Inside Pauls Brain

I am suffering with idea overload a bit at the moment, I have one tool that is ready to go all but the sales page video (I did one that is 10 mins long and that is to long to expect anyone to suffer listening to me), I have just got a quote back for another one from the programmer and I have well lets say I have some other stuff to get ready to distribute..

I couldn’t decide how to promote, or whether to sell or make people sign up to get the Hyperlink Maker and in the end I decided to give it away, no sign up , no charge. So far nearly 1k people have downloaded it and I am getting sign ups to the list that is advertised in the screen that is built into the tool.
This is all a game of numbers, need lots more downloads to really make it pay, but it has been worth it for the nice emails I have received and also for the things I have learned while releasing it.

I would say that I learn something from every product launch, Comment Hut was a huge learning curve for me and I have to say it still sells today over a year later so we must have done something right.

I am wondering about different ways to monetize these products, some of them are small ones some are large ones.
Could I offer branded versions of the small tools and sell them to people so they can distribute them to their lists or use them as listbuilders or .. well I am sure people can come up with a million ideas.

I have more ideas than I can handle , the main problem I have is that I am not sure my list will withstand me releasing something new every month. So I will carry on scribbling down my ideas and look at new and inventive ways to turn ideas into income.

Ok back to work, gotta give the go ahead on the latest tool idea, and then come up with a name for it and buy some domain names.

Oh and if you would like to know one word which is the key to making money.

Free

Give a free version of everything you sell, give some stuff away free, and heck once in a while give someone on your freebie list something for free (I run surveys once in a while and give someone something).

I just received my monthly aweber bill and I have to say it is worth every penny I spend on it.

One thing I noticed is that I pay for the people who unsubscribe!
Aweber charge you a base amount and then they charge you for each extra 10K, so if you have 10k people on your list it is $19.95 a month, if your have 10,001 it is a extra $9.95.
Now I think this is a fair price and I more than make my money back every month, but if you are at 10,001 and that includes a couple of hundred unsubscribes then remove them now and it will bring you under the 10k mark and save you $9.95 a month!

I know this is no use if you have 15k in there, but if you are coming up to the 10k number then it is worth looking at. If you are nowhere near the 10k mark.. Why not?

If you are looking for ways to build your list, giveaways can be a good way to build a list (yes I know it won’t be the most responsive one ever but there is money in them) - Find giveaways - The lense isn’t mine but it has a good list of giveaways.

While I am talking about lists..

There have been a couple of posts on a forum I frequent recently about whether mailing lists are a good idea in every market or not.
Someone also mentioned the pressure of running 3 monthly newsletters, which I can imagine would be a real headache..
Maybe I look on this a bit contrarily..

Just because you have a mailing list , it doesn’t mean you have to mail them, yes it will reduce your sales when you do mail them but less work and still making some sales has it’s plus points.
If you don’t have a list you don’t have the option to ever send them anything.

Another option is to have someone else write the autoresponder for you?
PLR Content - Tiffany Dow is a reasonably well known writer and a Squidoo expert. She has found a real niche in the PLR market, she not only offers PLR articles for a buck a piece she also does packs of ready to use content that you can just pop into youraweber account and bingo you have a years worth of follow ups for everyone who joins your list.

If you don’t want to invest in a years worth of autoresponders, you could always write 3 months or 6 months worth at a time or pay someone else to do it for you.

I wish I had started my mailing lists the day i started online, I don’t hit the lists often but when I do it is nice to see the income. I am sure I could get more out of them if I had some structure and was more organized.

You may have read the product review for a new video product that I was lucky enough to get a peek at.

Read The Review if you missed it.

I was talking to the developer and he said that his WSO was going ok, but he wishes he had a mailing list.

I have done some WSO’s before and some went very very well, others didn’t.
Software sells well, and so do reports that promise “get rich now with no work” seem to do best.
One of the other problems with a WSO is the bandwagon effect.

I bought 3 or 4 reports on site flipping for a project I am working on and they got gradually worse and worse as people just started copying the earlier reports.
If you release some new software as a WSO, you can almost guarantee that someone will be releasing a similar version at half the price within a week or two.

That is business I know and no one has any right to expect to be the only person selling anything.

Anyway Chris ( the developer of Viral Video Player )was talking to me about whether it is better to have your own list than to rely on a new WSO every time you release something.

Of course it is a good idea to have a list but that also sounds a much easier thing to do than it seems to be in real life.. more on that in the next post I think.

I keep hearing about all these new launches which will be going on in the new year, small launches, medium launches and I am sure there will be one or two big launches that will be bringing in someone or another millions of dollars.

I am currently testing the next Comment Hut update which is getting some great reviews from people who have seen it, I don’t think it will be ready until the new year but we will see.

If you are a Comment Hut customer who uses it on a regular basis and would like to be take a look at the update email me. If I send you a copy you need to know that it is not a finished product (e.g there isn’t a fancy user manual, and it is quite possible you will find a problem or have a suggestion) just yet.

Apart from the Comment Hut update I am clearing the decks a bit to start putting some of the ideas that I have got from The Income Academy into place.

Some domain buying and selling, some list building with eBay and some site flipping.

One thing I am wondering about, is it worth hiring a site builder from India or somewhere for $6-$8 a hour to build the sites so I can concentrate on building the lists and selling the sites to them?

I worry about information and opportunity overload, and….