm sourcing a product, the product already exists. I can see it being a reasonable approach then to first find a product that seems and then try to find someone to sell it to. I'm not sure that works when you're building a product though.

Before I can build a product, I need a problem I'm solving. The problem has to belong to someone, so I've got my audience before I build the product. If not, I'm trying the "build it and they will come" approach where I build what I want to build and then try to fit it into a market. My understanding is this rarely (if ever) works.

Would love to hear if your experience has been different though. I'm not speaking from experience at all; just what I've learned from the experience of others as this is my first attempt at moving into products.

 

[million$$$smile]

Ok, lets take the example of Mj's books. You could say it is an informational product. He must have seen a pain point in the general audience of self help books on expounding how to become a millionaire via one's own endeavors.
He felt like there was a need to write that there is a better way.
In his latest book, he writes that he didn't even know if TMF would necessarily be a hit or even accepted. But I believe he did have a general understanding of a need (or information) that had not been interpreted correctly in the marketplace. I believe he identified a pain point, possibly because he was extremely disenchanted with what he himself had read about the Slowlane way to becoming a millionaire. He then set out to write what he felt was a better way- and to him a better product. Obviously the market (or audience) responded that it was needed and wanted.

Now this is just my opinion, but that is how I see it.

Yes, he had an audience to a great extent, in the forum, but when he created it, he already knew there was a need for something better than the what was out there.

Find a pain point and you have found your audience. The pain point can be any type of product, be it sourced, created or information. It is all a product.

 

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[raddevon]

Ok, lets take the example of Mj's books. You could say it is an informational product. He must have seen a pain point in the general audience of self help books on expounding how to become a millionaire via one's own endeavors.
He felt like there was a need to write that there is a better way.
In his latest book, he writes that he didn't even know if TMF would necessarily be a hit or even accepted. But I believe he did have a general understanding of a need (or information) that had not been interpreted correctly in the marketplace. I believe he identified a pain point, possibly because he was extremely disenchanted with what he himself had read about the Slowlane way to becoming a millionaire. He then set out to write what he felt was a better way- and to him a better product. Obviously the market (or audience) responded that it was needed and wanted.

Now this is just my opinion, but that is how I see it.

Yes, he had an audience to a great extent, in the forum, but when he created it, he already knew there was a need for something better than the what was out there.

Find a pain point and you have found your audience. The pain point can be any type of product, be it sourced, created or information. It is all a product.

I think I understand what you're saying here. You're saying I don't need to define an audience. I just need to choose a pain and build the product to that.

What I don't understand is why finding the pain without having first targeted an audience would be any more effective. In defining an audience first, all I've done is to limit the pool of pains I might solve to a smaller subset of pains (pains that my selected audience experience as opposed to pains anyone might experience). The advantage it gives me is I can start engaging that audience before I build the product. By the time my product is finished and ready to sell, I may have established some trust with the audience, and I could have a small subset of that audience who is ready to give me money.

The only problem being I can't seem to make that happen.

 

[raddevon]

@million$$$smile Really appreciate your taking the time to have a dialog with me. I'm trying to learn and to understand what I'm doing wrong. Every bit of feedback helps.

Same goes for everyone else who has posted here. Thanks to you all for taking the time to read and to share your thoughts.

 

[million$$$smile]

It is just my opinion that if you think your audience is going to wait around for you to come up with a product to fill a pain point, someone else that has already figured out the pain point will be marketing the product to your audience.

People complain about pain points daily. They are just waiting for someone to rectify the problem.
If I solve their problem, I have an audience

 

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[raddevon]

It is just my opinion that if you think your audience is going to wait around for you to come up with a product to fill a pain point, someone else that has already figured out the pain point will be marketing the product to your audience.

People complain about pain points daily. They are just waiting for someone to rectify the problem.
If I solve their problem, I have an audience

Once you've built the solution, how do you tell them about it? You often can't do it where you learned about the problem because someone else owns that platform.

 

[Andy Black]

I skimmed the thread.

Are you trying to define your market by a demographic (audience), instead of by a "demonstrated cashflow" (pain point people are *already* spending money trying to solve)?


Maybe these will help:

• www.tropicalmba.com/services
• Article from Justin Jackson: Just Help People
• Stop Building Stuff

 

[Andy Black]

Maybe this whole thread might help too, and this post in particular:

• Introduction - How I realized 'I don't have time' is bullshit

What I'd do:

1) Find forums or Facebook groups inhabited by people learning English*.

2) Help people where I can.

3) Refine and reuse answers. Observe which answers help people the most and keep getting reused.

4) Consolidate some of those answers into a short course.

5) Release the course - into the very forums and Facebook groups where I've been helping people.


* The success will depend a lot on who inhabits those forums or Facebook groups, and why they're there. Maybe you'd do better in a group of Chinese business owners trying to export to the UK or US? Maybe you'd do better in a group of students trying to get scholarships in the UK or US?

 

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[Andy Black]

It sound like your steps are very similar to what I'd do from my post above.

Except I wouldn't post on a blog.

How is posting on a blog helping the people with the pain point you identified? When you found them at a watering hole?

Why don't you just help them at that watering hole?

Here's another thread that might help you:

• How to use forums (and Facebook groups)

PS: I still don't know what you mean by step 1 of define an audience. That part could be where you're defining a demographic instead of a demonstrated cashflow.

 

[Andy Black]

Read what you've written:

1. Select an audience
2. Find watering holes
3. Discover audience's pains
4. Write fixes for pain on a blog
5. Build an email list through fix posts
6. Develop product around fixing pain
7. Sell product through list

I am trying to build an audience organically

The sad part is that there is no product yet. I haven't even gotten that far into the system. The methodology I'm following says that you start building the list and understanding the pains before you start developing the product. Since I haven't had success building the list, I haven't developed a product.

One more thing I wanted to say about this: what I don't know is whether the content I'm writing on my blog is good. Since I'm getting no feedback, I don't know how I can figure this out.

Nothing to sell at this point. I'm working on building an audience first. Then, I'll focus on what pains them and what I can build to alleviate it.

This is what the watering holes represent. I'm already doing this. Now, I just need to get permission to market to them so that, once I have something to sell, I can tell them about it. For this, I'm trying to get them on an email list with the content I'm writing, and that's where I'm falling down.

...

Are these all symptoms of following steps to "make money", instead of steps to "help people"?

Why are you "building an audience", "building a list", "building organic traffic", etc?

Why would you have a problem getting permission from the owner of the watering hole to "sell your solution" to *their* audience?

...

What would happen if you focused on helping people instead?

 

[MoreVolume]

Maybe this methodology is wrong-headed though. Does that make any more sense, or do you still feel I'm taking the wrong approach?

I still feel like you're taking the wrong approach.
You're taking action, but your actions aren't moving you any closer to running a real business.

*After reading your other responses im going to bow out. It was a frustrating read.
Good luck though man. You seemed determined. Following that course is the cause of your problems

 

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[raddevon]

@Andy Black Thank you for all the resources you shared! I will read through them tonight. The one by Justin Jackson especially caught my eye. I believe I bought his book back when it was released. I should probably return to that at some point.

Are you trying to define your market by a demographic (audience), instead of by a "demonstrated cashflow" (pain point people are *already* spending money trying to solve)?

Yes, I am. I'm defining my market by demographic (with some guidelines as to what demographics will work well), but I'll define my product by the pain.

1) Find forums or Facebook groups inhabited by people learning English*.

This is an interesting approach I hadn't considered. Thank you for sharing it!

EDIT: Just realized this specific advice was quoted from the thread and likely wasn’t meant for me. Don’t I feel silly!

How is posting on a blog helping the people with the pain point you identified? When you found them at a watering hole?

Why don't you just help them at that watering hole?

I am first posting a response on the watering hole to help the poster. Then, I polish up the solution as a blog post so that others who might share the problem and search for a solution could also benefit.

What would happen if you focused on helping people instead?

I'm focused primarily on helping right now, particularly since I don't have anything to sell even if I wanted to. I admit I do have an eye toward a future in which I might have something to sell this audience though.

I still feel like you're taking the wrong approach.
You're taking action, but your actions aren't moving you any closer to running a real business.

*After reading your other responses im going to bow out. It was a frustrating read.
Good luck though man. You seemed determined. Following that course is the cause of your problems

You may very well be right that I'm hamstrung by the course. I've just begun to look outside their framework for solutions. Hoping that effort will bare fruit.

Really appreciate your following along and offering your thoughts.