This is what is selling well but it is not what I’d like to be involved with and tell my friends/family about.
Yeah, unfortunately you're right. And it's that much harder competing against people that don't "play by the rules." For example, hardly anyone runs flogs and "farticles" any more since the FTC started cracking down on them. They convert like crazy because they're so deceptive. But there are still people that promote the hot offers using this type of deceptive advertising, and it's hard to compete for a lot of the traffic because they can afford to pay more since their campaigns will generally convert better than yours. These days the only people running these are young guys with big balls and a don't give a crap attitude, people in 3rd world countries who think they're untouchable, etc. Unfortunately there are still lots of them out there though.
1) How did you brand your businesses while having offers in various niches? Did you use multiple pen names?
Yes, I've always used a different pen name for each product/site, even within the same niche.
2) Did you position yourself as an expert or you just leveraged “real world” experts and their content (interviews etc.)? I think that in info product business the author’s story and experience are pretty important and just selling as a brand doesn’t have the same power here.
I've never really positioned myself as much of an expert or used that in my marketing. I'm a relatively private person and you will not find my real name, picture, family, etc. plastered all over the Internet. In fact, you won't find me at all because that's the way I want it. A lot of people just make up fake personas and make up these really crazy stories and experiences, but I just never wanted to do that. It's one thing to use a pen name, it's an entirely different thing to basically lie through your teeth and just make stuff up.
I've always focused on creating GREAT offers and providing value, because when you do that everything else matters that much less. You don't need to position yourself as an expert or "guru" if you simply make great offers. You can read some earlier posts in this thread for more info about what I mean when I say a great offer.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with doing it the other way as well. If you're only promoting stuff you're proud of and you want to build yourself up and plaster your face all over the Internet, there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of the internet marketing and fitness "gurus" do this. I'm sure everyone has seen Mike Chang and his "six pack shortcuts" ads all over the Internet...
3) How do you FIND and VALIDATE your software/web apps ideas? I mean a situation when you can’t get any information if a particular saas business is profitable and worth trying to “copycat”. It’s easy to get to know whether some mobile apps are successful or not, because app stores provide this kind of information. But there are no such marketplaces for web apps and saas etc. How would you do your research and make sure you picked a good market?
In my experience if you truly understand a market, the customers in it, their frustrations, their needs, etc. you should be able to gauge this yourself to a pretty good degree. Honestly I would say that if you're not sure if your web app or SAAS will sell, you probably don't know your market well enough.
If you want the best chance of success you should absolutely model what someone else is already doing successfully. You may not know how much a site is making, but if you see a site being advertised all over the place for months on end, you can be pretty sure that they're making money.
I definitely wouldn't recommend you go and create something completely new and unique that doesn't exist in the market UNLESS you are 110% comfortable with the fact that this is NOT the way to make money as quickly and as safely as possible. No matter how great you think your idea is, these are the types of things you should pursue once you're financially comfortable IMO.
With that being said there are some things you can do to test. For example, you can setup a simple landing page with a short survey and then run some highly-targeted traffic to it. Offer people some kind of free bonus, a discount when your product is released, etc. to answer 1 or 2 big questions. If you make it simple and straightforward, and quick and easy for them to answer, a lot of people will answer and most will answer truthfully. This is a good way to get some good intelligence quickly and relatively inexpensively.
But again, if you model something that you already know is working, the whole process is a billion times easier ...
4) What do you think about the following validation process:
- create a landing page informing about a software product/service before it’s even built
- buy some ads (fb, linked in etc.)
- analyze if the idea is worth pursuing (signups etc.)
Ah, hadn't read far enough ahead before I typed up the above. Yes this is a great strategy that many people use. 100% yes to this.
5) I know you mentioned BizBuySell, do you use other similar sites that helped you create your successful products?
Nope, I stumbled onto a pot of gold on BizBuySell literally 10 years ago and honestly haven't used it since. Just in the few weeks have I started using it again just to see what other types of businesses are out there and see some of the numbers behind them.
When you become fully immersed in your market, you'll know about all the top sites, your competitors, the customers, their frustrations and desires, etc.
6) I’m not a techie and this is why I wanted to start with an information business. My plan is to find a good dev for a long-term cooperation and maybe in the meantime learn some coding basics myself. My worst nightmares are: losing money on building something nobody will want and not being able to fix or do anything if the developer suddenly leaves.
I hear you. Follow my advice above and you shouldn't have to worry about this. For example, you know that people need and use autoresponders. If you "build a better mousetrap" you'll know with 100% certainty that people will want to buy and use your service.
I have around $10k to invest. Do you think it’s enough to create a competitive software product/service or I should better try to find a way to build something awesome & “ethical” in info market first and then move to software with bigger capital?
Software development adds up real fast. With that kind of budget you should probably stick to a very simple product/service/script that wouldn't cost more than a few grand to develop. Or stick with info products for awhile like you said.
