Launching my motivational membership site

[Genius01]

Hi guys,
You can read a bit about my background in my Intro thread here:
Introduction - Hi, medical doctor from a tropical African country


The summary of it is that I'm a medical doctor from a developing country (Nigeria). I've been a classic textbook Slowlaner all my career life, though always yearned for the Fastlane pathway all through. However I've been limited all the while by the pressures of a very demanding job, and analysis paralysis from an over analytical mind.
Finally got a couple of weeks relatively free and I've decided to grab the bulls by the horns, put the pedal to the metal and launch my journey into the Fastlane.

I'm about launching a motivational membership site, that shows people how they can achieve their goals, whatever it may be.
I've always been interested in what makes some people succeed in their endeavors and what makes others fail, and I've done quite a bit of research on it, and found out some things that have been working for me, which I've crystallized into a step by step system, and want to share with the world via my site.

I created the site some months back, and considered launching it then, but the initial results I got from Facebook ads were unencouraging at the time, (I suspected it was primarily due to poor timing, as people are much more interested in self-help products at the beginning of the year than in the middle of the year when they've already developed apathy). So I suspended the launch, to relaunch it now when people are more attuned towards self improvement products.

The main challenge for me now is the very very limited time I have to launch (as I believe the maximum sales should be around New Years day/first week of the year). I would have preferred starting work on the launch process from late November/early December, but was simply impossible due to the massive pressure of work. But I am inspired to still attempt launching it by a wonderful book The 7 Day Startup, which states that "You don't learn until you launch", as well as concepts from MJ's legendary book TMF .

I just started reactivating the site yesterday when I got some freedom from work, but I'm determined to hunker down like a bull and do everything I can to ensure I make it a success. Even if it means working on it every single minute, ...no, every single waking second, I'm going to commit everything I have to it.

The point is such that I would have given it my all.

Its time to start getting my stripes on the world of business. This is my first real venture outside the Slowlane.
Whether I succeed or fail, I would have gained from the real life experiences what I would never have gained from 1 year of analysis.

Win or lose, I would have gained ultimately.

I'll be documenting my journey here as I go along from time to time.

Wish me luck!

 

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[Genius01]

UPDATE:
Got a huge blow to my plans for rapid, expedited launch yesterday shortly after reactivating the site.
I fully expected there would be bumps on the entrepreneurial road, but never knew they could come this fast and this big.

One of my first steps was to check my payment buttons and ensure they were still working. But when I clicked on Pay Now, it was giving me an error report.
Contacted my payment processor 2checkout, turns out they had inactivated my account due to the fact that it had been a long time since I made any sales (hadn't made any new sales on the site since the initial test sales about 6months ago, as I had suspended launching and marketing the site since then).
I wasn't expecting this inactivation...."novice me"???

The worst part was that I couldn't speak with their staff directly in charge of account reactivation, as when I phoned their customer support, the person that picked up told me their seller support staff just left the office about 30 mins ago, and as that day was Friday 5pm, I wouldn't be able to even speak with them till after the weekend and New Year's day, that's till 2nd of January next year. (Meanwhile I was hoping to start sales latest by January 1, as that's peak period for my niche).
To make matters worse, I emailed their tech support and got a response that it will take 5-7 BUSINESS DAYS for them to review my account before possibly restoring it.
That translates to earliest possible account restoration being January 8, 2018, by which time most of the main sales for my niche will be all but over.

So I have to find a new payment processor.
The challenge? I'm from Nigeria and most of the payment processors don't support Nigeria. And if I do find one, whatever payment processor I find has to work with my membership software Paid Membership Pro, if not I would have to uninstall it, reinstall a different membership software, and start reconfiguring it afresh and making sure everything works alright including links, the forum, affiliate software integration, etc which had all been set up earlier and tested to be working well with my current membership software PMPro.
All this takes a lot of time which I do not have the luxury of at the moment given the very limited time I have for the launch.

The painful part is that I had felt reasonably confident I would be able to pull off launching it in such short time, because I could throw all my time and energy into retouching the sales page and aggressive marketing, as the basic site setup had been done earlier.
But with me having to spend time in sorting out these site basics, its going to take away a very huge chunk from the time I planned to spend on marketing and retouching my sales page, which can contribute to a flop.

Its really annoying, but one of the problems i have to overcome as an entrepreneur.

I'm still trying my best to find a workaround around this payment processor issue by finding one that supports Nigeria and works with a reasonable membership software i can use, and find it ASAP today/tomorrow.

Still pushing.

 

[mo3]

Hi genius, glad you’ve joined us. The issue with payment processing is one of those frustrating things we so often run into - there are always little bits in business that slip through the net.

Personally I wouldn’t panic too much about losing New Year sales. In my experience people are looking for self-improvement all the time and motivation will be especially high this month and on into spring when people want change and improvement before summer comes.

Your site really needs to focus on exactly what people will get from joining. What problems will it solve? How will it help them specifically? What makes your method better? How will they benefit? All of these things should be addressed and answered before they will buy.

Good luck with getting things up and running, and keep checking in with us!


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