Personal Challenge: 1 Month To Impossible Success

[Aaron T]

What Is Challenge
I am new here, but I am am not new to investing, entrepreneurship and doing hard things. I love a good challenge. I love impossible challenges. So I am giving myself Until Oct. 28th to hit $120,000 with a new business. I am not sure what it is, but I have a few really good ideas. I probably won't hit the goal, but I am going for it.

Why Am I Doing It?
Because I can. Well because I want to but also because there is a reason to do it. Being the Entrepreneur I am I have had a few successes. As a result of one success I end up with pretty crazy tax bills. After the sell of one of my investments last year I incurred some tax liabilities. No worries I paid them easily. But then oops.. looks like the accountant made a mistake. No problem says the IRS just pay the $85,000 by Oct. 28th and there will be no penalties. These things happen. Nice guys right?

I am not worries. I can pay the bill, but I thought instead of wasting my current money I should earn the money to pay the bill off and the additional tax that the income required to pay the bill off would incur.

No, this is not your typical progress thread. I am already Unscripted by my standards. I am doing this because I can. Why not? More to the point, I am encouraged by all that people on this forum do. So I want to have a little fun myself. Plus this is a pressing need of mine. I hate giving the IRS anything more than I can. Fair is fair though so let's do this right.

How

• Must be a legal and ethical business
• Probably will use my current knowledge so it will be an online business using a digital product
  • Will try to avoid just doing a big software contract as it feels like a cop out
• I want to start it with as little outlay as possible as I feel it reflects what people are capable of doing so let's say less than $1000 initial capital
  • I can absolutely invest what it earns back into itself to accelerate and I do reserve the right to throw more money at it if I think it is going to work
  • I am trying to avoid the concept of throw 200k at the problem to make 85k as that doesn't seem fair
• I will share as much of the business and provide proof as I can without using this forum as a means to gain business
• Update should be frequent since this is a short time period, but the learning for me, and maybe others will be long term

Final Thoughts
This is putting myself out there in a way I never have done publicly. It might even make me an action faker versus taker if I let friction stop me from moving forward. I can afford the bill and I don't need to do this so the NEED might not be enough to overcome my general Unscripted lifestyle.

I do think this will motivate me to push to do something mostly because I really enjoy creating business concepts, and seeing them work. I might as well do one that could benefit others if it works or even if it fails. There will be learning regardless.

I am hoping to have my initial concept defined by the end of this week giving me a solid month to execute. Knowing me though, I will have it done sooner. Some blockers are that I will be out and traveling this whole week. Is than an excuse? Nope.

My goal is to show that if you have knowledge, will power, intestinal fortitude, then you can do this and do it in a short time. I will have a follow up post with my idea as soon as possible.

TL DR
Aaron is stupid and wants to do the impossible publicly because he is a bored old fart. Follow his general stupidity here and let's have a good laugh.

 

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[Aaron T]

Update 1:
I just came back from a long walk/jog down from the house.. along the beach to some caves, watched whales, saw sunset, got some pics.. walked back up.

The whole time on my mind is what will I do. I came up with an idea. This is the business in a nutshell.

• I will provide an info product on a topic I know well
• Create a small entry-level freebie
• Create a longer much more useful and detailed product for 29.99
• Perhaps make an online training sight to go along with with video training for additional or maybe included price
  • Kudos to @AndrewNC for advice in another thread that might really help me here
• I will need a landing page to entice and accept emails to build my list for upselling
• Use the freebie to hopefully provide actual value and get the email
• Use one of the very things I will be teaching in this Info course as the means to get traffic
  • Self serving test of the same said idea
  • Plus if I was starting from scratch this is what I would do hence this is starting from scratch
  • Also I know how to do this well

I still need to create the product. I will give myself this week to create the initial product, get the website, get the landing page setup. I am traveling and speaking but this should be no reason to not find a moment or two and get this done.

I will try to detail as much as possible during the process.

I still need to figure out the following:

• If i want to spend as little as possible to get this thing going so as to provide a template for people to do the same should I immediately get an LLC? It would be cheating to use one I already have.
• I have no idea how to take payment for this
• Perhaps a new bank account should be created for this before accepting payment
• Do I leverage other marketing services like JVZoo? Go at it alone?
• Am I nuts? Maybe.

Stay tuned. Ideas are forming. I am terrible at writing, but I will try to provide the details for what I am doing while keeping specifics of the product and all out of the forum. My goal is to NOT use this forum as a market so I need to be careful still. I will entertain questions, criticism, insults, idea. I am doing this so others can learn from my folly or, fingers crossed, success.

 

[Aaron T]

Update 3

This is just a minor update but I thought I should let everyone know where I am at.

I finished this past week where i was at our BOLD conference. Literally busy all day, but it was awesome. Got to meet Arianna Huffington and Magic Johnson. Wow, they were inspiring. Anyway, in between the madness of helping out clients, organizing, speaking, and yes partying.. OMG the partying I did manage to make progress.

• I finished my unique free entry level product (info/competitive market)
  • It is a < 30 page lead in give away about something I am knowledgeable on to help build my list
• I have reached out to several big marketers I know for feedback and to see if they can use it as a lead-in on their efforts and I received 2 yes's so far mailings
  • All new lists and with focus to build my email list of fresh leads to 100k from each marketer
  • Email is where the money is and I can afford to give this product away just for the emails
  • Yes I used my network (not my list) to get help here and for free with the exception of the below
• Started the second product / up sell that is $29.99 that will be used
  • Same marketers will get $20 from each sell on the up sell in lieu of any upfront costs while I get the lead and $9.99
  • This is the cost for the leads which are what I really want
• I am still trying to see what the next offer should be to the list after and it should be in the $99 range or more
  • I probably won't have time to create this product in the time frame
  • I have another friend who has done similar work and has a product in mind that I might be able to use and split
  • I can always go to another Aff offer if I need to
• I got my URL
• Building the Bridge pages and Landing Pages now
• I have a back of the napkin funnel flow and I am finishing the weekend out with either coding it or using a tool like Market Hero

The marketer friends have substantial reach. We will use what we can to try to get my email list to 100k from each marketer knowing this is exceptionally hard. But let's play with some funny math to see if this is going to work well enough assuming the email list comes through. Right off the bat I can tell you that my monthly average earn per email address is .61 cents. That means I can technically afford to spend up to .61 cents to acquire the email lead without losing money. Then that lead will continue to earn for me month after month aging out after a lack of response over 6 months.

This means that 200k emails should earn me about $122,000 per month. Oh so close! So what is the problem? Well, the cost to acquire them is not an issue here. Pulling favors. The first up sell should get me about $59,940 given my lowest conversion rate of 3% (6000 sales) . I tend to do closer to 8% these days. Also not the best but not bad. That is not the return I want. So the next up sell I don't have needs to do good and be worth it. At $99.99 (all mine if I create) and at another 3% (of 6000 here) then I might get another 180 sales for $17,820. Yikes! No where close to what I need.

Yeah, $77,760 is nice, but it is half my goal. Also I probably won't be able to create that second product as all mine. I will probably market the up sell to everyone so that number will be different. I will also continue to market to the same list through the funnels over the course of the month hoping to up the conversion. But the reality is friends.. this isn't looking good. This is awful!! I have some ideas, but let's get the marketing going first.

Where I am at now is pure setup. I know, I know.. but I believe preparation is key and I am going to go through with it. Since I am not using this forum for any of the marketing I am trying to be very careful what I actually share yet. I know I will be asked, so when this is over, success or likely failure, I will make sure to share the setup, funnels used, pages and what I was doing in more detail, in such a way that it is not marketed here, but still informative. Please don't ask for details or special previews yet. Hang tight. I will try to make this train wreck worth it for those that stick with the long reads.

 

[Almantas]

I traveled to the future and back. Unfortunately, the only thing that I clearly remember is you hitting your goal and this thread turning into Gold.

 

[Aaron T]

Final Update

As you all know I have been fairly silent on the forum. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which a major life event occurred in my family. All is well now, but it took a lot out of me the last couple weeks. Needless to say for me family first and I am fortunate I could actually do this and be there the entire time. Anyway that is not what you came to read so let's get to it. Just wanted to apologize. As of last night I am back home.

TL;DR
I did not hit my goal. Details below

First I want to make sure as I divulge information that a few things are clear. I will explain as much as I can so this is something that can be learned from but I also want to make sure this is NOT a guru post or a money chasing post. I have had several conversations with a few people around this and I pulled back certainly because it can be taken that way. This is not a simple, fast , easy approach to <insert whatever value amount turns you on> at all! I am not advocating this as a route. I do not need to chase dollars and I want to make sure others realize that this is not for that purpose. As a side note, if people hit me up personally for "the secrets" or whatever I am not sharing that. There are none. I am not selling a course on this to anyone here. I am not even divulging the specifics of the "niche", "technique", or anything. I know this is disappointing for a few, but for this forum and the viewpoint here I feel it is for the best.

Also this is NOT how I made my money in my life and not what I attribute my success too at all.

So Why Did You Do It?
Simple. I had a hard deadline to deal with an IRS payment that was due 10/28. I have the funds for it, but I thought if I made myself a bit of a bet, a challenge, I could try to earn the money to do it. Plus I was seeing many people here struggling to get the internet marketing right and not seeing results so I wondered if some things changed and it was not possible to make it happen. Plus the goal was impossible to hit and therefore a challenge worth accepting.

I am a little sad that it got twisted into a money chasing or guru situation and I got asked for details by people. I know I was going to share the full details including specifics of what I pursued, but that will create a copy cat situation that people will think they can do and make money. I believe MJ referred to this as the Lonny Leaper situation. I don't need people trying to do something like this at a huge costs to themselves without a chance to succeed.

Plus I had some unfair tricks up my sleeve.

Tricks? What Tricks?
Quite frankly I have been doing online and internet marketing in various ways for a long long time. Matter of fact my earlier career I cut my teeth at different marketing techniques and learned the hard way what works and what doesn't and the fact it changes constantly. The net result is that I have a huge network of really good friends that have been doing this along side me a long time too. This gives me an edge in knowledge and in my network that someone might not have. Unfair? Possibly.. but definitely hard earned relationships and knowledge over a long time.

Second I am pretty damn persistent and hard working when I want to do something. This means that I start and gun through things fast and then change/pivot when needed. I had to pivot a few times during this one month challenge. As an example several of people I have become friends with on this forum are still struggling to make a decision and even start during this same time frame. This isn't a trick, but just the way I work. It is why I have failed my way to success.

For those that read Unscripted , this is akin to turning the gumball machine crank faster. I invest and turn that crank so often, so fast, that even though I have relatively few gold gumballs, and lots of white/orange/red ones that I am guaranteed to hit them all. In a sense I try my best to empty my gumball machine out. It is perhaps a flaw of mine that I am a risk taker and not afraid of a few failures. And this means some failures having brought me to negative bank balances, nothing let to show for it, and living in a car I was moving around so it didn't repossessed. I have learned from that point, but I only show it to show that I am not afraid of risks when I believe in something.

How did these tricks help you?
Simply that I knew how to set up a funnel system quickly to get moving and make this work. That I called in on favors with two of my friends that happened to have a marketable list in the niche I was shooting for and followed through. That I also was not afraid to change when I realized I made a few mistakes. My previous golden gumball wins allowed me to use all the value I was getting early on to reinvest in this one.

OK, so where did you end up?
Now for the only part that most of you want to know about.

My friends using their lists of approximately 200k total people interested in what I was doing to mail the offer. I created a bridge page and landing page to capture their emails so I could market them myself. My final subscriber lists ended up here:


Basically I got 26,661 people into my own list to market. These people did not buy anything from me and only received some related free information I provided them. Now using Aweber I created an email marketing campaign in the same niche.

Let's review this part just to make sure it is understood. I created a small info product and reached out using my friends segmented lists to people that might be interested in a particular niche. If they were interested in the product then they would enter their email information on the bridge page and get emailed the free product I created. I disclose on that bridge page that I would be reaching out of the next few days in email, but that I would not sell their email address anywhere. This is true. I also didn't even bother taking their first/last name. I probably should have asked, but the response would be lower.

Why would my friends email out this much for me? I didn't pay them at all. I offered to sell an initial product and get them a 100% affiliate payment on it for the initial product and only make money on an upgraded sell but they actually refused. This is the nice thing about good friends that were interested in my experiment. Also this niche I was working on is slightly off and was testing my own personal knowledge. It was not a common niche and therefore it was risky and not likely to return enough for them anyway, but I did promise to share with them back free the segmented information I learned from it and that is only fair. They agreed. So this was a freebie.

Continuing on I then started an email campaign where I was going to offer a course for $99 but instead created a detailed information packet and also linked to a physical product for less money. Essentially they got immediate gratification if they purchased with a lot of really good, useful, valuable information + a nice physical product mailed to them for later. The mailing information allowed me to collect really good detailed buyer information.

What I am trying to do here is create a "buyers" email list. This is a recent list of known buyers that are valuable. Since I am not likely to market to them ever again and I refuse to sell this information it is essentially wasted, but this was a part of the experiment and quite frankly I don't want to do this kind of thing again. It isn't my cup of tea.

So I hit up the 26661 people on my list with rounds of emails, about 1 a day to every other day for a total of 2 weeks of emails (some still going out now.) Many of these people have unsubscribed, but I only received 1 complaint which I think is good. The whole idea was to convert these people into buyers.

In the end I got ~7.71% conversion from this list into buyers. This is pretty huge to be honest, but in keeping with my ~8% I used to see when marketing to interested crowds. This means that yes, there is still money to be made online. So what that ended up being is about 2,056 buyers total of my product. So out of 200,000 people I was about to get about 1% of them to buy.

Sounds great so what did you make?
Well. My final product as mentioned had a physical and digital component. I created the digital component so that value was all mine. The physical component is created on demand and shipped out through a service. The costs there is slightly more than $20.00 US dollars for the product + shipping. I sold the total package for $49.97 which means I would Net from the sale only $29.97. Net sales where $61,618.32 at the time of this update. Not great at all.

That doesn't sound bad really.
Perhaps, but it is far short of my goal. While I am still out on marketing for a bunch of the people on my list so it will grow, I am still more than 50% of the way through it so I don't expect much more. I won't double what is there and even that is not my goal.

Also let's think about costs. Aweber will charge me. I am not sure of the charge but it is over $149 per month once you have more than 25,000 subscribers in a list so I am waiting to get that final total after the end of this month. Plus my hosting, my funnels.. All in all I am still around my $1000 dollar mark this month as I did not run any advertising or have to pay for my friends to email out. This is HUGE and why it is a trick.

If I had to pay my marketing and emailing it is quite possible I would not have broken even. I might have lost on this. I don't know yet, but using techniques for traffic I know of and the kinds of results I get I suspect my NET profit would have been closer to ~$14,000. Yes that is still wonderful but even further from my goal.

Also bear in mind I need to actually save a large part of this for the IRS still. So it is even less than that left. Not a bad problem to have though.

Where does that leave us?
I am trying to find out now how to share out information in a manner that makes sense without creating copy cats that will blame me for when they lose money as they leap without the advantages I have. But I have learned a few things.

• It is still possible to make money online even in odd ball niches if one researches and tries hard enough
• People want to know the "secret" without earning it all the time... yes I am looking at you creative folks that reached out to me various ways to find out details
• Life events happen that derail everything and you never know when that is and quite frankly I was ill prepared for what happened to my family the last few weeks
• This was NOT easy and without my friends help it probably wouldn't have happened
• I personally find this a hard way to make money as even if I extrapolate this out over years it does not come close to my prior business building and selling in the software world. Personally this is where I would focus if I were to give 100% in the future. Software Development is still my thing.
• I definitely respect Internet Marketers for what they do and it is a good living but it feels greasy to me in a lot of ways. I am sorry friends.

I guess that is it for this journey. It was not as informative as I would like, but I need to spend a part of my time on my father now and dealing with the family and hence the details are not all here. I will try to get more out as I can and share some screenshots in a manner that doesn't illicit money chaser responses. I want to respect what MJ has created and the people here that do good things. To be honest this wasn't a good thing and it smacked of a lot of what I don't believe in. My apologies to many out there that are offended.

 

[Aaron T]

Update?

Not a full update yet as I prefer for it to be informative but a mini-update is not a bad idea so:

Mini-Update 2.1
While I have everything setup the one thing it needed without my lists were basically marketing. As mentioned prior I was relying on two friends to push to their lists into my initial funnel. They did not do that all week, but have started today.

So far in the first couple hours here is where I am at:


Ignore the default test. The first list is the one that matter for now. Note the Unsubscribe rate is through the roof and pretty upsetting but the fact is in a few hours I am starting to get a list up. This is not a big update but it it an update. The full update should include some initial sales numbers. There are some sales BTW but don't want to spoil .. or upset.

So far nothing was spent on this part of the effort. I believe AWeber will charge me a little less than $30 dollars at the end of the month for a list this size so far so I am well under my budget. I am also going to do some of my own marketing to my Bridge pages versus Landing or Squeeze Pages as I am upset at the timing from my Email Marketing friends. Yet I now have a list of people I need to convert into buyers.

Lessons Learned/Info:

• This is taking longer than I had hoped it would
• You cannot rely on friends for your timing when they are doing something gratis
• Still off track from my goal
• This method does work even with the front loaded work for getting some sales

I will provide a better update hopefully soon. Sorry for the lack luster update.

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

Fascinating @Aaron T . Even more so considering your track record.

To put this into perspective, this is $4,000 a DAY for the next 30 days.

@wade1mil is probing the right issues.

If you had a gun to your head and had to come up with $240,000 in 30 days instead, what would you do differently right now?

What is the Biggest, Juiciest, Lowest-Hanging Fruit you can grab and devour?

There are 24 hours in a day. Let's assume you can only effectively take 9-12 hours per day plucking the largest fruit.

How can you create the largest volume of results with the least amount of effort?

Once that's figured out, who or what can you put in place to pluck the largest fruit while you sleep?

If you want a powerful 'why' behind this challenge,
the simple exersize of creating massive results in a short period of time is an extremely valuable lesson;
especially analytical types like you and I - we like to think a lot, but have a hard time putting rubber to the road.

Cheers.
Rooting for you

 

[Aaron T]

you guys are either crazy or geniuses. nothing more , nothing less

I will take that. I think it is both. Crazy is often unrealized genius. Someone before or after their time unless it is truly a mental issue.

I am certainly no genius, but I will take crazy all day. Plus crazy is fun.

 

[Aaron T]

Official Update 2:

As I am creating the product I need to find a good Landing page theme for Wordpress (heard good things about Thrivethemes I believe it was called) or I might go with a service. I have not decided. If anyone has opinions share them please.

Also, I have done some affiliate marketing in the past and I might consider opening this up to affiliates. I would not reach out personally to past affiliate markets I know so as to not violate the terms of the challenge.

BTW I want to share something important here. I can afford this challenge therefore this is a stupid as hell to not use every resource one has to succeed. If you are starting a business of any sort, don't do this aspect of what I am proposing. This is merely for informational reasons to see if one can get a decent income quickly using this technique I am proposing.

Second, most info marketing is pure crap and borderline scam IMHO. So this makes me a bit of a hypocrite in my mind. The only way I am going to justify this is by doing my damned best to provide real value and do everything I can to NOT rip off a single person. If ANYONE is unhappy with what I deliver at ANY time I will immediately refund. Otherwise I can't justify this. I WILL NOT RIP OFF ANYONE TO MEET THIS RIDICULOUSLY HARD GOAL.

That said, I feel greasy even doing a campaign like this, but I actually think it might be of value to the right people. Since to some degree I will be using some of the very same said techniques I will know how valuable it might be.

Stay tuned. There will be slower updates. I just felt I needed to say this bit.

 

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[wade1mil]

As I am creating the product I need to find a good Landing page theme for Wordpress (heard good things about Thrivethemes I believe it was called) or I might go with a service. I have not decided. If anyone has opinions share them please.

I assume the one month goal is a joke because this should be a decision you make in 5 seconds and implement in 15 minutes if you're serious about the time frame. You don't have time for feedback on this small of a decision. Of course, you'd also be crazy if you don't have a proven game plan AND a high-demand product a the start.

Want a challenge? Pick a product/service and make your first sale (to someone you don't know) before midnight tonight. Then you can worry about which Wordpress theme to use later. Have fun man.

 

[amp0193]

What Is Challenge
So I am giving myself Until Oct. 28th to hit $120,000 with a new business.

I love the Fastlane.


You got this.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Thanks for sharing, win or lose, succeed or fail, we will all grow from your documentation. Thank you.

 

[Philip Marlowe]

I plan on transferring all of my rep to @amp0193 when his money is in the bank, but whatever I have built from then will go to you on 10/28 when you crush this!

Definitely watching this thread.

Question - are you leveraging an existing network or relationships for this (i.e., is this something analogous to what you've done in the past and know some folks will be interested in from the start?)?

 

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[Aaron T]

Thank you for the detailed update! I'm rooting for you. It seems your expertise in this arena is allowing you to sew the patches together pretty quick.

To be honest it isn't nearly fast enough to be a success per my criteria, and my distractions this week with prior obligations took a lot of time and energy out of me. Just seeing that I might only get $77k, half my goal, is frustrating. I am tempted to dump money into advertising, but then I promised to keep this to < $1000 as a startup budget and that would be cheating.

I appreciate your rooting for me though! I got ideas and I will work them.

 

[Aaron T]

Thanks for sharing, win or lose, succeed or fail, we will all grow from your documentation. Thank you.

Thank you MJ.

To me the only real Failure is if you learned nothing. Even if we fail at the endeavor we learn from the experience that helps us the next time.

 

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[Aaron T]

I'm also going to watch closely.
I'm always interested to see how other people walk through the process. Plus this is an ambitious goal if you aren't using current mailing lists.

I know. I feel stupid for that one, but ambitious is a good thing. What is the worst that can happen?

I will leverage my knowledge, and maybe my network of professionals and friends. I decided after it was raised to not hit any of my current or even old lists because I think it would provide less value as a case study for anyone that might want to do something like this from the start. I think there are a lot of people that would like to see if such a thing is possible, including myself. I am just crazy enough to attempt it.

 

[Aaron T]

If you had a gun to your head and had to come up with $240,000 in 30 days instead, what would you do differently right now?

Excellent question. Certainly those are the right things to ask depending on where you are in life. However I get the point! Err.. the gun point!

If I had a gun to my head, I would flash sell one of my many homes that I own outright for well below market for all cash. Or I would pull it out of one of my investments because I could get that in 48 hours.

If it was strictly by creating a business then I would pump up some of my current online businesses that are established. A couple of those do pretty good as it is.

If it was creating something from scratch, which is what I think you mean, then pretty much what I am doing now, or maybe a product in my aff network. But then I would be using my mailing lists to do it.

Instead, I am doing this as a personal challenge because I can. Instead of paying the tax bill I thought it would be fun as a challenge, but I certainly get the urgency. I took a deliberately harder route. Somewhat intentionally. I am starting as if from scratch with only knowledge. As I stated it is pretty impossible, but it is definitely fun.

I think it is just to show what is possible with a strong need, but not necessarily gun to the head need. That however sounds like a different challenge thread or maybe a contest thread. Ideas peculating for that one.

 

[GMSI7D]

i love you american or english speaking guys, whatever


because you remind me of the american movies we watch on TV :

superman, Western's heroes and so on


this is your culture : saving the world , doing the impossible, insulting reason and common sense

you guys are either crazy or geniuses. nothing more , nothing less



" Hope : it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of
your greatest strenght and your greatest weakness "

The Architect ( the matrix reloaded )

 

[Philip Marlowe]

Does it make a little more sense now?

Yes - this is an excellent thread.

In doing some due diligence on my own project, I've been researching a primary competitor and have just run into what I'll call his 'solar system'. It's amazing, and I didn't notice it before, but he has these sites all over the place, all revolving around his products. Even his most distant, obscure websites bring you back to his products. It's been really helpful moving through it all and seeing what he's doing. Especially since his product is just mediocre and his website is from the 1990s.

The challenge is that it's so overwhelming. He's literally got sooo damn much "stuff" out there. It's like getting stuck in a giant casino that hasn't been renovated in years and you don't know where the exit is.

All I can do is just grind through it ("How do you eat an elephant?").

 

[Aaron T]

I was just wondering I haven't seen any updates on this the last week... Are you still on track?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

Hey. Sorry. I have not been here or online a whole lot. I have had a bit of news in the family that has required my attention.

So for a very short update see below. I will try to put more information as soon as I can really focus

Minor Update:
Nearing the end and things are not where they should by a long shot. This is in part due to some inattention as I refocused on what is my priority in life; my family.
There have been a few ongoing campaigns with sending emails and building my list. The list looks better than I expected to be honest at this point, but the subscribers are thinning out.


Mostly I have been ignoring things and this has led to a drop off. The good news is that I have a decent buyers email list now and a decent subscriber list. My problem is the percent of conversions is lower than I really need and the up sell and down sell opportunities are as a result lower. The net of it is that I am more than halfway in and I am less than halfway there.

I am not providing all the numbers yet, but while I have started with an initial investment lower than I thought, the output is also lower than the target, but it is also not inconsequential. One thing I have learned though is I prefer building software products so far to this type of marketing. It takes a lot more focus and when something takes your focus away from it you see immediate drop in income.

As for my current situation it will resolve soon and I will provide more information as I can really break it down. This is a disservice to the group right now but I wanted to share a little bit as is fair. I am sorry.

 

[Aaron T]

I traveled to the future and back. Unfortunately, the only thing that I clearly remember is you hitting your goal and this thread turning into Gold.

Thank you for your faith! it's gonna be hard and I am not looking for a gold thread unless there is value here to be had.

I just want to see if I can do another impossible thing before Halloween. I have a big Halloween bash to go to that is scary enough without the IRS trying to frighten me a bit more.

To be honest, my biggest challenge here will be to stay on top and motivated and not fall back to current funds to pay the bill. I can do that. I can afford it easy. But, where is the fun in that?

 

[Almantas]

Thank you for your faith! it's gonna be hard and I am not looking for a gold thread unless there is value here to be had.

I just want to see if I can do another impossible thing before Halloween. I have a big Halloween bash to go to that is scary enough without the IRS trying to frighten me a bit more.

To be honest, my biggest challenge here will be to stay on top and motivated and not fall back to current funds to pay the bill. I can do that. I can afford it easy. But, where is the fun in that?

I love the way you try to challenge yourself. That's why this thread is going to get a Gold status for sure! I have all my fingers crossed for you and am doing a similar challenge myself, just on a much financially smaller scale - mine is more emotionally related at this stage until I pick myself up properly. Best of luck with your progress and PM if I can be of any help!

 

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[Aaron T]

I plan on transferring all of my rep to @amp0193 when his money is in the bank, but whatever I have built from then will go to you on 10/28 when you crush this!

Definitely watching this thread.

Question - are you leveraging an existing network or relationships for this (i.e., is this something analogous to what you've done in the past and know some folks will be interested in from the start?)?

Thank you Philip! I am certainly not doing this for rep. More doing this cause I am angry at the IRS.

That is an excellent question. I think I should leverage my knowledge, but I think it is more challenging if I don't use my current lists or network and therefore I have to start one fresh. That would make this a hell of a lot harder, but also a hell of a lot more interesting and maybe valuable.

OK, I think I will leverage knowledge to build the network, but not use my current Aweber mailing lists or current FB network. This will be fresh. That seems fair.

 

[CareCPA]

...

• If i want to spend as little as possible to get this thing going so as to provide a template for people to do the same should I immediately get an LLC? It would be cheating to use one I already have.
• I have no idea how to take payment for this
• Perhaps a new bank account should be created for this before accepting payment

...

How long-term is this? If it's just a short-term project, with no other complications or liability issues, I probably wouldn't bother with the entity or separate account. Unless you think that you're going to make enough for the S Corp conversion to be worth it?

The problem (as you probably know), is that everything with the government takes time. By the time you register with a state and the IRS, how much of the month timeline you're giving yourself will you have wasted?

 

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[Aaron T]

I assume the one month goal is a joke because this should be a decision you make in 5 seconds and implement in 15 minutes if you're serious about the time frame. You don't have time for feedback on this small of a decision. Of course, you'd also be crazy if you don't have a proven game plan AND a high-demand product a the start.

Want a challenge? Pick a product/service and make your first sale (to someone you don't know) before midnight tonight. Then you can worry about which Wordpress theme to use later. Have fun man.

No, not a joke. I sincerely wanted some feedback. You provided. I actually agree with you. I have some very strong opinions on what I want for my sales funnel, my landing page, how it would flow. In a sense I had already decided. What I also wanted was some feedback from other people on what they use/used.

Why?

I am building my product right now. I have the luxury of time in not having to sell it by midnight or having to make a decision in 5 secs. I thought it would bring good discourse.

The time to decide/setup to first sell is not my limiting factor. Regarding my seriousness, you can decide later. I am taking it quite serious and I know from a new idea, fresh info product being created, to first sale is important, and also takes more than 15 mins.

In terms of online businesses and marketing this is not my first rodeo.I did pick a difficult bull to ride though.

 

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[Aaron T]

deja vu?

I wasn't sure what you meant by that Jon so I had to reach out. Thank you for the great call and helping a new member understand. Glad all is good.

 

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[Qstyle]

Hey. Sorry. I have not been here or online a whole lot. I have had a bit of news in the family that has required my attention.

So for a very short update see below. I will try to put more information as soon as I can really focus

Minor Update:
Nearing the end and things are not where they should by a long shot. This is in part due to some inattention as I refocused on what is my priority in life; my family.
There have been a few ongoing campaigns with sending emails and building my list. The list looks better than I expected to be honest at this point, but the subscribers are thinning out.
View attachment 16704

Mostly I have been ignoring things and this has led to a drop off. The good news is that I have a decent buyers email list now and a decent subscriber list. My problem is the percent of conversions is lower than I really need and the up sell and down sell opportunities are as a result lower. The net of it is that I am more than halfway in and I am less than halfway there.

I am not providing all the numbers yet, but while I have started with an initial investment lower than I thought, the output is also lower than the target, but it is also not inconsequential. One thing I have learned though is I prefer building software products so far to this type of marketing. It takes a lot more focus and when something takes your focus away from it you see immediate drop in income.

As for my current situation it will resolve soon and I will provide more information as I can really break it down. This is a disservice to the group right now but I wanted to share a little bit as is fair. I am sorry.

There's no need for apologizing. Family is all that matters in the end.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

 

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[Aaron T]

I love the way you try to challenge yourself. That's why this thread is going to get a Gold status for sure! I have all my fingers crossed for you and am doing a similar challenge myself, just on a much financially smaller scale - mine is more emotionally related at this stage until I pick myself up properly. Best of luck with your progress and PM if I can be of any help!

Thank you. I love a good challenge!

Likewise let me know if I can help you with yours.

I am just trying to figure out the best thing to move forward with. I am not sure what to do yet, but it will consume me until I do.

 

[BD64]

Gonna be watching this thread closely. I'm brand new to the entrepreneurial world and just started on my own ventures. Really curious and looking forward to seeing how someone with more experience and some wins under his belt goes about this. Also kudos to you for doing something like this simply out of boredom, wish I could say the same aha, anyway goodluck!

 

[lowtek]

Rooting for ya Best of luck